#best thing about the later seasons is sam going insane

[cormoranthh]

you know, I’ve been… remembering things, little things so clearly. you used to read to me when I was little, I mean- really little, from that old classics illustrated comic book, you remember that? knights of the round table. and all king arthur’s knights- and they were all on the quest for the holy grail, and I remember looking at this picture of sir galahad and- and he was kneeling, and... and light streaming over his face, and I remember thinking, I could never go on a quest like that. because... I’m not- clean. I mean, I was just a little kid. you think maybe I knew? I mean, deep down that… I had demon blood in me and about the evil of it and that I wasn’t pure?

[according2thelore]

hiiiii i came across THIS wonderful post again: https://www.tumblr.com/flowersintheimpala69/757661016232460288/s1-dean-meeting-later-seasons-sam-through-time and was curious if you had any thoughts with es/ls verse and apologies!!!

i feel like through the seasons, dean clams up and can’t apologize anymore even when he clearly means it (“i’m poison,” etc). he does insane things to show it rather than say it. it’s like he thinks that if he doesn’t have that bit of pride — if he admits that he was wrong — the whole stack of cards is gonna fall.

meanwhile sam is soooo much more apologetic and taking the blame for things that aren’t his fault (whereas young sam is the opposite — he’s the tower of pride there, who’s not gonna ever admit that maybe dad was more complicated than thought).

just curious if you were thinking anything ☺️

the wonderful post in question!

hi, beth!!! :)

you hit the nail exactly on the head!!! dean holds a lot of guilt and blame in the early seasons (e.g., john's death, sam's death, jess's death, forcing sam away from stanford, jo's death, etc.), and as we get later into the seasons, dean never makes apologies or can be wrong. he still definitely has that guilt, but it mostly manifests as anger.

on the other hand, sam in the early seasons is never at fault, while in the later seasons, sam takes the blame for everything. he sees most things in their lives as his fault, and verbalizes blame as an apology.

they kind of go on opposite arcs, which is kind of fun!

i think they ABSOLUTELY notice this discrepancy very soon.

as a small-scale example, ES!Sam runs headfirst into LS!Sam one day in the hallway, and the stack of books ES!Sam's carrying goes flying. immediately, he's like "hey! watch where you're going!" even though he's absolutely the one that clipped the corner. LS!Sam is like "woah hey i'm so sorry i guess i'm in my head today"

ES!Sam definitely sees this as a supporting evidence for the lack of a backbone from sam. he can't even tell ES!Sam to fuck off about running right into him, and just takes whatever shit anybody throws at him. this probably drives him even crazier, because this is a further alienation--so much of LS!Sam he doesn't even recognize!!!

(cue ES!Dean/LS!Sam being stuck in an apology loop and ES!Sam/LS!Dean just staring at each other waiting for them to say something ("don't know how to use those long legs of yours yet, kid?" "shut up, it's your fault you're basically a tank"))

when they're all together, i think ES!Sam would irritate LS!Sam the most. LS!Sam would see ES!Sam as kind of an arrogant little shit, lol, especially since it's canon sam tends to be harsh with the younger versions of himself. it would make him sad, which would make him angry. who are you to know what's best? you don't know anything. you've never known anything.

i also think LS!Dean would irritate ES!Dean, because a dictator that can never be wrong?? very much john winchester, yup. when LS!Dean says something mean to anyone, and hits them with, like you said, an "i'm poison" move, ES!Dean would be like ?? wtf ?? what does that even mean ?? like okay emo, how about you apologize first ??

this was SUPER fun to think about, thank you so much for sending it in!! :) mwah mwah mwah! <3

-lizzy

[shallowseeker]

Rambling about the Macleods and Castiel friendship today:

I looooove how Rowena and Crowley will go out of their way to annoy everyone:

Rowena (11x03)

Rowena: You wouldn't think a road trip with two such strapping lads could be this tedious. Shall we have a wee sing-song? Sam and Dean (in unison): No!

///

Crowley in early 12x03: YAY ROAD TRIP!

Unlike in the past, Crowley is making himself as ADORABLE AS POSSIBLE THIS SEASON, ESPECIALLY TO CAS. Hilarious change of tactics. Truly. Crowley and Rowena both want friends so badly!

Crowley singing!

12x03

&

Crowley singing again!

12x15

///

Crowley is ALSO blowing a lot of hot air this season. Which continues into the next episodes.

12x03

Cas, as usual, not reacting much to Crowley's attempts to wound. (This is partially why Crowley goads him; the game is in getting Cas to react, which... he almost never does.)

////

But it's is soooooo funny, though. Crowley calls himself a "Jay-Z" and a POWERFUL demon and keeps trying to make digs at Cas as only "kinda powerful"...

...and yet insisting Cas go ahead of him, BWAHAHA. I love Crowley so much. I never thought about how Metatron-coded hs is a lot of the time, and it's... hilarious. (I'm a huge Metatron girl, so.)

"You first, Cas, go go!"

//

Also, I'm 99% sure this is the era where Rowena notoriously flipped on Cas, deciding he was super desirable, and I'm 99% sure this drove Crowley insane.

///

Rowena is in her dating-any-men-possible era, and she instantly starts velcro-ing herself to Cas. Later we'll see her go, "Ooooh, is the handsome angel there. Hi, tweetie pie!"

////

But yeah. Metatron, Crowley, and Rowena want to be popular kids and have friends soooooooooooo bad and I love them all.

///

Literally, all Crowley wants from life is to steal Sam and Dean's (and Cas's) roles. As we saw in s10, he HATES work. He wants his life to be one long fun road trip, filled with booze and bar-hopping.

///

Also LOL at Sam assuming Rowena got some licks in and did some damage. I love that he has this wonderful assumption of Rowena's strength:

///

///

///

Crowley tries much harder than usual to muster up (transparent) bluster. He's feeling insecure, lost. He wants friends, family, security. I think he's partially throwing his weight around because Lucifer represents his deepest insecurity: his job.

Beating Lucifer is the last peak, and maybe if he climbs it, he thinks, his life will finally even out.

&

///

AHAHA. Crowley loves being annoying, and he loves trying to break Cas's poker face.

///

And speaking of uncool, Sam and Dean are pretty "uncool" this episode too, LOL!

&

VERSUS

Despite the others nagging him, it's CAS who establishes a rapport and gets the "in" this episode.

Cas does this being being unashamedly uncool, not being a yapping Hell-king, or trying to appear "hip" like Sam and Dean do.

///

And Cas's stoic heroism seems to rub off on him. Crowley, not willing to fight Lucifer for Rowena in 12x02:

Crowley, who deep down wants to be more heroic like Cas, Like "Superman"...

...Is now trying his best to be a little more of a hero, following Cas's lead (he says it's because he hates Lucifer, but we'll do Crowley take up for friends and even the rescued-girl-of-the-week in later eps: Stuck in the Middle (with you) AND Somewhere in Between Heaven and Hell.

///

A hero's entrance:

//

And again, I had a meta about this before, but it's sooooo interesting that Lucifer is using Cas as a Chuck-stand-in: "Took you long enough," like he's been waiting for Cas, specifically. Like he wants a reaction out of Cas specifically.

//

And you know what else is fun? Lucifer attacks Crowley brutally with a guitar

And two seconds later Cas doles out the same thing to Lucifer.

ANYWAY.

This is the era when Rowena starting referring to Cas as "the handsome angel," and he actually gets fidgety and shy about it, and Crowley is probably losing his mind over Rowena's developing crush on him, especially since Cas, by all appearances, treats Rowena so nicies in comparision to Crowley.

BUT! In the next episode, Cas is a little nicer to Crowley, playing along by calling him Agent Zappa. Seems like they're KINDA friends now.

[utilitycaster]

Thank you for mentioning the possibility that Matt just planned that fight for a tpk + a switch to the other party and had to keep it, I thought I was just going insane. I understand that you said that it's unlikely, and I agree, mostly because Matt is a seasoned enough DM to know a party isn't going to just accept death, but this feels like a thing that production obligations causes? With the caveat that I honestly don't know anything about production stuff lol.

Same; I really do hope they cover it on 4SD because, and I know I'm being a bit of a broken record here, but. I'm not coming at this for "I HATE CHANGE" reason and while I'm haven't personally felt a deep need to check on the Crown Keepers I wouldn't mind it, but. That's kind of it. I went from "I am specifically more excited for this particular episode than I have been for a while" to "thing I can best describe as 'wouldn't mind it' under ideal conditions." I'm still like, no, I don't know how production works, but literally you can have standard episodes without Sam and give him some time to join, so I don't see how it would be that, and unless you are truly recording with only a week's lead time, especially because there's a Candela episode, I don't see how you couldn't just edit this to be later even if you had to film now.

I also am going to bring up a point I had in the DMs: again, typical caveats of it's their table and they trust each other and I do not know who knew what about this within the cast other than Matt, but also just speaking personally, if I were coming to a session after an intense character death and halfway through the DM was like "so I gotta play in this other game, we'll pick up next time" I'd be like "um, what the fuck." To be clear: it's entirely possible the cast was given a tip-off, but then it gets into "so this wasn't really a surprise for the table; it was only a surprise for the viewers, who by and large did not like it and like, I could have told you that" territory.

[pavloveme]

so i watched interview with the vampire.

and you're gonna be like "laila, i thought you like to watch things after the hype has died down" well i thought so too but they put it on netflix and the brainworms got to me. i watched both seasons in a weekend. i'm gonna read the books next. usually i really don't like shows where the characters you follow are just "so complex!!!1!!!!1" and "hard to understand!!!1!!!!1" because a lot of the time this is just a cheap copout for people who want to fuck very surface level villains with very surface level writing (a lot of you have let fanon make you think some characters are deeper than they actually are but thats a story for another day) but i am SO happy to report that this is NOT the case for interview with the vampire. you have so many conflicting feelings for all of these characters (except claudia. i do in fact support her every decision. love that queen. my princess.) and it's just so good. this is the true drama people are looking for on tv. kind of wish it was on during the era of cable cuz you KNOW it would've been craycray. going into this, i really was expecting to completely dislike lestat but honestly i can't even say that. i love him and i hate him. the same way i love and hate louis and i love and hate armand. claudia and daniel are really the only characters that i love unconditionally. but there are so many scenes that just really pull on my heart strings. the finale where lestat says "armand called me, did you hurt yourself?" with those SAD ASS EYES. i don't know if people have already said this but whenever lestat is really sad sam reid puts on these puppy eyes that practically FORCE you to feel bad its insane. and louis.......... the man who is fumbled over and over again constantly. my favorite unreliable narrator. seeing how the "turning of claudia REALLY went down lowkey rewired some neurons. "please ill do anything ill be anything please please please." the guilt was literally eating him alive to the point of no return. that had me really gagged. jacob anderson lowkey best actor ever? like where are the awards we need them right now. and armand......... oh armand. biggest fumbler ive ever seen. its okay though cuz he's gonna fuck that old man. i know he is. but him lying over and over again to louis is actually so crazy. like bro is a pathological liar AND a gaslighter. you've been alive for over five hundred years and i can tell you havent gone to therapy not one time in your entire life. like for him to take the credit for lestat saving louis is what REALLY got me. like lowkey that's worse than the betrayal itself. like 70 years of mending back together our relationship after you killed my daughter and almost me only for me to find out MY EX SAVED ME? AND NOT YOU? like oh i would've really crashed out. and my dear claudia.... my favorite. it's so crazy like i will absolutely not allow any claudia slander because i can defend her from anything. like i genuinely do not think any "bad" thing claudia does is her fault because she literally did not ask for this. like you can argue that it made her life WORSE! instead of simply dying in that moment, she had to die later after suffering so much and THEN proceeding to experience happiness for one moment (insert the have you ever gotten everything you ever wanted? no. but i once got very close quote here). claudia did nothing but suffer, was treated seriously by NO ONE in her life, and the one time someone picks her, they both proceed to die immediately after. that genuinely upset me so much i wanted to turn the tv off. and the crazy thing is we ALL knew claudia was going to die because they talked about her in past tense THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW! LIKE I KNEW SHE WAS DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME! AND I STILL WANTED TO SMASH THE TV! it's actually insane. at least in her final moments madeleine chose her. which was done very beautifully in my opinion. "my coven is claudia." goosebumps man. because a lot of people probably would've chosen the other option but no not madeleine. she loved claudia more than she wanted to live. i love this show man.

[ichayalovesyou]

Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow

SPOILERS AHEAD

Oh man you guys! I really enjoyed this episode! I loved it way more than The Broken Circle but I did not love it as much as I loved Ad Astra Per Aspera but that episode was so a cut above the average (as in in the running for best episodes of Trek ever written caliber stuff). That it hardly seems fair to say so because this episode was an absolute JOY to watch! Lol! I love a good time travel romp!

I remembered enjoying Paul Wesley’s Kirk in A Quality of Mercy but I wasn’t sure whether I was just riding the high of the previous season or whether he could pull it off twice. But he did and I really really like his interpretation of Jim. I honestly like it a lot better than Chris Pine’s if I’m super honest with y’all.

I mean he UNDERSTOOD the assignment! He was definitely at his Kirkiest when they initially arrived in the 21st century that body language and cadence was on point despite him not looking too much like Shatner. I mean hats off to the writers too for that one. The passion for chess without being overly cocky. The all of it!

There was something about the hot dogs scene and letting La’an have the bed in the hotel that felt very Tarsus IV even tho that might not have happened in this timeline. It’s still very James Kirk of him. Not to mention the whole bit where his type is overachiever, kinda uptight but also dark and mysterious and dare I say a little out of his league folks. Whom he charms without being pushy into warming up to him and letting their guard down. Also THANK YOU to the writers and to Wesley for recognizing Kirk Drift and acknowledging our boy is a hopeless romantic and NOT a babe hound.

I called the La’an/Kirk thing way before it happened because of it. And from what was implied in the Ready Room interview with Paul Wesley it sounds as though we might get more La’an & Jim content in the future which I certainly wouldn’t object to! Although we are skirting the edge of when Jim & Carol Marcus supposedly met so that might get a lil complicated but the seasons (because they’re sorter) might not be 1:1 with years so they’ve got some wiggle room to work with.

I love seeing the cinematic parallels between Kirk & Jim’s love interest stuff in SNW that clearly draws them to each other later on. Chapel is a lot like Kirk and Spock is falling for her pretty hard. La’an is a lot like Spock by the time we meet him in TOS (not too similar to SNW baby Spock though) and they fell for each other pretty badly too! For example, both La’an & Spock are terrified of Kirk’s insane driving skills (or lack thereof lmao)! But enough about Jim & the whole K/S kitten caboodle! This episode is about LA’AN :D

Holy shit did La’an need what’s been happening with her in these past couple episodes. She got to face her generational trauma headlong, she got to see a mirror in Kirk and further realize the value of enjoying the fleeting and precious joys of life. By both convincing this alternate timeline version of Kirk that her version of the world is worth saving (also not the “Sam’s alive?” 😭 because his older brother dies unexpectedly and tragically in both timelines DONT TOUCH MEEEE, also not the potential Kirk bros content going forward also 😭). To eating the damn hot dog, and presumably letting Kirk talk her into taking the bed and just ugggggh.

And then HE DIES! They fridged Captain James T. Kirk of all people for HER character development lmao how’s THAT for a twist. Historically it’s been the other way around how’s that feel for once Jimbo? Damn!

Sera was an interesting villain, she was a good twist honestly felt like something was up with her the minute she had pics of that romukan ship. Also, I love all the self referential like, “yes we acknowledge this changed a little bit” stuff that’s happened. Like the Temporal Wars are why the Eugenics war is supposed to start around *now* and not the 90s like previously stated and Sera has been trapped trying to fulfill her mission for 30 years. Or how clearly Jim thinks everybody calls his brother George and only he gets to call him Sam when clearly that’s not the case lol. It’s nice little touches like that that really make me feel validated for having faith in the writers when nitpickers complain.

Also PELIA! She’s an art thief?! Incredible! Hilarious! Brilliant! No notes! Although it JUST occurred to me that because La’an went to Pelia before the whole “preventing the timeline from changing entirely” bit does THAT mean that La’an can at least talk to Pelia about what happened?! Because it’s implied La’an is who inspired her to become an engineer and that’s still part of our prime timeline! Maybe it’s like a Guinan and Picard situation! I think La’an should get to sob into the arms of our funky little klepto engineer grandma as a treat instead of breaking down alone in her room, please and thank you!

Anyway, baller episode! 9/10

[angelsdean]

how is dean not the same as john. in the later seasons i mean. sorry but describing him as "not an angry man" is insane to me cause dean's number 1 of getting out his emotions is anger. i love dean as well but like. you know john tried to be better too right? like i dont really understand how you extend this huge hand to excuse some of dean's angry/bad tendencies (which imo makes him that mlre interesting: the fact that he is angry and he's sometimes not a particularly good person) but refuse to extend even a sliver of this to john? obviously i get that you're attached to dean way more than john thats like common sense for us deangirls but genuinely. cas died and dean did turn into his father. its a thing that happened. i love dean and i dont understand how you can call yourself a deanlover but... erase so much of him??? like you can say he has bad qualities. thats what makes him human. john and dean are much more similar than you claim and its genuinely confusing to me why you don't see that. not trying to start a fight or anything i genuinely would like to get a piece of your mind on this

no no no you misunderstand. i am not erasing ?? his anger. he IS angry (it's just that anger for dean is rarely actually anger). i also think his imperfections are what make him interesting. i talk abt this a lot actually. about how i don't believe in flatting ANY character to prop them up as your fave. people being messy and flawed is good. the problem i have is people who do not look at dean w/ any nuance and just point blank go: he's angry therefore he's abusive and equals john without examining WHY he's angry, where that anger originates from, the fact that his anger most often is Not true anger for the sake of anger or violence. instead, his anger most often stems from fear and grief. especially during widower's arc. he's drowning in grief and as much as we love jack and can see in hindsight that he wasn't a threat at all, dean doesn't know that! we as the audience get the privilege of often knowing and seeing more than the characters! all dean sees at the time is a Very powerful being, who IS the son of lucifer, and who he believes manipulated his best friend and got him killed. he does have every right to be afraid and wary of jack. (and i'd argue he has the right to feel this way again with soulless jack, he IS afraid of him and what he might do and he's also grieving mary and that mixture of grief + fear is where his anger-but-not-really-anger comes from). like, because of the way dean was raised, because of growing up with the angry man that is john, the only emotion that was really expressed and "allowed" was anger. anger was justified. crying and sadness and fear, that's weakness in john winchester's household. but anger was powerful and masculine and good.

i also DO look at john with nuance as well. i've talked about how i don't like when people reduce john to a flat caricature or cartoon villain abuser. there's more going on, there's nuance, their dynamic is so complicated. john is Also, at first, drowning in his own grief. i think early on, john DID try, and was mostly motivated by a desire to protect his family, but he went about it wrong and imperfectly. however, where they diverge, is that john continued to let his anger consume him for the sake of revenge. he neglected his children, he put them in danger through his repeated neglect, and he did (based on various pointed insinuations) at one point or another physically abuse them, most likely dean specifically (the line abt flagstaff, also less "canon" but in the john's journal book john mentions how dean was particularly responsive to "discipline" and that john feels he's been too soft on sam)

the thing is, being angry doesn't make you a bad person. being angry is human. dean's anger imo, and the way we see it manifest--most often when what he really wants to express is grief and fear--is indicative of his internalized behaviors learned from john and past trauma that remains unresolved. this man has never had a chance to COPE or unpack not only the abusive and controlling environment he grew up in, but all the subsequent years of trauma INCLUDING his hell trauma. that's a lot. all those bottled up feelings are gonna turn into a lot of anger and frustration. he doesn't suffer perfectly. like you said, and which i agree, he is not perfect. he's flawed. he's human. but i don't think being angry and suffering imperfectly makes him a bad person. i feel too much empathy and compassion for him. i can see struggling and i want someone to help him. sometimes when people are in pain they'll say or do things they don't mean. and yes, they may hurt people in the process and those people are allowed to feel upset, but dean is also hurting. and i don't think he's a horrible person for not suffering the "right" way or not being a "good victim." and that's how i view widower's arc, as someone who is deeply hurting and suffering. it's not excusing his behavior but it's not villainizing it either. john gets similar feelings from me too, to a point. but john took things further and actively abused and neglected his young children and raised them to be soldiers and made them put aside their dreams and desires in the name of HIS revenge quest. he raised his children to live in fear and used fear and violence to control them. however, despite the fact that *i* don't particularly like john winchester, i know that his dynamic w/ his sons is nuanced and i know that dean both Loves and Hates him and that both those feelings can and do co-exist and i enjoy that duality.

dean's complicated emotions during times of intense grief and stress (widower's arc, losing mary, finding out chuck was controlling his whole life) are isolated moments but do not speak for his whole self. outside these high stress situations, where what he's really feeling is fear / grief / worry, we usually see dean to be very compassionate and patient and good with children.

this is getting very long now and i don't know if you'll take the time to read all of it but i'd like to conclude with saying my main issue with the "angry man in the house" phrase is the way it is used out of context to paint dean as becoming john and taking the place of the angry man in the house, when the original context of the quote is about being haunted by the angry man you grew up with, not becoming him. i talk more in-depth about all of that in this post.

also, just as an aside but, i generally have two "modes" of operating on this blog. one is fangirl mode where yea, dean is my blorbo specialest princess who can do no wrong<3 and then there's the other mode where i'm doing formal analysis of canon where it's more abt dissecting things and talking meta and looking at WHY characters are acting how they are. that's when i talk abt their flaws and motivations and nuance and context. also, people are often needlessly harsh or over-exaggerate things dean said or did in canon just to villainize him and in those instances yes i will go to bat for dean and "defend" him, usually by just, pointing out the nuances and additional context for his actions that many choose to overlook or misinterpret just to make dean seem worse than he actually was.

[mothgardens]

it is 2am and i am feeling so much sam winchester love rn so here is a list of taylor swift songs i think resonate with him:

1. Anti-Hero

I feel as tho all the lyrics work towards his character.

Mr. Samuel “It’s me, Hi, I’m the problem it’s me… everybody agrees,” Winchester

I should not be left to my own devices -> Dean constantly implies that Sam shouldn’t be left to figure things out on his own. He does this so much that Sam actually confronts him about it, multiple times.

I wake up screaming from dreaming -> Sam used to wake up from his visions freaked the hell out.

The second verse is also very fitting; he always felt like a freak or monster compared to everyone else.

2. Clean

DEMON BLOOD !!!!!!

I think it works really well for his addiction arc because the song is about toxic relationships (aka RUBY).

The drought being the worst -> Being locked in Bobby’s panic room.

The flowers that we grown together died of thirst -> The powers that grew and developed during his addiction and slowly disappeared when he was sobering.

I screamed so loud but no one heard a thing -> Sam was shouting and banging for hours down in the panic room and no one came to check on him until he was quiet.

Ten months older, I wont give in. Now that i’m clean, I’m never gonna risk it -> He never went back

3. Nothing New

Honestly, the whole reason this song is on the list is because of the lyric:

How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22 -> Sam left for Stanford at 18. That was his first taste of freedom; it was his first time deciding something for himself. He was his own person. He had finally escaped. But, then at 22, Dean came and brought him back in. Jess dies. Everything feels lost again.

In general, I think Sam has lost of teenage girl vibes to him tho. This is probably self projection, but I think its true and this is MY analysis so <3.

4. My Tears Ricochet

This song is about Sam and John’s Stanford fight, and general dynamics that they share.

This one is going to get it’s own in depth, dedicated post <3 but some highlights are:

Even on my worst day, did i deserve, all the hell you gave me -> Sam was a child. No matter how arrogant or frustrating he could be, John should have never been so harsh on him. Telling your kid to never come back just because he wants to go to college is INSANE.

And I can go anywhere I want, just not home -> THIS LINE IS SO AHHHHHHH SAMMY.

Cursing my name, wishing i stayed -> John. John. John. Cursing Sam to never return, while simultaneously wishing he had never left.

Cause when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave -> Parallel, John telling Sam he being brave on a hunt VS John condescendingly saying Sam was being brave for standing up to him.

You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same -> John realizing that Sam might have to die if nothing changes. John giving that responsibility to Dean by giving his life for Dean’s; selfless selfishness.

5. Mirrorball

Mr. Samuel “And when I break, it’s in a million pieces” Winchester

I’m still on that tightrope, I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me -> Sam continuously tries to do his best under every circumstance. Even though most of the people around him have such little faith in him. He won’t stop trying.

And I’m still a believer, but I don’t know why -> His faith is God and the stereotypical Christian religion in general throughout the series fascinates me. He has very little reason to keep his faith, but he does. Even in later seasons, I think it was s11, when he prays and believes that Lucifer’s visions are actually messages from God.

I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try try try -> Sam doesn’t actually know what he is doing. He uses his training, but that only can get you so far in mental battles with Lucifer or physical battles with God. He does what he thinks is right. He just wants to help.

6. This Is Me Trying

This is also in the works of developing its own post. Highlights include:

I didn’t know if you’d care if i came back, i have a lot of regrets about that -> Sam never got to know if Dean wanted him back. All that time spent at Stanford he had to wonder if his father and brother actually missed him or not.

Could’ve followed my fears all the way down -> This just screams Lucifer trauma to me

THEY TOLD ME ALL MY CAGES WERE MENTAL, SO I GOT WASTED LIKE ALL MY POTENTIAL -> *violently screams and shakes* The visions, Demon blood, Hallucifer, literally anytime Sam is struggling it is brushed off as him being too worked up about it. Dean literally COMPLAINED to Bobby about how much work it was that Sam was mentally ill. LIKE DUDE.

AND MY WORDS SHOOT TO KILL WHEN IM MAD, I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT -> Sam does say shit that is hurtful. He does shit that is bad. It’s usually out of frustration from someone else’s actions towards him. AKA it’s usually towards Dean, when Dean belittles him.

pouring out my heart to a stranger, BUT I DIDNT POUR THE WHISKEY -> Sam vs Dean (this is NOT me belittling Dean’s alcoholism bc i get he has an issue)

That this is me trying, AT LEAST IM TRYING -> Again, Sam is just doing his best.

And it’s hard to be at a party when I when i feel like an open wound -> Sam has to just behave and go through his life normally even when he is struggling with abandonment, addiction, 180 years of every abuse imaginable and unimaginable, guilt, and just so much suffering.

It ’s hard to be anywhere when all i want is you, you’re a flashback -> Sam’s feelings about Jess. I constantly think about that scene in the impala when he tells Dean that he still thinks about her. It had been like twelve or more years. Its so painful.

—

please excuse my typos

i am yet but just a girl

<3

[sammygender]

Choose violence ask game. 16 and 21. ❤️

ask game

thank u sm for enabling me to be a hater

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing

well dstiel obviously though i do understand why people like it so much. it's because they're stupid.

aside from that.. oh wait this one is so random and no hate whatsoever (in fact only love) to people who like it but i don't really like transmasc dean in a canon setting. as an au it's incredibly interesting but i see it as occupying similar space to a cis girl dean au in a way where it definitely is..... an AU. in canon like. yeah no. that's NOT a trans guy im sorry. trans guys can be annoying dont get me wrong. but you'd have to be VERY special to be annoying the way he is. also he wouldnt transition for ages cause hes dean winchester and he likes to conform to and in fact play up his expected role. so he certainly wouldve not transitioned in the canon when we see him.

i dont feel this way at all about transmasc sam however. he'd be the same pretty much. as would transfem sam who we all know i adore. anyway i'll probably change my mind in a week and get obsessed with transmasc dean and post 20 times in a row about it and you are all allowed to pelt me with rocks.

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

this was surprisingly hard. in the interest of being interesting and not just going for 'destiel' or something, i'm actually going to say kripke era. it IS my favourite era!! its objectively the best in terms of writing, atmosphere, plot, characterisation. like no contest, obviously. in fact when i recommend the show to people i tell them just to watch the first 5 seasons (while planning on baiting them into continuing after swan song by going 'but its suchhh a bad ending for sam :(( dont you want to see what happens next.....').

so i use 'overhyped' very loosely to mean that despite me recognising it as objectively superior to the rest of the show, i don't actually hugely enjoy a lot of it that much more than i enjoy later on? a lot of my favourite parts of supernatural are heavily built on in the later seasons, or even introduced then. sam & lucifer's cage dynamic and everything resulting from it. the gadreel violation and in fact most of sam's..... everything. ofc this is all present in kripke and it's explored much Better and thematically and gothically and its just more atmospheric and intentional-seeming. whereas late seasons is kind of like this hodge-podge by different writers where you get these insane and intentional gems amid a bunch of white noise. but i just.... im a late seasons kind of person!! i loved buffy s6!! i enjoy works jumping the shark and i enjoy what art becomes when it already has so much to build on. shrug emoji.

like. ok. what first made me compulsively obsessive over supernatural (after the dean daddy issues, which i HAVE to admit hooked me........this is why im the ultimate critique of deangirls, because i was one for 3 seasons <3) was sam & azazel, the metaphor & violation present in his whole demon blood storyline. obvi this is kripke era. and i have to give kripke era credit for it. but a lot of what i consider fundamental to sam & this theme of uncleanliness especially in regards to assault and violation in some way is just soo built on post kripke. his cage trauma in s7. 8x21's "i'm not clean" speech. every compounding incident that happens to sam and his body, from gadreel possession to chuck in s15................

BASICALLY this is to say not that kripke era is really overrated but that so much credit is given to it at the expense of late seasons, when the domestic horror, cycle-of-abuse-sitcom, gabriel's tv show style thing it becomes is actually such a huge part of my enjoyment of spn. and wow i never thought i would be saying this. but i watched riverdale so idk what i was expecting. sigh. but really. what other show is giving us toxic polycule made up of brothers and an Angel of God coparenting the devil's child... also the devil happens to be brother #1's (sam is brother #1) abusive ex.... and hes currently fighting the polycule for custody rights. also the kid was born last week and hes 15. like sorry this is so fundamental to my supernatural. i could never rewatch and stop at s5. i rewatch late seasons eps all the time. ALSO LATE SEASONS SAM WINCHESTER. LIKE. COME ON. EARLY SEASONS SAM IS OVERRATED COMPARED TO LATE SEASONS. <3

[juniperhillpatient]

Supernatural - 3, 9, 13, 22

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr?

what you need to know is that supernatural was genuinely the singular autistic focus of my entire existence to an extreme most people can’t actually understand like. I didn’t just “like it an annoying amount.” It WAS my life for… several of my teen years.

so…. coming up with one specific bad take I remember clearly is not as easy as you might think

also. I’m probably romanticizing it in my head but I feel like the supernatural fandom is mostly chill? the show itself is insane but I don’t remember getting upset by the fandom so much as… the actual downward spiral of the show itself?

I think the worst take I can think of is people who think the later seasons are the best or that you can skip any part of the early seasons lol

9. worst part of canon?

the thing is that this question deserves a 10 hour deep dive video essay to explore it 💀 & I could probably be the one to do it but… I don’t feel like it

So I’ll just say this - the first 5 seasons were connected in a meaningful way & all Going Somewhere.

the ultimate premise of the show? 2 brothers on a road trip to hunt supernatural creatures? It DID have the promise to go on longer even if it was never going to always match the quality of that beautifully written original story.

but making it bigger & bigger & leaning harder & harder into the Christianity of it all was the opposite of the direction to go if the intention was to push for as many seasons as possible.

I would’ve happily watched the brothers hunt random cryptids & obscure myths in random backwoods American towns for 30+ years but they lost the thread. it’s the marvelification & Christianity taking over. everything must be bigger & brighter & Christianity must be at the center of it all.

13. worst blorboficiation?

No because you don’t understand I was JUST thinking about this. Sam, Dean & YES Castiel (I complain about the Angel demon focus in later seasons but if they were gonna continue post season 5 they def could’ve still found ways to include Castiel without letting the god stuff take over entirely. side note I actually like the leviathan plot. I didn’t say I hated ALL things from the later seasons. I did watch it all obsessively after all) were SUCH beautifully written characters.

I’m referencing what I see as the 3 leads but also, Meg, Lucifer, Gabriel, Ruby, Ellen, Jo, Charlie, Crowley, Rowena, Bobby & plenty of others (I just typed some of my beloved off the top of my head) —- Supernatural has AMAZING & compelling characters. The entire thing that drew me in initially was how very real the cast felt.

But unfortunately a combination of fandom & canon made these characters into more ideas than complex beloved characters. They became icons & gods instead of beloved relatable flawed characters I could imagine myself as. I’m not sure if that makes any sense to anyone else but that’s where Supernatural started losing its appeal for me personally.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores?

I’m seeing a resurgence in early fans lately especially since I’ve been posting about it but literally I fucking LOVE just Sam & Dean on the road dealing with their daddy issues finding random classic myths & legends doing research & dealing with personal conflict as they hunt ghosts 👻

thank you SO Much for playing along 🫶

(Choose violence)

[quietwingsinthesky]

See now you have me thinking about how Michael would be if Lucifer were pregnant with his baby. Because Lucifer bring knocked up with Sam's kid carries all these transgressions and the baby is Schrödinger's good, and pretty much everything you said, but his kid? His kid? Ignoring the fact that angels can't impregnate eachother in canon, Lucifer pregnant with Michael's child is a mindfuck for everyone involved because it means the whole world knows that Michael and Lucifer slept together, that Michael has either forgiven Lucifer or he took advantage of their messed up relationship and Lucifer's messed up view of him and now their this. Now there's something that binds them and he's going to have to be there and he's going to have to confront all these feelings about Lucifer, and that's before we even get to the baby itself because Michael is like, you want me to be a father? To be the think that fucked me up? Because Michael's personality is Son and now he has to be a father and I don't think he could deal with that.

Also the whole seeing Lucifer in pain during labour thing is even worse because he is the one causing the pain. Ah guh I'm sorry this is insane

😫😫😫 oh and there’s literally no good time in canon for this to happen, either! Pre-Fall, some desperate plan of Michael’s to tie Lucifer to him and force him to stay in Heaven and not fight, or a rendezvous during the Apocalypse gone wrong that ends with Michael knowing Lucifer is having his kid while they’re counting down to the day Michael has to kill him, or even post-Apocalypse, in the cage or out of it, because how do they walk back hurting each other like that, even to give their child a good life?

(Poor kid, lmao. Imagine inheriting the trauma of these two losers. Literally hell.)

Ough, and Michael having to shift his POV from Son to Father, when his only real experience of having a dad is God and because it’s God, Michael can’t look at any other examples and place them above him, he’s got to be The Best Example Of Parenting, The One Who Got It Right, and so Michael’s going to emulate him, in all the good and bad. (Personally, I like to just. sweep later seasons Chuck to the side. I prefer the more complex interpretations of s5 or even I think it’s s10 or 11? Where he’s clearly Bad at everything, he’s clearly done Wrong in abandoning his kids/giving Lucifer the Mark/parentifying Michael while also chopping away his autonomy/etc, but he does love them. Because that always makes it more complicated to come to terms with a parent having hurt you, that they did it, and they loved you.)

And pulling that back around to Michael, he’s got two conflicting parts of himself when it would come to parenting. There’s the part that raised his little brothers, and the part that wants to be to his child what god was to him, without examining how bad that would actually go.

(Lucifer is doing the exact same thing here, but in reverse, he’s trying to Not be like his dad, but. He’s also got zero experience in parenting beyond like. Making demons. Who he then hated and abandoned. What’s it mean to strive not to be anything like your dad when you have a few good memories left, too? Which is to say Lucifer is simultaneously too attached (because he won’t even think about abandoning his child as he was abandoned) while also being kind of cold? (Because maybe that way if he does end up hurting them, it’ll be less painful, because they’ll love him less.))

[ananke-xiii]

(TW- fictional incest) What do you think about the possibility of a romantic relationship between Sam & Mary? Like not in a 'I ship this' way, but rather in a 'that's something that would be interesting to see explored in thr story' way. I am aware that SPN, for all it’s blood and blasphemy, was not a grownup enough show to handle that dynamic in a sophisticated way. Thoughts?

Thank you for your question and wow, this is a really big one, I’m not sure I can answer in a satisfying way but I’ll do my best!

I’ve broken down your question in three parts, let’s start from the easiest :P

"The show was not grownup enough to handle that dynamic in a sophisticated way":

I think one of the reasons why SPN is so loved and has inspired so many people to write *things (fanfics, articles, metas, you name it)* about it is because it’s so rich in terms of myths it’s insane. I’m not simply referring to “the lore” but, from a storytelling pov, you can explore so many themes it’s difficult to choose from: two brothers’ rivalry, the spouse’s blind vengeance for their partner’s death, the mother dying to protect her son, offspring carrying the sins of their parents (just to name a few)… I mean, literally it’s crazy, this is the stuff ancient mythology is made of.

So, on one hand, I give credit where credit is due and, in this case, to SPN writers because they somehow managed to weave (not always successfully) all these difficult threads together. The show lasted for 15 seasons because the actors were hot, yes, but also because the storytelling foundations were solid. On the other hand, it was maybe “a little bit of everything all of the time” and this translated sometimes into superficiality, some other times into “let’s sacrifice the plot on the altar of X theme” and it didn’t always work out.

I’m saying all this because, after s5, the biggest event in terms of foundational themes is the return of Mary. Carver spent his tenure as showrunner to reach that apex and it was a pity that he wasn’t the one who completed that arc. I think he was an interesting writer and he was clearly heavily invested into exploring the theme of family and the taboos pertaining to it. To sum it up: the show could’ve handled Mary and Sam’s relationship, they had all the raw materials ready to use and indeed they used them. How? Let’s see…

 “that's something that would be interesting to see explored in the story”:

I think that they’ve explored their relationship in s12. One of the possible readings for Mary in that season is that they basically gave her the 101 of s1-5 Sam’s arc. Mary is similar to Sam, like a lot. At least she's so narratively speaking. She starts off being thrown back in a world she didn’t want to be part of anymore and ends up in a different dimension with Lucifer. Sounds familiar?

The relationship between Sam and Mary, however, is not so much portrayed in much needed screen-time between the two characters (to my distress) but it’s prevalently mirrored in their MOTW episodes. And, let me tell you, it’s not a good one. I’d like to explore each episode but I don’t want to kidnap your precious time on this planet so I’ll just use “American Nightmare” as an example (also because it’s a great episode).

Yes, Magda has psychic abilities so the parallel with Sam is blatant. She is also considered The Devil by her mother. Oh-oh. She’s also a prisoner who’s forced to torture herself and bleed for her sins. Oh shit. Sam is pissed at Gail, Magda’s mother (“God didn't kill your daughter. You did”). Later, Gail will try to murder her whole family, her husband’s the first to go, then her son steps in to protect Magda and, eventually, Sam manages to convince Magda not to kill her mother. Meanwhile, Sam is tied up to a chair, unable to do anything but screaming. I thinks he feels a bit castrated. Interesting. From what I can infer, Sam is subconsciously livid at this mother. He hasn’t healed his separation wound. This is why he’s the first to smell something’s off with Mary even though she’s basically a stranger to him. This is also why he doesn’t even make an attempt at reaching her, the ties between them are very much severed. Of course, consciously he wants to know his mother and play the good-kid role for her. But scratch that surface and Sam’s totally not okay with Mary. And what about her? She feels guilty. Guilty for her past actions and guilty because she understandably doesn’t feel a real connection with the two adults in front of her. So she does the Sammest thing ever (but levelled-up) and asks for space to breathe. You see, it’s very very complicated.

The show has explored their relationship but only in the foreground and only via the MOTW episodes. Dean’s got his moment with Mary because, of course, this is also about him and he had to have it but, from the story pov, he was also the reason why she was back on earth so, you know, they had to complete that arc for him. That was okay with me as I was hoping that s13 had something more in store but it was a total disappointment as far as Mary and Sam’s relationship is concerned (well, tbh, it was a disappointment as far as everything is concerned but okay). So, again, to sum it up: I think the show explored Sam and Mary’s relationship specifically in s12 but what we’re offered is nothing exceptionally encouraging because there is a rift between them (seriously, s12 ends with a literal rift: symbolically it represents birth as both coming into the world and being separated from the world: the ties between The Mother and The Son are forever severed).

"a romantic relationship between Sam & Mary":

It’s time for the difficult part. Surprisingly, it’s also something I think about a lot.

Short premise: I adhere to a school of thought according to which stories are ways to explore our conscious and unconscious mind (mostly the second). Characters in a story play the role of some of the parts of our mind we cannot reach. For instance, I believe that it’s possible to interpret siblings in a story as the different side of the same coin representing a single part of our mind. Basically, siblings in story symbolize opposite things that must be integrated in order to move on. In a word, everything I’ll say from now on must be interpreted as symbolical.

As I said, I think that Sam and Mary’s relationship’s main feature is separation. Interestingly, there’s an ancient myth that combines the themes of motherhood, separation, romantic union and… castration. I’m talking about the myth of Attis which, I believe, could’ve been a way to explore Sam and Mary’s relationship.

Like all ancient myths revolving around the archetype of the Great Mother there are many different versions of this story. This is one of them (I apologize in advance for the deplorable retelling of such an ancient and fascinating myth): Agdistis was an ancient hermaphrodite deity closely related to the cult of The Great Mother of whom other deities were afraid of. They decided to tie them to a tree and evirate them. From their male genitalia an almond tree was born. Nana, the daughter of a river-god, picked one almond and became pregnant with Attis. He was later abandoned and raised by goats. Agdistis met him and fell in love with him. Attis was supposed to marry the king’s daughter and Agdistis, in the grip of jealousy, made Attis go insane and he ended up evirating himself by a tree.

Why am I talking about castration and mothers? Well, because this is a story about the separation wound, specifically pertaining to virility. It’s also a story that ends where it begins and this is exactly there s12 starts and ends too. Imo, it can be applied to Sam and Mary, too. Agdistis (Mary) being The Great Mother, the Alpha and the Omega, is separated from something that’s theirs in a brutal and coercive way. They are tied up and dismembered. Attis is born because of a violent act of separation that he’s forced to repeat. Sam as Attis also ends up tied up and dismembered in a brutal and coercive way. He has no voice at all. The two are basically the same person because they were the same person before separation happened. I know this all sounds sad but in ancient Rome they used to have a festival in Attis honor where people whipped themselves (just like Magda, come to think of it) to symbolize Attis’ castration and consequent death and, the next day, they would celebrate his resurrection (it’s a festival closely associated with Easter and it was celebrated around the same period, i.e. spring equinox).

To sum up: romantic relationship can’t even begin to cover how messed up Sam and Mary’s relationship is. We’re talking about The Love Above All, the unconditional love, something that, unfortunately, Sam has never discovered in the series. Mary was an opportunity for him to integrate this part and be able to move on a little with his life. Mary’s a bit different because in s13 we see that her guilt eases up a bit as she sees the world where she didn’t make the choices she made. Still, in terms of her relationship with Sam, working together, getting to know him would have maybe worked wonders in accepting that a part of her life was taken from her forever but that didn’t mean that all is lost. Reconnection and reunion are always possibilities.

Okay, wow, that was a lot. I still don’t know if I was up to the task, I did my best! Thanks again for your question, again, it’s a big one but I loved writing about it! I hope you enjoyed reading it (fingers crossed)!

[wastemanjohn]

Happy DFF China! Sending everyone the same one today. Let’s say somehow, some way, John gets resurrected in the later seasons when Sam & Dean are well into a relationship. How does John react? How does Dean react?

OOF SPICY SPICY thanks Spike

I'm late to the dadfucker party but - I think if there's background johndean I see John, maybe in a way, not being that surprised. He may be not the best father ever but I do think he's aware of it - painfully aware. He'd probably know that it's his fault. Not just for normalising incest - but for setting his boys up to be so insane about each other. I think there'd be a lot of self pity and a lot of drinking lol. A lot of everyone avoiding the topic - until they can't.

How does Dean react? He'd be so mixed up. It's my strongly felt headcanon that Dean feels very differently about John when he's older and ?wiser. John is still his first love. Those feelings are still very much alive and he'll have missed him the whole time. But I think with distance - and in parallel to his canonical realisations about John being Maybe Not That Great - he'd realise at least some of what was so wrong with him having a sexual relationship with his father. Not just as an afterthought, not just "It's wrong but whatever" etc - but genuine epiphanies about John and where the fuck he must have been *at* to go to bed with his own son. Just because you consent to something at some time doesn't mean it can't be utterly traumatising later right - so I think John coming back would bring up A Lot of Stuff for Dean. I see him distancing himself from Sam. I see him feeling very mixed up about everything - that's his Dad who's back, his first love, and Dean still loves him with everything he has but there's all these other layers to it now. It's not this dizzying, beautiful, strange secret thing anymore. Would Dean feel shame too - carrying on the wincest tradition, would he feel that he's let John down because fucking Sam isn't quite protecting him, is it?

I wonder about Sam in this situation too (my samgirl is showing, it always is). I wonder if he'd feel conflicted too. Part of him having forgiven John and wanting that relationship with him, part of him fucked up by all the incest too, and part of him utterly and completely in love with Dean and not wanting to lose him to John again now he's back. Which I think he would somewhat. I don't think John and Dean could act like they never existed. And later seasons Sam might have found a way to be okay with that. Not that he and Dean would "break up," although I'm sure John's return would be... testing lol. Idk. I do think John and Dean would never be able to be the way they once were. Dean isn't the same person in later seasons, John probably wouldn't recognise him actually. They'd never get back what they had. Dean wouldn't feel the same way about it all, and it would be hard for John to confront everything he did to Dean and also the fact that his sons are now basically married. All this to say that it would be some messy shit but ultimately; I think Sam and Dean would remain a Thing and John and Dean would try and fail to be a Thing again and it would be messy af for all involved. I don't know if John would stay around for long.

[tuiyla]

(return of the s2 quinn anon) oh man ok. i think that her returning to the cheerios and even selling santana out to reclaim her spot as captain made sense. i love when she tells sue off in mattress (“i don’t want to be a member of a team where i only appear to belong, i’d rather be a member of a club that’s proud to have me like glee club”) but there’s more than one glimpse in the back 9 of her wanting the status and power she had once before back. and it makes sense for her to want to reclaim those things after everything she went through the prior year. her and sam are fine. kind of bland imo (i do not ship her w any of these men lmao) but fair enough. another example of her aiming for status with him becoming the new quarterback and gaining popularity. one thing that stuck out to me rewatching the show though is that quinn really doesn’t feel like a major player after the front 13. there’s probably more than one episode in the back 9 where she only has one or two lines of dialogue. i guess she gets more to do in 2A? there’s some interesting stuff at play there with her wanting that popularity, status, and power back. there’s definitely a contrast from the more softened quinn we had in the later half of season 1. but again, makes sense after everything she’s been through. her quitting the cheerios alongside the girls is nice. and then you hit fuinn 2.0 😭 man. she feels like the human equivalent of an obstacle for finchel in 2B. you know those two will inevitably find their way back to each other. i guess it also makes sense quinn would go back to finn once more? thinking about how her relationships with men tend to have that theme of helping her obtain or retain status. they were the picture perfect couple at one point the previous year, bound to be prom king and queen. they look perfect on paper. and god the speech she gives to rachel in original song. the future she has envisioned of her and finn being those high school sweethearts who will settle down, start a family, she’ll become a real estate agent, and rachel is destined for much bigger things. thinking about her last season tearfully telling luck after he learns of the pregnancy revelation that she really thought she had a shot of getting out of lima and now she’s resigned herself to the idea of this future for herself. the obsession with being prom queen. (an absolutely insane line is her going on about how you can get married as many times as you want but you only have one shot at your junior prom 😭 girl) and then the subsequent breakdown when she loses. that bathroom scene with rachel. finn breaks up with her and then the new york breakdown. santana and brittany offer her as much comfort as they can, encourage her to get a haircut, and that’s a wrap on the season. but she’s very clearly not okay, made even more evident the very next season. i don’t think she loved finn but i can imagine she must have felt painfully alone at the end of season 2 and that she inherently had nothing. finn back with rachel, santana and brittany have each other, it didn’t seem like her friendship with mercedes was prevalent at all throughout the year. which is a whole other tragedy. i think it could maybe be argued that she did her absolute best to repress the trauma she went through in season 1 with all of her actions the following year. rejoining the cheerios, regaining her popularity, dating sam, dating finn, wanting to be prom queen. and then it all comes crumbling down at the end. her arc that season makes some sort of sense when you type it all out and look at it from a deeper perspective than the writers themselves probably did but it’s hard to watch at times, especially 2B with cheating on sam, getting back together with finn, the prom queen fiasco. especially feeling that the finn thing in particular was just to cause some drama for him and rachel and reunite those two at the end of the season.

Well damn I'm sorry I passed the ball back to you Anon just to leave you hanging for a month. That's my bad, hope you're still around, hope you're well. Right, so season 2 Qunnie.

I view the shift from late season 1 Quin to season 2 Quinn, in terms of in-universe attitude at least, exactly like you said. As her trying to completely erase her pregnancy and everything she went through. Call it a trauma response/defense mechanism, but whatever it is it really just feels like... she resets. And that becomes a joke with Quinn as even in later seasons she seems to return to square one eyoooo Glee writers what's good. But you, I think in s2 at least it makes sense. And we see how her pretense crumbles after Prom Queen and then the breakdown in New York leading into her skank era. Skank Quinn is just the manifestation of everything she was pushing down in season 2, and she was pushing everything down. (On a Doylist level Quinn's demotion is the writers truly not knowing what to do with her once Santana takes on the Alpha Bitch role.)

I hate that she just exists to be an obstacle for Finchel, too. Fuinn 2.0 makes no sense even if we buy that Finn would be oh so popular and that appeals to Quinn. To be fair, I never bought Fuinn 1.0 either rip so there's that. I can even understand why Quinn would want to convince herself and others through Finn, fine, but why is Finn with her again? I get it man she is the most beautiful woman you've ever seen but you cannot tell me he even likes her, much less loves her. Makes no sense except that the love triangle needs to be revitalized. Bleh. We can make it work for Quinn's ch especially through things like her infamous "get it right" speech (which is so depressing btw, "god that speech" indeed) but she's clearly not taking center stage in her own story. Finchel are. Just as, I'd argue, she wasn't central even in her own pregnancy storyline.

Like you say, that's the hard part. That's what makes it hard to watch because not only is she villainized but she's so sad throughout it all. And it's not even about her! This girl is so clearly just sad and lonely but the show just does not seem to get that. Every time they explicitly tell us how miserable Quinn really is deep down they have to do a 180 and tell us that despite this she doesn't deserve sympathy, for some reason. That reason mostly being that she's our number one Finchel obstacle. Idk if a better course of action would have been keeping her together with Sam. Like you, I don't much care for them. But I guess it's better than Fuinn? Man, almost anything's better than Fuinn. (Crazy how I can see ZERO chemistry with those two because when it's bts videos of Cory and Dianna I'm like, oh! those two! so cute!)

I think the original question was what I think of Quinn's season 2 arc? Haha sorry that OG question was so long ago. But yeah I guess all of this, just forever shaking my head that the writers were never willing to center Quinn. But her season 2 stuff isn't terrible and I wish they did more with her backstabbing Santana and that rivalry. Especially because they then just quit the Cheerios halfway through the season?! And somehow, even though both of them are obsessing over their image in s2B we get not one word of how not being cheerleaders anymore negatively affected their status. And don't tell me it didn't. Anyway that's a Quinntana post for another day.

[myspnsideblog]

SPN fic idea I’ll never write: 

During late seasons’ debacle with alternative realities, Dean accidentally lands himself in a reality where he did die in the car crash after first season. The alt!world is much different place, maybe a little worse than his, maybe a little better. It was John and Sam who averted the first apocalypse, and the few after that, and even if they’re not getting along all that well (understatement), they’re still hunting together, living in the bunker. 

Once they confirm that Dean is human, John and Sam are happy to help him research how to get back... even if they’re pushing Dean to slow down a little, and spend time with them, go for a pie festival, or an old car convention, or just sit and watch some movies. It’s understandable, of course, who wouldn’t want to spend some time with their dead loved one. And Dean can see that the death of their Dean hangs heavily over John and Sam - they both feel responsible, and extremely guilty. Moreover, when their Dean died, making a deal seemed impossibly irresponsible, and later when death became cheap, they both felt that it would be so wrong to bring Dean back to the mess of apocalipses that followed from whatever heavenly calm he found. Besides, to bring him back just to possibly lose him again? No. 

So Dean goes along with alternate John and Sam, he also kind of missed his dad, and this version of his family is so nice to him, so very accomodating. And yeah, this is all out of guilt towards THEIR Dean, who in his absence grew to be the ultimate Best Son and the ulltimate Best Big Brother, but it’s just nice to be appriciated that much. And of course he misses his Sam, and his world, like crazy, but this Sam needs him too, just a little, and with no real leads on how to get back he can enjoy himself a little, right? 

But it’s not long till Dean starts noticing things that put him on high alert. Books that may help with the research into alternative realities suddenly go missing. John and Sam are lying about how things went down in their reality. They may take up hunts, but somehow Dean always gets stuck in the hotel room researching with one other Winchester, while to other goes solo against the monster. Dean doesn’t seem to be able to go anywhere alone. Other hunters they sometimes meet seem visibly uncomfortable and even scared of John and Sam. Dean manages to find himself a lead for reality jumping in form of some hunter’s book? Before he can meet up with her, she’s suddenly dead, her house burned down, well tough luck, sport, tragedies happen, don’t worry about it, Dean. The feeling of frankly unnatural contentment and calm that Dean feels with his family? He strongly suspects that they’re either drugging him, or laying some mojo. 

There is one conclusion: this John and Sam are not willing to let him go. He might not be their Dean, but at this point? They’re not picky. They got a re-do with Dean, and they’re going to use it. And thus Dean has to find the way home alone, actively working against his father and brother. And at this point into neverending apocalipses, John and Sam are insane enough that they are one wrong move on Dean’s part away from just breaking his legs so that he stays put so they can keep him safe and sound. 

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

I really appreciate how much thought you put into your posts btw. It is very evident that you not only care about the story, but you are very thorough and really think stuff through and that's refreshing. And I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me.

I do want to clarify a couple of things really quickly, because I know with writing it can be very easy to misinterpret tone or even just make pretty logical but false conclusions based on only being given limited input from someone (from me in this case). I wasn't mentioning Emma lying to Dean to try to get you to concede to my view, it is just something that seemed significant to me and it wasn't clear to me from what you'd previously said that you knew it was a ploy. So I was just trying to see if we agreed that it was a ploy. I don't believe that she would have never changed her mind or that she was ultimately irredeemable. And I don't think that Dean was lying when he offered to let her walk, I just don't think that he actually thought that she was going to walk. I also don't think that Dean killing Amy was particularly ooc for him, nor do I really hold any sort of grudge against him for it, I just think it was kinda a dick move.

I really think the only place that we are in any sort of real disagreement is whether Sam was furious with Dean for hesitating to kill Emma and why he then shot her himself.

I think that Sam was understandably upset with Dean for killing Amy the way he did, and Sam was still working through that. I'm pretty sure I've seen you post about the different ways that Sam and Dean's morality plays out, how Dean's is more intrinsic while Sam seems to struggle more to define his, and this is true. Sam struggles with stuff more sometimes because he doesn't see things in the absolutes that Dean tends to. Sam sees everything in shades of grey so it is harder for him to draw lines and make consistent seeming decisions about what is right or wrong. This isn't to say that Sam is wishy washy or lacking in morals, he isn't, but that he is trying to judge every single situation separately, which is insanely hard to do and is exhausting. Sam also uses Dean frequently as a lodestone to determine which way to go on things because deep down Sam has more faith in Dean than he does in himself, but he wants not only to be able to trust his own intuition, but to have Dean trust it too, and this is something he really struggles with well into the later seasons.

Dean killing Amy threw Sam for a loop because it felt wrong to him, but he really does have a lot of faith in Dean's gut, so he was doubting the entire thing, his reaction and Dean's actions. So then when he walked in on Dean and Emma, and heard Dean offering to let her walk, saw Dean's gun lowered, saw Emma's eyes go all red just like the Detective/Amazon that he'd just been attacked by (and then killed) before coming to the motel...

... he made a fast call. I am not saying that it was the best call, or the right call, just that I can see why he made that choice and I don't blame him for making it. He did what he thought Dean would have done if their roles were swapped, and I think that Dean would have most likely made the exact same choice under the same circumstances.

Sam didn't shoot Emma to punish Dean, or to get some sort of revenge over Amy, or because he was feeling weird about Dean potentially having a daughter. He honestly thought it was the right thing to do in the moment. And yeah, he was upset and pissy/angry in the car, they both get like that sometimes.

As for Amy's situation, I'll read those other posts, but I'm not actually defending her, just pointing out that most people will do things to protect there family/loved ones that they otherwise wouldn't do. Morally questionable (at best) things. But killing people is wrong. There is often at least some understanding when that killing is done to save another's life, but that is also generally reserved for when the one being killed was the one actively endangering the life... self protection and whatnot. We all typically agree that forcibly culling body parts from people is not okay, even to save a child's life. So Amy was straight up murdering people, which was not good.

Sam and Dean have also done some pretty fucked up shit to save each other, shit that has killed other people. We're mostly okay with what they've done because the narrative is set up to make it easier to be okay with it. but as the passion in this entire thread shows, despite the narrative, we have some pretty strong feelings about some of the things they've done that we don't agree with.

Again, I'm cool with us disagreeing on stuff, I do not expect that I'm going to change your mind on anything, but I find it easier to sort through ideas by discussing them and hearing/reading what other people think, and you've given me lots of interesting points to mull over, so I really do appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this today.

#okay wait do y'all think that she wasn't going to try and murder Dean?#Do you think he was going to get through to her?#convince her somehow to not try to stab him?#that she was telling the truth at all in that scene?#because she was totally going to try and kill Dean#like 100% that was going to happen#and if Sam hadn't shot her then Dean would have had to kill her and that would have been so much harder on Dean#like it was disturbing that Dean had a 3 day old monster child that wanted to kill him but who was then killed by her uncle Sam instead#and even more disturbing that they then never mention her again#but these are also the guys who left their half brother in Lucifer's cage and didn't lose any sleep over it so...#and I love Dean but killing Amy was an asshole move#and there's kinda a difference between killing an active imminent threat and killing someone in cold blood after the fact @jinkieswouldyoulookatthis

I didn't want to clutter someone else's post but this was partially directed at me? I've talked about the whole "Emma vs Amy" debate quite a few times, but I'll share a few thoughts.

Amy is a present, unrepentant, fully cognizant, adult, serial murderer. She is not actually sorry about what she did in any way. She believes that slaughtering humans like cattle to feed them to her son was the morally correct action even if it wasn't the ethical action because it kept her son alive. She is not correct.

Emma is a brainwashed child who's been psychologically conditioned for a few days. She has never killed anyone and only wants to kill Dean because some women who abused her told her to.

Hunters like Sam and Dean primarily deal in punitive justice, not preventative justice—and what I mean by that is that Sam and Dean try not to kill people (with powers or without powers) who have never killed anyone.

While I think you're right to point out that a preventative justice component is in play, that is not primarily how Dean makes the decision to go after Amy, and the reason we know that is because Amy's son swears to kill Dean and Dean does nothing about it because the boy has done absolutely nothing wrong.

Dean's application of his personal code is consistent here. He kills Amy, who is a murderer who killed four people, but he does not intend to kill Emma or Amy's son—both of whom wanted to kill him—because neither has actually killed anyone and both may choose not to.

You say that Emma was going to kill Dean 100%, but you don't actually know that because we never got to see that future. You assume Amy would never have killed again, but when you add up "murderer who regrets absolutely nothing" and "child vulnerable to catching illnesses" you get "Mom who absolutely would kill again as necessary and who would feel zero remorse doing so just like the last time".

I don't personally think SPN gives us any reason to suspect that three days of psychological conditioning from a cult is too much to overcome. We have seen other characters overcome much more serious levels of psychological conditioning intended to make them killers. For example, Cas and Alex. I'm not saying Emma wasn't trying to pull the wool over Sam and Dean's eyes in the scene where Sam shot her, but I am saying that doesn't actually mean in any way that she couldn't be convinced to actually choose a different path.

Under the same litmus test with which you suggest Emma's condemnation, we'd also condemn season 2 Sam for his potential "future" crimes. We are killing monsters before they actually become those monsters... because of the dark path someone else intends for them to go down. Amy—again—is an active present unrepentant serial killer.

I think sometimes people misremember the scene where Sam kills Emma—recalling the scene as a scene where Emma lunges at Dean with the knife and Sam steps in just in time to save his life, or where Dean is unarmed and Emma has him at knife point. But that is not what happened. Emma quite literally brought a knife to a gun fight. Dean had a gun pointed at her, and if she was thinking straight at all, she would have left to avoid being killed if given the chance—especially when Sam arrived. And had she not, Sam could have shot her at that point—but Sam didn't wait to see what she'd do. He wanted her dead, because even if she ran, he didn't think they were equipped to deal with surprise attacks from Dean's Amazon child. That is the decision Sam made after a brief moment to consider, and it makes sense to me given the headspace he was in at the time and his assessment of Dean's headspace as well, but it does not make his decision consistent with his previous or future behavior regarding people who have been psychologically conditioned to kill.

My own frustrations are more with fandom, for a thought process that really really does not make sense to me, where Emma deserves to die but Amy deserved to live. I do not agree with that premise. I do not understand why so much of fandom has the perspective that a child who hadn't shed a drop of blood and who was acting in response to a cult's torture, who brought a knife to a gun fight and had already been driven into a corner where she had no choice but to surrender or run—doesn't deserve a chance to choose something else before she's barely lived and before she's heard a loving word in her entire life, but an adult with full cognizance of their actions who went through with killing four people and doesn't regret it should go on with their life and is "just a good mom doing what she had to" and killing that person is the bad thing. I don't understand that. I don't think Dean killing Amy was wrong at all in the "hunters kill supernatural murderers" show. The only thing Dean did wrong was lie about it and not take enough care to keep her son from seeing it happen.