#dean controls the trajectory of their lives

[ardentpoop]

consider: the bunker is not comforting in the slightest to sam bc he associates it almost entirely with tragedy and death and entrapment. aka the bunker = life of hunting. "This isn't our home, this is where we work." (9.04)

it's why he doesn't stay there (bunker, hunting) after dean chooses to die. if it isn't necessary bc staying with dean is necessary then sam no longer has to convince himself that he associates it (bunkerhuntingdean) with more good than bad. "Even when you mess up, you think what you're doing is worth it because you've convinced yourself you're doing more good than bad… but you're not." (9.13) "We don't get to quit in this family. This family is all we have ever had." (10.03) can't remember the exact episode(s) to pull up a specific quote but numerous instances of sam saying something to the effect of "I know hunting is the right thing to do but I couldn't do it without my brother." he wouldn't do it without dean bc it wouldn't be necessary for him if not for dean.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Dean is such a paradox for me because on the one hand, I have been actively triggered by him in the show, there are moments where, intentionally or not, the writers managed to create a portrayal of manipulation and abuse and control issues that it sets off actual alarms for me. And on the other hand, I would not have him any other way. There is something — not comforting, that’s too soft a word — about knowing where Dean’s actions stem from, having seen and learned all that we do about his childhood neglect and parentification and the trauma he goes through repeatedly in the show, and that he doesn’t come out clean. He comes out a goddamn mess who ends up hurting the people around him in reaction to his own pain!

There’s a reality there that’s. Almost nice, actually. Distressing to watch, but it is a fucking mess, it’s a good mess! He’s got zero healthy coping skills and a healthy relationship with say, his brother, is terrifying because it leaves him open to abandonment!

I’m not sure I’m wording this correctly. There is a way to be a good abuse victim. Take the pain, martyr yourself on it, and then, even if you have no support or idea how to, then you have to become a Good Person who never hurts anyone the way you have been learning to your entire life. Simply toss everything that shaped you out the door and emerge a saint with a tragic backstory. And Dean is not that. And that’s so fucking good. Everything that he has gone through continues to effect the way he treats the people around him, and he can’t fight the behaviors he might recognize as harmful because he also sees them as protecting him (or protecting Sam by keeping Sam with him.)

And sometimes, idk. It feels good to see a guy who didn’t heal the “right way.” Who mostly didn’t heal at all, just keeps the wound open because it’s easier that way.

[natlacentral]

ONE NAME IS ALL KIAWENTIIO NEEDS

The mononymic Mohawk actress stars in the highly anticipated new adaptation of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” one of Netflix’s most expensive series ever. It’s a role she’s been preparing for almost her entire life.

At first, it’s a ripple. Hovering drops rising from a puddle soon cluster into a faster-moving, levitating stream that swirls into an orb of water floating over a young woman. The focused motion of her hands control this aquatic flow. In the lore of the beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, the ability to manipulate the elements is known as “bending” and wielding this power is Katara, a fan-favorite of the franchise’s core characters. In this instance, she’s no longer animated, but rather living and breathing in Netflix’s recent adaptation of the cult show, as played by Kiawentiio, the 17-year-old actress and singer-songwriter from the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. For young Indigenous audiences, it’s a powerful moment seeing what was always an Indigenous-coded character, dynamic and independent, brought to life by an Indigenous actor. Her interpretation of the heroine is both true to its source material and grounded in an undeniable sense of Indigeneity, notable in the scenes of Katara’s survival of the violence inflicted upon her tribe and their later resistance to its recurrence. Free from the confines of Western film tropes or the expected relegation to secondary and background roles, Kiawentiio’s Katara is unprecedented. She’s both of this world and beyond. A sign of things to come.

There’s a balletic velocity to Kiawentiio when she arrives at her photo shoot, a certain sense of purpose and the pull of a trajectory toward something just off of the horizon. She’s traveling with her mother Barbara, who works in their community’s cultural restoration efforts, and her father Corey, a volunteer firefighter and building inspector for their tribe. They beam with pride as they watch her and recount the recent stops she’s had on the show’s busy press tour. In the dressing room, she smiles while reviewing pieces she requested from Indigenous designers Josh Tafoya and Karen Francis. It’s like witnessing someone coming into alignment, a new possibility realized. She says, “It feels like it’s not real, to be honest. Sometimes it feels like I’m living this fantasy life or living someone else’s life, especially with where I come from.”

The evening prior, Kiawentiio walked the red carpet for Avatar’s Los Angeles premiere in a stunning ensemble, also fashioned by Indigenous designers: an ice-blue duo chrome taffeta skirt by Evan Ducharme, accented by a hand-beaded corset from Tasha Marie, and jewelry by BYCHARI and Dean Davidson. The look, both in color and from the corset’s beaded wave design, is a subtle nod to Katara’s Southern Water Tribe in the show. Kiawentiio grew up watching the original series, which makes this all the more surreal. “For filming, we were in British Columbia for almost a year and stepping out of that was really kind of like a culture shock,” she explains.

It’s not lost on her that this is her moment, one that she’s balanced with both grace and aplomb, but also a time to reflect on all that’s led her to this point. From her beginnings as a guest star a mere five years ago on the Canadian series Anne With an E, to playing the title character in Tracey Deer’s debut feature Beans in 2020, and more recently appearing in Peacock’s Rutherford Falls and Marvel’s What If…?, Kiawentiio’s career has been nothing short of meteoric. In many ways it mirrors the creative boom of Indigenous-led and centered television in the last half-decade. That a young, Indigenous actor is now one of the leads in a $120 million Netflix production—one of its most expensive to date—that also happens to be an adaptation of what is considered to be one of the best animated series of all time, is as much of a cultural tipping point as it is an expectation rewriting itself. And Kiawentiio is at its precipice.

Over the phone, Kiawentiio discussed this moment and what it means to her.

How did you connect with the Indigenous designers you’ve chosen to work with recently?

One of the looks was Josh Tafoya, a fashion designer out of New Mexico. I actually got to meet him, I think it was two years ago now. He also works closely with 4Kinship, which is also a really cool Indigenous vintage brand. For the red carpet, I got to work with two Indigenous designers to custom-make this very beautiful gown. Tasha Marie Designs was the designer that beaded my corset and Evan Ducharme made my skirt, and they both just came together so beautifully. I love how it turned out, truly.

Does anyone in your family do beadwork? Is it something that you grew up around?

Yeah, my mom beads. She doesn’t sell any of her work, which she should. My sister also beads. I grew up beading here and there, but it was never something that I continued. I think out of all my creative outlets, it got the short end.

My mom does some beadwork too, so I know it’s super meticulous. How do you approach style outside of professional spaces, like the red carpet? What are you drawn to?

I feel like my style has been changing a little recently. I like really baggy pants. I haven’t really worn jeans in a while, but I wanted to up my whole closet recently. I’ve been wanting to get more color because I tend to lean on black a lot and earth tones in general. It also depends on what time of year, ’cause sometimes in the summer I like giving off that skateresque vibe.

I like a lot of men’s fashion too. I’ll have long shorts that are past my knees and huge T-shirts on and be like why do I look like a boy? Oh, I’m dressed like this. Doing a lot of this press and having this part of my life really lets me tap into my feminine side.

You grew up in Akwesasne?

Mm-hmm.

When you’re on set and you’re in front of the camera, how do you become this character that you grew up with?

It was honestly really crazy, like that first time we had that transition. Growing up, seeing this character all of the time and idolizing this character almost, and then to have that transformation and look in the mirror and see yourself as that person. It’s like whoa, whoa, whoa. But honestly, Katara and I have a lot of similarities in our personalities. And I feel like it’s kind of a double-edged sword in that it becomes easy to become them. But because there are some similarities, it’s hard to differentiate yourself from the character and keep those things separate.

Were you able to draw on or tie some of your own Mohawk roots? It was great talking to your parents too and hearing about the impact of their own work, your mom’s work in cultural restoration and your dad’s work with your tribe. I’m curious if any of that went into how you shaped this role, especially because Katara is a very Indigenous-coded character.

I think with my Mohawk roots and what my parents have done my whole life, I feel like it has shaped me as a person. With that, I can’t help but take that to every role that I play in the past and in the future, too. So, I feel like my Kanienʼkehá:ka roots will always be there with me in every character that I have the pleasure to portray. I haven’t said this before, but really, I truly do owe everything that I have to my mom and my dad.

What was some of your preparation for this role?

We binged the original show. I think I watched it twice and then went into specific scenes for Katara’s character and her mindset, and then also her bending. Every time we had a fight or we wanted to re-create something from the animated show, we were watching clips of Katara’s bending and that also was really helpful for me.

What’s it like being a young actor now in the age of TikTok and social media?

I think it’s a delicate balance. I feel like in this age, it’s really easy to get caught up in what people are saying, good or bad. Because it’s just so accessible. It’s really important to be able to protect yourself from that. With the show dropping, I will have to find ways to protect myself from the outside and what they are saying, even though I have this sense of wanting to look, wanting to know what the public thinks. That’s how I’ve been this whole time leading up to the show coming out. I want to be and I try to be an open-minded person. So, with what people are saying, I like to look at it just plainly, not trying to hurt my own feelings or anyone’s feelings. I like to have this information and [take] it as a learning type of thing.

With the show dropping and how massive the scale is, there is going to be so many opinions, so many thoughts. So, I feel like it’ll be OK if I just kind of let this one go for a while and revisit when I’m in a more stable place.

I think that’s healthy. On the flip side, for somebody coming up in your generation, specifically somebody Indigenous working in this industry, what’s it like to watch actors like Lily Gladstone or Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs lead the way?

It’s so beautiful. It’s beautiful to see all these amazing strong Indigenous actors. A lot of our stories have been trying to break through for a long time. To now be able to see it in multiple people that come to mind immediately with Reservation Dogs, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Echo, all of these things are so amazing to be able to see in the industry. It’s come so far even from when I was little.

I think one of the main reasons that I was drawn to Avatar: The Last Airbender growing up was being able to have a strong brown role model in Katara. She was one of not many. I think representation, even in that time, was so scarce and rare. So, to be able to carry the torch that’s been passed down for a long time now and be able to light multiple fires and lead the way for the generations coming is so important. I am truly blessed to be alongside all these incredible Indigenous actors leading the way.

Has there been a particular performance by another actor that’s had an effect on you like that? Somebody that you saw growing up, or are even watching right now that’s a model for your career?

The only person that I could think of is Zendaya. I grew up watching her on K.C. Undercover and Shake It Up, when she was just a kid star on Disney. Another thing that is so inspiring to me is her fashion sense. I love how she doesn’t always step out to all these different events. But when she does, everyone knows it and she’s making a statement. It’s just really inspiring to me, her fashion sense and her choices. Also, to have a single name that’s different from what you always hear is also something that we relate to and is inspiring to me.

What is it like having this be something of a new normal for a Native actor where you’re not necessarily just relegated to these roles in westerns? That’s something that people have been dreaming of. It seems like it’s a totally open future now too. What does that feel like?

It feels so surreal. Honestly, sometimes I get the sense of guilt. There are so many people that fight for the same spot. Sometimes, I have to remind myself how hard I’ve worked for things because it sometimes can feel like maybe someone else deserved this. You know that type of feeling?

But I’m lucky enough to have an amazing support group. To be able to be in this position that I’m in now is so incredible. Something that my dad always told me that we’re always where we’re supposed to be. I think that’s something if I had the chance to tell other Indigenous people, or just people in general, especially with actors and acting—you’re always where you’re supposed to be. If you didn’t get this job, it was for this reason. If you feel like you really wanted this thing but it didn’t end up happening, it was because this thing was waiting for you. And I feel like a lot of times, fate works in really funny ways. Of course, I was auditioning for so many things before Avatarhappened. I just can’t imagine if I had landed a different role and then wasn’t able to go out for this. So, it’s so funny how the universe works in crazy ways to make things align perfectly.

[thesweetnessofspring]

What's your opinion of President Snow as a character in THG trilogy? Was he a great villain?

* Spoiler for TBOSAS *

After reading the novel, what's your opinion about Coriolanus Snow 'transformation' in the end?

Was it his nature or the way he was nurtured that led him to become the character we know?

Thank you :)

@curiousnonny

Even though Snow was physically in the novels very little, he's still a major presence through his threats and surveillance. He's just the president in the first book, but come the start of Catching Fire he's playing games with Katniss and attempting to maintain control but failing. He's very realistically written as a villain who takes and accepts calculated losses--he isn't wanting to "destroy the world" but his method of maintaining order causes at least 95% of the rest of the population to suffer so the minority can be comfortable and a minority of the minority living lavishly and greedily (not unlike the world now...)

Personally, I think that if children are given a basic level of physical and emotional safety, they grow up into decent people. Yes, even people with *insert disorder here* even though it may take more work and self-awareness for them. So I think the majority of Snow's trajectory comes from nurture, not nature. Some people like to point out that "from page one" Coriolanus is thinking elitist, misogynistic, thoughts and therefore it's by his nature he's bad. However, these are all factors in Coriolanus's life up until page one of TBOSAS:

His father was a cruel man.

His mother was kind, and died with her new baby during an attack during the war

His father died

He endured starvation (to the point it affected his growth) and saw another adult resort to cannibalism to survive

Has grown up being told he's a Snow and therefore one of the best families in the world and yet-

Struggles to find food even ten years after the war, clothing, and has to lie and cover it up

Is in an elitist social circle that looks down on not just the lower classes, but others in that social circle

Was raised during a time of wartime patriotism and propaganda, including Capitol superiority and dehumanizing the districts, which is further supported at home with Grandma'am.

Wealth, war, and entitlement corrupted Coriolanus from who he might have been. Some people like to point out that Sejanus or Lucy Gray could have been a turning point for him, yet so much had already riddled his mind and influenced him. Not only his elite status, but the adults in his life. Grandma'am with her Capitol superiority, Dr. Gaul with her mentorship, Dean Highbottom with his antagonism, even Strabo with his attempts to become Capitol and use Coriolanus as an adopted son, who he wished his own son had been like. Others argue that Tigris wasn't like Coriolanus, yet while she had compassion for Lucy Gray, she didn't take action to stop the Games because she, too, was just trying to survive. Nor did she receive the same attention and grooming as Coriolanus did, both from the Grandma'am (who declared Coriolanus would be president one day) and Dr. Gaul. Additionally, as far as we know, Tigris was a stylist in the Games up to Katniss having memories of her. It's possible she was part of the rebellion from the beginning, yet Plutarch seems to be the Capitol instigator of the rebellion, so she came under it later in life, though when we're not sure. All that to say--she did participate in and benefit from the Capitol lifestyle and Snow name, too. We don't know what led her to turn things around herself, though I suspect there was some kind of "nurture" she received on top of her nature.

Obviously Snow still had his choices that he made and there were glimmers of a possibility to turn himself around. And part of him, no matter what, would have likely had issues with control and his own pride, but the circumstances around him really encouraged these nasty elements of his personality and fostered them into the dictator we know in the original trilogy, while very little supported any encouragement toward social justice.

[queermania]

I'm a different anon but now I'm curious what you would have preferred they do in Dabb era with Dean's anger

hmm i think the single biggest change they could make is to not have soulless!jack kill mary and instead make dean pointing the gun at jack be the actual breaking point. so the vague shape of the last few seasons would look like this:

everything is the same up until right before jack burns off his soul

jack burns off only some of his soul, enough to be concerning, but not enough to actually make him soulless/lose control (the situation with his soul and what to do about it will be a big pressing concern going forward, just another worry added to the pile)

mary dies while on a hunt in a way that is seemingly nobody's fault but is still obviously a huge emotional blow (for the record i would not kill mary off in an ideal scenario but i know that they had to kill her off for understandable sam smith reasons so that's why i'm leaving it in here)

dean and cas get in a fight that is explicitly a culmination of both of their communication issues and has nothing to do with jack and/or mary

the divorce arc still happens (but this time jack is like a confused kid whose parents are getting divorced and they both have to assure him they still love him and its not his fault etc etc)

the makeup still happens but it includes an actual discussion of their actual issues and in the process cas confesses, summoning the empty. ideally, it would be because dean reciprocates but i'm trying to be plausible here so the general vibe would still be the same (and it would have nothing to do with billie because if i'm rewriting this shit, billie is not gonna be a villain! we can find another way to work around lisa's pregnancy!)

after the confession, chuck tries to manipulate dean into thinking that jack is dangerous and that he's the reason that cas is dead again. that everything is jack's fault. that he's burned off all of his soul. that the only way they can all get off this hamster wheel is for jack to die.

dean points the gun at jack. he doesn't want to kill jack but he doesn't want to do this anymore. he just wants it all to be over and if god says this is the way to do it, who is he to argue (he's dean winchester! but he's so broken down at this point)

jack still gets on his knees because he's nothing if not a winchester willing to sacrifice himself.

dean is horrified when he sees jack on his knees in front of him, waiting to be executed, and turns the gun on chuck instead

this leads to the reveal that chuck is the Big Bad and that he sucks. chuck is the reason mary died. he added one extra unaccounted-for vampire or whatever at the last minute and that's why mary died. amara giveth and chuck taketh. he just wanted to see what would happen.

salmondean and jack decide they have to kill god, obvi. instead of spending a season just kind of vaguely stressing over THE THREAT OF GOD DESTROYING ALL OF CREATION while not really doing much about it, they spend one or two episodes figuring out a plan.

15x20 is them defeating chuck. maybe they release all of chuck's power into the universe or maybe amara absorbs him and then her and billie live happily ever after. i don't care. but jack doesn't become god. the series ends with sam saying something about how now that chuck is gone they really can do whatever they want, and dean and jack share a look that is very much What We Want To Do Is Get Cas Back And We're Going To Start Working On That Right Now.

something like that? i know this isn't perfect but it it's a general idea of a narrative trajectory that i would find a lot more satisfying while still being something that they would've actually been allowed to do

[nougaty-nephilim]

Supernatural trudged through many seasons feeling aimless. There was a point to it all from s1-5, but afterward they sort of slipped into bros just fighting to survive, endangering the world and then saving it from other entities (and themselves). In a way it went back to the s1 basics of saving people hunting things blah blah, but there was no overall trajectory like they once had with Yellow Eyes, the psychic children and the apocalypse. No real end in mind or point to get to. That's why I always expected the series finale to be doomed.

I knew eventually they'd get cancelled or keep churning out content until CW got tired and said told to wrap up a final season. Then they'd scramble to find a way to end it and likely choose the lazy, uninspired, 'what's the point it's not like ratings matter anymore' sort of ending.

But then they pulled the Chuck is a cruel, capricious God storyline. They revealed to the characters that they're just puppets to be controlled for entertainment. They have no agency, no autonomy no free will. Suddenly we had a villain more powerful than any other could hope to be because he created and controlled every other villain that came before him. He made them and handed them their power and purpose to play with them and toss them aside when he was bored of their plots. Suddenly there was a purpose to the show, face the puppet master then fight tooth and nail to get the free will you never quite had. And sure if they'd died in that process, it would be sad but at least it was to fight for their freedom to be real people with real lived. And if they survived it, they got the chance to explore who they really were when Chuck isn't dictating every line into his novels before they can say it. They can begin the road to self discovery, even if it's just implied and we don't see it on screen.

The finale was disappointing because we had 15 seasons, almost two decades in real time, of watching The Truman Show. But instead of Truman facing his master, choosing freedom from control at the end and discovering who he is outside of a controlled environment, he simply dies at the end. He never experiences real free will long enough to make the journey satisfying. He never gets to figure out who he is when he isn't micromanaged in his own life. He lives a life being controlled and dies the moment he's about to step out of the door of his simulated world. That's how Supernatural ends. Dean and Cas are killed before they can enjoy Chuck's defeat. Sam lives through it but he is so depressed the entire time that he doesn't seem to really enjoy any of it (and frankly looked depressed and su*cidal half the time). Jack becomes God so even though he didn't die he still lives in the afterlife as if he did and he never really gets to live his life despite being a toddler who never got the chance to experience much normal.

TL;DR In the end, it all feels like the show told us that Team Free Will 2.0 defeated the final villain yet it felt like he won

[tiarnanabhfainni]

hello for the last day of @spnwomenweek i have written a small fic featuring mary winchesters’ heaven being broken into, some time around early season 6 because we totally should have seen more of the angel civil war. a lot of this inspired by the thoughts and posts of @donniefinnerman. the fic is also beneath the cut.

Mary is content. She sits in their old creaky lawn chair and watches as John gently throws a baseball for Dean to catch. Under her skin she can feel the baby kicking, as if he can feel how happy she is on this perfect day. That morning, John woke her with a soft kiss and gifted her a beautiful bouquet of flowers that now sit on the kitchen table. Carnations, violets, sprays of yellow gorse. They bring so much colour to the room.

For once, restlessness doesn’t itch beneath her skin and the ashy taste of resentment on her tongue is entirely absent. Mary wishes her life could be like this all the time but she will take what she can get. There is still an hour of sunlight yet. This moment can last just a little while longer.

And then.

A shadow. Something moving across the sky. The light from the sun shimmers- vanishes and all of sudden she feels cold.  Dean and John seem oblivious to this break in the script. They run through the garden, completely unphased by the drastic change in weather. Mary cannot seem to move her gaze from where it is fixed on this domestic scene. Like a bug trapped in amber she cannot control her own body, fossilised in her own history.

This is wrong - she knows this is wrong - this isn’t how this day went -

------------------------

Red and white petals fall down around her as Mary hangs onto the arm beside her, walking slowly up the aisle. She is sick to her stomach. A mix of excitement, nerves and a sour taste of grief mix in her chest and it’s all she can do to keep walking.

Her father is not the one walking her up the aisle and it hangs over the day like a dark cloud. She knows it’s silly, that he probably wouldn’t even be there if he was still alive. But she misses him nonetheless.

Even so, she looks up at John and it helps. He is alive. It was worth it really in the end because John is alive and they are getting married and she will build her own happiness.

But then the music is fading; and she doesn’t think that the priest is supposed to speak at this point in the ceremony, yet there is a voice whispering from further up the aisle. She can’t quite make out the words - the meaning just out of her reach - like it is speaking in a language slightly to the left of her own. Her legs refuse to move any faster and can no one else hear this ceaseless muttering -

---------------------------

A salt and burn. Easy as anything. She’s getting used to the rhythm of a hunt now, hopefully her dad will let her upgrade to something more interesting soon. But the old man is irritating that way. “Every hunt is just as important as another, Mary. It’s about the people we save, not us.”

Yawn.

An idle wisp of a thought drifts through her mind that this must be before things got messy. Ghosts were simple really. No body to bury, no blood on your hands. Just old, crackling bones going up in smoke. Easy to feel like an uncomplicated hero. She is young, she still idolises her dad in some ways.

The man digging beside her sets his spade down and goes to crack open a can of cheap gas station beer. This is not her father, one of his hunting buddies instead. Mary’s known him for years, sees him as an uncle of sorts. He reaches down to pull her up from the grave. As she grasps his hand suddenly all she can see is him; choking desperately on blood, his entrails spilling from underneath his skin.

She jolts back. That is not supposed to be happening she is sure of it. In fact, she thinks that it won’t be happening for another 5 years.

All at once Mary can feel an unfamiliar energy emanating from just outside her field of vision and she is herself, unmoored from the inexorable trajectory of her past. She looks up and there is light, burning light. Her eyes must be melting, must be boiling out of her head at the sight but when she reaches up to check they remain intact in their sockets.

Like an ant under a microscope, she knows she is being watched. There are no eyes, no obvious means of seeing but she knows anyway. The way all prey knows when something more powerful is watching.

She is unsure of how long she stares at that overwhelming glow, unable to move for fear when she feels a tug on her arm that brings her back to her body. She turns her head and sees a young blonde woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five years old.

“Heya! The name’s Jo. Come with me if you want to live”

--------------------------

They are running now, at full speed and Mary cannot breathe. She stumbles and falls over her own legs. She is exhausted but she cannot halt her own momentum, knowing that if she stops she might never start again. The girl - Jo - she seems completely unbothered by the exercise. Mary doesn't know if she trusts her but she has to, needs to get away from that scorching presence behind them.

There comes a shout from over the neighbours’ fence and a hand beckoning them from the shed behind it. On the door she can make out some sort of strange sigil, painted in a suspicious dark liquid. Jo grabs her hand and urges her to jump the fence. When they land on the other side Mary sees the man attached to the hand, wearing a wrestler’s mask and a cape.

The young woman rolls her eyes at the outfit but never stops moving relentlessly towards the door.

“Time to go Ash!”

The man - Ash - slaps his beckoning hand on the sigil and it lights up beneath his palm. Finally the girl’s hand reaches the doorknob and opens it. Mary takes one last look behind her before following. The world around her twists - twists and they are someplace else.

Her eyes snap up and see a brown-haired woman with kind eyes smiling at her.

“Hello honey. You must be Mary Winchester. I’m Ellen Harvelle. Welcome to the resistance”

[lesbiansamruby]

supernatural is a tragedy time! this is @quakersamwinchester​ and i’s thesis. ok so. initially. i buy that late seasons supernatural was attempting to build up a story of found family and relationships that grew beyond sam and dean’s codependency. what i do not buy is that they were successful with this. supernatural, actually, is a story about sam and deans mutual desperate obsession with one another that transcends death and each other’s autonomy which they drag people like cas and jack into. it is about perpetuating the cycles of tragedy and abuse. it is a found family! it’s just a massively fucked up one.

 sam’s character arc over the show goes from desperately distancing himself from his family/hunting to making a sacrifice protecting them to seeing hunting and his family as inevitable, not something he chose. somehow this is presented as a good thing. in dark side of the moon sam’s heaven is moments where he was able to escape his family, specifically moments where he possessed the autonomy to make those decisions at all. in carry on, sam’s heaven is just him and dean on the bridge from the pilot. this sucks! this is negative development. it’s also consistent with the narrative that has been built over the last few seasons, where sam gets sucked into the nature of hunting and his brother as his only options. dean becomes a progressively more controlling and violent person throughout the show with sam, cas, and jack. he hasn’t in any way become a person who could settle down or remove himself from violence. 

the finale feels like an episode that could have come from any season because sam and dean have not fundamentally changed as people. they have become worse versions of themselves because they have become even more codependent and lost any sight of the “saving people” part of “saving people, hunting things.” a finale where deancas and saileen were endgame and they all lived happily ever after in the bunker would have been dramatically inconsistent with the trajectories of these characters so far. fulfilling their original “fates” from the pilot is cyclical in a fun way and highlights how inescapable their tragedy was, not because of divine fate but just because of who they are as people. 

sam and dean returning to where they started on that bridge is in some ways the most hopeful ending i could see for them because it’s a return to who they were before they became so twisted up in one another in a narrative which would not have allowed them to become healthier people outside of death. basically, when robert icke said in his oresteia, “i can only make the decisions i can make: regardless of what i say, i can only do, fundamentally, what it is in me to do.” sam and dean can only do what they can do! after years of being the worst versions of themselves they can only make the decisions they can make, which is what they did in the finale.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Graphics by Anna Wiederkehr

Americans have changed their behavior in ways that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago. Masks are an essential accessory. Social distancing is the norm. And even as states moved to reopen their economies in May and June, many Americans continued to think it was better for people to stay home.

But underneath that apparent consensus is a large — and growing — partisan divide. Even as cases and hospitalizations spike in red states that mostly escaped the early effects of the virus, Republicans and Democrats remain stubbornly split on the threat it poses. For instance, it was only in July that President Trump wore a mask in public for the first time. And perhaps thanks to Trump’s repeated downplaying of the threat that COVID-19 poses, Republicans are much less concerned than Democrats are about the virus.

On the one hand, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, Republicans have consistently been less likely than Democrats to say that they fear being hospitalized because of COVID-19 or that they might unknowingly spread the virus to others. But on the other hand, that partisan gap has widened significantly between April and June.

It’s hard to find a more extreme test of our tribal political attachments than the current pandemic, where Trump continues to downplay the risks of the virus in the face of near-universal opposition from medical experts. It also raises a thorny issue: In the midst of a pandemic, partisanship appears to be shaping people’s perceptions of their risk and personal behaviors — to the point that our divided politics actually affects our health. For Americans, that might mean that questions of whether to stay home, wear a mask or to see friends and family without social distancing are filtered through a partisan lens.

In other words, do our politics risk making us sick?

It’s pretty clear that at this point, Republicans’ and Democrats’ experiences of the pandemic have been steadily diverging for months. It’s much harder to say, though, what that means for transmission of the virus. Some surveys offer a glimmer of hope, suggesting that the partisan gaps in how people are actually behaving — whether they wear a mask, for example — are much narrower than the divides on questions about what they think the government should do in response to the virus or whether the worst is behind us. It’s possible, too, that some of the partisan divides we’re seeing now could start to narrow as outbreaks spiral out of control in states like Arizona, Florida and Texas.

These trends are cause for alarm among the small army of social scientists who have tried to figure out how Americans are responding to the virus since the beginning of the pandemic — from the conflicting signals they’ve received from Trump and other political leaders, to changing guidelines from public health experts.

“Some Republicans are much less freaked out by the virus than they were a few months ago,” said Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina who is tracking Americans’ perspectives of the coronavirus through a panel survey. “But things are changing so quickly — these new outbreaks could scare them and maybe some of that polarization disappears.”

That doesn’t mean the politicization of the virus isn’t having an impact, though. Take the political fighting around whether people should be required to wear masks or the timeline around when businesses should reopen. The virus is spiking in Georgia, with thousands of new cases each day, but the state’s Republican governor is suing the Democratic mayor of Atlanta over the city’s decision to revert to its most restrictive opening phase and mandate the wearing of masks. “The national conversation about how we behave during this pandemic has been so colored by the partisan divide that it’s becoming impossible to talk rationally about the risks we are and are not willing to tolerate,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist and the dean of the Boston University School of Public Health who studies the politics of public health. “If both sides were pushed out of their corners, they would both have to concede quite a bit, and we’d frankly all be safer.”

Understanding how Americans are responding to the pandemic isn’t an easy task; there are essentially two methods at researchers’ disposal. The first is to use a survey. The second is to look at mobility trends, such as geolocation or credit card data, to see if people are actually behaving the way they say they are. And over the past few months, political scientists and economists have leaned on both methods to figure out how Americans are thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic and how that relates to their behavior. With the exception of a few studies conducted in late March and early April, when fear of the pandemic ground the economy to a complete halt, all of this research has uncovered an accelerating partisan divide, too.

For example, as early as March, a group of researchers found that Democrats in a large panel survey exhibited more worries than Republicans about the pandemic and were also likelier to embrace health behaviors like more frequent hand-washing or avoiding mass gatherings. The first round of Hetherington’s survey suggests a partisan divide in Americans’ support for some public health interventions, like widespread testing.

The problem with these surveys, of course, is that there’s no way to figure out, for example, whether someone who says they’re quarantining is actually doing so. So a number of other studies have tried to figure out what people were actually doing by using geolocation data to follow people’s movements. This research has found basically the same thing as the surveys: People in Republican-leaning counties, or counties that voted for Trump in 2016, didn’t reduce their activity as much as people in Democratic counties.

Another study that looked at individual-level smartphone data found a similar pattern. And one team of researchers examined both survey data and geolocation data and determined that the trend held up for both — people in more Republican areas were less likely to feel at risk because of COVID-19, and they were also less likely to stay at home.

But this mobility data has its own limitations, according to Rebecca Katz, a professor at Georgetown University Medical Center. It can only tell you whether people are leaving their homes, not where they’re going or whether they’re taking precautions. “We’re all using this data because it’s the data we have, but it’s imperfect,” she said. “Sometimes, I pack my kids in a car and we just drive for a little while so we can get out of the house — by my cell phone, we’re moving. But that doesn’t tell someone looking at that data if we are interacting with other people, or if we’re wearing masks.”

Geography is another confounding factor; people in rural areas are more likely to drive places, even if they’re otherwise following public health guidelines, and less densely populated parts of the country were also less hard hit by the virus in the beginning. The problem is that Republicans are more likely to live in those parts of the country — and the effects of political segregation and the virus’s trajectory are very difficult to untangle, especially for studies that were conducted a month or two into the pandemic.

The partisan split was hard to deny, though, so early on, a couple of research teams tried to figure out why Republicans and Democrats were responding to the pandemic differently. Two usual culprits — politicians and the media — emerged as possible factors in the divide.

One study conducted from late February through the end of March found that the partisan divide on risk perception and health behavior only narrowed after the White House issued federal social distancing guidelines, suggesting that Trump’s role as a national Republican leader could be quite significant. Several other studies dug into the impact of cable TV, with one survey finding that an MSNBC viewer’s response to the pandemic was quite different than that of a Fox News watcher. Another study focused only on the impact of Fox News and concluded that an increase in viewership did appear to result in less social distancing. The evidence for the effects of politicians and differing media sources is less robust because there aren’t as many studies, but it does suggest that even when there are serious health risks at stake, how both talk about the virus and the public health response may affect the way people behave.

Shana Gadarian, a professor of political science at Syracuse University who is helping to conduct one of the panel surveys, said she was surprised to see such enormous divides emerge as the pandemic wore on. According to other research she’s conducted, moments of extreme anxiety and uncertainty can actually make people more open to new sources of information — including public health experts and leaders from the opposing party. So at the beginning of the pandemic, she and her team expected that Americans would coalesce around public health experts’ recommendations, or that other demographic factors — like age — would turn into key dividing lines.

Scientists and doctors do still enjoy a high level of trust from most Americans, as Maggie Koerth wrote for FiveThirtyEight in May. But that doesn’t mean they are entirely immune to the winds of partisanship — for example, Democrats are likelier than Republicans to trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Crucially, though, big divides haven’t emerged everywhere. According to the latest wave of the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group, conducted between July 2 to 8, the vast majority (88 percent) of Republicans said they wore a mask when going out in public, even though Republicans in greater numbers have said in other surveys that the government shouldn’t require people to wear masks. And according to Robert Griffin, research director of the Voter Study Group, that’s significantly higher than in any wave of the weekly data going back to May 28. There was more of a partisan gap in responses to other questions about coronavirus-related behavior, although it was still fairly modest.

So are these partisan splits actually driving the spread of the virus?

As it turns out, it’s hard to prove that Republicans’ resistance to mask mandates or social distancing is actually worsening the pandemic. One reason is that political scientists and economists don’t feel equipped to take on the epidemiological modeling that would be necessary to measure what, say, a partisan divide on hand-washing actually means for the spread of the disease. Yael Hochberg, an economist at Rice University, said that the lack of uniformity in testing data made her reluctant to wade into the public health data. “There are places where testing still isn’t widely available,” Hochberg said. “And if testing isn’t uniform, it’s hard to compare what you’re seeing in one county versus another.”

One study tried to pin down the effect of differing levels of compliance with social distancing policies among Republicans and Democrats using individual geolocation data. It concluded that a Trump voter who contracts COVID-19 infects 16 percent more people than a comparable Clinton voter. That’s a striking finding — but it’s also only one study, and several infectious disease experts who reviewed the paper at my request were a little skeptical of its conclusions.

Samuel Scarpino, a professor at Northeastern University who studies infectious diseases, said that it can be very difficult, even in a sophisticated model, to separate all of the confounding factors that could be at play, like geography. And Katz said that without information about whether people are wearing masks or engaging in social distancing, it’s hard to draw very solid conclusions about transmission from mobility data.

Scarpino was quick to add, though, that polarization can still be a serious problem, even if it’s hard to quantify its precise impact. “If politicians’ messaging is making people feel like they’re safe from COVID, those are people who are unnecessarily being put at risk,” he said. He’s also concerned that public health experts’ credibility will erode as certain health behaviors, like mask-wearing or social distancing, become associated with one party or another. “We’re kind of building the airplane as we fly it and we need to be able to change course when we get new evidence,” he said. “But it becomes harder to have those conversations and get buy-in from the public as the whole process becomes more politicized.”

There’s danger in exaggerating the extent of the partisan divide, though. Galea told me that he’s been struck by the fact that so many Americans — including nearly all Republicans — report they are going along with health experts’ recommendations, like wearing masks, at least to some degree. And it would be a mistake, Galea said, to gloss over this unusual level of partisan unity, because it’s a sign that health behaviors aren’t as divisive as they could be, given the strength of partisan loyalties.

“Nobody should ignore the fact that people on the political extremes are embracing polarizing positions on health behavior that should not be polarized,” Galea said. “But I think the evidence we have indicates that most people have tried to be responsible and adopt the recommended behaviors, even at a time of immense polarization and confusion and discomfort.”

That said, he still thinks some politicians — and in particular, Trump — need to do more to get on the same page as public health experts. “It’s not that politics is making it impossible to implement these health behaviors, because we see that many ordinary people are getting on board regardless of what political leadership is saying,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we should give politicians a pass for turning these serious, serious health conversations into a political football, because that is very much to our detriment.”

[gra-sonas]

RosweII, New Mexico star LiIy CowIes on lsobeI's self-empowerment and fangirling over Jason Behr

The actress takes us inside her character's heartbreaking grief and trauma on the CW extraterrestrial drama.

For a town inhabited by aliens, a whole bunch of very human, very real — and heartbreaking! — drama sure does go down in Roswell, New Mexico.

On Monday's episode of the CW series, we journeyed back in time to the scene of the 1947 saucer crash that brought Max (Nathan Dean Parsons), Isobel (Lily Cowles), and Michael (Michael Vlamis) to the New Mexico small town, and we got our first glimpse of Jason Behr (who played Max on the original Roswell series) as a zealous army officer intent on capturing the recently landed extraterrestrials. While we learned more about Michael's mother's arrival on Earth and the turbulent hours that followed, back in the present Isobel was having a rough time of it herself, having chosen to attempt to end her pregnancy alone and confront her grief over the loss of her brother and basically the whole life she'd known with Noah for so many years.

We caught up with Cowles about the emotional scenes with Parsons, the bold decision to bring an abortion story line to the forefront of the episode, and bumping into her teenage crush at craft services.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Isobel is obviously carrying a lot of grief and pain this season from the loss and violations she suffered last season. How did you approach the character coming into this second season?

LILY COWLES: Halfway through the hiatus, Carina [Adly MacKenzie, series creator] and I started talking about what Isobel had been through, where she was coming from, and what we could expect to see moving forward. I was really hoping when it started, we'd be six months down the line, but no — of course that doesn't make for good television, nor does it do justice to character. So we very quickly realized we were going to be heading right back into the moment straight after. I was like, "Ooh, boy." I got a lot to take on: losing her brother, her other half, the twin that she'd had since birth, and of course having to digest the fact that her entire life had been a sham. Her marriage was a lie, to a man who had been physically and emotionally using and abusing her without her knowing about it. She'd been married to this sort of psychopath, serial killer who used her body to commit murders. How do you even begin to digest it? We talked about how Isobel was a character who had built a tremendous facade, and she was living this perfect life that looked really good on paper. It was a very carefully constructed house of cards, but it was a prison because it was all based in lies. Carina and I were looking at it and thought, "Well, the one thing that can be said is that that house of cards now has been destroyed. It's been razed to the ground." So she actually, strangely, has been given an opportunity to start again. In many ways, we were both excited to see: Who is Isobel outside of the confines of how she's defined herself? It's so painful and scary, and yet it gives her a fresh start to say, "Who am I, deep down inside?" I think that's something that everyone can relate to on some level, finding your authentic self.

It seem like a big part of Isobel's journey this season is going to be finding her own autonomy, making her own decisions, and not relying on anyone else to look after her. Can you talk about her decision to abort the baby in this episode and how that plays into her overall story arc?

Isobel is, of course, a special case because she's an alien. Her story line is largely metaphorical for a lot of people, but it's nonetheless a story that so many women can relate to: We have these bodies that other people want to control, and we have a lot of restrictions placed on our own reproductive health. It's crazy that it's still such a huge issue that women have to battle so much to be able to have autonomy over their own systems. Isobel finds herself in a position where she learns that she's pregnant and there are a lot of things at play here. One of the biggest ones is, of course, that the man who fathered this child was not who she thought he was. So there's a question of consent. It's tricky because all of these things are so shades of gray. She learns after the fact that this man had been lying about who he was. He had been manipulating her, using her body, and infiltrating her mind. It's hard to draw comparisons to a human on human, but she definitely suffered emotional, psychological, physical abuse and manipulation. Now she's dealing with a pregnancy that's come out of an abusive and traumatic relationship, and she's looking at this pregnancy as representing the legacy of that abuse and trauma. Isobel's looking at a woman's right to have it on her own terms, and these are not the terms that she agreed to, and she's very much alone.

That's a very relatable story line if you remove the alien element and just focus on how many women are alone and dealing with an unwanted pregnancy and don't have access to help.

Yes. That's a really terrifying thing. I think that's a place that many women find themselves. While Isobel's in extreme extenuating circumstances, I think this is something that many women face, and whether it's because they're under age and their families won't understand, or because they're illegal citizens and they feel that going to a hospital will compromise them and they'll be deported, or maybe they live in a state where medical assistance just isn't offered for that. This is something many women have had to really face. I think in that sense, Carina wanted to do justice to that story so women who have gone through it can see that they're not alone. Often on TV, you get to this moment and then it's like, "Oh, there was a miscarriage," or they find some way to do it without compromising the character's likability. It's so sad to me that the character's likability would be in question for having to make this kind of decision, but it's the reality that we live in. There's such a stigma. Carina wanted to say, "This character is alone, and she's making a choice to save herself." It was very bold, and I'm really honored to be a part of it.

It's an emotionally draining episode for Isobel, for sure. The scene with Max on the couch where she talks about how much she misses him but seems to come to the realization that she is the only person she can truly rely is pretty heartbreaking. How was that to shoot?

It was very challenging. Carina called me and we started talking about it and she said, "Okay, I have an idea, but I don't want you to freak out." She proposed this whole thing. My initial reaction was like, "Oh God, please don't make me," because you go through it as an actor. You put your human body through it, and you don't want to hold back. Especially with this, I felt an enormous responsibility to do justice to this story because I know it's so important to so many people. But it was rough. Every morning going to work was like walking into a war zone. You know what's coming and you're like, "Please don't make me go!" But it's such a beautiful monologue. It's heartbreaking. I lost a parent a few years ago and when I read that monologue I was just like, "Oh God." It just hits. It just rings so true. To be dealing with grief is its own miracle and monster, and that was something that was really important for me to show up for as an artist. I know that part of the human condition, that inability to move forward beyond the loss of someone.

Wow, yeah, pretty heavy stuff. I guess one bright spark in all of this was that Liz [Jeanine Mason] and Isobel are back on better terms. Will we see them team up going forward?

Yeah, something that's really beautiful about what happens to Isobel is that in the dearth of all other supportive relationships, she's going to have to learn how to be friends with the girls. Men, God bless them, can't relate as well to what she is going through as other women can. I think Maria sees it. She's got her psychic abilities and she's like, "What's going on with you?" Liz, of course, when she finds out, is like, "Why didn't you tell me?! I would have been there for you." I'm really excited that this season Isobel is going to learn how to play nice with the girls. Female relationships can be complicated, and they can be so powerful.

I'm assuming you won't have any scenes with Jason Behr since he exists in flashbacks, but how was just having the O.G. Max on set?

Such a dream. First of all, I was a huge Roswell original fanatic. I was obsessed with it. The first time I saw him was at craft services. It was lunchtime and I'm like stuffing my pockets full of all my snacks and I like look up, and it was like an angel had fallen to the earth and there he was. I don't get star-struck, but I was so awkward. I was like, "It's you!" You could tell the poor man has had to deal with this like a lot. He's like, "Yes, it's me. I know that I'm the hero of your dreams." It was embarrassing, but having him around was amazing. He's been such a huge champion of the show. We have a tradition of going out for karaoke on Saturday nights, and he came out one time. I had just recently bought this totally absurd floor-length fur vest, and he put it on and looked like Jon Snow, but sleeker. I was just like, "Is this real life?" I just wanted to tell my 12-year-old self, "Girl, wait until I tell you what is going to happen!"

Amazing. I love that so much. We should talk about the ending too with Michael's mom and the other woman who may be Isobel and Max's mom. Can you tease anything to come there? Is Isobel going to throw herself into investigating her past?

Yeah, I think you can definitely get ready for some exciting investigation into the past. Isobel is trying to figure out who she is in a sense of where's she from too and what her roots are. That's definitely a question that she's got intensely on her mind. Part of the trajectory of the season is exploring the past and trying to get some information on what happened and what went down in 1947. So we'll definitely get to know some of those characters and get to fill in a little bit of the family gaps. It's beautifully written and beautifully acted, and I'm really excited for fans to see it. I think they're going to love it.

~ EW

[amwritingmeta]

4x06 Deconstruction: This One Goes Out to All of Dean’s Fears

I started working on this after 14x19 and it’s been sat in a document folder needing to be turned into a post ever since. With all the fairly delicious callbacks to this particular ep in 15x07 this seems the opportune time to give it a polish and share. Hope y’all will enjoy!  xx

So, I’ve been meaning to do this ever since I wrote this meta on 4x05, because watching the opening half of S4 is like taking a nose dive into Dean’s character and what he needs to understand about himself in order to let go of old patterns of behaviour and belief systems, grow into his own person and find the answer to what will actually make him happy. 

The trajectory of this nose dive is set up through Castiel arriving on the scene with his way of looking into Dean’s soul and stating uncomfortable truths: You don’t think you deserve to be saved and Good Things Do Happen. 

S4 and Dean’s rebirth (or his rehymination, as he calls it in 4x05) is all about setting him on the path towards adulthood. This is where his coming-of-age story really begins in earnest. The need for him to let go of old patterns of behaviour has been hit on throughout S1-3, but those first seasons act more as a setting up of this fact, letting us follow the behavioural pattern, whereas in S4 we start to get more contrasts to it, including discovering new sides to him, like exactly how much he knows and reads etc.

Now, let’s focus on how Yellow Fever explores Dean’s inner fears and explicitly lets him know that he has to confront them. 

This episode states that this is the work that’s beginning for him, whether he likes it or not. 

(he likes it not) (which is why he rejects the proposition in the episode’s final scene) (and has continued to reject it out of narrative necessity ever since) (but I skip ahead)

I’m late to the party here, so I’m #sorrynotsorry for the repetition, but I’m really eager to finally dig into this episode, since how it comes off the back of 4x05 and how it leads right into the absolute smasher that is 4x07 has felt so weighty to me ever since I deconstructed Monster Movie.

Contemplating the visual and thematic callback in 14x16 to this very episode, established through Felix the snake, as well as the most recent callback we got through that lovely piece of dialogue in 15x07, I feel that the intricately crafted exploration of Dean’s fears in 4x06, and the stated need for him to confront them if he’s to be happy, is more intriguing than ever.

Alright, before we go ahead and dig in, I want to present you with a few thoughts on Dean. Namely, I’d like to list the fears I see this episode exploring and they are:

Fear of Rejection (linked to perception of societal judgement)

Fear of Death (linked to Hell)

Fear of Growth and Internal Transformation (linked to fear of happiness)

Fear of Happiness (linked to losing his mother at a young age)

Fear of Failure (linked to Protect Sammy, and, in turn, linked to all the above)

These fears, and how they interlink in rather amazing ways, inform his behaviour, and it’s his behaviour when confronted with all of these fears that the narrative of 4x06 explores. And to my brain it does so in staggering ways, yeah?

Yeah. Okay. Let’s dig.

Little Pink Bow

We start the episode with Dean, running for his life, terrified. 

I mean, he is literally running from his fears. It’s rather gorgeous. 

The scene also paints the mood for the rest of the episode, where Dean’s skewed perception of the root of his fears are explored in depth. 

As a viewer, you’re brought into the belief that Dean is truly running from Hellhounds because, of course, this belief is effectively established through use of sound as Dean is running away from the noise of barking dogs, teasing the idea that the fear Dean’s displaying has to do with seriously bad memories of getting ripped to shreds and sent to Hell. (remember that we’ve only had glimpses through snippets of nightmares up until now of how much Dean actually remembers of his time there)

The scene itself is shot with urgency and real threat. We feel Dean’s fear. We worry for him. We wonder what the fuck is going on. We don’t want him to get attacked and dragged back to Hell! 

We get an abrupt stop to Dean’s flight when he crashes into the cart of a homeless man, but Dean’s on his feet quick enough and it’s put in dialogue that what you should do is run from your fears. Because if you don’t, they’ll kill you! And then…

…we get the tiniest, friendliest little dog, complete with pink bow as a visual aid underlining exactly how non-threatening it really is meant to be perceived by us.

This reveal of Dean not being about to get dragged back to Hell is funny, obviously, on many levels because we’re relieved that Dean’s terror is unfounded, and then we get hit with the understanding of Dean the Soldier Warrior Man running away from the sweetest little creature ever.

So, though this is sincerely funny thanks to impeccable acting, to me, there’s a bit more to it, and it’s to do with how this scene really sets the tone for the entire episode.

This tone is all to do with the exploration of Dean’s character makeup and what really makes him tick. 

Surface level narrative explores our first impression of what this episode is about: Dean’s fear of dying and going back to Hell. (Run! It’ll kill you!) This episode is about to lay it bare to us how Dean’s struggling with his memories of Hell, with his lingering fear that God has made a serious mistake and that it’ll all get ripped away from him again. 

His feelings of guilt at how he caved and began to torture souls keeping his self-loathing as intact as ever, and that self-loathing keeps him feeling, very much, that he didn’t deserve to be saved. Which feeds his fear that it was all a big mistake. And around and around it goes.

But his persistent self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness are in turn anchored entirely in fears that have been with Dean his whole life. The fears listed above in the intro to this analysis. And, to me, these fears are what that pink bow is about. 

Because subtextually I see Dean running from himself when he tries to escape that little dog. He’s running from fears that are, if he really dared open his eyes and look at them, not nearly as threatening as he thinks they are. If he just dared recognise them for what they are and begin to face them, he’d see that they’re no more dangerous than that little dog is.

Subtextual level narrative explores those fears, the ones intrinsic to Dean’s character, the ones feeding the surface level narrative fear of Hell and that are keeping the guilt and sense of worthlessness and lack of faith in himself very much at the forefront of his self-perception.

S4 is all about pushing Dean to open up to who he truly is. It’s about asking himself what will make him happy. It’s all about identity. And, yes, the series as a whole is about identity, but this season pushes that theme into a whole new focus from previous seasons. 

There’s a shift with Castiel entering the narrative and God reaching down a hand to give Dean a mission. There’s tentative faith beginning to blossom in Dean, which is a hugely important building block for Dean to dare to face his fears, and is also something this episode picks up from 4x05 (It’s kind of like a mission… Like a mission from God…) and builds on.

His Heart Gave Out

So, we get an immediate plant that what we’re about to deal with is matters of the heart. 

This plant is important for the plot of the episode, of course, but symbolically hearts are tied to Dean and it’s been implied since as early as 2x01 (ah @mittensmorgul​ pointed out that it actually starts in 1x12 and of course! how could I neglect the episode that started the faith thread?? tut! thanks for the pointer Laura!) that heart issues could be what kills him, rather than a bullet between the eyes. Right? 

Right. But rather than looking at it as a direct foreshadowing of Dean’s death, it could be seen as a comment on what is keeping him from living, and what’s keeping him from truly living is the fact that he’s unable to open his heart, to have faith, to trust. (and how can you follow your heart if you don’t trust it?) (you can’t is how)

Also very much the reason why Castiel the angel of Heaven and bringer of faith (who’s biggest problem is having too much heart) has stepped onto the scene, but I shan’t digress. 

The fact that the coroner actually takes out the heart of our vic and places it in Dean’s hands gets a rather amazing bookend moment in the scene where Lilith tells Dean he knows why this is happening to him and that he should listen to his heart. *slow eyebrow raise* I’ll get back to that.

Sheriff’s Office

Please note that the cute young deputy is already noticing Dean, and Dean notices him noticing, and Sam is noticing them noticing each other. This is important to note not only because it’s fucking amazing to make note of it, but also because of the Moment that comes later. We all know it, I still gotta call it out, but that’s for later.

Now for the sheriff.

I just want us to make note of a few things regarding the sheriff as well:

The sheriff gave the deputy instructions he didn’t want to be disturbed and now scolds him for doing as told

The sheriff gets the brothers to take their shoes off

The sheriff keeps putting disinfectant on his hands

Conclusion, he’s a control freak, and he’s a control freak because? 

I’d say he’s a control freak out of fear. A man doesn’t use disinfectant like that if he’s not terrified of germs, right? And this character trait lowkey links him to another control freak germaphobe. Yup, that would be Dean.

I’d also like us to note that Dean can’t stay professional and act like an actual adult (because he’s not one) when the sheriff says the word gamecock. The sheriff, being an actual adult, gently corrects the behaviour, leaving Dean looking self-conscious.

Could Be a Hundred Things

We continue the setting up of how Dean’s fears are about to go through some serious deconstruction, and with it the man himself, when Sam and Dean leave the sheriff’s office to have this exchange (edited btw):

Dean: Something scared him to death. Sam: Alright, so what could do that? Dean: What can’t? Ghosts, vampires, chupacabra. It could be a hundred things. Sam: So, we make a list and start crossing things off.

Yeah, remember the list I made of Dean’s fears? Going through that list and exploring Dean’s fears is what the narrative of this episode is setting up to do. Dean is, as the brothers are soon to realise, infected with the same ghost sickness that killed the vic. So here we have foreshadowing, in dialogue, of exactly what this episode means to do: go through the list of Dean’s fears and highlight, with each new situation where one of these fears is explored, exactly what Dean’s issues are and why the biggest one is… his closed off heart.

First fear: rejection.

Because why exactly do those teenagers make Dean need to cross the street? He doesn’t like the look of them, but why? They’re just a group of friends standing on the sidewalk in broad daylight. 

I’d say it’s to do with Dean’s fear of societal judgement, that has kept the conviction and reliance on his toxic masculinity armour so firmly in place for so long. Even firmer in place, I’d argue, than John’s immediate influence. 

John introduced it as a necessity for survival, for keeping your head focused in a fight, for putting emotion aside and getting the job done, but wearing the armour also meant social status and acceptance, even admiration. I think Dean caught onto this at a young age. Because that’s how we all form our personas (how we present ourselves to the world), through societal conditioning. Or through growing aware of this conditioning and telling it to go fuck itself. (good for you if you’re in that place) (Dean’s journey has been all about getting there) 

The fact that Dean’s insecurity stretches to even the possibility of teenagers side-eyeing him is a really great set-up for how this very deep fear is about to get put under an extremely bright light for the rest of the episode, through Luther’s storyline. 

She Smells Fear

Sam and Dean go to see the vic’s neighbour Mark and oh, he really, really likes his reptiles. 

Second fear: growth and internal transformation.

Why do I see this scene as being indicative of this fear? Well, because of how snakes, as we know, symbolise transformation. They symbolise healing. (Ouroboros anyone?) 

Now, of course, surface narratively speaking, Dean doesn’t exactly enjoy having a huge albino python sliterhing onto his lap (though the dirtier connotations that can be made from the visual are all shades hilariously poignant) (also the fact that the Devil was a snake and Dean’s fear of Hell) (all part of the symbology for the surface level fear), but him freaking out at all the reptiles and one spider (also symbolic of transformation), to me, has much more to do with what these creatures all declare for the subtextual reading (the pink bow related one), and their declaration is a continuation of what 4x01 told us.

Dean needs to open himself up to much needed internal growth and transformation.

This is what the first five episodes of the season, landing us here in 4x06, are all about: deconstructing Dean, forcing him to gain new perspectives on himself, on his behavioural patterns, on what has shaped him into the man he’s always seen himself as. 

Look at how, in just a few short episodes, he’s had someone enter his life that has not only brought with him a whole new world view, where God and the Devil exist, and where Heaven, for whatever reason, actually seems to be on his side, but this someone has also brought him back in time to bring him a new understanding of his mother and who she really was, not who she was when filtered through John’s view of her. 

I mean, that’s giving an insight into his lack of faith in himself as well as laying the foundation for beginning to question his self-perception right there. Within the first three episodes of the season. *head explodes*

So, to my mind, this episode is an extension and, in many ways, a deepening of what the season has clearly set itself out to do, yeah?

The fact that Marie is stated in dialogue to smell fear is just delightful. 

Might I also draw your eye to how we, in this scene, are told that the vic was freaking out. About witches. Who is skeeved out by witches? Dean. So there’s a narrative tie there, which I find interesting. (that the witch-freakout for Frank is tied to The Wizard of Oz comment is just icing)

Why is Dean so skeeved out by witches? I would say because witches symbolise something deeply regressed within him, which is his feminine side. His non-performing side. Rowena comes as a Dean mirror, and a very powerful one at that, bringing deep truth and standing in, for her first seasons, as a representative of toxic masculinity traits not simply being allocated to men and underlining how we can all display these traits, regardless of gender.

There’s also the ghosts (the past), the vampires (dual nature of identity and wearing a mask to cope) and chupacabra (happiness, mayhaps?), and how Carl Jung talks about what monsters really represent to us and why they’re so prevailing throughout human mythology. I mean, I studied this at uni so Carl didn’t teach me this, but the fact that it ties in with Carl Jung’s doctrine just gives me a sense of synchronicity. But. This is already getting fucking long, guys. :)

Moving on.

When Mark says that Frank used to tape his butt cheeks together we get another moment of Dean being an absolute child about it, unable to keep a smile down, presumably at the idea of butt cheeks taped together, not the idea of bullying, and again he totally offends the person talking, and he grows sligthly self-conscious about it. 

He really needs some self-perspective, yeah? Yeah.

Scratching the Itch

I mean… Look, I think that Dean has never been able to scratch the proverbial itch because what he’s the most scared of is the idea of daring to believe in a good thing happening, because good things do not last, not in Dean’s experience. You know? 

He’s a big-hearted, soft-to-the-core, loving type of human being, who longs, more than anything, for real love, to be loved for who he truly is. And all of that, including his true identity, is being repressed out of his fear. Of happiness. Because Good Things Don’t Last. 

I’ll talk more about the root of this further down, but I just find the fact that in this episode, the ghost sickness, which is a manifestation of fear, is literally an itch he keeps trying to scratch, and it just gets bigger and worse and is a visual statement of how his internalised fears are pretty much driving him out of his head is a rather poetic choice.

So, we get the information that Frank’s wife committed suicide way back when and that Frank had an airtight alibi and then we get the reveal that Dean appears to be, by all accounts, haunted.

Ghosts as representatives of needing to put the past to rest… Just throwing that in there.

And Dean is driving slow. 

Second fear: death.

And this was already established through the fear of Hellhounds at the beginning of the episode, yeah? But given the deeper issues being addressed here, you could actually argue for Dean’s fear of death not only being linked to a very real fear of Hell, but of a genuine desire to live.

Peeling back the layers of the Blaze of Glory bravado that’s kept him on a self-destructive fast-track for so long and revealing the softer belly underneath. 

I mean, one could argue. Since this episode is all about stripping away the toxic masculinity armour and showing the non-performing side to Dean. Showing us the truth, rather than the lie he’s been telling Sam since he got back from Hell. And on a subtextual level, stripping away the armour that’s keeping him safe from himself and exposing those nerve endings.

Because he should listen to his heart. 

But we’ll get to that.

Eye of the Tiger

I really do appreciate the detail of the cowboy scene on that hotel. Like. Wow. It’s almost insane. To me, this show is all about deconstructing the American ideal of the 50s, right? The ideal that’s informed toxic masculinity patterns since then, as well as the toxic patterns of societal judgement at large. 

It was in the 50s that the Hollywood western shaped the cowboy/sheriff character into becoming a glorifed male hero ideal, moving away from the truth of the rather open-minded wild wild west and into the commersial version of a very white, very straight man’s man who got the job done, no matter what, and sorted shit out wherever he went. Yeah? 

Anyway, I digress. This deconstruction is why cowboys and native americans and the wild west symbology is just so poignant on the show. And here it is. In all its glory. Attached to a hotel that could be said to be low-key linked to happiness.

Because the bluebird is a symbol of happiness.

Fourth fear: happiness.

And, look, Dean’s fear of heights is linked to the hotel, okay? His fear of flying. And flying is linked to? Yeah, you get the idea here. Of course, Castiel. 

Here’s the thing, this is a highly dubious reading, because it’s absolutely not anywhere in the narrative that Bluebird is the chosen name for a hotel suddenly related to a fear of heights related to a fear of flying and being out of control and it tying back to Cas, who is making Dean feel all sorts of not-in-control. Yeah? That’s my reading.

But it’s my reading because there’s more. 

Wait for it.

First, let’s talk a bit more about this scene —>

Dean rejects food. (love Sam’s reaction face like the fuck?) 

Why the fuck does Dean reject the food?

I’d say because food is a superficial band-aid, right? It’s ineffective comfort at this point. A way to eat his emotions, rather than find healthy outlets for them, like, I don’t know, actually connecting to others because that’s just a recipe for disaster, death and loss. But his emotions, right now, will not be suppressed by simple means. They’re completely in control of him and refuse to be put back in their designated boxes. 

So the ghost sickness can be spread like any disease and, of course, attacks the heart. Dean got infected when holding Frank’s heart. 

Sam didn’t get infected and Sam and Bobby’s theory is that the men who got infected all had a history of being dicks. Which is, you know, funny, but tragic, when looking at the surface level fear of Hell. Because Dean became a torturer of souls. So kinda a dick. Very much using fear as his weapon. 

But when it comes to the principal and the bouncer, it’s not verified that they did. Sam and Bobby are just associating using fear as a weapon with the roles of principal and bouncer. Especially when looking at how Dean tries to reject the idea that he, as a hunter, uses fear to scare people, Sam telling him all they do is scare people, and fair enough, but the ghost sickness isn’t infecting Sam.

And it isn’t infecting Sam because, for the subtextual layer of Dean’s fear, this theory is too shallow.

For the subtextual layer of Dean’s fears I’d say that the ghost sickness actually latches onto guilt.

There’s even the aspect to Frank where guilt might actually be the foremost reason for why the ghost sickness infects him as well, since we’ll learn later through Luther’s brother that Frank’s wife wasn’t killed, but was a victim of suicide. We don’t get it extrapolated on what caused her to take her own life, but safe to say her marriage was anything but healthy, and Frank’s outrage and murder of Luther seems to be underpinned by him being wholly unable to process his own guilt,  instead ending up projecting it onto an easy target.

baby gonna cry?

The fear of dying and of going back to Hell is threaded through in this scene, clarifying it further for us that this is what Dean’s terrified of. 

The ticking clock pretty much acting like a visual underlining of Dean feeling like he’s back on borrowed time. It’s inevitable that he has to go back. For all the things he did while there. He can’t have been forgiven. He sure as shit hasn’t forgiven himself. 

Dean breaks the clock. Doesn’t need the reminder of how his head is, as he tells Sam, on the chopping block again. He’d almost forgotten what that feels like.

For a moment. Like a glimmer. There had been the thought that he was serving something bigger. That maybe he was off the hook. Chosen to do great deeds. Aw, Dean. You’re not meant to learn how to have faith in a higher power. You’re meant to learn how to have faith in yourself.

They realise, as Dean coughs up a wood chip, that he’s the biggest clue they have.

Dean doesn’t like it.

Cassity & Sons

Now. Of all the things to call this lumber mill, this haunted structure - housing Luther, our ghost of the hour who is in the narrative to be representative of Dean’s deepest issues, his most repressed fear - of all the things to call it, there’s a Cass in the name. 

It could just be a tounge-in-cheek thing. It could mean nothing. But I like to think it does. Coming off of the absolutely angel riddled narrative of 4x05 as well, I really do think it does.

From the Bluebird of happiness and Dean’s fear of flying/heights, to the structure that is about to be significant in exploring Dean’s deepest fear being owned by a man named Cassity… I feel there’s reason to think there’s a reason for it. 

But, either way, this structure and Luther himself are important for exploring Dean’s deepest fears.

(they’re not playing around with the sign and making sure to linger on it either)

Now. Dean takes one look at this place. A place he has no idea if it’s haunted or not, btw. And states he is not going in there. Sure, nine times out of ten a place like that, given Dean’s previous experience with places like this, turns out to be haunted. Fair enough.

But in a subtextual context, with the structure itself owned and run by Cassity… 

Dean doesn’t want to go in there because of what he’ll have to face. Which is, in essence, the need to face up to the fact that he’s already beginning to open himself up to the idea of change, to wanting change, because of this formidable someone who’s arrived in his life through a rain of sparks as a catalyst for Dean to begin to gain a sense of what faith actually feels like.

Dean doesn’t want to touch all that with a ten-foot pole. 

Because, and this is wholly unconscious, but because touching it means daring to have faith that Good Things Do Happen. And because Dean’s fear of happiness is fed by the conviction that Good Things Don’t Last, and this fear sits at his very core and so – he drinks.

He downs half a bottle of whiskey.

Because he’s gonna need liquid courage to face the idea of opening himself up.

And he mans the flashlight.

Rejecting that gun is interesting, because, of course it’s tied to his fear of injury resulting in death, but it’s also Dean rejecting something that’s always brought him a sense of control before. 

Consider: as he’s brought into situations of facing his fears, his armour falls away and the tools that  that armour relies on, to make him feel in control, don’t actually fill that function anymore.

Regarding Dean relies on that same peeling back of Dean’s layers, yeah? That same deconstruction. The shedding of the toxic masculinity armour to have a peak at what’s really underneath it all.

Dean masks his fear and he masks it really well. He feels he’s on control, all the time, thanks to the mask, thanks to the armour, but the truth is that he is a bundle of fear. Always. He’s just gotten so good at masking it that he’s masking the truth even to himself.

That’s what this episode is all about. Lifting that curtain. Forcing him into a position where all that raw emotion is exposed and he can’t lie to himself anymore. It helps set up the reveal of how he remembers Hell, but it also sets up for Dean’s journey of introspection this season, yeah?

Surface level vs. subtextual level.

EMF

If ghosts are representatives of the past (and needing to learn how to let go) then the fact that Dean is dealing with fears that were established in his childhood, meaning he’s one hundred percent facing his past and what’s shaped him into who he is with every new situation this episode, then that EMF meter wouldn’t work around him, would it?

He’s haunted by his past. Suppressed Hell-guilt, and repressed fears anchored in his childhood. Oh my.

I love Sam in this episode. He’s unfortunately a reactionary character, the straight man, as you’d call it, because this isn’t his journey, but oh what a reactionary character he is. Also —>

Can’t do a post on this episode and not have Dean screaming his head off. *sadism*

Now, I very much enjoy the fact that, once it’s time to do the detecting, Dean takes part in it without hesitation. Autopilot kicks in and he engages with the search for clues without any fear, because there’s nothing scary about it.

But when the ghost (the past) appears, he runs like the damn wind.

Sam is there, though, to take care of it.

And Dean downs the rest of the bottle. Taking us into that epicness of epicnessess that is —>

Drunk and Unabashedly Flirty

I mean, look, okay? This is blatant.

Dean stands there, having a slightly worried expression on when he notices the woman to his right, glancing over at her suspiciously, okay? We get that he’s still scratching at the itch, he’s still alert, even though he is drunk, right?

But what does not faze him? What makes him put on a goofy smile? The very cute (I’d even call him a pretty boy) deputy from earlier, with whom he exchanged looks, so that there’s an already established sense of mutual attraction there. 

Dean: You know what? You’re awesome.

And then Dean just keeps smiling goofily, taking the compliment that’s offered back to him, until Sam comes and pulls him out of there. 

And the fact that this is the one instance in this entire episode after the ghost sickness kicks in that Dean is not displaying even a whisper of fear is what has informed my impression of him being absolutely comfortable with his bisexuality. 

Here he’s dropping the toxic masculinty armour because?

Well, I’d say it’s because he wears that armour because it allows him to suppress/repress whatever fear is threatening to surface. Here, in this episode, we’re checking off a list, and he’s faced his fears at this point, and now only has to acknowledge them and learn how to actually dig deep and deal with them. (which he won’t) (but this episode is exposition for this being what the narrative wants him to do) (this is the big lesson it’s trying to teach Dean moving forward) (listen to your heart)

Luther

The habit of lying without a second thought (including to himself) is being stripped away with the rest of his coping mechanisms and here we get Dean freaking out over the thought of all the possible consequences that lying might actually land on their heads. 

Sam acts the parental figure as Dean regresses out of his control freak patterns and into a state where he’s in need of Sam’s protection, not the other way around. Whenever this happens on the show it’s always nice to see Sam stepping up to the plate without hesitation. It’s just that Sam doesn’t seem to remember his ability to do that and falls back on the codependency easily enough. Understandable, since it’s the core of the narrative motor, but oh, Sam. You’re such a clear leader.

Luther’s brother speaks of Luther’s backstory, and just as the characteristics of Frank and the sheriff make them Dean mirrors, the ghost of the hour is the biggest Dean mirror to me, and reveals a lot to us about Dean’s deepest fears.

Garland: Everybody was scared of Luther. They called him a monster. He was too big, too mean-looking. Just too different. Didn’t matter that he was the kindest man I ever knew. Didn’t matter he’s never hurt no one. A lot of people failed Luther, I was one of them. I was a widower with three young ones and I told myself there was nothing I could do.  Sam: Mr. Garland, do you recognise this woman? Garland: That’s Jessie O’Brian. Her man, Frank, killed Luther.  Sam: How do you know that? Garland: Everybody knows. They just don’t talk about it. Jessie was a receptionist at the mill. She was always real nice to Luther and he had a crush on her. But Frank didn’t like it. Then when Jessie went missing, Frank was sure that Luther had done something to her. Turns out the old gal killed herself, but Frank didn’t know that. They found Luther with a chain wrapped around his neck. He was dragged up and down the stretch outside that plant till he was past dead. 

Frank was the pillar of the community.

Luther was just the town freak. 

Frank was respected.

Luther was judged and dismissed as not even being human, simply because he didn’t look like everybody else. 

Frank is framed as being an abusive, violent dickhead - clearly not the most stabile marriage - and to find an outlet for his grief, Frank picks up a shotgun and then drags a man along a road until he’s dead.

Luther’s almost childlike innocense and kindness leads him to find an outlet for his unrequited feelings of love through drawing portraits of the object of his affections.

Frank is representative of toxic masculinity (performing Dean) while Luther is all about wearing his heart on his sleeve (non-performing Dean). 

And, to me, Luther’s backstory of how wearing his heart on his sleeve gets him nothing but societal judgement, and leads to his death, is telling of Dean’s deepest fear, and why it’s been perpetuated for so long through his experiences of societal judgement, because Dean’s deepest fear is his fear of happiness, and it sits at his core and informs the rest of his fears, which, in turn, inform his behavioural pattern of using coping mechanisms to suppress/repress his true emotions, locking himself away from ever really having to open up to them. 

And what is the root of Dean’s fear of happiness?

Well, here’s how I see it:

Dean’s biggest battle with his past isn’t the idealisation of his father, but why he idealised his father –>

The why stems entirely from Dean’s loss of his mother, because that loss meant having his life ripped to shreds, resulting in Dean losing his trust in that childlike sense of joy, tied to the stability of home, love, family –>

This is the root of his long-held belief that Good Things Don’t Last, which underpins the idea that happiness (and love) equals pain, an idea that’s been perpetuated throughout Dean’s formative years, since every time he’s come close to feeling happy, something’s happened to snatch that sense of stability and safety away –>

Fearing getting hurt by believing he deserves happiness was easily avoided by dressing himself in toxic masculinity armour, modelling himself after the strongest man he could think of: his father

So every time he came close to happiness and let himself believe, only to have things fall apart on him, that armour has gotten just a little thicker

Dean is stuck in an emotional loop that through this season’s first arc of deconstructing Dean with Chuck, but to me especially through the communication rift between Dean and Cas, is being highlighted, just as it was in 4x06. And we got the entrance into this mini-deconstruction thanks to the same occurance that lay the foundation for Dean’s fear of happiness: the loss of his mother.

It’s the brightest of threads, threading through all of the emotional subtext and necessary character progression that the series as a whole has been pushing for since forever for Dean (and through his progression what it’s been pushing Sam’s and Cas’ individual progression towards as well) *gorgeous*

We Are Insane!

This scene is so everything because omg the comedic timing is just!

And I love how, when thinking closer on the topic of a Dean deconstructed, in Yellow Fever, when all there is to him is fear, he rejects the life, and all sides to it, but when he lost his memories in Regarding Dean, and what was left was his innocence, all that was left for us to see was his wonder and excitement.

Meaning that Dean stripped of all of his fears (once he’s faced them and accepted them and integrated them) is a soft, happy, content human being. As long as he actually remembers who he is and exactly how to survive, he’ll be goddamn unstoppable. And he’ll be balanced and happy. 

*please, good gods, please*

Buh-Boom

Dean starts to have some serious hallucinations and any reason for Jared to play a different character or side to Sam is just all good with me (Gadreel is still just… mind-blowingly good). 

So Dean sees Sam with yellow eyes and here comes the final fear.

Fifth fear: failure.

Failing to Protect Sammy means pretty much losing his purpose at the Yellow Fever point in the narrative. It’s changed since S12, because of a big shift in Dean’s perspective, but of course, Protect Sammy is still at the top of the list of Dean’s self-worth check list. What’s he worth if he’s unable to protect Sam? To his mind, still not much. Protect Sammy as identity marker has tripped Dean up his whole life, and here that fact comes into stark relay.

Now if we stay with Dean in the hotel room, we get to witness how his inner fears attack him, and of course the surface level fear is the one that manifests: fear of death and going back to Hell.

Thusly – hellhounds.

They turn out to be the sheriff, who’s come to confront Dean about his investigation, and I love how Dean, no matter his fraught mental state, knocks that gun out of the sheriff’s hand and then has the rather amazing fortitude to tell the sheriff he has to calm down. Only it’s too late. The sheriff suffers a heart attack. 

Dean sits on the bed, scratching. Hears the voice of the Sam hallucination telling him he’s going back, and it’s about damn time too. 

Dean…

…picks up a Bible.

This visual ties right back in with 4x05 again, with the threads of faith beginning to show themselves in Dean’s progression. He’s beginning to want to believe. He looks at that Bible like it’s a life line. He presses his lips to it and hey, I’d say this might be his first moment of giving into prayer as recourse. 

But his prayer doesn’t exactly get him what he wants.

I’d theorise that it’s because he’s not meant to learn to have faith in God, but in himself, and this whole episode is about forcing him into a meltdown, which is what he’s in the middle of now. Zero faith in himself, zero faith that he’s not going back to Hell.

And that’s why Lilith appears.

I do love how Dean actually points the Bible at Lilith stating: You are not real.

He’s using God’s faith in him as a shield. Trying desperately to convince himself. Which is rather lovely given the context of how Lilith is a representation of something deep within him that he’s trying so hard to avoid confronting.

And here comes the reveal of exactly what the fear of Hell is really anchored in, because it’s not anchored in Dean’s memories of his gruesome death at the jaws of the Hellhound that killed him, it’s anchored in his memories of not four months in Hell, but forty years. 

Guilt.

And Dean’s heart starts to give out.

Dean: You’re not real. Lilith: Doesn’t matter. You’re still gonna die, you’re still gonna burn. Dean: Why me? Why’d I get infected? Lilith: Silly goose. You know why, Dean. 

What Lilith says now is, really, what’s informed my entire reading of this episode and I’ve mentioned it several times already. She tells Dean: Listen to your heart.

To me, it’s Dean at this point knowing, deep down, that the only way to keep himself from going back to Hell, the only way he can truly be saved, is all about him beginning to recognise his need to face his fears. 

It’s about him daring to listen to his heart and daring to let his emotions be his guide, rather than shutting them down, bottling them up, without question. 

This is what his journey is all about, yeah? To learn to let go of the past and all the fears that have been informed by what he’s been taught and told, and opening up to who he truly is and who he truly wants to be.

This is what the beginning of the season has set up for and what the rest of the season will continue to explore, slowly, of course, but meticulously, and it doesn’t slow down in S5 and, honestly, each season has added a new aspect of exactly this exploration, gently pushing Dean toward moments of daring to be honest with himself, which to this meta writer culminated in S11, when he finally had it pointed out to him that he’s not just attracted to or kind of enamoured with this angel dude, he is truly pining for him, and it made him unable to keep trying to deny the truth of how he’s fallen deeply in love, no matter the terror that comes with it. (and twice the worrying about getting ganked to boot)

I’d say that this realisation, this final admittance of his true feelings, is what opened Dean’s heart up to looking at what was really driving Amara from a different angle, and made it possible for him to, instead of blowing her to kingdom come using the soul bomb, actually talk to her on a more human level, about the feelings that were driving her actions. But, again, that’s my reading, not narratively stated anywhere so, you know, pinches of salt here.

Adding to all of this is how Dean needed Mary most because the loss of her is the root of Dean’s fear of happiness, and getting to have her back allowed him to gain perspective on so many things, like his idealisation of her (and through that beginning to slowly open his eyes to his idealisation of John as well) (though this didn’t take root until S13), and he got to tell her that he hated her for what she did to them, but that he loved her, he he got to forgive her, because he could finally see her as a human being, and human beings make mistakes, rather than only having her as an idealised memory, the loss of her idealised mothering love marring his ability to trust from a very young age. Especially his ability to trust himself, since he couldn’t save her.

This realisation is also what brought on the whole awkward 11x23 Brologue like… I don’t think you love me back because I couldn’t reach through to you, but hey, you mean a lot to me, bro.

I find it interesting that Sam’s the one to save Dean. Symbolically Sam and Bobby’s intervention saves Dean from being consumed by his fears. I’ve always felt like Sam stepping up and choosing to show Dean that he’s ready for independence, that he needs it, will push their unhealthy patterns to a breaking point, especially since Dean is already aware, he just doesn’t know how to let go when he’s not sure Sam’s ready. But we shall see.

I’ll Kill Anything

Look at where we land. Look at this absolutely stunning bookend and how it wraps the theme of fear and how it informs Dean’s behavioural pattern into a soft, warm statement of You Really Need to Stop This, Dean Winchester.

We start this episode with the visual of Dean running from his fears. The fears that are coming at him wrapped up in a neat pink bow. :P

We end this episode after it’s spent a good forty minutes picking through Dean’s fears, with him facing the two fears that always get to him the most, the ones that perpetuates his reliance on the toxic masculinity armour to help define who he is: his fear of rejection and his fear of failure.

We get the fear of rejection in how he completely overreacts to Sam and Bobby’s gentle teasing about how this line of work can get awfully scary, Dean forcefully reasserting how he’ll hunt, he’ll kill anything, unable to bear the thought that the men who know him best in the world could, for even a moment, think of him as yellow aka a coward (which of course they don’t) or question his killer instinct (which of course they wouldn’t). 

This brief emasculation, however, really bothers Dean in the moment (and Jensen plays it gorgeously) and he squares up to it without hesitation, the armour slamming down and leading right into the softer moment with Sam, when he gets the chance to be honest with his brother, to share some of the burden, but…

…Protect Sammy is still prevalent, and Dean chooses to downplay the ordeal he just went through, and lie through his teeth about the true nature of it, still not opening up to Sam about Hell.

So, back to square one we go, but with all this glorious insight into Dean as a character to warm us by, and here we now are at the end of it all, and I’m so very curious what Dabb - who cowrote this episode with Daniel Loflin btw - will give us. *hopeful for all the good things* *always*

[mittensmorgul]

Hi Mittens! Based on what you've heard/read so far - with Dabb's comments and how Jensen has reacted - saying he had to be "talked into" liking the ending...what do you think - and I know it's a guess....what do you think will happen to each character? can you respond a bout: Sam, Dean, Cas, Jack, Rowena, God, and Lucifer? And we know Adam and Eileen are back, what about them? Will Lisa/Ben return? What ending do YOU expect?

Hi there! I’ll start this off by reminding everyone that while I do occasionally speculate on the Big Themes and the big picture direction of the story, this sort of specific speculation is something I normally… hate… :P

Since you’re not asking about Big Themes here, but specifically character stuff, I’ll just give you general thoughts on how I think each character’s arc will eventually unfold, because it’s impossible to know specific character beats yet.

Sam: I think he will have a difficult time reconciling his lifetime of hope and faith in a benevolent divine creator. remember he’s the one who always prayed, who wanted to believe God was out there, and when God came back in s11 he was DELIGHTED at first… Like fanboying over Chuck. And he was the one to finally see behind the curtain in 14.20. This fundamental belief and hope that Sam’s held on to his whole life has just been shattered, and he can no longer deflect the truth he’s learned. I hope he’s able to face it head on, and finally be able to reconcile the fantasy life he’s always dreamed of with the reality he’s been forced to live because of Chuck’s meddling.

Dean: he’s always lived his life for other people, for the mission, for “saving people, hunting things.” I want him to be able to live in a world where the entire world’s fate isn’t weighing on him personally, you know? I want him to get to a point where he can let that burden go, and actually choose to live for HIMSELF for once. To even get a chance to figure out what would truly make him happy. And then for him to be free of that enough to go out and BE happy.

Cas: We knew he’s long doubted the righteousness of Heaven’s mission, and that he’s struggled with who he is and what he wants to be. He’s long since put the Winchesters first, but I think he will be continuing that journey, learning it’s not how useful he can be that makes him indispensable in their lives, but just HIM, HIMSELF that has inherent value to the Winchesters (and especially to Dean). And that he doesn’t need to sacrifice himself for his family in order to truly be part of it.

Jack: my thoughts on Jack in s15 are by necessity hazier than the rest, because as a mirror character for all the others as much as a character in his own right, on top of the fact that something game-changing is about to go down in the empty and we can’t yet guess how that will play out, I suspect a lot of his journey will mirror parts of what I’ve said above for Sam, Dean, and Cas, but where that will end, I really can’t say yet…

Rowena: AAAAHH. I love her, and I think her journey will continue along its current trajectory, working more and more closely with the Winchesters (and especially Sam), and my main hope for her is that she and Sam both find a way to redefine their supposed “fate.” Go back and watch 13.12 and 13.19, the vulnerability she’s shared with Sam, and the heartbreak when she realized Sam actually could pull the trigger on her… which he immediately regretted… Sam: You changed other people’s fates. Maybe we can change yours. And she’s been actively working toward that since then, based on the solid foundation of resting that redemption on SAM. So. :’)

God/Chuck: He’s gotta go, one way or the other, right? Can there ever truly be free will for any of them when he won’t let go of his story? Humanity must be allowed to pick up their pens and begin writing their own stories now. Don’t know how that will look in a non-metaphorical way in the show, but there’s the show’s own metaphor version of it :’D

Lucifer: He dead-dead.

And now on to the returning faces:

Eileen: I really hope the show gives her a solid story for her return, but I’m not setting myself up to assume that she will be back for more than one episode. I suppose I’m hoping at minimum that she’s done right by, after 12.21 did her so, so wrong. Her death was needlessly, pointlessly cruel not just to her character, but to real humans who watch this show– women, d/Deaf people, disabled people in general… and didn’t even really serve the supposed intended purpose of fueling Sam’s manpain. We were all so in shock from the graphic pointlessness that most of us were incapable of even watching the rest of the episode, only made worse by the simpering tone of the letter she’d apparently sent Sam before she died. So at the very least, I need the show to issue her a formal (if metaphorical) apology for that bullshit.

Adam: What I would personally like most from a return of Adam, (and I was yelling about this to someone in chat bubbles recently and I can’t remember to whom), but knowing Dabb’s personal sense of humor, and knowing the spirit in which Adam’s character was first introduced way back in 4.19 (link for what I mean here: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184474002825/when-daniel-loflin-and-i-came-up-with-the-idea), but especially this bit: “We leaked that we were doing an episode with another Winchester brother and let photos go out to the various websites, and then we let them all panic. “We were laughing because we knew the whole time that he was actually never really their brother. I have to admit, we take sick pleasure in making our audience anxious. We like stirring the pot when we know everything is actually well under control.” 

So to me, the absolute BEST way to bring Adam back would be definitively proving he has been in Heaven all this time, and was never in the cage at all. That, to me, is the only way to end a 10 year long con on the entire fandom, paying off Adam’s entire character in the exact spirit in which he was created. It would be fucking poetic, is what it would be. And we all know how Dabb loves his poetry.

(and for the sake of completeness, have my rewatch notes on 4.19 too)

(since I see Billie as Dabb’s self-insert character, like Kripke’s was Chuck, and Carver’s was Metatron)

and finally,

Lisa and Ben: I most sincerely doubt they’ll be back. There is zero narrative reason for them to return, but I already wrote a kinda long post about them a few days ago: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186471109135/gosh-bringing-lisa-back-would-be-an-awful-idea-i. I really, really really do not think the show is gonna take that route… there’s just waaaay too much skeevy baggage to unpack to bring them back to the story, and with only 20 episodes left to go, I don’t think they have time to do that in a non-skeevy way. Better not even try to unpack that whole can of worms at this point.

As to the ending I expect? I expect Sam and Dean (and hopefully alongside Rowena and Cas) to be at a point where they’re ready to go out into the world to truly seek their own destinies, unburdened by the Cosmic Story that’s prevented them from truly making their own choices for themselves all their lives. That’s it. 

[dimples-of-discontent]

Don’t you think Jensen always denying that dean is bi is because it hits close to him? Like Dean’s behaviour around men and Jensen’s around Misha is kinda similar so?

Hello Nonnie,

Whew, oh boy! Ok, I got this ask in a few different forms so hopefully one answer can serve for them. 

The first thing I’m going to do is remind everyone that Jensen has never commented publicly on his sexuality at all and that, therefore, it’s none of our business. It never is, actually, unless someone brings it up themselves and indicates that they wish to discuss it. That’s just a rule for life. Private is private, even if you’re an actor. The second thing I’m going to do is assume that you know what kind of blog this is and that I backstroke through the garbage fire pretty regularly including speculating about Jensen and Misha. So, yes, I am guilty of engaging in this type of posting. 

But there’s rules! The main rule being that these things we say for our entertainment (curiosity, whatever) in fandom spaces are never in a billion years to be brought into the actors lives in any way. Do not ask them about it. Do not show them posts or fic about it. Do not tag them in Twitter posts about it, even if those are adorable posts collecting all the Cockles cheek kisses or whatever. Fandom spaces are ours; they’re imagined communities and we behave differently in them than we would in the real world. 

Plus–again this should be obvious–we’re just posting shit we infer from a very limited viewpoint. Jensen and Misha give us a lot to work with (hoobooy they do!) but we’re seeing them in the public eye, at cons mostly or on livestreams. We have no freaking clue what they are like alone…and that’s how it should be.

And now that I have attached that upfront (I know I do this all the time and that if you read a bunch of my posts you may be getting sick of it…apologies, but RPS is very tricky and I feel like I need to foreground some of the boundaries for newcomers) let me put a cut below which you will find my thoughts on this.

It’s no secret that Jensen has a very high degree of character bleed with Dean–he straight-up admits that. I wrote a long post that’s been going around about how Jensen views Dean very experientially, knowing what Dean knows and doing what he thinks Dean would do, and about how that makes it tough for him to distinguish what he thinks of Dean from what DEAN thinks of Dean. Dean is a part of Jensen, as he has said.

What’s slightly less obvious, though intuitive, is that Jensen is a part of Dean. The vulnerability that Dean has had from the beginning is, to my mind, all Jensen. A lesser actor, or a lesser sweetheart, in that role would have made Dean pretty unsympathetic with his sarcasm and his machismo and his dumb, smirking face. To me, this is the same thing that happened with James Marsters on “Buffy.” He was supposed to be a straight-up villain, in just a couple episodes, but audiences went nuts for him. He got more episodes but Whedon still wanted to keep him a villain…except that James couldn’t keep that vulnerability and uncertainty and humanity out of the character. So instead we got a love story and a big, ol’ redemption arc. (I realize that it also sounds like I’m describing what happened with Misha and, in a sense, I am.)

Now, Jensen is a better actor than James Marsters (even though I think James is an amazing actor…and I love that he dropped out of Juilliard), but I’m willing to bet that what James did with humanizing Spike was more deliberate than what Jensen did with Dean. I think Jensen feels things intuitively about Dean and that he just goes for it without additional self-reflection. That’s why when he’s called out on something that he hasn’t deliberately chosen to do–like many of the bi!Dean or Destiel moments–he’s confused and slightly defensive. He makes some deliberate choices, obviously, but especially at this point he’s going on mostly instinct and doesn’t HAVE to examine those choices.

That is, unless we ask him to. I think often his encounters with questions about playing Dean a certain way (bisexual, in love with Cas) DO ask him to reflect on himself and ask himself why he made particular choices. And that’s not easy to do, especially onstage and in front of a crowd!! It’s like we’re always going, “Ok, Jensen, so clearly your instinct is to [insert non-hetero thing here]…why IS that?”; no wonder he will freeze-panic and sometimes say something thoughtless and/or rude! (Personally, I would like us to stop asking, largely for this reason.)

So, I suppose my answer to your question is “yes, exactly.” I think Jensen is an intelligent, meticulous, and thoughtful actor. I also think, subconsciously, he channels a ton of himself into Dean and that his being defensive of certain aspects of Dean (e.g. his sexuality) is indeed also his being defensive about those aspects of himself. Look at how much more easily the other cast members are able to analyze their characters, including comments about their sexuality. Just this weekend (at Jaxcon) Rich pretty much confirmed that he sees Gabriel as non-straight (pansexual?). Jared has said that he sees Sam as straight but that it’s ok by him if other people don’t. Ditto Misha about Cas (though he usually gets asked about his being Ace). And, yes, that is Jensen’s party line on the Dean question too. “You have your version and I have mine.” But his reactions to it are, to me, notably different from the rest of the cast.

I haven’t mentioned Misha yet but, well, if there’s any time we see Jensen acting non-straight it’s around Misha (in character or not). I’m not fully on the train for “Destiel is Cockles’s fault” because “Destiel” is a complex phenomenon 10 years in the making. But I’m not ever going to deny that their chemistry was a huge part of it taking root and growing. And it’s impossible–absolutely fucking impossible–not to notice the overlap between the trajectories. The first time Jensen met Misha was the first time Dean met Cas; they were both freaked out by this kind of alien being as much because he inspired “weird” feelings in them as because he was so “weird.” Jensen had Misha’s handprint applied in makeup before he met him just like Dean was branded by Cas. They had kind of an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers thing. They experienced some kind of betrayal and breakup and then a tentative reunion. They’re basically married now. 

So, yeah, when Jensen is asked about Dean’s sexuality I do think he experiences it as a question about his own sexuality. And when he’s asked about Cas I do think he experiences it as a question about Misha. And, as others have said, either he’s been subtly playing Dean’s attraction to guys (including Cas) the whole time or he’s kind of lost control of himself and enabled his own attraction to men, and particularly Misha, to creep in unintentionally. (Note that I don’t think that makes him a “bad actor”; like I said, I think he acts Dean very intuitively at this point so his decisions may be unexamined but are not “bad” choices.) 

This is already long, so I’m not going to comment here on what I think of Jensen’s sexuality. Well, actually, you’ve stayed with me so long that I feel I owe it to you. The short version… I do think that Jensen isn’t straight. I think he’s a guy who thinks of himself as straight even though he sometimes hooks up with dudes. The fact that that is inherently not straight doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t think it’s a big deal (though he used to, and that panic can still get activated). He doesn’t care about the labels and he finds the idea of seeing himself in the LGBTQA acronym ridiculous. 

He and Misha may argue about this. It is, after all, a form of enormous privilege as an incredibly attractive, cis-het, white dude to just choose not to join a marginalized group. I do think that’s one reason he and especially Danneel support a lot of LGBTQA causes. (I don’t think she and Misha are straight either and I think they probably don’t self-identify that way.)

Maybe in another post I’ll go more fully into the long version of sexuality speculation. It’s such a delicate thing to do and I want to do it as respectfully as possible and I just don’t have the energy at the moment. I have written about this before, though, if you’re looking for more; I have a tag for “jensen is not straight” and (I think) “jensen is bi” although I dropped that b/c it was too definitive. There’s also one for “sexuality speculation” and “misha is not straight” and “misha is bi” (same reason for the tag change…too definitive.) 

Remember the rules, though, and keep everything respectful and confined to our own lanes.

[a-mountain-ash]

Space

Tiny little drabble based on this gorgeous piece of work by @licieoic. 

"I gotta know. Just do it."

Cas was mere inches from him and Dean could feel the heat simmering between their bodies. Cas wasn't hot, so much as charged, his grace crackling from every pore of his body as though he were a live wire. For months he had tried to ignore the feelings that heat sparked within him, but now, with no where to go and no one to turn to, Dean couldn't any longer. He just needed and hoped Cas would give.

"Do what?" Cas asked, his breath whispering hotly over Dean's jaw.

God dammit.

"For Christ's sake, Cas. Kiss me! Screw personal space, I don't want it."

Their eyes met, his desperately frenzied greens joining with ferociously piercing blues. The angel made no move to follow Dean's command, but Dean could see the hint of a smirk lift his lips as Cas tested his self-control. He wouldn't lose, he wouldn't. But he had. He'd asked for it, shown he needed it. What semblance of indifference did he have remaining to prove?

Still he couldn't move. It was as though Castiel was holding him in place, the force of his gaze as powerful as the grace flowing through him. Dean wanted to feel that power, but suddenly he felt intoxicated simply being caught in this force field, like celestial foreplay. Was Cas aware of what he was doing? Aware of the heat building inside Dean through his mere presence?

How long had they been this way? Still and connected, incapable of moving towards one another or apart. Eternally caught in an orbit of too far and not close and never just right. Dean felt his muscles begin trembling with the force of needing to move, whether to get closer or farther he couldn't say. He had no way to know the optimal distance between their beings, but the gravitational pull was strong and nothing was left to exert an opposing force to pull them apart. Nothing but the power he held over himself, declaring an arbitrary concept of personal space, and Dean finally let it go.

His lips clashed with Cas's like the tide pulled toward land and the angel met him with all the give of a rocky shore, hands pushing him back against the porcelain counter with enough force to press the air from his lungs. Cas tasted like he felt- electric, ever changing, indomitable. He stole the breath from Dean's lungs and strength from his legs.

They didn't belong in orbit around one another. They belonged together, as one heavenly body, hurtling through space on some indeterminate trajectory. Dean was terrified but he clutched tighter, pulling the angel closer into his field, unwilling, now that he knew, to face the vacuum ahead alone. Whatever vast abyss lay before him, he finally had the perfect force to pull him back. 

Here on AO3!

[queermania]

i apologize for being rude. i misread your tone and that's on me. i get multiple asks a day, not to mention reblogs/replies/etc of people who are just flat out being an asshole and trying to start drama so i leapt to a conclusion and i'm sorry for that. you are allowed to have your opinion, but i'm also allowed to have mine. and i fundamentally disagree with you about most of the things happening here.

i don't have any thoughts about what you're talking about with 'yellow fever.' mostly because i don't think anything having to do with dean in that episode is really a problem. the racism and the disgusting re-traumatization of someone who was already disgustingly traumatized is the problem.

as for amy pond, i... don't think dabb villainized dean for that. i think sam did, and then the fandom took that at face value. but even if dabb did do that, he's not the only writer to have ever done so. dean gets villainized for doing a lot of things that other characters do all the time! that's not unique to dabb.

if people don't like dabb era, that's fine. nobody has to like it. but that's not the same thing as it being out of character, which was what my original point was.

i don't think dabb had as much control over the trajectory of the show and the ending as a lot of people seem to think he did. i think there's a lot of evidence that he wanted to do certain things (mainly make destiel canon) and that he was curtailed by the network. i think he was told what the ending more or less had to be and specifically designed the rest of s15 to be a flashing neon sign that says THIS IS A BAD ENDING! THIS IS NOT HAPPY! THIS IS NOT GOOD! (the greatest evidence of this is dabb writing 'the hero's journey')

and i think the alternative to killing dean off would've been having him live a happy, heterosexual life without cas, which dabb was not willing to do, and i'm glad.

but mostly i just think it's kind of unfair to single out specific instances that weren't great while ignoring all of the things that were and call it evidence that dabb hated dean (and jensen!?). and to then make general, sweeping statements about one writer that could easily apply to most of the other writers as well, if you zoom in and focus on individual things and not the entire picture.

it just feels like so much of this is the most bad faith interpretation possible and. well. that's not really the way i want to engage in fandom. so.

regarding the post you made about ooc dean in the later seasons, which i totally agree with, i was wondering what you meant by “swapped out 'three of the cheerleaders are legal' for 'jack's not family'”?

okay so in the earlier seasons dean was written as like a ladies man who was always flirting with women/interested in sex (and of course there's nuance to this and what it meant) but he wasn't gross. he wasn't a sex pest and he never made women uncomfortable, you know? but every once in awhile somebody would write him saying or doing something that was like ew why what is wrong with you. it was so jarringly gross that you kinda just had to label it a Writer Crime and move on, like dean saying he found out which teenage cheerleaders are legal.

by dabb era, that kind of stuff had mostly faded away. the show got a lot better about how it treated women in general so that makes sense. but dean was still ooc every once in awhile. when it happened in dabb era, it was usually related to dean's anger. it's not that the anger itself was ooc, it's more that the way he expressed it (or that other characters reacted to it) was ooc, i guess. "jack's not family" was a bad example on my part tbh because i can rationalize why dean would say it in that moment, but it's never really dealt with or resolved in any way. we kind of just pretend like he never said it. but in general, the idea is that when he does or says something that's ooc in the later seasons, it's usually related to his anger, just like how in earlier seasons it was related to women.

[hgconfessional]

HG Yearbook Superlatives: Most likely to succeed? Class clown? Best Smile? Most changed? Biggest drama king/queen? Most accident-prone? Most likely to break a world record? Most likely to dance in a Beyoncé music video?

Most Likely To Succeed: This one was tricky but I have to hand it over to @evaynesantiago! This woman is a powerhouse to be reckoned with but still has a kinder side to her. Her ability to gage what each social situation calls for paired with her intellect and cunning makes her someone who is on a trajectory to a the top. (Honorable mentions: @bianca-york and @scout-matthews)

Class Clown: This one also had some tough competition, but without a doubt it has to go to @itsalextraynor. This little wolf has been making people take shots with her and laugh at her goofy antics, despite being bogged down by family trauma and going back to high school. She even made @zanehartman go from yelling into his phone to hiring her because of her twitter jokes. (Honorable mentions: @minaxfitzgerald and @pbstones)

Best Smile: @genevievebeauchamp and @milesdexn. These two are always smiling, fairly happy-go-lucky, and sweet as a Georgia peach. Dean is always willing to lend a helping hand and some advice, paired with his big and ever-present grin. Genevieve’s smile is infectious; whether it’s selecting the perfect bouquet for you to share with a loved one or trying to find common ground with people so different from her, her smile is authentic and warms your soul. (Honorable mentions: @zoeainsworth and @ryan-carrcll)

Most Changed: We sure talk about @madelinexholt‘s one-eighty quite often, so this feels like an obvious choice. This girl came to Hollow Grove with a drinking problem that could only be challenged by her lack of self-love. After losing nearly everything, she bounced back, opened a small business and is going back to school. She’s embracing healthy relationships and cutting back on others on her own terms. Go Maddy! (Honorable Mentions: @adam-haley and @calebxhunter)

Biggest Drama King/Queen: I’m only crowning one so the drama-llamas don’t fight over the crowns. @lolalcortez because her temper is something she still needs to learn to control. Not to mention the fight outside of her spat with @dinahdiamond that bled into our precious little gossip blog not too long ago! Let’s just leave it at that. (Honorable mentions: @sophievidalcs and @michaelawayland)

Hang on, I’m losing stamina here. This is a long post, does anyone have a glass of water?

Most Accident-Prone: @minaxfitzgerald. This adorable klutz bumped into someone once, but because this is high school superlatives, she’ll never live it down. However, she’s accident prone in an endearing way. Maybe she’ll trip and fall into my arms. Hugs and kisses, baby girl! (Honorable mentions: @avaxbishop and @oliverhastings)

Most Likely to Break A World Record: Literally all of our Originals. They’ve broken the records. They probably SET the records, c’mon now. @sophiagreyson @daralisgreyson @nathanielxgreyson @elena-greyson @maggiexblackwell @lukasblackwells @noahxblackwell @josblackwell @cassandracresswell @savvydaniels

Most Likely to Dance in a Beyoncé Video: Ugh, hands down it’s a tie between @meggilbert and @alexasawyer. Be our local Honey Bee and Gaga please, I’ll buy front-row tickets!