#for those who have their headcanons set in stone from all we have atm

[random-cattai]

I just have this horrible feeling about the new book though.

As it stands, we all probably have our, deadset ala "I will die on this hill!" Headcanons about our favorite tyranical overlord Dorito Bill Cipher. This book is probably going to slam a few of us broadside.

The fact that it's considered "Adult" is going to make the "every orifice" scene like childs play. We'll get more in line to his last note as Bipper, and then go darker. It'll truly show us the fact of his cheerful conartist persona hides the dark soul of his heart that is even darker than we thought.

But on the other hand, i'd like to see a few pages of Bill drunk rambling about his past to get those facts down set. And he needs to be inebriated because you know damn well he'll never admit the truth while fully coherent.

[cadysu]

tell me about your kokuyo gang headcanons pls and thanks

Let us talk about my children the Kokuyo Gang aka Mukuro, Ken, Chikusa, M.M., and the rest but not Chrome because Chrome is a member of the Vongola Family and was kicked out. :^) EDIT: NO FRAN BECAUSE THIS POST GOT TOO LONG GOMEN.  I’m going to do a paragraph or so segment for each character I think with some canon facts mixed into headcanon so have FUN!

Mukuro- Mukuro has a lot of canon info already so this is gonna be on the shorter part. Mukuro is a little shit kjasnd Mukuro enjoys reading of all types- from picking up a magazine to novels. He is also very spiritual- yes his powers have ties to the levels of Hell, but I can see religion and belief systems being topics of interest for him. He’s extremely up to date on politics (less in a “wow politics is interesting” and more as a study of people. He watches to see the corruption, lies, and abuse of power. And let’s make it pretty damn clear that if he had nothing better to do/ there was no effort to it, Mukuro would 10000% be okay murdering those people in cold blood because he can. I feel like a lot of people forget Mukuro is a villain (antihero but still a villain too). On a less serious side of everything though- Mukuro can also be very laid back and playful. He pampers himself (spa day with M.M., glass of wine FRUIT COCKTAIL, video games with the rest of the gang, etc.) As serious and scary as he can come across, he is still a teenager. A teenager that is fully aware of how bad the world can be, but also in a bit of a chuuni-bubble where he feels this one man illusionist wrecking machine can take over everything and his only obstacle atm is the Vongola Family. 

Also Mukuro strikes me as someone who would enjoy David Lynch movies. I mean I’m not projecting my love of Twin Peaks on him, but watching Twin Peaks made me think he’d enjoy it a fair amount. :T Or at least Fire Walk With Me.

Ken- SMELLY BOI. I love Ken. Ken may not be the smartest, but do not call him stupid! He just works things out differently. Ken can pick up on small things that many people miss due to his keen observation skills; his sense of smell, hearing, and vision are all heightened compared to a normal human being. He can almost “sniff” out illusions if they’re not very well done and he is a natural at catching someone in a lie. Ken canonically hates bathing but I can also see him being grubby in general- he doesn’t floss as much as he should or clean his ears, he has dirty nails, runs around barefoot a lot- stuff like that. Ken doesn’t eat his veggies either. He’s like that one tumblr post where Chikusa is the “Do you feel guilty when you dont eat vegetables/ only junk food for awhile and you need healthy food to feel better?” “Idk Kakipi I’ve only had soda and gushers for 3 days and I feel fine” “Ken...no...” That is Ken. Ken has a huge fear of doctors/dental offices in general, but I think one of the biggest things that he’s scared of is anesthesia and needles, even though these things are supposed to help. Seeing tanks of nitrous or the small plastic mask to go over one’s mouth and nose really drive up his anxiety. Only Chikusa and Mukuro can really calm him down and convince him everything will be okay. Even if the doctor is Verde/ someone he has developed a degree of trust, he still cannot control his PTSD. Ken hates wearing suits and he doesn’t really like getting new clothes either- not so much anything against new clothes, he just likes wearing the same smelly shirt 5 days out of the week if he can. Also, not a set in stone headcanon, but I can picture Ken being colorblind.

Chikusa- Chikusa is such an overlooked character aaah- Okay first off- Chikusa is not as smart as Mukuro, but smarter than Ken. He sometimes reads or peaks into the books that Mukuro is reading, and he does try to continue his education however way he can. There actually isn’t a subject he really dislikes, but Ken and M.M. tease him for still doing things like homework or reading the old textbooks they have despite none of them going to school. Chikusa is also one of the only few in the house to do chores: cleaning, cooking, making Ken take a bath, grocery shopping, etc. He can also do small sewing/stitches for mending holes and he learns small skills relatively quickly as long as they aren’t too complex. Despite his extreme loyalty to Mukuro and rarely seen without Ken tagging along, Chikusa is a very independent person. Introverted, but independent. He spends his time at home playing video games and listening to music, and when he needs to leave, he just goes out. Chikusa is a better functioning adult as a teenager than most adults LOL (minus the fact he has no bills to pay). Chikusa tries to save his allowance money but usually gives some to Ken for whatever small reason like a few extra tries in an arcade game, some junk food or comic, etc. He never brings it up or asks for money in return but sometimes sighs with reluctance. If he really doesn’t want to, he’ll say no, but there’s usually a reason (”Ken we need real groceries. I’m not eating gum for dinner.” “I need to replace my headphone cord” “I have a crack in my glasses” etc.) Opposite to Ken, Chikusa tries to have really good hygiene. The only thing that truly bothers him is that he can’t wash his hair as much as he’d like, but he covers it with his hat and possibly dry shampoo from M.M. if desperate.

Chikusa is ambidextrous. :v

ABOUT THE BARCODE- Okay so another person I rp’d with had the headcanon of Chikusa being a twin and the barcode being a way the Estraneo kept track of them, which I thought was fucking genius. Screencaps and manga scans show he didn’t have that tattoo as a kiddo/pre-Mukuro rampage, so technically it isn’t accurate, but it’s a thought nonetheless. I do consider the barcode a tattoo and not drawn on/temporary/birthmark/etc. I still like that idea as an honoring thing. Like if he had a twin who they marked but the twin died during an experiment so when they were out of there he did it as a we-will-never-be-apart thing.M.M. - MY DAUGHTERU. God M.M. is such a good character but people snub her because she’s a “bitch” and a woman (I say that because when Mammon is greedy it is cute but when M.M. is greedy she’s bad. Same with her attitude! If a male shounen character acted that way he’d be like, a princely type. So yeah I think a lot of M.M. hate comes from people who don’t respect women :T) 

ANYWAYS I genuinely love the idea of M.M.’s name/design/background having a small reference to the book series of Madeline. PROBLEM HERE IS I HAVE TWO HEADCANON BACKGROUNDS FOR HER AND I LIKE BOTH SO HERE THEY ARE: I headcanon her real name as Madeline, and the she was sent off to a wealthy all girl’s boarding school as a child. She lost her parents at a very young age and inherited a small fortune, but had nowhere to go. She would stay and live in the boarding school until school was out, and then stay with an estranged relative during the breaks. However, she quickly started staying at “friends” homes instead as her limited family did not look after her or have any interest in her actual well being. THE OTHER VERSION VERY SIMILAR BUT INSTEAD OF BEING WEALTHY SHE WAS VERY POOR AND SENT TO A WEALTHY SCHOOL. The idea of her either being a poor young girl who got a taste of riches and fucking took it or the idea of a young girl who grew up wealthy but was surrounded by people who wanted what she got made her be a lot harder and did a fuck you all I’m M.M. and I get what I want. I love both those ideas and I can see them both working as a background. Both M.M.s’ see how the capitalism really runs the world and the main difference is one just had to work a little more to get rich while the other had less of a struggle but equal amount of determination. M.M. learned quickly that she was rather “pretty” to men and with money, she wouldn’t have to run to anyone or need help from anyone.

To earn money, she started as a small petty thief and moved on to grander schemes quickly. M.M. was a talented shoplifter and would pick up on things she could sell off to the girl’s in school, and then for the big money she knows how to blackmail people and get dirt on anyone. A cheap disposable camera and risky photos can ruin a person’s life. A little bit of alcohol is all it really takes for someone to make a horrible mistake. Also a lot of alcohol can make someone pass out and lose all the money in their wallet. Although she never liked the business, I can see M.M. knowing the fastest cash she could make would be to sell drugs to other girls. A little coke here and there. Think of that post making fun of the group of white boys vs. hipsters with the caption “Who would pay more for weed?” M.M. knows who and knows how to convince them “this is some really rare good stuff that I stole from my parents~ Yknow it’s imported from Amsterdam~” or “Hey I heard you want to lose weight, yknow I know how you can be the thinnest girl in school~” M.M. is resourceful and cunning and she can and will prey on someone’s insecurities for money. M.M. has been arrested and does have a mugshot, but this was in the beginning of her thieving days and she was released later that night. She also may or may not have tried to seduce her guard(s). Also despite her flirting and knowing what she CAN do, she has never gone into sex work. She hasn’t met a man or woman who can afford her. She’s a virgin but she’ll lie about it/ leave it ambiguous just to see what pays more. :T

Now a lot of this all applies to her before she joined the Kokuyo gang. Mukuro had heard about M.M. when seeing her mugshot in a trashy gossip magazine. A young, pretty and precocious teenage girl with a natural talent of stealing? No family really known/ totally independent? Why not try and get her in your growing gang of misfits. She was hesitant at first, but Mukuro, in Verde’s own words, is extremely charismatic. Plus she finds him cute and really saw promise in his plans. She hates Kokuyo Land because of how dirty it is, and actually bothered to have her part of the hideout remodeled for her liking (a nice bed, a vanity in her room, a throw rug over the damaged floorboards, etc.) She managed to turn abandoned and run down into “shabby chic” but she’s hoping she can get it to a more Versailles tier one day. 

Not to bring up Twin Peaks again but after watching it I definitely get Audrey Horne vibes out of M.M.

M.M. has the highest education of the Kokuyo Gang and has actually has a very good understanding of chemistry. Her main passion though is music and she genuinely loves to play her clarinet in her room for fun. 

OTHER CHARACTERS!:

FUN “FACTS”:

M.M. is a Sephora VIB Rouge member and makes fun of people who have to shop at Ulta (except she does shop at Ulta when no one is looking.)

Each member of the Kokuyo Gang has a preferred fighting video game and main. (SIDE NOTE: I don’t play enough fighting games to be familiar with every character’s play styles in all games so these ideas can easily change) Mukuro- Mortal Kombat (I only played MK1 for genesis and MKX which I suck at but I can see him playing Scorpion and beating up Johnny Cage repeatedly), Ken- Tekken and probably mains Kuma (Ken can definitely tap the buttons fast enough for those combos), Chikusa- Street Fighter as Ryu/ he keeps things very classic (But usually he plays whatever Ken wants to play, so I can see him maybe playing a lot of Yoshimitsu),  and M.M. is Soul Calibur as Ivy, who is definitely 100% not overpowered. Also Fran plays Smash bros. and he’s probably a Mewtwo spamming lil shit. Or Metaknight.

Chikusa’s likes to go inside Tower Records and Mandarake stores, but rarely buys anything because of his limited finances.

They didn’t have cable until Verde moved in and would sometimes watch daytime television. Local news, daytime soaps, public tv anime, etc. Sometimes they rent videos for a night at home, or sneak into movie theaters with a little illusion help.

NONE OF THEM HAVE GONE TO A DOCTOR OR DENTIST (except M.M. and Fran when he was at his granny’s) because of their past trauma. When Team Verde was formed, Verde did a health assessment but has been unsuccessful at making any of them see a dentist. Especially Ken- but Ken does take better care of his channels.

i have so much more to type but oh fuck i went on sorry chi jkdsfnaksdfn

[adhd-ahamilton]

Joy To The World, 1, 4 and 5!

Hoo boy, so many questions!!! I hope you’re prepared for the deluge that’s gonna result...~ I’ll answer these tonight and finish the ones in the other messages tomorrow morning!

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

So. Over the last five or so years I’ve been writing fic, in all but the second year, I’ve written a special Christmas-related fic for Christmas. (And I did two the first year, so.) Christmas is a really important holiday to me and I really love Christmas-related stuff (the cheesier and sillier the better), so it became kind of a tradition. But this year, I was at a little bit of a loss. I knew I wanted to write Lams, because that’s my big thing right now. But how would I write Christmas Lams? Did they even properly ‘celebrate’ Christmas during that time period?? Or should I just go for an AU?

I researched it, and thankfully it turns out that the 18th century is around when people did start to celebrate Christmas in the modern sense (and it’s also when carols really started to come about, which is great because per tradition all my Christmas fic are titled after a carol), but that was just the beginning of the issue. When exactly would it be set? Valley Forge? But, uh... I highly doubted they would be really doing all that much at that point. But I couldn’t really think of any time outside of Lams AU that they’d be together. (And then I found out afterwards that Ham wasn’t even there for Christmas 1777, so, welp.) And I really couldn’t think of any kind of actual plot. I could have done a kind of meditation on their relationships to religion, but I didn’t know that much about which specific form of Christianity they belonged to, and I thought it was something that could be and HAD been done much better by other people. (Plus that’s not really my fave kind of fic to write to begin with.)

So, it wasn’t really working out that well. But still, I really kept trying. Through November, my working plan became almost set in stone: I’d do a combined historical and modern AU fic, switching back and forth between scenes, comparing themes (supply lists in VF compared with finding money for food over Christmas break in modern AU), sorta casually looking at the differences. When I gave it up, it was partly out of lack of interest in the themes, but my conscious reason was ‘I just don’t really care about modern AU Lams.’

...which came to the crux of the problem all along: I’m not really an AU person. Or rather, I’m very not an AU person. I’ve written very few AUs in my time, and almost all of them were historical AUs - certainly not modern day ones, and definitely not school AUs. I don’t have any, like, moral opposition - I can fully appreciate the transformative potential of full-setting AUs and find very interesting the interdependent communities that develop around AU-heavy fandoms as they essentially create their own accepted canons - but I just...don’t tend to like them. I’m very analytical!! The idea of just...MAKING UP not just one character or setting but basically a whole story just always seemed simultaneously too easy and too hard to me!!! Plus, I like to write really interesting and unusual things and try new styles, and one of the most basic points of interests for me in writing is asking what makes these characters and relationships unique, based on their precise personalities and backstories and combinations of traits. None of that lends well to full-setting AUs.

But. As I was mulling this terrible problem over, as usual, I was also running over in my head all kinds of various different characterisation ideas. This time, I was thinking about how it was interesting that Hamilton always seemed to be written in opposition to Henry Laurens, when IRL it seems they had a pretty decent acquaintanceship. And I was thinking about it, and I really started to think that, actually, someone in Hamilton’s point of view - who was constantly abandoned by his father, and desperate for his attention, and incredibly ambitious despite the circumstances of his birth - would be one of the WORST people to understand that an overly-controlling, overly-interested father who expects extremely highly of his son could be a negative influence. Which also added to another thought I’d been having. I always liked one quote from Chernow, that Laurens must have seen in Hamilton what a man who makes himself can do, and it always made me think that Hamilton must have been the same way - that he must have seen in Laurens the man he had always aimed to be. So, Laurens grew up in a good family, acknowledged and promoted by said family, with plenty of money and a great deal of opportunity. To Hamilton... yeah, it’d definitely be hard for him to see the problems with that. (And, you know, there IS a lot of privilege there!! It’s just, y’know, that mental illness doesn’t always listen to that.) But, those thoughts were kinda moot, because I really couldn’t think of any way to contrast these different experiences with fathers in historical verse.

And that’s when it came to me. What if I did a modern AU where Hamilton came down to visit the Laurens family for Christmas?

I didn’t have the time (or, really, the interest) to develop a full-on world for everyone, and a uni AU just seemed to be the most appropriate for this one, anyway. And it also did have a bit of appeal: it always kinda bugged me that in the AUs I read, Hamilton and Laurens never seemed to be studying law, even though that’s historically what they did do. As a law grad, I figured I might as well be the one to write it. (Though law in Australia is p different from in the US - there’s no separate law school, we just study it straight out of high school like anything else - but whatever.) And once I was doing THAT, it was hard for me to escape the fact that, in the real world, studying law hadn’t...exactly always been the best experience for me. Given that Laurens didn’t really want to study it either, it seemed appropriate to lean on those experiences a bit.

Aaand that’s where we really get to the meat of the inspiration behind it, heh. Which is to say: this is possibly the most autobiographical thing I’ve ever written...? I’ll say outright that a lot of it WAS entirely invented - my relationship with my family is nothing like John’s was in this, at all. But my anxieties over studying, and my worries about the future and what a career in law would lead to... yeah, that came from me haha. Because, to get kind of personal about it... well, I graduated July 2015. And in the time since then, I have been employed for about 2.5? months, total. The job scene here, in general and especially for law grads, is just that bad. (And, uh, there was a fair bit of personal fault in my lack of preparation for after I’d graduate? But, seriously, I was really anxious already...) And ever since then - particularly 2016 to the present - I’ve also had a lot of anxiety and depression and stuff going on. At the time I wrote the fic, it was in a position of leaning worse rather than better. So...I honestly don’t know if there was ever, like, a dispassionate fic in there safely cordoned off from my own projections, but if there was, it didn’t last long.

So, I got the idea, and wrote it all up pretty quickly in early December, just kinda ridin’ that catharsis of getting all that stuff out. (And it turned out to be even more relevant than I thought, as ‘trying to enjoy Christmas like you usually do when you’re really not happy’ also ended up a very autobiographical theme.) And that’s how it happened!

As for one or two other things:

I really really didn’t wanna get too into politics in the fic lmao. I don’t feel comfortable with more than the broadest strokes of Hamilton’s beliefs (I’m gonna GET THERE but Im still well rev-verse in Chernow) and I always feel uncomfortable about portraying historical figure in any better light than they deserve when it comes to specific matters. But I also wanted to have Laurens and Hamilton at least as POC because I also think it’s important to increase racial diversity in fanfic in the rare cases that we really get a clear choice. So, I tried to kinda portray that without really getting detailed about any activist stuff or whatever. Which is why in Ham’s argument with Henry he’s really not siding with anyone, he’s just an economics wonk who gets mad when people on both sides of the political aisle don’t make sure their numbers add up, lol. That was my best compromise. (And Philly kinda nudged me when I still got too far off-course;; haha!)

Hamilton has ADHD because: again, I wanted to actually officially write up neurodivergent characters into fic when I had the option of being specific (my Ham is always neurodivergent but obv I can’t explicitly write that into the text of historical verse), and it’s ADHD because......well, I could write a really long thing about that alone lmfao. And I feel like I kind of should in some ways because I know that a lot of people aren’t rly familiar with how ADHD tends to actually, like, feel, for real-life people, and if you aren’t then I KNOW this must sound like a really arbitrary or misguided HC. And I’d really love to write it up and expand education and all, but. It’s also something that hits really close and personal for me and, as someone who can be anxious for days straight over opening entirely innocuous tumblr messages... I just DK I could do it, atm;;;;; Someday I will though, I hope!!! (Tho I will say that I’m totally for all neurodivergent Ham HCs and that honestly my Classic Ham is also influenced by BD and BPD things so I’m p flexible about it.) (Actually I guess I CAN say that my HCs for Ham all involve disorders with extreme moods and mood swings and stuff and ADHD in its lesser known symptoms can absolutely include that, esp with Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria, so yeah. That’s basically the large part of my reason for that headcanon right there lol.)

4. What's your favorite line of dialogue? 

HM OH MAN, I’m not sure!!! Lemme skim it again real quick.

In terms of sheer characterisation efficiency, I always liked the idea of Henry Laurens’ introductory sentence being to complain about John not calling often enough. It’s just such a perfect combination of a) genuinely cares about his son and wants to hear from him, and b) is an asshole who has no idea whatsoever of the pressure he’s putting on his son without offering any concurrent praise or reassurance. 

...so yeah I think I’ll leave it at that actually, since this thing is long enough already lol.

5. What part was hardest to write?

I was sitting here trying hard to remember if I really had trouble writing any part of the draft because there was one bit where I stalled briefly but it wasn’t really that bad and I couldn’t even really remember it and apart from that it was super smooth...until I remembered that editing counts as writing. And hoo fucking boy.

I was lucky enough to be able to have my fic beta-ed by Philly! Which I’m super grateful for and the fic is undoubtedly better for it! But it was a really difficult process for me because of my anxiety. And I needed to do it rather quickly, because of course I had to have it finished before Christmas, and my family actually was going away for Christmas where we wouldn’t have internet access.

So I get through almost all of the fic. It’s finally almost done. And then right at the end there’s a bit where Alex and John quickly exchange gifts on Christmas morning. Super short scene. And Philly pointed out that, actually, wouldn’t the rest of the family be taken-aback at them exchanging gifts without them?

And I kind of read that and sat back and. that was right. That was 100% correct. So like. What do I do??? Do I involve the other characters? But the original scene was like, three lines. and I don’t wanna have to write a whole new scene lmao. Do I take it out? But in a earlier scene, I’d had John express a worry that the present he’d gotten for Alex was awful and he really regretted it, and I kinda liked that in this final scene we see that actually he’d just forgotten WHY he’d bought it (he’d remembered Alex saying something about it), and I thought that was a nice thing about how anxiety can really fuck with even your memory and stuff bc in the end there genuinely was no reason to worry. It wasn’t necessary to the fic, but it only came about in the writing - I’m pretty sure the outline was just like ‘and then they exchange gifts or somethign??? IDK’ - and I didn’t want to get rid of it again. But then how do I justify them exchanging gifts alone??? 

And so that’s how I ended up just sitting there mournfully or pacing back and forth like p LEASE just SAVE ME, just GIVE ME AN OPTION, I have a HOLIDAY TO PACK FOR and THINGS TO DO and I just want this damn fic to be EDITED and DONE ALREADY. I came up with soo many possibilities, none of which satisfied me,lmao. and eventually after wayyyyyy too long of trying to figure it out I settled on something that seemed mostly plausible and then just. wrote it in and skimmed the rest of the fic and posted it lmao.

Which, honestly, is pretty typical proceedings. I tend to have the general ideas come pretty easily to me, and the actual writing is normally pretty smooth - it’s usually the editing where I start rocking back and forth and cursing myself for ever trying to write :’) (Luckily, at that point I’m close enough to the end that I can usually force it through...!!)

[mittensmorgul]

I had a wee Cas-related headcanon. And I thought @mittensmorgul​ etc will have done this to death so I searched #castiel #pb&j. Right? Not a sausage, much less a symbolically charged jelly and nut based bread snack. #cas + #pb & j, #pb n j. You get the picture. But seriously, someone has done the as-pie-is-to-Dean-so-pb&j-is-to-Cas meta/fic, right? He really liked it when he was human, but it just doesn’t do anything for him any more? #look, #I ship hard, #but #you've done this, right?

Hi there! And yeah, we’ve done this…

I got this message last night and conferred with lizbob about it, because I’m going to sneakily use her tags to find some relevant musings on the subject. From her 9.03 weird rewatching notes:

Aaah, I forgot that the real April gave Cas PB&J sandwiches. She’s presumably still normal real April, anyway. I choose to believe that >.>

Since I normally go around willingly forgetting this episode, it does put 9x11 in context with Cas wanting to make himself a PB&J sandwich, and feeling sad that it doesn’t taste the same. It was offered to him out of genuine kindness and to him must represent the goodness of humanity, way more than his horrible experience with April later which Buckleming kept going back to, Robbie picks out the one nice thing about this encounter for him to reflect on, since, as I was saying, they get the monopoly on defining Cas’s human experience. He has a 3 second encounter with the real, kind April, and so that’s what Robbie leaps on, rather than choosing a path to remind us over and over of what else to do with her.

That’s quite an interesting thing as well because this season of course, stretched and fraying at the seams surface level is that Cas just loves humanity that much (like, ignoring 9x23 and Metatron actually telling us straight up that it isn’t just this :P) but the Cas x humanity thread does have a lot to commend itself just because that’s not exactly a false lead that Cas doesn’t love humanity. I think it’s lovely that he’s profoundly affected by this moment. As well as, in 9x11, it then has Cas describing a disconnect between himself and this symbol, that it doesn’t taste as he remembered and he’s sort of feeling too huge to comprehend it just as a sandwich any more. Because I think there’s a real yearning in Cas for the “human things” (and 10x01-3 when he’s sick and where that line comes from, he slips closer to humanity as his grace fails, and again we see him experiencing “human things” in a small measure, again, against his will). That yearning to me says more than anything else that I think Cas should end up human or that he would want to be, if only he could allow himself to really contemplate it. For the love of a PB&J sandwich :P

And to go right back to being a grubby Destiel shipper, this is not the only 2 times peanut butter is mentioned in this stretch of episodes. In 9x07 Dean’s arrested as a kid for stealing peanut butter to make sandwiches for Sam, which aligns him with the side of humanity Cas fell in love with: the selfless peanut butter-giving side of humanity :P So a way to link Dean to Humanity appears in the first 11 episodes…

And then there’s this, which was probably the beginning of my real personal obsession with food on this show:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/138730581600/soo-the-elvis-already-had-me-worried-for-dean

And this from lizbob’s 9.11 rewatch notes:

Cas and his PB&J!

Which I have already talked about repeatedly and especially in 9x03 where I already talked about it thematically to Cas’s humanity arc. So I guess, let’s just write down Cas expressing nostalgia for humanity which he had to give up and is now reflecting on the less shitty parts of it and realising he has given up the experience now in favour of achieving other goals, so again in a concise moment expressing his entire character conflict over the humanity arc, especially where he is on the other side of being human.

The fact Cas was sitting alone in the Bunker waiting for Sam, and decided to just go wander around digging in their shelves in the kitchen and make himself a sandwich though. I mean, compared to my comments about what Dean did off-screen between episodes that’s pretty boring, but I like it :P In 11x18 he’s strongly aligned with the kitchen, and while we don’t see the kitchen here, he had to have been in there to get the PB&J materials, even if he moved to the war room to eat it. (Which has its own significance that Cas is ready for war not domesticity, see also: all the stuff I was saying about his new uniform, grace, etc, and the reason WHY he’s changed himself so he can’t enjoy PB&J any more)

Yeah, I’m snipping stuff out here, but these are themes they’ve applied in a lot of other ways that tie in to other things as well. Pie. Coffee. Hamburgers. Cake. Pie vs Cake. Pizza. And even beer. And if you click on any of those links, you’ll note a lot of crossover between the posts.

As for s12, I’ve been keeping a Big List of Food by episode. No mention of the pb&j again yet, but I’m keeping a close eye out. It’s called The Pies of s12, but it covers pretty much all the food-as-symbolism stuff so far.

But there’s been at least one other mention of a peanut butter sandwich as a major plot device. It was, after all, the reason Dean had been arrested in 9.07, setting up the entire story and laying down some heavy Dean Feelings.

Getting back to Cas (and really Dean, too), these references used to come in the form of cheeseburgers, going all the way back to 5.14.

And yeah, we know Jimmy enjoyed a cheeseburger from 4.20, but we also know that Jimmy wasn’t there anymore by 5.14. This was all Cas, finding enjoyment from something very human. Sure, he’d been getting closer to humanity during s5, but I think this is the first time he really enjoyed something human.

I recall there being some distress in the fandom around the time 9.11 came out that Cas would’ve been reminiscing about a pb&j instead of a cheeseburger. But we just kept waving vaguely at 9.07 and the pb&j that Dean got arrested and tossed into Sonny’s Home for Boys over.

Dean had been trying his best to feed and care for Sam despite not having enough money for groceries. John was gone on a hunt and out of touch, and 16-year-old Dean got caught trying to provide for the family in the most basic way possible. Like peanut butter was the glue that could hold their whole world together.

But at the same time, that month Dean spent at Sonny’s was unprecedented for him. For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to follow John’s orders. He didn’t have to sacrifice himself to be Sam’s primary caregiver. He got to spend a bit of time doing what HE wanted to do. He joined the wrestling team and won competitions. He learned to play guitar and met his first girlfriend. He had an adult who was interested in HIM, who wanted to help HIM and make sure HE was doing well, you know? Not just whether or not he was successfully following his orders. For Dean, stealing that peanut butter was unknowingly a stepping stone to his first (and one of his only) tastes of that sort of pure freedom in his entire life.

Then (only 4 episodes later!) in 9.11 Cas reminisces about being able to taste and enjoy a pb&j for what it was, the way a human tastes it and not as an amalgamation of molecules the way an angel tastes it.

(which raises some questions about 5.14 and if Cas was appreciating the molecular arrangement of a good cheeseburger, or if Famine’s influence literally gave him an appreciation for the taste, but none of that’s relevant here atm)

Back to 9.11… Cas goes one step further and uses the pbj to make a point, the entire scene preceded by a fade-in on that pbj:

CASTIEL: Sam, I want Gadreel to pay as much as you do. But nothing is worth losing you. You know, being human, it didn’t just change my view of food. It changed my view of you. I mean, I can relate now to how you feel.SAM: What are you talking about?CASTIEL: The only person who has screwed things up more consistently than you…is me. And now I know what that guilt feels like. And I know what it… I know what it means to feel sorry, Sam. I am sorry.SAM: I know.CASTIEL: You know, old me – I would’ve have just kept going. I would’ve jammed that needle in deeper until you died because the ends always justified the means. But what I went though – Well, that PB and J taught me that angels can change, so…who knows? Maybe Winchesters can, too.

Bonus:

He misses a simple pleasure of humanity. Same as Dean. Okay imma go cry over a sandwich now.

bonus-bonus:

okay now i’m going off to cry