#i think its so funny how they had cas literally brand dean raising him from hell and then it was never relevant ever

[souporsaladnatural]

Uhhhh uh Dean goes into the Empty to rescue Cas and at first hes wandering around aimlessly but then he feels his shoulder heating up so he rolls up his sleeve and his shoulder is glowing in the shape of Cas' handprint from season 4 and it gets brighter as he gets closer to Cas send post

[awed-frog]

The latest chapter of your fic made me think how do you think the show will deal with Crowleys death? From my side I think they'll make Sam and Dean either literally or metaphorically raise their glasses to him

Hi! Well - I think that’s a good guess, but I’m not sure if and when it’ll happen.

See, one of the problems with Crowley’s death is that it was overshadowed, to both audience and characters, by Cas’ death and Mary’s disappearance. If S13 starts exactly where S12 finished, I’m betting Crowley won’t be on anyone’s mind - Dean will be too distraught by Cas’ death to function, and Sam will be Sam - repressing his own feelings and grief and worry about his mother because Jack Kline is about to possibly destroy the world, and Dean’s in no shape to stop him. So, you know - I think that the realization of what Crowley did, and the consequences of those actions, will take a little time to surface - if they do at all.

Because another problem here is that no one will actually miss Crowley at all - except for Dean. 

If you’re reading my fic, I assume you know why I think their relationship was so interesting and significant, so I won’t get into that, but it’s a fact that Dean was the only one who got to see Crowley for who he truly was (also the only one who understands what being turned into a demon is like, because it basically happened to him twice), and therefore he’ll be the only one to feel anything other than relief. And what worries me there is that the show doesn’t have a, uhm, stellar record of allowing Dean to come clean about things he can’t, or won’t, tell Sam about - we’ve seen he’s come to rely on Cas for this, which is Beautiful and Meaningful but also a problem because a) Cas already knows everything Dean is, read it on his soul way back then, so Dean has no reason to talk to Cas about All The Things and we, the audience, are left guessing about many of them, b) Cas is not human, which means he sometimes reacts bizarrely and not in any useful way and c) at the moment, Cas is pretty dead, so there’s also that. In my story, I had Dean talk to Jody, which is sort of the only option Dean’s got left at this point, and also a Terrible Idea if it’s Crowley’s death he needs to discuss because, well, Crowley did try to kill her - jerk move, Dean.

(In his defence, he was very drunk.

Dean, that is, not Crowley.) 

And also: the reason Dean will miss Crowley (and it’s text that he will, because Cain said so) is Highly Problematic. As much as I loved whatever that thing between them was, I think Supernatural crossed the line without even realizing it, because writing our hero, the Righteous Man, sleeping around with the King of Hell (and they’re! both! men!) - I don’t think they actually wanted to o there, I have a feeling it was some kind of joke gone wrong, like the beginning of Destiel. And whatever point this show makes about shades of grey, in the end its moral compass is pretty on point, which means there’s no place for Dean to have any kind of feelings for someone like Crowley, who may have changed, sure, but was still a demon up to the moment he died and never much repented about anything bad he’d ever done (including being a very visible threat to Dean’s heterosexuality).

Furthermore, Supernatural is peculiar in that it is both very self-aware and extremely patchy with past events? Like, there’s all sort of parallels, both visual and narrative, to other seasons, but at the same time, what’s dead stays dead and once the episode is over, goodbye and good luck. We never hear Sam and Dean staying in touch with people they’ve saved or helped (even in cases where that should definitely happen - you’d think Sam would try and text Magda, for instance, and maybe he did but we don’t know anything about it; same thing goes for the Cuevas - me, I would have stopped by and said hi at some point, if not to see them then to remind myself that happy endings do exist, but, again, that never happened), and we never hear them mention dead people at all, which, again, as someone who lost people, I always found Weird, because it just happens, you know? You go somewhere or you see something or you dream about stuff or simply, after enough time has gone by, you find it pleasant to discuss these things even out of the blue - Charlie would have loved this movie and Hey, remember the way Bobby used to -? And yet, nothing. Same thing goes for season continuity - last year, they basically found out that God exists and they had waffles with Him and there was that whole awe-inspiring and traumatizing Amara business - stuff that hasn’t been brought up once in S12.

(Maybe it’s because they want casual viewers to be able to just start watching whenever, I don’t know, and it’s true that it happens on other shows as well, likely for the same reason, but still - it’s weird and unnatural and I don’t like it.)   

Anyway, all of this means that the scene I sort of want probably won’t happen, and what we’ll have, if anything, will be Dean pouring himself Crowley’s brand of scotch and Sam raising his eyebrows at him and Dean going, whatever, bitch and Sam saying something funny which will totally undercut any possible gravitas the moment could have had. The whole thing will take, what? one minute? yeah - sounds about right - and then we’ll go right back discussing what Lucifer is doing next (personally, I think ‘possessing a rich dick who doesn’t know how society works’ is a good bet).