#i think sam is a much more interesting character than dean but thats just me. i found dean interesting in middle school but i outgrew him.

[rodrickheffley]

thing about sam supernatural is no one understands him but me. thank you

[prentissluvr]

OKAY SIBLING WINCHESTER THOUGHTS HAVE ARRIVED!!

like sam and dean with a younger sibling thats just a little bit closer to sam than dean??? like DONT GET ME WRONG PLEEK ☹️☹️🙏🏽🙏🏽 i love dean like so much but like sammy i feel like would be such a great big brother.

like younger sibling reader just always goes to sam first for comfort or advice or just to hang IDK but big brother!sammy 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

- alex💫

HEHE YAYYY

i mean... this is what i think about all the time because sam's my favorite! clearly lmao. i agree!!!! i think sam would be an amazing big brother. we see dean in that position a lot more (i'm talking in terms of side characters) because he has a very very natural older brother instinct because of sam. but if they have a younger sibling that they grew up with, then sam would have that naturally himself as well! he's also just quieter and more reserved so i think that plays into why we see dean acting as an older brother figure more to other characters as well. that, and they tend to be characters more aligned to dean in certain ways (like charlie and claire)

but! we also know that sam absolutely has that protective instinct, and he is a great great great older sibling (or parental) figure!! we totally see this with jack! sam's definitely better at trying to talk and figure out emotional things (not that he's great per se LOL) but he does try to help out jack, understand him, talk through things with him, and comfort him when he's having a hard time. especially when they first meet!

so i really really see a younger sibling who's closer to sam and goes to him more for advice because he's more willing to actually talk through things + gives good advice!! he's also comfortable being a comforter. he's always great at reassuring even random people when things are scary or difficult.

plus i can really imagine a youngest sibling who has interests and maybe a personality that's closer to sam! and they're likely closer in age, i imagine a two year difference! because that way, sam still wouldn't have memories of mary, along with reader, because people generally don't retain memories until about four. so that's definitely something that sam and reader would be closer over and they'd both feel that distance from john and dean. maybe reader tries to get out of the hunting life like sam did! and sam helps them <3

also!! i think a lot a lot about half-sibling!reader who by some circumstance has to stay with the boys after meeting later in their lives. and i think they'd end up closer to sam as well, once again, especially if their interests and personality align closer to sam's. generally, sam gives people a chance quicker than dean, so they wouldn't have as rocky a start. and sam would also be very aware that reader is likely struggling a lot to adjust with living with them and this life.

and this is assuming that reader grew up decently normal, so they're more likely to notice that dean sometimes does some really fucked up or not normal things (not that's sam's normal either LOL but.... sometimes dean does shit and i'm like.... huh. maybe don't.) anyways! i just think it would be easier for someone a little more normal to get closer to sam LMAO

and yeah i'm just super obsessed with older brother sam <333 i think he'd be the best!! dean's amazing, especially when reader needs an escape or the likes, but yeah! sammy <3333

TYSM FOR SENDING THIS IN MY LOVE <333 i really hope to write more winchester sibling fics soon <33 i have a few ideas brewing <3

[angelsdean]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[sammygender]

8, 10 and 12 for the violence ask game ✨️

ask game

8. common fandom opinion everyone is wrong about

im trying to not go for the easy ones here and am pretending that 'fandom' means me and mutuals and mutual adjacents. so here's a controversial one that i think i disagree w a lot of people on: john definitely hit them. not necessarily regularly, but enough that it was still part of their experience of him.

and this isnt even because i think it makes sense for his character, though i do, and it's not bc i think it's more interesting that way or anything, because it isn't whatsover. it's just because i think supernatural, the show, wants us to think he hit them. its intentional on the parallels it draws even if it refuses to ever say it directly (because it refuses to say ANYTHING directly, come on, this is like spn stone number 1, every core theme is alluded to).

ive been steadfast on this since 1x14 (nightmare) which is the first (of many other) episodes to intentionally parallel sam and/or dean to kids with physically abusive parents. u can make a case this is about hunting as physical abuse by proxy -which in the case of nightmare it kind of is and i could see! - but its not just about that, especially looking at, say, 7x03 (the girl next door). i have better posts about this somewhere so i wont go into detail so this isnt too long.. cause these keep being WAY too long.

10. worst part of fanon

there really is so much in mainstream spn fandom that this took me a while. but my absolute hatred is for Dean Winchester Is Sam Winchester's Parent. yes that is an ao3 tag. yes i have even probably tagged my shit with that ao3 tag before. I DON'T CARE. deangirls, PICK A SIDE. if dean is sam's sole parental figure and john is an afterthought (just blatantly canonically not true but wtv).... that makes dean absolutely AWFUL for the way he treats sam in multiple pre-canon episodes nevermind in canon. and that literally is not even fair to dean. yes dean's parentified and in some ways i am sure he 'raised sam' but 1. hes not Actually sam's dad and 2. most importantly, if he WAS, he certainly would not be a GOOD dad. he is a child too for most of the time he's 'raising' sam.

half the tragedy is that he can't be a good parental figure, no matter how much he wants to. because he's not capable. because he's four years older. because he doesn't have a good parental figure himself. he occupies this weird position with more authority than brother and less knowledge than parent. hes left alone to feed and look after and control sam but he's still shouting in his face and shoving him and belittling him but you can't even blame him because he's twelve (plot of spn christmas ep). sorry thats so fucked up and so interesting actually. like please. can we look at the power dynamic here. oh and the people going 'dean was sam's real dad!!' are the same people who then insist sam and dean have an equal relationship. Girl what??

12. the unpopular character you actually like and why more people should like them

answered here, but tldr: late seasons lucifer.

[lordstormageddidnt]

7. :) i know you have a lot of fandoms that arent pjo and you can apply it to whatever you want

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because of how the fandom acts around them?

Hi Im sorry this took me so long to answer, I wanted to sleep on it lol because I didnt want to forget all the characters Ive hated 😔

So the funny thing is that nine times out of ten, the way the fanon treats a character will make me like them more. Pepper Potts from the MCU is a good example of this because her canon portrayal gives off these weird girlboss vibes and I really dont like her relationship with Tony, but in a lot of fanfic featuring Pepper, her girlboss aura gets toned down more into the way less annoying boss aura, and her relationship with Tony tends to feel more natural to me. Then there's characters like Lisa Braeden from Supernatural who get used as a cake-faced villain to destiel which is just super unfair and reeks of "not like other girls" yknow.

Mary Winchester from Supernatural is a hard character for me to hate. I don't like her on the show, I don't like that they brought her back, I don't like what they did with her. She was Sam and Dean's mom but she never acts like she cares about them (like there's this whole arc where she ghosts them for weeks on end). And it bothers me when people say Mary was this like really good mom because I don't think we ever got to actually see her act as a mom outside of her own weird brain hallucinations.

But then someone starts complaining about Mary in a way that feels a little too weird and I gotta sigh deeply and put on my "defend mary winchester" hat so I can't really hate her too much.

And then there's Meg Masters from Supernatural, who is probably the best answer I can give to this question. Because the thing is, I really don't like her in canon. I thought her old romance thing with Cas was freaking weird and I never liked how the writers seemed to forget all the stuff she did to Sam and Dean in like Seasons 1/2/whenever she first appeared. Like I always forget Meg is a Season 1 character bc she's just so inexlicably different in that season versus when all the Cas romance stuff happens. Anyway, people will sometimes treat Meg in fanon like she was the only person looking out for Castiel's best interests which like. Isnt true. Like Im really not convinced that thats true. Like obviously Dean has done Cas dirty plenty of times, but when Meg was sent to watch over Cas in the hospital when his brain wasn't right, do you really think that was purely for Cas's sake and she didnt at all see it as an opportunity to manipulate him/get close to him? Anyway yeah I dislike Meg even more in those potrayals than I dislike canon Meg

[anarchomuffin]

I posted 1,863 times in 2022

That's 1,863 more posts than 2021!

304 posts created (16%)

1,559 posts reblogged (84%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lord-kaira

@castielsupernatural

@youre-only-gay-once

@beachboysnatural

@pussypopstiel

I tagged 1,072 of my posts in 2022

Only 42% of my posts had no tags

#spn - 240 posts

#reblog - 234 posts

#supernatural - 193 posts

#owl with a shotgun - 125 posts

#dean winchester - 89 posts

#sam winchester - 39 posts

#castiel - 22 posts

#asks!! - 22 posts

#hbo spn - 16 posts

#sam winchester speech bubble - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 122 characters

#beyond that its your rich friends dad who you meet twice but gives you turkish delights and tells you your hair looks nice

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

what about trans Steve?

hi so i already talked about why i think steve is trans but here's how i think he would come out to everyone (yes ik its "unrealistic" but all his friends are queer too it's fine)

robin: i think robin just kind of realized on her own. either that or she realized right after she came out to steve (i think that he would've had some kind of fear she would be attracted to him if she knew, that she would see him as a girl. he would've either told her or she would've had a sort of 'oh.' moment.)

dustin: dustin DEFINITELY hung out at steve's house idc about canon, he probably heard steve's parents talking about him using she/her pronouns and asked steve about it. steve would be scared but since thats his k i d he'd tell dustin.

el: ok hear me out. mind reading. el doesn't really understand transphobia since she grew up in a science cult so she just asks him, completely innocently, when he realized he was a boy. steve would absolutely bluescreen and it would be so funny

max: she was there when el asked

nancy: she and steve canonically had sex i think she'd notice

will: steve hasnt really interacted with will but he probably found out through dustin

i don't think that he would be okay telling anyone else (nancy wouldn't tell mike, eleven might but if she knew how important it was to steve she wouldn't.)

119 notes - Posted June 30, 2022

#4

PLEASE talk about trans steve <3 if you'd like to

i would LOVE to talk about trans steve harrington.

ok so like his canon implied neglectful/absent parents is SO interesting viewing him as a trans man. bc like they were probably the same way before he would've come out, but once he realized he was trans he totally wouldve told himself they were absent because he did something wrong by being trans! it's so important to his character that hes insecure abt his masculinity!! (this is another thing that makes more sense with him as a trans man, similarly to dean winchester. a character that he's really similar to.)

i can totally see him being born in another town, coming out at a pretty young age, and finding ways to pass until bullying got so bad that his parents moved to hawkins. and his parents would still tell people he was a girl, until he looked so much like a cis man and would get so upset about being called female that his parents finally relented. and like?? imagining him changing in locker rooms apart from the other guys (he would've convinced the school that he was a cis man so he could) not just because he's King Steve but also because if any of the other guys found out he'd be dead.

his relationship with nancy is even more important with this lens, because no matter her reputation as a "pretty" girl, she was still mike wheeler's older sister. she was still enough of an outsider that if she knew, no one would believe her.

tldr; steve 'the hair' harrington is transmasc and it's pretty much canon.

142 notes - Posted June 30, 2022

#3

the reason im so attached to the first few seasons of supernatural is because there's something so inherently american gothic about them. like, yes, thats present later on but something about seasons one through five just satisfies this love for american folklore i have

like, especially episodes like 1x11 and 2x08 are just so beautifully, hauntingly American that you can't look away. it's the acknowledgement that there's something there in back roads and old abandoned orchards, it's the collective idea that if you start looking behind you, you'll never stop. and the cinematography only adds to it, the grainy found-footage-esque aesthetic thats especially present in season one. it's in the way that the hotels sam and dean frequent are all the same but with slightly different details, the way all the people interviewed can only come up with halfway-there explainations of what happened.

216 notes - Posted January 5, 2022

#2

will byers went missing four days after mary winchesters death

574 notes - Posted July 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

literally all ash did was be gay, do internet crimes, have a sick ass mullet and get kicked out of mit for fighting. and they fucking killed him.

1,051 notes - Posted March 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[bitethehandthatneedsme]

i’m thinking about sam winchester and his relationships w/ some of the non-main characters again (ex. charlie, bobby)

because, with the way the show was written, it’s very obvious that the writers preferred dean, esp in the later seasons. they have always made sure that characters like cas, charlie, bobby, and claire were closer to dean than sam and maybe that had just been crappy writing but also i was thinking and-

sam does have some close relationships (more like had) and those people were always considered ‘the enemy’ to dean and other hunters (ex. ruby, mick, brady, rowena, amy, jack).

sam spends pretty much the entire series believing he’s a monster. brady had literally told him, right before sam killed him, that maybe the reason he always trusted monsters was because he was one himself

dean is always close to ‘the good people’ and sam is always close to ‘the monsters’ or ‘the enemies’.

and thats just so interesting to me idk.

[lol-jackles]

lol Jared is the only one who doesn't need to lean on supernatural for work. He really branched out on his own.

I honestly feel like thats why j//ackles didn't feel the need to include him cause Jared is doing his thing right now and succeeding without him. And j//ackles is dependent on him and spn. Unfortunately SPN doesnt just belong to him so a heads up would have been nice and less shocking. I myself was shocked when I read it so I can't imagine what the guy who's been leading the show for 15 years thought when his "best friend" just dropped the news out of no where like that... If roles were reversed Jared would never do that to him. He has loyalty and morals.

I don't have high hopes for it. Tinhats are refusing to watch. Wife haters are refusing to watch and John Winchester antis aren't interested. And if there's no Cas I dont think hellers would care that much?

The only positive post I've seen about it was Jared saying I'm happy for you lol. Everyone else has just complained. I don't know who told him this was a good idea but yikes for the chaos machine...

While it is true that Jared doesn't need SPN for work, Sam Winchester is his legacy.  Sam is an original character that Jared will mainly be known for, like how William Shatner is known for Captain Kirk even though Shatner went on to star in other drama series and won 2 Emmys.  So not surprising that Jared is protective of both his character and the show.

I don't have high hopes for it...

Usually this is when I write my fake transcript, but instead decided to directly lift from my dash and TL.

AAs: *Tyra Banks gif*  I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU!  WHY A PREQUEL?  I WANTED AT A BARE MINIMUM JUST HOPED FOR MORE JENSEN CONTENT AS DEAN BUT MY GOD AT WHAT COST?

Hellers: Jensen Ackles is making an spn prequel about Sam and Deans parents "love story" when it was literally god trickery bullshit which Dean will be narrating... the child of an abusive father narrating his abusive fathers loveless relationship with his mother......      

Cas stans: Laughing at the rage that it isn't a Cas prequel and realizing Jensen would ever give a shit enough to do that.

Dean girls: Oh My God Jensen your wife is going to play Dean's mother isn't she and complete the incest circle.

Sam girls: I would've rather have Jensen call me a slur than have him announce that prequel.

Tinhatters:  Fuck off come back when you have your balls back.

Me: This is going to be Phantom Menace isn't it

*Five minutes after Jared's tweets:*

Jared stans: I've been freed!

[swift--fox]

Just here thinking that. Supernatural is its own TV show Era. I mean. This show started in 2005, when anything lgbtq on TV was few and far between. And anything on the community was often used as an excuse to kill, or degrade a character- therein degrading the community. Supernatural was not immune to that unfortunately, throughout most of the show.

When Supernatural first aired, even in Canada we were only just legalizing gay marriage, and it would still be another 10 years before the US followed. Supernatural was around for it all, and broke that barrier. Supernatural in 2020, has turned supernatural 2005 into something lgbtq friendly. Let me explain.

This show started out about two brothers, finding their dad, and hunting the monster of the week while doing so. They aimed this show at a very niche audience. You know, the tough guy that wants to see some heads cut off and some ghosts getting ganked. They also tried to make the show as masculine as possible, to try to keep this niche audience.

• mom killed by mystery creature

•gotta find dad

•sams girlfriend killed in first episode

•new monster every week not much story line other than "we still haven't found dad"

•Dean and Sam being pretty 2 detentional without back stories (Sam went to college, Dean hunted with his shitty dad)- of course that's kinda expected in first seasons, but they still didn't really delve into their past much during this season.

But then the story started progressing. Sam and Dean started becoming people. You can't have a show last very long without characters become people. It just doesn't happen.

Season two started becoming less horror TV show and more fantasy adventure with horror mixed in. This peeked the interests of people outside the niche focal point, especially since the show started getting more emotional as time went on. Less about the monster of the week, more definitive story lines. We started getting closer looks at how the brothers feel towards the world they live in and the burden they carry on their shoulders.

By the end of season 3, the lgbtq community had a pretty firm grip on the show. We tend to revolve around these kinds of series (LOTR, Harry Potter, Buffy, etc.). Especially shows that show challenges like this. Cause while our monsters aren't vampires or werewolves or demon deals, our monsters are very real none the less. It's comforting. (Of course this is my outlook on it, not everyone else feels the same, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who relates this way)

Insert Castiels amazing barn entrance. Cas was a huge hit for the show. Alas, Misha was only supposed to be in the show for 3 episodes (wonder why he decided to make his voice deep? Cause he wasn't expecting to have to keep it up for 12 years 😂😂). But we latched onto him and weren't letting go. We even managed to get the angel that was supposed to replace him killed off the show (rip Anna) and everything snowballed from there.

We started finding comfort in Cas and Deans dance around eachother. Dean started showing signs being bi (just because it's not said in the show, don't mean it's not canon, fight me). And Cas fell for Dean. Did everything for him. Though not every choice was a good one, they were all well intended, and specifically for Dean. Cas became a comfort character for a lot of us. So did Dean. These characters even took a step above people, they started becoming people we knew, we weren't just watching a TV show anymore, we were catching up with friends. Dean and Cas became a part of our lives, they became our family.

So, for the next 12 years, we were fed a whole lot of bullshit queerbaiting between dean and cas, we witnessed the CW try to kill our angel off time and time again. Of course it never stuck though, because we never gave up. We never allowed them to leave our angel in the dust. He was ours. They would not have made it to a season 8 without him. They realized then the amount of pull we had.

And then finally. FINALLY. Over a decade after his first appearance. our constant fighting, our constant need to be HEARD as a group of people, who fell in love with a horror turned love story, got our declaration of love. Our ship was acknowledged in more than just a quick quip. Our ship became canon. We were finally given SOMETHING (I'd go into everything else they should've given us, but thats not what this post is about)

And now? We have turned a show that was full of queer baiting, and low jabs to the lgbtq community all the way from as early as season one, into one of the longest love stories out there. EVERY SINGLE terrible joke they put in to make fun of us? Has turned into a bisexual man learning about himself. Has turned into an angel of the lord learning about love through the eyes of the man he saved. We turned a misogynistic, homophobic show, directed toward cis white males, into a 15 season love story about a nonbinary celestial being in a male vessel, falling in love with a bisexual man, and vice versa.

We did that. We all did that.

And I think that is beautiful

And I can say with almost 100% certainty, it will never happen again.

Supernatural is its own breed. Supernatural is its own genre. And WE created it.

[demenior]

Dem’s Big Post About The Spn Fics Part 1/2

aka The Wrap Up to celebrate To Exist Again and To Become a Man now being finished!

(This will be a long post. This is your only warning.)

Admittedly this is a bit of a weird thing to be doing, but I wanted to try it out for 3 reasons: 

I love talking about my own work and 

It functions really well as a self-reflective tool for me to improve on, and 

I can answer some big questions people might have because there was a LOT of worldbuilding in these stories. 

We’ll start off with reflective stuff, and move into the juicier world-building focused stuff later into the post. There will be major spoilers for both fics to come!

To begin with a funny anecdote, Why Did I Write These Stories?

I was beginning to write and work out the story that I wanted to write for Spn (what will now be To Destroy a Man. As I was writing the scene, I realized I had a LOT of ideas and while I was trying to avoid as much exposition as I could, it became quickly apparent that I was needing to create my own au (this scene eventually became chapter 34 of To Become a Man). A short prequel seemed like a good idea, to quickly hash out the ‘prior’ events that I needed to go through so all the readers could be on the same page. While plotting out prequel points, I realized Sam and Dean were going to have drastically different experiences during the same time period, and I was trying to figure out who’s pov would be better for which scenes, and how to keep momentum when they’re going through such radically different types of changes. Ultimately I decided to split their povs, which I also thought would be a fun project! And I naively assumed each pov would take about 2 chapters each, rounding out to maybe 15k total.

I had my ending points: Dean n Cas soul-merged and (basically) married, Cas on the lam from heaven and a complete anomaly, and Sam juiced up full of powers and a weird mix of archangel and antichrist but still 100% human and ready to fight God. 

Now I needed to add weight to these changes, so I wrote 200k of build-up.

Am I proud of these fics?

OF COURSE I AM!!! These are the longest fics I’ve ever written AND finished AND in the fastest freakin turnaround ever (both were finished writing, barring edits, in like 6 months holy shit)

I didn’t write a single scene that I “didn’t” want to write. If I had trouble writing it, as in it was fighting me, I scrapped it. Most obviously was the scene in Dean’s pov where he and Sam were intended to meet some other hunters and Dean declines working with them because he’s nervous about being outed as queer. It was meant to be a good scene! I wanted to introduce some new characters! But it just wasn’t working so I said ‘thank you, next!’. 

But it means this story was an absolute joy to write. Because for a while all I was doing was ‘if I wanted to write one scene into supernatural, what would I write?’ and then just DID that!! It’s why there’s a lot of ‘Salmondean do dumb shit or have really dumb heartfelt conversations’ scenes.

Would I change anything?

If I’d been less eager to start sharing, I might have planned out the story beats a little tighter so there were less ‘soft’ chapters and a draw/pull for people to come back and keep reading. I felt Dean’s story specifically lagged at points and could have used some tighter editing (there was a noticeable lull in directed movement between Dean n Cas getting together, until Sam corrupts Amy).

I also probably would have held Sam’s story until I’d finished Dean’s so I could make the two line up better! Probably could have inserted more scenes into Sam’s fic that way, and made sure things were a little more consistent. In an ideal world one concept I had was to release 1 chapter from each pov every week that would correspond to the same time frame so we’d be getting real-time SalmonDean pov narrative. Unfortunately that didn’t work!

The biggest takeaway overall is for me to focus more on what moves the plot, and to make my scenes do more than 1 thing so I can cut down on wordcount and increase my efficiency. 

Of course every writer will find things they want to fix in anything they’ve ever written, so these are minor “mistakes” at best. I’m so dang proud of these fics. 

Onto more interesting things!

How Did I Put These Fics Together (because it’s different than anything I’ve ever done before)

Normally when I write a story, I plan out the beats I need to hit, see where I need to insert any kind of foreshadowing/buildup, and then write from A to B to C and so on and so forth. Hence, this is why I can normally post things as I complete chapters, because it’s all a linear progression. 

For these two stories, rather than linear plot/a normal story structure, I just sat and free-wrote any and every scene that came to mind and then pieced them into a kinda-linear form like putting a quilt together. You’ll note that this is why there’s not a lot of internal callback or a feeling of sense of time flowing within the fic (save for points where I went back and specifically edited it in). How long does the story take place over? Hard to say! Your author has the barest grasp on linear time even on a good day (how many times did I say ‘see you on [wrong day]’ at the end of chapters lmaaoooo)

This also meant EXTENSIVE editing on the back end once I decided in what order I wanted my ‘quilt pieces’ to be. Hard to say if this is a bonus or a negative!

But I did want to try and capture the vibe of the lives they lead, as a bit of a ‘slice of life’-style story, when the slice of life is the profound weirdness of the Winchester roaming life, and how things are status quo- until everyone almost dies oh shit!! And then they have to keep living because no therapy we die/undie like Winchesters. Do I think I captured this effectively? Hmm. Good question. 

Dem where the FUCK did the inspiration for a lot of the magic and creature weirdness even come from?

Honestly? Music, primarily. And completely mishearing lyrics!

Nightwish ‘Ever Dream’: the line is ‘my song can but borrow you grace’ and because my brain is scrambled eggs on a good day, I heard ‘grace’ ‘song’ and ‘borrow’ in that order and have had, for YEARS, the mental image of Cas borrowing Dean’s soul to power himself up for battle.

From there I’ve always been enamored with the ‘wavelength of celestial intent’ descriptor that Cas drops in s6 for ���what he is”. 

I also really like ocean metaphors mostly because I’ve been obsessed with the ocean and things in it since I was like… 5??? So really this was me just rolling with what I know lmao. I love using (somewhat) accurate scientific metaphors for very intangible things!

I was also finishing my degree in biology/ecology while writing these fics and I think it shows

Stars ‘The Night Starts Here’ gives us the series title and the fic titles. Except for ‘To Exist Again’. TEA was almost titled ‘The Upwards Fall’ because I wanted all 3 of the Main Stories to have titles from this song, but I couldn’t make anything else work in tandem with the series name ‘The Love It Takes’ while also working for Sam’s personal story. So Sam, as always, is the rebel <3

Stars ‘Up In Our Bedroom, After The War’ is basically the vibes of the whole story. TFW has been, literally, to hell and back!!! There’s a bit of melancholy and sadness, a lingering dark, but the chance of a bright new tomorrow and a soft start.

Let’s Talk About Themes in The Story! What were you looking to accomplish? 

My earliest notes for TFW are, as follows:

Dean’s journey of self-discovery (who am I when I’m not trying to be Dad?)

Dean wants to settle down! He wants a big family! He wants to be domestic!

Basically: Dean doesn’t want to have a short life of hunting. He wants to live!

Dean’s journey of realizing he’s bi, and him accepting that

Dean’s relationship to Sam is both older brother/parent 

And continuing Dean balancing these roles while also letting Sam be an adult 

Dean’s Big Issues/Fears about never being good enough for people to want to stay with him (these are effectively highlighted in that Cas thinks he’s not useful enough to be wanted)

Sub Plot:

Castiel’s autonomy

Cas’ fall from grace, to trying to restore Heaven, to wrecking it further

He’s majorly depressed by the end of s7 (before purgatory)

Wants to stay in Purgatory but doesn’t tell Dean

Remains depressed after leaving, but resolved to keep living on because he’s clearly meant for something

After the seraphim reveal: does he have free will?! How does he grapple with this? How does he live in a way he can be proud of?

And lastly

Sam gets his powers back CAUSE THATS HOT

where tf did they go????

he got them from Lucifer?????

sleeper agent??????

Sam is The Chosen One

Accepts that he is More Than Human and to celebrate all parts of him

Lucifer and Sam friends?? Work together????

Sam needs autonomy in his choices/his life

If you compare these to the overall arc of TFW within the two stories, I think I got a lot of them! But you’ll also note a lot of these things aren’t concrete goals that are easily measurable (ex: Dean wants to learn to bake pie. In chapter 1 he starts a fire in the kitchen. By the end of the story he finally makes A Good Pie.) part of the lack of concrete milestones was why I felt it was important to tell Dean (and Cas’) story by going back to the point they meet, in s4! Dean’s gradual change towards his feelings for Cas, his relationship to Sam (heavily influenced by the s7 events of this fic) and then his own relationship with himself were such slow burns that I felt it would be a disservice to try and cram a change like that into a timeline like “1 year”.

I felt like these subtle changes and adjustments actually felt a lot truer to life-- people often change in very small, gradual ways over time, even without realizing it and often times not consistently! If only we could all gain skills like the sims, where we can easily level up and remain at that high level of performance! 

So the Guy Who Ate Satan, A Celestial Nuke that Developed Sentience, and Dean walk into a bar…

Sam’s story in Spn The Show has always been a ‘chosen one’ kind of narrative. Sam is living with one foot in the realm of the monsters, and I wanted to bring that back full force! It really makes sense for him that he should only continue to grow in power, might, and magic!! As the story progresses.

Cas also got a power up! I do desperately love in the show that he was kind of a grunt/nothing angel, and so even when he defected to TFW he was a huge help for them, but in the scale of things he was an annoying fly to most other angels. It really worked for the underdog story of s4/5. In this I wanted to give him a power up, and originally it was actually going to be close contact with Sam that eventually changed Cas into something unknown (you can still see traces of this in ch34 of TBAM, where Death remarks ‘Castiel could be [Sam’s] first creation’. But for a combo of reasons: how Sam’s magic needed to have intent, the entire concept of free will and consent, and how much I wanted Dean and Cas to have their effect on each other, I decided to go with the route that Cas has actually always been something angel-adjacent rather than becoming something new. TFW/Supernatural has always been about free will and making your own story, so I amplified that with Cas.

Dean has always been A Normal Guy, which is part of the appeal of him and Sam (2 normal dudes!) taking on the Very Not Normal. As explained above, Sam’s story is ‘normal guy finds out he’s the chosen one’ and so, in a story about very large concepts and huge monsters and acts of magic, I felt it was very important to keep Dean as normal as possible. To the point it became a running gag to me, personally, in that ‘no matter what cool shit happens around him, Dean has to stay as Just A Guy’. And it’s a very humanizing role that allows the story to have the scale it does!

What were the most important themes in your story?

Sam’s Autonomy

I wasn’t even going to include the plot about Lucifer’s death in this story— that was going to come up in a later story, actually! And rather than Sam having ate Lucifer, the original idea was that they’d become a SamandLucifer entity (this harkens back to a concept I wanted to write when Swan Song first aired). 

That storyline would have involved a lot of mental ‘Sam and Lucifer discuss what it means to live, which one of them is more worthy of life and if they do deserve to destroy the world for the pain they’ve been forced to go through, just to create the dichotomy of good and evil for everyone else’ discussions. There would be a lot of talk about how Sam hates and fears Lucifer for the pain Lucifer put on Sam, how Lucifer hates Sam because he and Sam are the same but Sam’s brother loves him anyways, etc. 

Ultimately that was scrapped because Sam’s entire story in the show is always about how the world and everyone around him manipulates him and that he never actually gets to make choices about his own life or body that aren’t influenced or part of someone elses’ design. And that always bothered me that Sam was never allowed to be himself without having to be ashamed of it, and I wanted to make sure that Sam’s triumph of being proud of himself/proudly choosing to exist (again) was evident in his story

In the end I needed Sam to have this visceral win over his tormentor. As the story shows, in this case Lucifer was abused and put into a position where he was incapable of empathy and could only express himself in violence. Sam even understands this! But it doesn’t change the fact that Lucifer tortured Sam in unimaginable ways for thousands of years. 

With that in mind I didn’t like the idea of Lucifer and Sam having “co-ownership” of their new identity, so I made the choice that Sam had to be the survivor. This tied in well with Sam’s new crusade to restore free will to the universe, because he’s breaking the narrative of his own story!

While Castiel wasn’t a pov character, his own autonomy and free will was equally as important. You’ll note that many, many paragraphs and conversations revolved around that theme and that in the end Cas followed himself (and love!) which ensured his freedom of self <3

The Brothers are WEIRD PEOPLE!!!! And Codependent to a Worrying Degree, but It’s Also How They Survive

It’s very hard to show “unusual” relationships when you’re writing from the pov of the two people who don’t think there’s anything weird about their relationship. Sure, they say ‘yeah it’s probably weird that we still share a bed’ but that’s kinda more in line with ‘I had a nightmare and I want to be close to the person who makes me feel safe’. Hashtag normalize co-sleeping when you need it!!!

From there I did try to point out how the boys have a weird perception of lifestyle in the little things they did. 

From thrifting everything from clothes to appliances to books (thrifting is a valid lifestyle! It’s incredibly handy when you’re on a budget.) 

To never actually having condiments or knowing how to use a dishwasher cause they’ve lived in a car, a motel room, or squatted in old houses their whole life.

I tried to have them wear each others’ clothes or casually swap things as much as possible. They live out of each others’ pockets!

Also the brothers are just weird people!! It’s hard to show from their pov, cause they don’t know how far off from normal they are, but like…

Everything about Sam and Amelia was NOT right like holy shit those two were wilding in their grief. They are very lucky things worked out for them and that they got to be hashtag Weird Girls together

Dean explicitly, in the story, gets horny after killing stuff!! Violence has done a number on his psyche and he’s gotten some wires crossed that maybe shouldn’t have been, or maybe could be worked out in a safe space but… uh… how likely do we think Dean is gonna go find a safe space to deal with any of his shit???

LOVE!!! Love is truly what this whole story is all about

If you’ve read the stories, you know how much emphasis I put on love. Love is the strongest force in the Spn Universe! It’s what averted the apocalypse and saved the world (Swan Song), it’s what created free will (Cas’ entire arc!) I love love!!!!

I went out of my way to not put any definitions on platonic love vs romantic love because I think love is love is love and how you express that is the difference. Neither is more powerful than the other because LOVE is powerful!! Sam and Cas are the most important people in Dean’s life and he loves them equally! He shows this by giving Cas kisses and stealing Sam’s socks.

It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when I have to hear explanations like ‘I love you, like a brother’ or ‘I love you, but like, as a friend because I’m a lesbian and you’re a man’ etc etc in media. If you have to continuously define how your characters love each other, then I don’t think you’re doing a good job of portraying their relationship. So you’ll see that I never put those parameters in any conversation. Dean DOES muse that he loves Cas differently than he loves Sam or Bobby, specifically because there is a romantic and sexual tone that his feelings for Cas takes, but not because he loves Cas more or less than he loves Sam or Bobby.

Which means, if you haven’t realized it yet, the Series + Fic Titles are meant to be a complete sentence because the power of love IS the thesis of this series:

The Love It Takes To Exist Again (Sam’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Become a Man (Dean’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Destroy a Man (TBA)

And now for fun stuff. Behind the scenes!!

What’s Something People Probably Don’t Know?

The demonic fungal/hydrothermal vent growth on Sam’s arm was thrown in literally as I was posting the chapter because I had just finished a 48 hour cram session of writing a report on tube worms for an ecology class (I was chanting my tube worm song as I wrote it) and it ended up being a HUGE hit with both readers and myself. But it was so last minute I had trouble fitting it in more throughout the rest of Sam’s story!

Cas’ orders? That may or may not have bound him to Dean and removed his free will? Were written into Sam’s story and I went ‘oh SHIT that’s compelling’ and then left them there as a ‘guess I’ll figure that out when I get to Dean’s story lol’

Originally Dean and Cas were supposed to get together after having their souls bonded, and have been in a UST limbo the entire time before that. Mostly because I think the entire concept of ‘we just got married of the soul I guess we should try dating?’ is very funny. CLEARLY the two of them were way more eager to fall in love than I anticipated (thank you Cas for your honesty) but you can still see shades of this original idea here and there (especially in ch35 of TBAM)

I never intended Dean and Benny to connect so well!! Benny was going to reunite with Andrea, she was going to live, and they were going to go off into the world and leave the story. And, uh, here we are. I’m still debating if I need to adjust the relationship tag or not haha. Polyamory is fun, especially when I was planning for Sam to be the polyamorous brother...

Speaking of, I can’t believe I forgot about Sam and his sexuality! If I rewrote TEA I would have had Sam contemplate more on his lack of sexual appetite due to trauma, up until he meets Benny and he gets to rediscover how he wants to be a sexual person

Many of Sam and Dean’s absolutely stupid sibling conversations were lifted near-verbatim from conversations I’ve had with my siblings

And lastly...

Dem where’s Kevin????????????? Where is our sweet baby boy????????

He’s SAFE!! He’s in the Hunter pipeline somewhere cause Sam handed him off to Bobby’s people. He and his mom are safe and at some point they probably got rib sigils like SalmonDean did against angels, but for demons. I didn’t have room in this story for him!!! But my baby boy is SAFE and I want to get him back to university because it’s WHAT HE DESERVES!!!!

To that point: god there were/are SO many characters that I just didn’t include in the story so far because I didn’t feel comfortable including them without stalling the story for them. To that point: pretty much everyone who is alive/dead in s8 is that way in this story, except Bobby who gets to live.

[Check Out Part 2 for reader questions!]

[estrel]

Listen. I really cba about Jared because I'm more interested in Misha and Jackles, but it honestly seems like people are just leaping at an excuse to go for his jugular about this whole Eileen thing.

I mean I get it. He's not the chillest dude and quite a few times I've seen something he's said and just thought 'dude, just stop digging and shut up'.

But at the same time he's entitled to have his personal opinion on a character he's lived as for 15 years? Like idk. I know they set up Eileen as his endgame and thats fine, but he's also allowed the personal opinion of not liking the relationship or wanting it to be endgame?

Everyone is acting like he personally fired the actress and trashed the ship and forced the writers to scribble her out. But all he said is (albeit his reasoning is pretty skewed bc Dean was supportive of them anyway) that he personally was fine with it/preferred Sam having a different relationship.

Ik Jared is stanky but to me it just seems like Samleen or whatever its name is shippers are just jumping on an excuse to be bitter over their ship?

to me, it wasn’t about his personal opinion, it was mostly the fact that he considers dean’s ending “successful” when it clearly was not (for many reasons, but the main one being that the death of an already suicidal character who has been shown time and time again as wanting to live and then dying instead on a rusty piece of rebar is a damaging narrative to tell and bad storytelling overall) and that he thinks that dean would not have wanted sam to have a life with eileen when...he literally, in canon, says the exact opposite.

i don’t consider myself a hardcore saileen stan/shipper--if anything, before this i just liked it a normal amount and thought “hey, good for sam! eileen’s a badass!” and i think that a lot of people felt the same way. i just don’t think it’s jared’s prerogative to be talking about dean’s opinion and ending when he himself did not play a part in it or (obviously) give dean’s character much thought. if anything, it should be jensen, who actually lived as the character for 15 years, who is entitled to his opinion on the matter. and i also think that eileen, as a minority character that meant a lot to a lot of people, deserved more than to be dismissed like that so easily when the statement that dean wouldn’t want her for sam is literally not true. 

i just think that jared should watch the show before giving his opinions on it

[fucktheroyals]

*sigh* Hey Supernatural fandom, raise ur hand if you know exactly how stupid a large majority of the Misha hate is?

Everyone who isn't a bi-bro or a bronl*es:

@lilulo-12 disclaimer: I've only been here for 7 years and I am SURE there are people who know of a hell of a lot more than me on this, like the details. Which is why I wanted to do this on a post people could respond to if u or others want more info or people want to add things.

So basically this is really how a majority of the inner fandom hate starts: Bronl*es (and sometimes b*bros, I was looking up the term and found out they are a little different then bronl*es and most of us doesn't seem to care whether the term is used correctly or not). (b-r-o-n-l-i-e-s or b-i-b-r-o-s)

So, idk if you know what bronl*es (bros‐only) or b*bros are but these people are all about and only interested in the relationship between Dean & Sam (This is like the full definition for B*bros. Bronl*es are like B*bros extended edition, so they most likely ship w*ncest). If any character gets at all in the way of that relationship they HATE that character (as a group).

Before s4 when Misha came along, this meant many female characters would be seen as getting in the way of this relationship and B*bros and Bronl*es would start hate campaigns and get those women kicked off the show. (See Bela, Jo, Ellen)

So when Misha came along with Castiel and Castiel started to be seen as a potential threat to relationship and screentime of Sam and Dean they got pissed off and thats what started the raging hate. They really only hate on him so much because they want him off the show.

Now to be specific about the bronl*es. These people are the ones who HATE Castiel with a burning passion of a thousand suns. Yeah same reason.

Bronl*es are the ones who ship the actors, Jared and Jensen (yeah there's no "they might not be" for this one). If you're a person and you get and in the way of their relationship the bronl*es HATE that person.

Anyway it's safe to say that Misha gets in the way of their relationship. Like they're all friends and Misha's friends with Jensen and Misha's also friends with Jared and because Jared and Jensen like Misha the bronl*es get mad because to them Jared and Jensen are only supposed to like each other. The bronl*es DO hate Jared and Jensen's wives for the same reason. To them the wives are "beards" for them so J and J are in a relationship. 🙄

So because Misha's on the show and good friends with them outside of work he basically gets double the amount of hate.

A lot of other hate comes from Bronl*es taking things out of their contexts to make it bad or worse and what I like to call their "misinformation campaigns" where they just spread a whole bunch of lies, often using those things taken out of context they find.

Also, I dont know if you've seen the start of this show but it gives very southern christian homophobic vibes. Like, it attracts that type at least. And because most of these bronl*es AND b*bros are like that, a lot them see Misha's easiness at which he talks about sex or his... I wouldn't say femininity as much as lack of toxic masculinity... or the way he supports the lgbt... or has heavy liberal leaning policies... or his just general "weirdness" and they hate him for it. Yeah, a lot of the b*bros and bronl*es are homophobic.

Anyway none of that's to say I think Misha is perfect, I think he makes a lot of mistakes, some bigger than others, but what's important is he tries his best to fix things when those mistakes happen.

Yo, if anyone has more information about why Misha gets so much hate go ahead and add or correct me.

[sammygender]

thinking about that bit in the s10 episode i just watched where dean (and sam but i think mostly dean) recounts john taking them to new york and how there was SO MUCH in it. everything made me feel so vindicated i love love looove when spn suddenly lines up with something ive been thinking about. so much there.

dean being 'really underage' so i was thinking like 15 (not that id even describe 15 as REALLY underage, but these are americans) and sneaking out to a sick rock venue... <33. coolest kid around i love him. i like the establishment that dean did do things like that - it both makes me feel happier for him and slightly vindicates me against the people who claim dean was more sam's parent than his brother. thats not true. sure, he raised him, but he also snuck out to go to bars and dumped sam at random places and acted like an idiot older brother. and im glad dean got to do that.

15 year old dean (or some other young dean) being intentionally gotten drunk and implied to be roofied or drugged or whatever by a bunch of girls who were immediately all over him... hello... thats AWFUL..... god he must've been such a looker and i like it when canon acknowledges that. i have this idea in my head of like. 'funny looking' kid dean who's about twelve when he suddenly graduates from funny-looking to like relentlessly beautiful by just growing perfectly into his features. dean is always so aware of the way hes percieved physically in any given situation and always uses it in this specific way, from flirting with every girl around to responding to male aggression by way of cops etc by also like fake flirting or pretending they're sexually interested in him..... i dont always know where i land on 'precanon dean did sex work' hcs but this is something that does intrigue me about it. plus the weird and very sweet protectiveness he always has about sex workers - also just watched that ep where hes like trying to talk the soul-wanting sex worker out of it. ANYWAY. and the extremely casual way dean recounts this like its just?? something that happens to him??? hello???

then dean telling john he'd embarrassed him and he hated him...... doesn't really stack with everything else we've ever heard of child/teenage dean, but it's kind of interesting to consider. i guess he was incredibly drunk/potentially drugged. also this is from dean's perspective, a dean who was intensely gone and probably barely remembers.

and then we get a classic early-seasons style moment where dean recounts something about john winchester and goes Ha! Classic dad! What a great guy! and sam's like Dude wtf?????? except sam isn't snarky anymore so he just does a Look. i mean come on dean. ten minutes ago you said 'john winchester isn't winning any parenting awards' and now you're saying 'he raised us right!'. Dude. You KNOW that is not true. sam also knows you know.

that being said. i like seeing a moment of john winchester just being... a human guy. taking his kids to new york bc they kept begging him to and seeing all the fun sights. scaring the hell out of a bunch of terrifying punk teenagers who got his teenage son drunk. its more interesting to me to think that john is, like, a decent guy, aside from the child abuse, and probably would've been a much better dad if it wasn't for the trauma and the hunting and mary's death (though. i have to say. The way he deals with it is still his character!!! Putting it all on your very young son and venting to him is still like. Not something that a hell of a lot of people would do, even if they got just as revenge-driven. i reckon that specific type of parentification/spousification would've still have happened to dean. mary would've probably done it too.). the young john we see seems like a cool guy and he has strong as hell opinions about his future self's parenting (admittedly while not knowing it's his future self, lol). i reckon, on one level, john and dean did actually really get on. that makes the awfulness of it all so much more interesting to me <3

this post is all over the place but like. what an interesting scene. ill replay it and actually talk about in more depth and a more structured way someday.

[mr-smith-wesson]

(Long-winded anon warning. Seriously if I’m annoying you with these just ignore my ramblings). Ok, so I just found out that five years pass between 15x19 and 15x20, which got me super excited because as much fun as Jensen’s “put us back in coach” idea is, we don’t really need it. We have five years of stuff that could be explored where it is just the boys and Miracle. How fucking awesome would that be? Like to see the firsts of everything that they get to do without Chuck’s interference, where they know that it’s their choices, their decisions, their genuine experiences. Their first take-your-pick holiday, birthdays, date, dance, etc. The first time they get to watch a movie, read a book, listen to music and know that yeah, they do like it or no, nope, not anymore, and it’s them. The first time they realize that they are actually fucking amazing at hunting without a divine puppet master pulling the strings. The first time they eat food and poor Dean realizes that Sam weird, unnatural, completely inhuman if you ask him; hatred for bacon was all Sam and not Chuck. “It’s just damn unsettling, Sam. Damn unsettling.”

(I can’t find any information on when 15x19 would have occurred, so I’m going to pretend that it’s before July 4th.) Just think that after watching Jack walk away, seeing life restored on Earth, and getting food/supplies for Miracle, the boys head out in Baby for an open field. There, they just sit and listen to life. They play fetch with their newest addition until the sun goes down, and then they hop up on the hood of the impala and watch the stars. For the first time in their lives, it’s THEIR lives. They’ll deal with all the repercussions of that revelation soon, but for tonight they just sit for hours and watch the night sky. In fact, they stay out there so long that before they know it, the sun is rising, the beer has gotten warm, Miracle is snoring in the driver’s seat (don’t get comfy there, buddy), and their asses are numb from sitting on the hood for like six hours. They gather up their stuff and head home, and the only thing they have to think about right now is what they’ll do for supper tonight. There are no plans. No one is telling them what to do or, worse yet, making them do something. They aren’t pawns on the chessboard anymore. Everything from here on out is them. And that is great and so. So. Fucking. Scary. What if Sam actually does want leave me and back to school? What if Dean honestly does think I’m a freak? How much of our bullshit was our bullshit, and how much was Chuck? And do we, or this city, have enough booze to get us through the upcoming chick-flick-feeling-vomit-pass-the-tissue moments? (“What if I’m actually like just an angry, fuck the world guy Sam? What if I’m really just that person that isn’t good to be around people? What if…what if I’m actually like a secret cuddler or something?” “You’re not, you’re the best person I have ever known, and I promise I’ll let you be the big spoon like 43% of the time.” “You’re a fucking asshole, Sam. Stop laughing. Stop it!”)

The talks do come, and while they are not pleasant and do result in quite a few “I need to go shoot something” moments from Dean and more than a few “I just need to some time Dee. I’m just going to go for a run,” moments from Sam, they are needed. And so. Fucking. Cathartic! And by the time July 4th rolls around, while they are not entirely 100%, they are better than they’ve been in a really long time, maybe forever. They decide to celebrate their independence in style – BBQ, fireworks, sparklers, a fancy little bowtie for the dog (“What, Sam?! They were on sale. Don’t give me that side-eye.”), and a bottle of Bobby’s favourite whisky. While Sam leaves Dean to buy the BBQ, Sam goes and gets the fireworks. He practically buys out the store, but whatever, they haven’t done this in so long, and Dean’s not the only one who remembers that 4th of July in ’96 and this display will kick that displays ass.

They get themselves supplied up, and two days’ time finds them in the field behind the bunker. Steak and hot dogs and veggie burgers cooking on the grill, Sam and Miracle chasing each other and playing tug of war with one of Miracles new toys (“What Dean?! He had already slobbered all over it. I couldn’t just leave it in the store. That would have been rude.”), and Dean just soaking it all in. Nothing has felt this right, and this complete since before Sam left for Stanford. Sure, they miss everyone they lost, and yes, they will “Pour one out for their homies,” (“No one says that anymore Dean.” “You’re just jealously that I’m still hip and cool, Sammy.” “Your Scooby-Doo boxers beg to differ.” “Hey! No dissing the Scoob.”) but God-damn, -hmm Jack-damn? This will take some getting used to- they are content. And that’s not something Dean ever thought he’d feel again. And while Chuck may have been the biggest dick to ever exist in this universe, if Dean gives a little prayer of thanks and drinks a drink to him, well no one has to know. He may have royally screwed over their lives time and time again but without him Dean wouldn’t have Sam. Chuck gave Dean his little brother and while he sure as shit won’t miss him, Dean will be eternally grateful because Sam, his Sammy, his beautiful baby brother, is the best fucking thing in his life and that deserves a toast.

The 4th of July is fantastic, and if Dean got a little teary-eyed over the fireworks, well, Sam doesn’t mention it. He just wrapped his arm around his brother and tugged him to his side. This was just the first of the celebrations they were going to have. While Sam’s life is never going to be apple-pie-2.5-kids-white-picket-fence normal, he had made a promise to himself that he was going to give Dean and him whatever normal he could. And that meant holidays. All of them. But those plans are for another night. For now, all Sam has to focus on is the warmth coming off his brother, who unsurprisingly hasn’t moved from under his arm (Dean being a cuddler is only a secret to him, everyone else knows.*) and the smile on his face. A smile that Sam hadn’t seen since that night in the field 24 years ago.

*(Sam has decided to not to tell Dean that he had been winning money off their friends and family for years betting people that when they had to bunk together Dean would always snuggle up some point during the night. At least he’s not going to tell him yet. However, he really does need to get a copy of those photos from Jody and Donna from the last overnight hunting trip.)

YES TO ALL OF THIS!!!! I’m with you 100% the years between are so much more interesting to me like what did they do all that time??AND THEM BEING FREE AND NAVIGATING THAT IS SUCH A CONCEPT. THIS IS JUST SO WONDERFUL! I WANT TO SEE ALL THE DOMESTICITY, THE FIGHTS THE GOOD AND THE BAD JUST EVERYTHING!!!! I LOVE THEM BEING DOG DADS... I HOPE TO SEE THEM SETTING OFF THE FIREWORKS IN MY DREAMS TONIGHT. JUST...THEM AND MIRACLE THEIR LITTLE FAMILY IS SO SWEET I COULDN’T BE MORE FOND. I LOVE HOW YOU MENTIONED SAM AND DEAN BEING AFRAID THE OTHER WILL LEAVE THATS MY FAVORITE ANGST. AND can I just say I never mind your asks I actually love them very much. This is all so in character I can see it so clearly I’m in awe. I will re-read this over and over. THANK YOU DEAR ANON  :D

[toxicsamruby]

your thoughts are all so interesting!!

i'm an eldest daughter (🙄 not saying there's anything special about that. i just don't have the younger sibling experience) but I've always related to sam and i think it's because for a long time, self-esteem issues defined me. i felt like i was rotten to the core, but never could decide if me being fucked up is my fault and i could change with sheer willpower, just by myself, or if I'm just inherently evil and this is my nature (hurting others, being a failure) and I'll never change. i think a lot of people who had periods in their lives when they felt like monsters will see sam being chosen by lucifer and condemned for his sins and starting to believe he should be condemned and see themselves in sam

also in s1 and 2, sam's resentment towards john and his rage is v much like mine?? :/ it might make sense for the younger sibling who sort of had their older sibling as a shield, who was protected in certain ways, to see the abuse or at least the unfair treatment from a parent and run away and be angry at that parent right up until they die. but it's not a younger sibling specific experience to have with your parents lol all i'm saying is, this is a thing to identify with, no matter your place in the family

so i would say people can relate to sam as much as they relate to dean, it's just easier to see dean as whoever you want to see him. or something

no yeah absolutely that makes a lot of sense and thank u for sharing! that first part about self esteem and monstrosity has always been one of my favorite conflicts integral to sam's character like more broadly the idea about evil being innate and all the social and philosophical baggage that comes with is a really important and interesting one that (imo) is never explored as much as it should be (although i have NEVER seen a show that went so out of its way NOT to explore it). thats also why sam is shafted in the later seasons bc there's no way to genuinely explore him as a character without seriously exploring that idea and to seriously explore that idea pokes a massive hole in the entire premise of the show.

re: what u said abt very early seasons dean isnt able to stick up for himself until after his abuser is already dead whereas sam is vocally angry and acts in ways that are destructive to the family unit. i am of course not passing a value judgement on either of these responses but that anger makes sam a less than perfect victim. which is relatable to many people! but it's also something that a lot of people hold against sam and i think there's something slightly romantic (for lack of a better word) about dean as a perfect victim that fans can then use to project any other ideas or feelings abt victimhood they may have. i dont know! i dont know

[kirschkid]

Stageit Panel with Jensen

Jensen is wishing us a happy sunday!

... so lets just get some of the stuff he said on here:

Jensen wasn’t alone. As he said, he brought a friend, who wasn’t talking much:

Jensen: “You good? You need makeup?”

...

Jensen: “No?!”

...

Jensen: “Happy? ok!”

Jensen about not seeing his fans at the moment:

“I definitely miss that interaction and that connection and those smiling faces.”

About Episode 19:

“I just saw it as well, the final cut, a couple days ago. And i was happy! I thought we looked pretty great getting our asses kicked by god. But that was a fun day of filming and i thought Rob did a fantastic job and all around, Jake being there and Alex and Jared and the whole gang. So, that was a lot of fun. We only have one episode left.. what could possibly happen?!”

Question: "If Sam and Dean have been asked to assist on a case outside the US where would they have done it and where would you’ve liked to film?

Jensen told us that they couldn’t because of the shows budget and that they found a way to avoid it early on by making Dean a terrible flier. Also getting all the weapons and tools on board an airplane “would have been an interesting episode.” But he would have liked to film it,- “anywhere! I think just going somewhere would have been great.”

Question: “What has Supernatural taught you during these 15 years?”

“Well, how to keep a car, older than i am, running. Thats one thing. Cuz she is pretty old.”

“I would say that there is probably not a lot in my life that i have learned and has shaped me more than my experience over the past 15 years. Its been something that i never imagined, in the best way possible. And it is giving me life-long friends and it is giving me life-long lessons, that i will be forever grateful.”

Question: “If you had the chance to do another cross-over episode which show would you wanne be with and why? It could be life-action or animated”

“So yeah, i guess the only cross-over episode we ever did was with scooby doo. I know there was a lot of talk doing a cross-over episode with some of the other shows that runs on the CW, that had kind of a similar theme as supernatural or at least dealt with certain kinds of being, that we dealt with on supernatural but that never really happend. Largely because it is a logistical nightmare.”

“I think it would always be fun to cross-over with the walking dead.”

Question: “If you could go back to season 1 what would you tell yourself?“

“Dont eat so much on camera cuz they gonna do that to you for the next 15 years.“

“... i think i would go back and tell myself exactly what i did tell myself in season 1,- just keep your head down and do the work. And dont try to focus on, you know, if the shows gonna continue or if the show is getting good reviews or what the critics are saying.. keep your head down, do the work, its a good story, its a good character, the fans are gonna find it, so just keep motoring. And thats what i did and here we are,- 15 years later.”  

~~~

Well... this is getting longer than i expected. Maybe i will do more.