#implying that lucifer mostly left him alone in the cage

[anuntamedornitho1d]

maybe i missed something, but did the boys just decide adam was a lost cause and leave him in the cage with michael and lucifer after sam was freed? even when they went back and freed lucifer for a second time?

[lifblogs]

Whumptober 2021

No. 3 - STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT...

taunting | insults | "Who did this to you?"

Fandom: Supernatural Title: A Good Little Slut Rating: Mature Word Count: 1241 Summary: Sam ends up trapped with Lucifer. WARNINGS: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape/Non-con Elements, Beating, Broken Bones, Choking, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse READ ON AO3

“Come on, Sam,” Lucifer taunted. “You know you want to.”

“Never,” Sam argued.

“Oh, really?” he asked, casually leaning against the bars of the warded cage Rowena and Crowley had set up. “Then why are you here?”

“You know why. God—”

“God wants you to do this! He sent you to me! He knows you. He knows me. We don’t just need to do this. We want to! I know you.” Sam was shaking his head, and Lucifer was pointing a finger at him. “I know you, Sam! You can’t deny it. I’ve spent more time with you than anyone else ever has or ever will.” He pressed up against the bars now, as if he wanted to be right on top of him. His hands gripped his prison, and with hungry eyes, and a low voice, he said, “I know you liked it.”

Sam could barely breathe as he stood there amongst the darkness, and the bones, and the flickering flames.

Lighting struck, the following thunder making him flinch and close his eyes.

Sam turned away from him, his shoulders risen, all of his body tense. He didn’t know whether to run or hide, or simply just stay there and hope that if he didn’t move the bad thing would leave him alone.

“I know you did. We both did. Remember how it felt? All that power?”

“Shut up!” Sam cried, whirling on him. “If you know me so well then you know that—that… that all of it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Worse than losing my soul, than losing Dean, than having to survive my own freakin’ childhood! You possessing me was like… it was like…” Sam froze, no words on his tongue that so desperately wanted to argue, or perhaps just wanted to help him scream. How could he argue with a being of true evil? “Just shut up. You’ll never understand.”

Lucifer seemed unfazed by this; in fact, he seemed amused. With a raised eyebrow, hips leaning against the bars now he asked, “I’m sorry, are we talking about the same thing, bunk buddy?”

Sam shuddered, and refused to meet his eyes.

“I made you my bitch, and I can do it again. What you’re feeling right now? That’s denial: denial about how you feel. You want me in you, in all the ways that are possible. So just… say yes, and we can go back to the good life. To how things were.”

“Wow, that’s not rapey at all,” Sam muttered.

Lucifer shrugged. “Rape’s such a strong word. It doesn’t really matter. Only the truth does.”

“So what,” Sam asked, “you think taunting me about—about all the fucked up shit you put me through is going to make me say yes?”

“Just trying to get you to remember the good old days.”

“Fine. You know what I remember?” Sam asked. “I remember you backing me into a corner. I remember you not giving me any other choice but to say yes. And then I couldn’t take it back. That’s not consent. That’s not even close to consent! And then when we were here in Hell, you hurt me! Every second, you hurt me, you used me. You violated me. You tore me apart. So if all of that is your argument, then you’ve got a pretty weak one, and I doubt you could make it better.”

Lucifer sniffed, and ground his teeth together, rolling his jaw around. He stepped back, hands up. “Fine. Fine! If that’s the way you want to play it.”

The fires began to go out.

Sam’s heart stopped, adrenaline shooting through him to the point of making him light-headed, everything tingling.

The sigils and wards were going out.

“What’s happening?” Sam muttered, mostly to himself. He turned back to where Rowena and Crowley were watching, mostly out of earshot, and yelled, “Rowena, what’s happening!”

All she did was answer him with a grin and she took Crowley and left.

“Crowley!” Sam cried, even while knowing betting on the King of Hell to help him was up there with some of his stupidest thoughts and whims. “Crowley!”

He turned, and then he wasn’t outside the cage anymore. He was in it.

Sam rammed back into the bars in the corner, gripping them so he wouldn’t collapse. Lucifer approached.

“You know, the funny thing about this, Sammy, is that… well, there is no God. He went out for a pack of smokes and never came back. Oh no, it wasn’t my dear old dad inside your head.”

He was right in front of him now, and he gripped his neck, one thumb rubbing at his chin. He didn’t choke, just touched. Sam was close to tears, feeling his throat ache, the pinch at the corners of his eyes.

“You see, when the Darkness was released the Cage was damaged. There were cracks, and I slipped through them. And you know what I did?” Sam’s eyes widened in horror, his legs going completely weak and watery. He was hot and cold with dread and apprehension, and sheer terror. No, this couldn’t be happening. No.

“I visited you. Not as much as I wanted to, but as much as I could. So it wasn’t God inside your head, you little slut. It wa always. Just. Me. And now you’re going to let me inside again!”

Sam spat in Lucifer’s face, and Lucifer spat right back.

A punch landed in his gut, knocking all the air out of him. Then, hand tightening around his throat, other hand gripping his shoulder, he threw Sam clear across the cage, where he banged into the bars. His back and legs were numb where they’d met the metal. And then he fell, coughing, feeling like his throat was stuffed up with cotton.

Before he could do much more Lucifer was by him again, and he kicked him dead on in the sternum.

There was a crack, and Sam let out a choked scream.

Lucifer leaned down, grabbing him by his hair, and dragged him to the center of the cage, where he straddled him, holding his head down.

“You will say yes,” he said, his tone absolute.

Sam struggled beneath him despite being near-blind from pain.

“You want to know why?”

“Not… particularly.” Sam gasped out, grimacing and writhing as Lucifer caressed his face with a possessive fondness.

He let out a moan that turned into a cry as Lucifer felt his way softly down his neck, and explored over his pectorals, and then ended the little journey with his hands by pressing down on his sternum. The other hand was reaching low, hiking his shirt up, going under it and feeling at one of his nipples.

Sam tossed his head back as it was squeezed mercilessly and then flicked. His teeth sent bright sparks of pain through his skull from the pressure of him clenching his jaw.

Lucifer’s hand then went down again. Down, down… It pressed right in between his legs, and Sam jolted with fear, even as a hellish and undesired want flooded him.

The Devil kissed him, Sam scrunching up his face in disgust. And then he said, eyes glowing red, “Because you’ve always been my good, little slut.”

He brought his lips to his again, and started working on his belt.

Dean. Help me, Sam thought.

Dean would come, Sam knew. He had to. But he’d be too late.

[nightklok]

Chapters: 1/? 
Fandom: Descendants (Disney Movies) 
Rating: Teen And Up 
Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply 
Relationships: Gil/Jay (Disney: Descendants) 
Characters: Gil (Disney: Descendants), Jay (Disney), Audrey (Disney: Descendants), Carlos de Vil, Celia Facilier, Dizzy Tremaine, Harry Hook, Uma (Disney) 
Additional Tags: Volunteering at an animal shelter, Fluff, Light Angst, Implied abuse, Implied animal abuse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added 
Summary: (¼ of an anon’s request of Jay getting Gil a pet. After a year of traveling around the world and settling down in Auradon, Jay and Gil decide to volunteer at an animal shelter. A particular cat catches Gil’s eyes. Chaos ensues.

[wincestbigbang]

2017 Master Post

Prompt 1: The Spaceship Impala Artist: amberdreams Author: samsexualdeancurious Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Unrelated Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Unrelated Winchesters, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Bottom Dean, Bottom Sam, Top Dean, Top Sam, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Android Castiel (Supernatural), Sex in Space, Alternate Universe - Passengers (2016), This is Passengers with a better ending, Near Death Experiences Summary: Dean Winchester is an engineer in hibernation aboard the starship Impala, journeying alongside five thousand other passengers to a new beginning. When his pod malfunctions, he wakes up ninety years too early. Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 2: The Winchester House Rules Artist: emmatheslayer Author: puckity Other Pairing(s): Implied Sam/Jess, Implied Dean/OMC, Sam/Dean/OFC Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: N/A Summary: There are rules—there have to be rules—otherwise Sam and Dean wouldn’t make it out of this world in one piece. An exploration of tropes, kinks, and meant-to-be through the Winchester life cycle(s). Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 3: Armageddon Game Artist: dreamsfromthebunker / hit_the_books Author: alulaspeaks Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Canon-typical Violence Summary: A year ago Dean watched Sam walk away from the life. A few months later Sam dropped off the radar completely, his last words to Dean a scribbled note. I just need some time. Don’t look for me. I’ll call if I need you. Now it’s 2009 and Dean finds Sam locked in a warded cell guarded by the Campbells. They say he’s running with demons, that they call him the Boy King. They say Sam’s up to something big. Dean and Bobby confront a caged Sam who is cold, and distant, and far too knowing. While everyone tries to tell Dean that the brother he knew is gone, Dean is determined to find the truth. Along the way he discovers angels, broken seals, a runaway apocalypse, and visions of another timeline that burned up his brother’s brain. Now all Dean has to do is figure out what Sam’s endgame is and how to stop it, or risk losing Sam forever. Art: Tumblr Story: Ao3 Prompt 5: Synecdoche Artist: apataeavaca Author: samdeanddlyumptious Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: ABO, heat, knotting, brief consent concern Summary: The girls are on their way to meet their dad for a hunt when a heat hits D. Lots of fluff and sisterly teasing and passionate sex, with some angst and whump at the beginning to keep things interesting. (This is a timestamp, but can stand alone.) Art: Tumblr Story: Ao3 Prompt 6: A Shadow of What Should Be Artist: fridayblues Author: wetsammywinchester Rating: PG-13 Warnings/Spoilers: None, Stanford angst, hallucinations Summary: Sam wakes up in a strange bed, a strange apartment, and living in domestic bliss with Dean and a dog named Mothra. Obviously, either he’s lost his mind or all of this is a dream. Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 7: My Anchor Artist: kuwlshadow Author: backrose_17 Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Top Dean, bottom Sam, hurt Sam, Hallcuifer tormenting Sam Summary: Death was the ending that endverse Dean had been waiting for what he got was anything but that. Dean finds himself in a rundown motel with someone he thought he would never see again his Sam. Only this Sam is broken tormented by visions of Lucifer and his Dean missing he is on the edge. Two broken souls each missing their other half find a peace and sense of belonging to one another. A love story between Endverse!Dean and pre-season 8!Sam. Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 8: Howls In My Bones Artist: azziria Author: weefaol Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Underage, Top Dean, Bottom Sam, Angst, First Time Summary: When John gets a call to investigate a series of grisly animal killings, he drops Sam and Dean at an abandoned cabin two towns over. The boys find ways to keep busy — playing cards, watching movies, chopping wood — but with a howling winter storm on the way, there’s nowhere for Sam to hide his illicit feelings for his older brother. As the lure of desire threatens to devour him, Sam must learn to face the wolves that lurk outside and the monsters within. Art: Ao3 Story: Ao3 Prompt 9: Bolide Artist: weakspots Author: laughablelament Other Pairing(s): Sam/Dean/Jess Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: mild underage, non-con, early S12 Summary: A run-in with witches leaves Sam in a supernatural coma. Dean must navigate the broken, shifting landscape of his soul to get him back. Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 10: Doesn't Matter What I Remember Artist: stargazingchola Author: smalltrolven Rating: R Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for episode 12.11,"Regarding Dean" Summary: Maybe it’s because they both almost lost each other again. That’s part of what makes Dean do it, but mostly it’s the essay he read in a magazine in the laundromat. Sometimes the right words find you just when you need to read them. Art: Tumblr Story: LiveJournal | Ao3 Prompt 11: Perfect, Twisted, Bloody Family Author: justanothersaltandburn Artist: emmatheslayer Rating: NC-17 Other Pairing(s): Dean/Ketch, Dean/Ketch/Sam Warnings/Spoilers: sibling incest, serial killer AU, police detective!Sam, butcher!Dean, serial killer!Dean, bounty hunter!Ketch, serial killer!Ketch, murder boyfriends, drunk sex, gore, violence, torture, murders, desecration of corpse, oral sex, anal sex, rough sex, bottom!Sam, switch!Dean, top!Ketch, threesome (M/M/M), bareback, coming untouched, dirty talk, polyamory Summary: Dean has a great life. He’s got amazing boyfriend and a successful business, lots of friends, and a smart detective for a brother. They have awesome dinners at each other’s houses, poker nights, and a relationship most siblings would envy. Dean also has a deep, secret lust he’s been harboring for said little brother. That, and the occasional murder of a pimp or drug dealer, just to keep things interesting. C’est la vie. Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 12: That Time Dean Came to Stanford Artist: tx_devilorangel Author: runedgirl Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Pre Series, First Time Summary: Sam goes to Stanford carrying a secret about his feelings for his brother. Seven months later, everyone’s talking about the good looking guy with the gorgeous ’67 Impala holding court at the local bar. What sparks will fly when Sam sees Dean again? Art: LiveJournal | Ao3 Story: LiveJournal Prompt 13: Hold My Hand Artist: nisaki Author: meohmywhyohwhy Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Bottom Dean, Bottom Sam, Top Dean, Top Sam, Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Established Relationship, First Time Fic Summary: Sam isn’t sure he can do this anymore–he can’t keep being Dean’s dirty little secret. A case in Missouri brings things to a head, while memories from the summer this all began keep bubbling to the surface. Art: LiveJournal | Tumblr Story: Ao3 Prompt 14: Reckless In Love Artist: loracine Author: paperann Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Explicit Sexual Content Summary: When Dean fought his way through the soil to an Earth he never thought he’d see again, he didn’t care how he escaped Hell. The only thing on his mind was seeing Sammy. It turned out to be harder than he thought, but with the aid of Bobby they found him: post-party, having a fuckin’ blast with some half-naked chick in a motel room. It was almost a punch to the gut when she asked the million dollar question—“if they were together” and Sam couldn’t say “they’re brothers” fast enough. Of friggin course, they never flaunted ‘it’, but Sam was acting cagey. Like he genuinely meant it. Dean knew damn well his brains hadn’t scrambled. He knew he hadn’t imagined Sam’s urgent confession the moment his one-year-left Crossroad’s Contract was revealed. And…his own astonishment, upon discovery, because Dean felt the same way. If there was helluva way to go out? God, it’d be that year—every day (every second) was lived with passion, freedom and without regret. But most important: they lived fearlessly with each other. Had Sam’s mind changed after Dean died? Was he humoring the last wishes of a dying man? Either way, if Sam didn’t feel the same anymore…maybe Dean should have stayed in the pit. Art: LiveJournal Story: Ao3 Prompt 15: The Golden State Artist: bluefire986 Author: soy_em Other Pairing(s): Sam Winchester/OMC Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: Implied/Referenced Rape, /Non-con, Abusive Relationships, Domestic Violence, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Sam and Dean are still hunters, Hurt Sam Winchester, Getting Together, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence Summary: A year after Sam leaves for Stanford, the Reckoning happens. Angels and demons descend to earth and destroy much of the planet in an endless war. Dean survives, living with Bobby in the survivor city of Sioux Falls, but he never forgets his missing little brother. Finally, after the world has stabilized a little, he decides it’s time to undertake the dangerous trip to California and try to find Sam. He finds his little brother in a settlement on the Californian coast, but all is not well with Sam, who is in an abusive relationship with the Boss, the settlement’s shady leader. Dean has to rescue Sam so that they can rebuild their lives in the safety of Sioux Falls, but the Boss is not going to let Sam leave easily. And Dean’s not even sure that Sam wants to leave... Canon divergent from the beginning: in this world, Sam and Dean are the characters we know, and grow up in hunting monsters with John, but are not the vessels. Art: LiveJournal | Ao3 Story: Ao3 Prompt 16: Never bet against a Winchester, even if you are a Winchester. Artist: stormbrite Author: milly_gal Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Spoilers: No Spoilers, Cross Dressing, Sex Depravation, CRACK. Summary: The lack of sex is driving both Sam and Dean crazy, but neither brother will admit defeat and beg. What happens when you place a wager on your willpower and then realise you have none? Art: LiveJournal | Ao3 Story: LiveJournal | Ao3

[words-writ-in-starlight]

So your rant on Supernatural? Also I fell in love with the story you're talking about and basically want to know more. Sorry.

My buddy, you have made An Error, but let’s do this shit.  To any SPN fans who have wound up herethrough Ye Olde Search Function, I encourage you to stop reading now.

I watched up to about halfway through Season Five before Idecided that I could Do It Better (I think this is the novel you’re talkingabout, anon, unless it’s Earth is where the trouble comes from), and draggedmyself up to about halfway through Season Seven before I packed it in and gaveup, resigned that the parts of the show I loved were about four to five seasonsdead.  So like that’s the information I’mworking on here.

So, obviously, lots of people have lots of legitimatecomplaints about Supernatural,including treatment of queer characters, characters of color, and women, aswell as their fairly rampant history of queerbaiting.  And lots of people have covered this in morecompetent detail than I could ever manage, so like google “sexism in Supernatural” or something and you cando your own reading there.  Hell, if youwant to do it the lazy way, you can knock out two of the above with this onearticle in friendly, easy-to-read Buzzfeed format.  To the nominal credit of the people involved,I will add that the cast seems acutely aware of these problems and finds itdistasteful, HOWEVER the problems persist and therefore that credit is minimal.  Anyway. These things are covered much more thoroughly by many other people whoare far more cogent than I could hope to be, so I’m going to leave those alone.

Instead, my rant is mostly summed up as “YOU CALL THIS SHITSTORYTELLING.”

So there are four basic parts to this rant, or rather fourbasic flaws that form the fundamentally weak foundation of Supernatural as a narrative.

Failure to commit to a single cohesive narrativearc, also known as “SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OFTHOSE” syndrome

The persistent and erroneous belief thatcharacter death = character development and narrative progression

Inability to commit to a major change ofparadigm, also known as out and out narrative cowardice, which I personallycall “flinching during Plot Roulette”

Total incapacity to put their characterizationwhere their script is regarding the Winchester brothers and the other major players

*cracks knuckles*

POINT THE FIRST

Right, so first it’s the story of Sam having strange powersand their dad being MIA, which segues pretty naturally into the story of Sampotentially being the Antichrist, and then there’s Dean’s sacrifice of his soul,which at very least holds up even ifit sort of acts like the previous plotline about their dad’s soul didn’t happen.  Upuntil this point, I was pretty comfy.  Ihad some complaints covered below, but I was copacetic.  Season Three is largely about getting rid ofthe contract on Dean’s soul.  Okay, seemslegit, you have a tangible problem with potentially serious consequences.  Now, having had not one but TWO seasons whichwere easily summed up with ‘so Sam is mebbe the Antichrist or at very leastAntichrist-adjacent,’ I made what I thought was a logical leap and went “well,gee, if I was mebbe at the very leastAntichrist-adjacent, I would leverage the fuck out of that to do somethingabout my apparently beloved brother’s soul.” Even when they didn’t go withthat (news flash: I wrote that novel mydamn self and amazingly it worked out 100x better, narratively speaking,because it’s fucking logical), I wasstill kind of like “gosh sure is a good thing they remembered that they spenttwo entire seasons building up to Sam mebbe being Antichrist-adjacent.”  And there’s the whole drama with Ruby which Ijust…am very uncomfortable with for a lot of reasons, not least of which isthat it’s a very thinly veiled endeavor to rehash the same ‘Sam being afraid oflosing touch with humanity’ plotline as Seasons One and Two but without havingto worry about really altering the paradigm, see Point The Third, and alsobecause it’s really intensely literal about the concept of having a femalecharacter exclusively as a prop for consumption.  And Castiel shows up and a thousand ships arelaunched, blah blah blah, and then after the end of Season Four…we never hearfrom Sam’s powers again for more than a couple lines.  

As of about Season Four, the focus of the show abandons Samand shifts tangibly onto Dean, who is now The Interesting Character because hehas Been Through Hell (literally). Furthermore, we are now given Dean’s POV on any quandry between him andSam, which is a personal complaint because I honestly just think it’ssloppy.  Season Four is mostly dealingwith angels being assholes, which is really not as original as SPN likes tothink (Good Omens did it first and Good Omens did it better, get out of myface), plus Dean being the Righteous Man and the question of the oncomingApocalypse (sure is interesting how we spent two seasons building up to Sambeing Antichrist-adjacent).  The Apocalypseis less oncoming and implied to be more ongoing by the end of Season Four.  So Lucifer escapes and Season Five is prettymuch About That, involving the fairly unhelpful description that Dean isMichael’s ‘sword’ and they’re the true vessels of Michael and Lucifer,culminating in Sam being locked in the Cage because presumably someone realizedthat, hey, we have two maincharacters and we must make them both Interesting Characters.  Season Six is 50% about finding Sam’s souland figuring out how he got out of the Cage (sure would be helpful if we’dspent two seasons building up to Sam having inhuman powers and beingAntichrist-adjacent) and 50% a wickedinexplicable plot about the Mother-of-All and some kind of fucking jigsawmonsters and…Alpha monsters?  But thatnever really gets explained in a pertinent way except that they needed to anteup because they beat the Devil at theend of Season Five.  Oh, and a bonus 50% of some bullshit withCastiel and Crowley and ~Scheming~.  Andthen Castiel gets possessed by Leviathans (?) from Purgatory, which he openedwith Crowley (??) who he then betrayed (???), and Castiel decides He’s God Nowand also dies (????), and somehow these metaphysical more-powerful-than-angelsbadder-than-Lucifer things are sensitive to fuckingBorax.  

And it was at this point that I stopped the show in themiddle of a fight scene like 1/3 through Season Seven and actually said outloud “Gosh it’s almost like you needsomeone who’s Antichrist-adjacent to help you out here” before turning off the TV. And then I stopped watching and got better taste in TV and blew throughwriting a 250K novel in 18 months of being a full-time student because I waspowered by pure bitter spite.

Now, here are the two major things that matter about thiswhole deal.  First of all, the firstplotline is the most reliably coherent, although some degree of cogence lastedup until about Season Five—we understand why Lucifer wants out of Hell, weunderstand to some extent why Dean and Sam matter on the cosmic scale, we getpretty bored of watching Castiel do heel-face and face-heel turns like he’s ona Lazy Susan but like logistically it all makes a reasonable degree of sense.  That being said, the whole plotline ofSeasons Four onward would make a lot moresense, would it not, if they remembered that they’d spent a good solid twoseasons and change (Season Three, intermittent, Season Four, major) designingan Antichrist-like character who is now the last survivor of that batch ofexperiments.  Then, instead of having Samand Dean just be Inexplicably Special, you have Dean (who can still be theRighteous Man!) acting as the foil for Sam being forced into increasingly darkchoices, and Sam who’s a viable candidate for Lucifer-puppet because he’s partdemon.  Or, alternatively, Sam whomaintains his stance as the gentler of the two despite his demon blood, which would add a lot more depth to Supernatural’s fanatical hardon for theAngelic Asshole trope.  Honestly Irewrote the entirety of this show one time, predicated on the assumption thatthey actually went with the idea of Sam as the Boy King, and I think it wouldbe much less haphazard.  (Basically: hey,what if Sam actually used his status to strong-arm Dean’s deal into beingdissolved, as it’s implied that he’s totally capable of doing that and totallywilling to sacrifice his own humanity for his brother, and then Heaven sentCastiel to kill Sam, which would add a fuckton of legitimacy to Castiel’s LazySusan and Dean’s antagonism.  But no. Instead there’s monsters whose only vulnerability is fucking Borax.)

Second, and far more critical, is the total failure tocommit to a single plotline.  Okay, Sam’sstatus as the possible Boy King is a major plot point for two seasons, not somuch for the third season (he literally…a demon straight up tells Sam that he could have an army if he took up hisposition and it never occurs to himthat he could use that to help Dean), more so in the fourth season, and then itnever comes up again.  Even when it is unarguably pertinent to thesituation—Lucifer!  Fucking Luciferpossesses Sam and drags him to Hell and he comes back soulless and yet none of the writers ever, not once, went “Gosh, maybe we should remember those seasonswe spent developing Sam into sort of the Antichrist?  Maybe including at least a minor nod to thator somehow wrapping up the plotline would help cohere our current trainwreck ofa plotline?”  Nope, it’s just left as aloose thread, flapping in the breeze with all the subtlety of a limp dick.  It’s like Supernaturalis actually a Frankenshow of two shows with the same characters but totallyunrelated plotlines—maybe when Lucifer escapes he shunts them all sideways intoan alternate universe and there’s another show somewhere with a Dean whosebrother has never been even a little bit demonic and died through normal huntershenanigans suddenly having to deal with Sam the possible Antichrist, andthat’s the show that an alternate me is still watching.

And this is an ongoing problem.  Sam’s powers are just the major point that Ialways latch onto, because, first, I always think the phenomenon of “well fuckme sideways I might be obligated to end the world and ain’t that a messy thing”is pretty great (I really, reallylike Hellboy), and second, IT’S FOURSEASONS OF WORK YOU CAN’T JUST ABANDON IT.  But seriously.  Just. Throw a dart, you’ll hit a loose end. Because Supernatural is theequivalent of that one fucker we all hate in sitcoms—you know, the guy who’sdating a great girl he totally doesn’t deserve, but he can’t ~commit~ sothere’s all this ongoing Drama™.  Exceptthat in Supernatural, not only canthey not commit, they accidentally defeated their biggest gun—the literal Devil—less than halfwaythrough their series!  Whoops!  Quick, someone call up Satan’s cousin twiceremoved who’s even worse and more evil than he is!  And sensitive to Borax!  

No, no, I’m kidding. We all know that Satan’s cousin twice removed, who’s even worse and moreevil than he is, is actually named Metatron.

Fuckin’ Supernatural.

POINT THE SECOND

I know this is going to come as a shock, but rampantcharacter death does not actuallyqualify as a legitimate way to progress your narrative or develop yourcharacters.  In order, the major players(nominally on the Winchesters’ side) who die or seem to die in the first fiveseasons are Sam’s girlfriend, John Winchester, Ash, Sam, Bela, Dean, (Deanseveral times in Mystery Spot), Ruby,Castiel, Jo, Ellen, Sam, Anna, Sam, Dean, Gabriel, Castiel, Bobby, and sort of Sam with the whole Cagething.  And those are just the peoplewith arcs that extend over more than a season (except for Sam’sgirlfriend).  It’s entirely possible,even probable, that I missed some.  Thatdoes not include the one- ortwo-episode characters whose deaths we’re supposed to observe as emotionallywringing, nor does it include the frankly vast numbers of civiliancasualties.  So, for the ease of reading,we’re going to divide ‘character death’ into ‘reversible character death,’which is largely the prerogative of the primary trio, and ‘permanent characterdeath,’ and we’re going to talk about why there are real problems with the way Supernatural treats both of them.

First of all, the problems with reversible character deathare obvious—there are no fucking stakes! Like, arguably the stakes are ‘the whole world,’ but obviously not (seePoint The Third), so practically speaking the stakes should be life or death, because the show tells you that the stakes are life or death.  Now, sometimes resurrection is an importantplot point, I get that, in my spite novel there is, in fact, aresurrection.  But here’s the thing.  Either you have to straight up establish arevolving door policy and change your stakes (example: the show Forever, where the point is that the MCis immortal and would very much like to not be immortal anymore), or you can only use that resurrection once.  You use it once, and you still get theemotional gut punch of “Oh God, they’re dead”and the flood of relief when it proves that they’re not dead after all.  You use it more than that, and the audiencebecomes complacent that, well, you won’t reallykill them.  By the time you’re on a levelwith Supernatural, it just…doesn’tmatter?  A major character dies, but youraudience has already hit compassion fatigue because of the death rate, whichI’m about to cover, so there’s not really any oomph to it.

The problems with permanent character death aresignificantly different.  Now, I myselfam a Happy Ending person (like…the world sucks …let me have my happy fiction),but even I recognize that a certain percentage of the characters in a story orshow like this one are basically just cannon fodder (it would be great if itwasn’t so consistently the women, POC, orLGBT folks, but whatever).  Theproblem is that it’s constant.  And not just “well that person’s a corpsebecause that’s what vampires do to people” or “some kid pissed off the localspirit and now they’re six feet under,” it would be totally fine and reasonableif that situation was an every episode thing (it…kind of is, that’s kind of thepoint).  But every few episodes, we’reexpected to get attached to a one-off character and then be deeply affectedwhen they die.  Take, say, Season Three:you have the hunters Isaac and Tamara in the first episode, Casey and FatherGil in the fourth episode (some flexibility as they’re demons, but we’resupposed to be shocked and horrified that Sam kills them both), Callie in thefifth episode, Gordon in the seventh episode (again, we’re supposed to behorrorstricken that Sam kills him, even though it’s clearly self-defense), all the civilians in the twelfthepisode, Corbett in the thirteenth episode, and finally Bela, who admittedlyhas had some nominal presence for a while. This does not include any Winchester trauma, which you’re always supposed to be deeply affectedby.  I’m sorry, but after a season or twoof being expected to work up that kind of emotional upset between five and tentimes over the course of thirteen to twenty episodes, your audience is going toburn out and start to lose emotional engagement.  

So, basic summary: the Anyone Can Die trope does not playwell with main characters who are on a Revolving Door of Death, because itmeans that minor characters don’t matter because Anyone Can Die, while majordamage or trauma to the main characters doesn’t matter either because they’reon a Revolving Door.  You can’t kill yourmain characters once (or more!) a season and expect people to still…worry aboutthem.

On a more strictly structural note, using character death asthe primary way to drive character development is just fucking lazy.  It’s just an indicator that the writers don’tactually know how to progress their character development in any other way,which is a major problem because, since they only develop the charactersthrough the deaths of others, they have to hit the Personality Reset buttonfairly regularly to make it look like things are actually happening to thepeople who are supposed to be developing. Which, in case you were curious, is why you feel that overwhelming senseof déjà vu when the Winchesters getinto a huge blowout fight about ‘don’t sacrifice yourself’ in about thethird-to-last episode, followed by one of them sneaking out to sacrificethemselves, followed by the other onebeing angry about it.  It’s the samegoddamn script, it’s just that Sam’s hair is probably longer and Dean isprobably scruffier.  Furthermore, thefixation on developing characters with the deaths of others means thatbasically every character is fair game but NO ONE’S DEATH HOLDS MEANING,because of the above, which means that SPN’s ‘character development’ turns intothis recursive self-congratulating circlejerk of killing someone, developingSam and Dean accordingly, and then somehow regressing them so that the writerscan do it over again and be proud of themselves for Such Dynamic Characters,Much Develop, So Change, Wow.

And I feel like the reasons that character death =/=narrative progression should be pretty clear from the rest of this rant, butbasically if you’re killing someone to progress your plot, it needs to be asolveable death (emotional payoff is what makes walking away from a booksatisfying, such as catching a murderer) or a terrible tragedy that drives thecharacters to great acts or both.  Supernatural is basically a horror/fantasymurder mystery, so it would be fine if they stuck with that model, but theykeep trying to sell the deaths of any number of major players and many many minor players as this greatand terrible tragedy that’s pushing the Winchesters forward.  And like, I’m sorry, but if you commit withinthe first episode to a dead mother anda dead girlfriend and a missingpotentially dead father, you’ve already pretty well maxed out your terribletragedies.  Find a different motivator,or else it looks like your characters just leave huge amounts of collateraldamage and refuse to take responsibility. Or, alternatively, it looks like the individual deaths don’t matter toyour main characters, which is NOT going to help with making your audience giveeven a single fractional fuck.

TL;DR: Character death is a powerful tool that rapidly losesits weight and import if you overuse it, and can make your audiencedisinterested and emotionally detached if they’re expected to care every time.  Slow your motherfucking roll, stick to aMAXIMUM of one resurrection per character unless their immortality is anexplicitly discussed plot point (at which point their deaths need to not mattermuch anymore), and remember that you can progress your plot in literally anyother way before you go for a shock-value death.

POINT THE THIRD

Don’t be a little bitch in your writing.  Honestly it’s that simple.  I’m gonna get into it some more, but that’sthe gist of it.  If you already know whatI mean, great, skip to the next point, because the TL;DR is “don’t be aninfant.”

This is something that plenty of shows are guilty of(Merlin, anyone?), but SPN is terrifiedof actually changing the paradigm.  Theshow must always include a certainlist of things:

The Winchesters in the Impala, which, sure, I’llgrant you that

A home base, also totally reasonable

Monsters to fight, fair enough

A masquerade (meaning ‘civilians do not knowabout magic’), which should honestly have broken down after, like, Season Twowhen they accidentally release massive numbers of demons into the world

A world to have the show happening in, which isa problem since they started theApocalypse in Season Four

Now…listen.

It’s fine, even necessary, to have some fixed points in anarrative.  It offers a way to anchoryour characters against the ongoing changes that the plot demands.  That, however, is very different from beingtoo much of a coward to alter the paradigm of your story when the major driving force is a change ofparadigm.

The first major change of paradigm they cop out on is Sam’spowers.  If Sam was the Boy King, thishypothetically Antichrist-esque position in the cosmic dichotomy, that would radically alter the dynamic.  Sam would automatically be the most powerfulbeing in any given room unless he was in a room with a respectably high-rankedangel or demon, and he would certainly be able to go toe-to-toe with most oftheir targets on their own terms. Telekinesis is an exceptionally goodpower, guys, like, as powers go—even disregarding his position in thehierarchy, Sam would be pretty strong in his own right.  Which, I’d like to point out, can be a reallythrilling change to a narrative, because it means that you have this additionallayer of ‘well, how do we deal with the fact that Sam doesn’t like being this strong, how do we dealwith the way demons and monsters have started to view him as more us than them’ and would give a much more legitimate basis for the questionof humanity that they shoehorn in later with the Ruby plotline.  Buffyhas its flaws, but at least it frequently brings up ‘hey, Buffy might be ostensiblyhuman, but she operates on the level of her enemies more than on the level ofher allies’ as an issue that she thinks about. But they don’t do that in Supernatural,they bail completely on the Sam plotline because they panic about theimplications of having such a powerful character.  And then they bring in fucking Castiel likethat’s not exactly the same problemcloaked in ‘well, noninterference.’  Like, please, that ship has fucking sailed,choke down your anxiety and figure out how the rules of your powerful characterwork, and then let them be powerful. It’s gonna be okay.  Deepbreaths.  If you make an OP character,that’s fine, you just have toactually deal with it rather than having their powers be an asspull every timethe main characters are in Real Trouble (*angry sigh* Merlin).

The second one they balk at is the unveiling of thesupernatural world and oh my God it is constant.  But let’s deal with the biggest and mostimprobable of these here: Season GoddamnTwo, where they bust open the doors of Hell and unleash some thousands ofdemons into the world.  Like, is that asmany demons as it could be, in comparison to your six to seven billionhumans?  No.  But it’s still a huge population and is implied to be accompanied by a huge uptickin various other supernatural happenings and is furthermore really visible.  The Devil’s Trap is suggested to pass throughat least a couple towns and it’s a big flashy event, so like…sure, maybe peoplewrite it off as swamp gas or what have you, but sooner or later people who havehad demons exorcised or seen some vampire/werewolf/etc shenanigans and lived totell about it are going to start running into each other.  They start hearing people say “it’s likeshe’s a totally different person” and they take that seriously rather thanwriting it off.  They were maybe saved bya hunter who confirmed that the supernatural exists and they maybe tell thatperson that, hey, something like that happened to them, maybe they could cometake a look around.  Maybe they couldcall the person who helped them out.  Andyou end up with this fucking Ponzi scheme of The Great Truth, where each personwho’s in the know finds one or two more people who’ve seen evidence and brings them into the loop, and then they find one or two more people who’veseen evidence.  And for every personwho’s determined to call it bullshit or think they’re insane, you’re going toget one who saw that person turn intoa hairy monster and murder someone, or who waspossessed by a demon, or who witnessedblack smoke merge with their spouse and turn them into a killer.  So you get this whole rickety network ofamateurs who’ve…kind of learned the thing. And like any Ponzi scheme, sooner or later it collapses.

Basically the point is: there is a limit to the parts permillion of The Great Truth that can be present before that shit becomes commonknowledge.  Look at any availablegovernment conspiracy for confirmation. The more people you tell, the looser the rules of ‘secret’ become, so ifyou have a big flashy visible disaster that involves drastically increasing the number of uninitiated civilians who areaware of The Great Truth…you’d better be ready to deal with that.  What I’m saying here is that by Season Seven,you’ve not only had this whole demon situation for a while, and increased those numbers several times with variousdisasters, but you’ve also had at least one big flashy disaster in a city.  So the Winchesters should pretty much be ableto walk into a given town and wander into the church or the bar or somethingand go “So, I heard there’ve been some weird murders” and have at least oneperson come up to them later and be like “Yeah it’s a ghost here’s all theinformation but I have no idea how to get rid of them.”  And when the Winchesters go *gasp* “How do you know The Thing” theperson should look at them like a fucking moron and go “It literally rainedblood last year, everyone in this time zone knows The Thing and also it’sevident that the end is pretty seriously nigh, so get on that.”  Commit to your big flashy disasters, youcowards, or at least have the decency to make it an ongoing Sunnydale joke.

Far more crucial is the fact that they bail on the end ofthe world…let’s see.  End of Season Fouris when the Apocalypse properly gets underway, so they balk at the end ofSeason Five (Lucifer and the Cage), end of Season Six (Mother of All andPurgatory), and like minimum once bythe middle of Season Seven (Godstiel) as well as at the end of Season Seven (Leviathans, I am now past where I kept watching),end of Season Eight (Metatron, angel tablets, falling angels), presumably endof Season Nine from what I understand of the summaries online (some…war onHeaven nonsense), and based on the trend I’m guessing that Seasons Ten throughThirteen keep to the model, do youunderstand my point here.  Thesearen’t even all the near-Apocalypses that they avert.  Off the cuff, I can think of the Croatoanvirus (…twice?  Three times?), as well asthree out of four Horsemen within episodes of each other.  They’re probably averting the Very Seriousand Catastrophic End of Days two or three times a season by Season Five, and that number only goes up.  This is very similar to the character deaththing: quite simply, if the audience is expected to get that worked up multipletimes a season, and brace for thatkind of disaster multiple times a season,you are inevitably going to bore them.  Yourplot has to be intensely recursive sothat you can ‘reset’ and avoid a new Apocalypse the next season, which getsboring, because it feels like you’ve been there before, similar to how usingcharacter death to advance character development demands that you hit thePersonality Reset button on the regular.

Furthermore, repeating the same level of disaster over and over and OVER again means that it starts to lack emotional weight, and yourcharacters start to seem really, really stupid if they don’t start to treatthings accordingly.  One of the things Ithought of constantly during thelast, say, season and a half that I watched of Supernatural was a quote from Buffy,specifically from Riley who I usually very much dislike but who NAILED thisparticular thing.  “When I saw you stopthe world from, you know, ending, I just assumed that was a big week for you.It turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural ofapocalypse.”  And that’s the running jokein Buffy!  That they literallydeal with an Apocalypse every few episodes, and they lampshade it, and thecharacters respond accordingly—Buffy and the Scooby gang start to act cavalier,almost unimpressed, about each new disaster. Like “well, we saved the world, I say we party.”  That’s a direct quote from Buffy (IN SEASON ONE NO LESS), and Supernatural could stand to take a pageout of their book with that one.  BySeason Seven, the Winchesters seem like they have somehow missed out on thelast decade of their own lives because they always act so shocked and horrifiedthat somehow someone could try to endthe world.  Like!  Yes, yes they could and yes they would,welcome to the party boys!  Please try toget in touch with your own history on this subject!

So the highlights here are: don’t be a fucking baby aboutyour writing.  If you’re writing toward abig paradigm shift, you need to recognize that you’re playing Plot RussianRoulette, and you have to pull the trigger. Change the paradigm of your narrative and deal with the fallout like afucking adult, you tepid fools, you limp-necked cowards, you ink-stainedwalnuts.

POINT THE FOURTH

Listen very carefully. Do you hear that?  It’s the soundof the Winchesters promising eternal brotherly devotion and saying things like“you’re my brother, man” and vowing to always have each other’s backs.  

Now wait a moment longer, and listen very carefully.  Do you hear that?  It’s the inevitablesound of the Winchesters stabbing each other in the back and/or throwing eachother to the wolves because they’re feeling pissy, and then getting a whole(static! See Point The Second!) “character arc” about how distraught they are.

All right, y’all, I don’t have siblings so maybe I’m wrong, but I do write a lot and I think I’m right, and you should probably put yourcharacterization where your script is. If your primary relationship that you expect people to care about isfraternal devotion, you should maybe nothave those people cheerfully feed each other into metaphoricalwoodchippers.  Like.  Okay, maybe you get ONE chance to have adramatic falling out.  ONE.  And then when they repair the relationship,they need to actually sort their shit out and not keep having the exact same dramatic falling out because thatshit gets boring and is a sign of lazy writing and—shocker!—lack of character development.  Next time they fight, it has to be aboutsomething demonstrably different, notjust the same issue with a new set of tits (c’mon y’all, this is Supernatural, it’s always a set oftits).

Let’s do a real fast recap. There’s a one episode plot in Season One about the two of them fallingout over the question of whether they should follow their father’s orders.  Dean spends a good percentage of Season Twotaking his guilt over their dad’s death out on Sam, but we’ll give a passbecause they explicitly acknowledge it and take steps to resolve theproblem.  A major plotline develops inSeason Two that hunters have started trying to kill Sam, and Dean reliably,consistently has his back.  Props.  Season Three is kind of a mess (if you have a big visible semi-Apocalypseyou should probably deal with it, see Point The Third), but whatever.  Pertinently, Dean’s big ongoing concern isthat Sam isn’t acting like himself, because he’s being much more ruthless(something Dean has consistently told him to do), while Sam’s ongoing concernis that Dean is being reckless (justified, he has a death sentence onhim).  Season Four is when things startto break down.  Castiel shows up and Deanresponds with aggression, Sam gets his rehashed ‘humanity’ plotline with Ruby,there are a lot of really incredibly poor decisions made and a lot of lies toldwith minimal regard for the trouble that’s gotten them into before (@Sam).  There’s a fight that includes Dean callingSam a monster, which has been canonically identified as the thing Sam is mostafraid of, and acting like this whole demon blood thing is a terribletremendous shock, despite the fact that Dean…knew and totally failed to reactin any way except to penalize Sam (for trying to save him!  Much like Dean sold his soul for Sam!  And got pissy about Sam being pissed offabout!).  Cue Lucifer.  Apocalypse, possession, Horsemen, etc, etc,more Lazy Susan Castiel, infighting about who should say yes to what in orderto save whom, whatever.  

And then Sam apparently dies in the Cage and Dean…goes offto get a nice white picket fence? Um…this is not consistent with the characterization of a dude who soldhis soul to resurrect Sam literally just three years ago.  Their falling out has never been intenseenough nor consistent enough to justify this. Even if you say that Dean’s honoring his brother’s final wishes by nottrying to resurrect Sam or anything, Dean should be drinking himself to deathor something similarly dramatic, because allthe drama in this show comes from the relationship between the Winchesterbrothers.  

Basically, here’s the problem: the show spends a lot of time and effort on telling youthat the Winchesters would die for each other. And while they do use that trope a lot (John dies for Dean, who dies forSam, who sacrifices his humanity for Dean, who risks his life for Sam, whojumps into the Cage for Dean…), they seem to have forgotten that, generally,you’re only willing to die for people who you actually like.  Like, peopleto whom you are genuinely emotionally attached,not just people who are your family because Blood Is Thicker or whateverbullshit you’re trying to pull there. And by Season Five, I’m just…not convinced the Winchester brothersactually like each other anymore.  Andthat never gets dealt with, they just expect you to believe that the Winchsterslove each other because the show says so,and listen, I hate the saying of ‘show, don’t tell’ as much as the nextperson who’s suffered through a college writing class, but honestly.  Supernaturalneeds to stop telling its viewers that Sam and Dean care about each other andactually…demonstrate that shit on a regular basis.  

Example: there’s the incident at some point where someoneplants a phone call on (I think) Sam’s phone, apparently from Dean, telling himthat he’s a monster and he should go do an incredibly stupid and dangerousthing because the world and Dean would be better off if he was dead.  Which Sam then believes and listens to.  This seems totally justified based on therelationship they’ve had for the past season. Pro tip, kids.  If your majordynamic includes two people who readily and easily believe that the other isliterally calling them an inhuman abomination and telling them they should justdie, that…that is not a Loving Affectionate and Devoted Familial Relationship.  And if you’re pitching it as one, A, you needsome therapy, probably urgently, and, B, your audience is only going to stickit out for so long before they give it up as a lost cause.

The point of this whole thing is that you better be ready toput your money where your fucking mouth is, and keep your characterizationsconsistent with what you’re telling the audience.

ANYWAY.  

The ultimate TL;DR here is that Supernatural’s storytelling is approximately as competent as thenovel I wrote when I was eleven, which I have hidden in a deep dark hole neverto be seen or discussed ever again.  Less competent, even, because at least Icommitted to a single individual plotline and dealt with the fallout of majorchanges to the universe.  And it’sfucking tragic, because this was a show with some real potential buried underall the chaos.  If you ever want my fullrewrite, please do ask and I will tell you, but this is now over 6K words andon its tenth page, so I’m going to stop now.

Long story short?  Supernatural: What The Fuck.