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memorydragon · 4 years ago

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Mo Dao Zu Shi

So there are like, twenty five million different ways this gets translated along with the TV show which has a completely different name, The Untamed. I’m just gonna leave it in pinyin because I can’t type Chinese on my laptop. But I’ve read the book and watched the first season of the donghua, so here are some thoughts. Spoilers, of course, under the break.

Let me just start off by saying the novel is certainly a Trip. Like, the summary for The Untamed is like, these two good friends (aka, censorship lingo for super gay) go around solving murders. I can’t say much for the TV show as I haven’t seen it, but that’s... really not going to prepare you for any of the plot. Like, at all. It’s most definitely not a whodunit, and really, it’s one murder they’re tying to figure out that gets them caught up in a bunch of other things because they’re following the dismembered hand for clues to the rest of the body. And yes, the rest of the body is just out there stirring up trouble for the most part. None of that even touches on the bigger plot at all, really.

Be warned if you’re considering getting into it, everybody has like, three or four different names. And you kind of have to keep track of all of them if you want to know what’s going on. The translation I was reading did have a handy little chart for some of the characters, but not all, so you may find it useful to make your own while starting it.

I went into it without knowing a terrible lot about the novel/series/anything. What hooked me mostly in the beginning was Wei WuXian discovering that he was in the body of an insane gay man and just... Hamlet-ing it up as much as possible. The speed of which he goes from “ugh, this makeup is gaudy and awful” to “Ya know what? I’m having the time of my afterlife here” is glorious.

It’s also entertaining how he’s supposed to be fulfilling the curse because he’s a ‘terrible spirit of evil’ (which he’s a bit offended by, because sure, his reputation wasn’t good, but he wasn’t that bad), he didn’t even really try. Something else did it for him, and he was just like, whelp, there’s one dilemma down, guess I’ve got a body now. Then he immediately runs into trouble, because that’s apparently his life.

I won’t go too much into plot, though it is fun. Character wise, I’m not sure I have an absolute favorite? Wei WuXian is a little dramatic shit and I love him. Lan Wangji is, as I mentioned to Nar, Doumeki Shizuka but with Catholic levels of repression and denial and I also love him. Lan ZiChen is possibly a fave, but he got so little screen time in the novel which was a shame. Still, I’m 100% willing to throw him under the bus and turn him into an absolute tragedy for shipping. He deserved so many more hugs than he got in canon. Big Brother just wants his little brother to be happy and plan the wedding with his sworn brothers, but that’s obviously not how things went down.

Really though, the best part is with the younger generation. I mean, the past life stuff is necessary and interesting, but I won’t lie. Wei WuXian just wants a baby, and the fact he’s like, Parent/Teacher to all the younger generation is beautiful and lovely. Would I trust him alone with a child? He buried Wen Yuan in the ground to ‘plant’ him so he’d grow bigger. Absolutely not. But he has so much fun parenting and teaching, so he should get children. The fact that he just takes the children under his wing and turns everything into a Teachable Moment is so good.

Lan Zhan with his gay rabbits, on the other hand, is Soft and pining. Oh, god, So Much Pining. He could not speak his heart properly and save Wei WuXian like he wanted to, so he spends the thirteen years Wei Ying is dead to yearn and pine while raising the child Wei WuXian stole/adopted/Parented with the village after his death. Do you want massive gay feels with lots and lots of pain? This dude kept the gay rabbits Wei Ying gave him, then pined for years.

Drunk Lan Zhan is honestly the best Lan Zhan too. Aside from the last time where he may or may not have actually been paying attention to what he was drinking, he consents to drinking too, which is nice. Drunk Lan Zhan is able to actually say his feelings somewhat, which adds to more pining because Wei WuXian is well, a bit of an idiot who misconstrues all of Lan Wangji’s feelings. Lan Wangji pointing right at him and saying “Mine!” Oh, he’s got Lan Zhan’s sword, that must be why. Tying him up with the Lan Forehead ribbon? He’s drunk, obviously doesn’t mean it.

That said, I love the forehead ribbon and the Drama of how it should only be touched by the One True Love. Young, repressed Lan Wangji gets so upset over Wei Ying touching it. Older, drunk Lan Wangji ties him up in it then slams his tied hands on the table for all the younger generation to see Wei Ying has been claimed. And when Wei WuXian uses the paper spell I love the description of him just playing with the ribbon like it’s his favorite thing in the world and Lan Zhan being all, stop fooling around with softness.

I love the babies too. I say babies, but they’re like, all teenagers. But I also call my college freshman children so like, babies. Lan SiZhui being raised by both of them and Wei WuXian being all, OUR BABY IS LEAVING THE NEST AND I JUST FOUND HIM AGAIN at the end was so good. And then Jin Ling having so much pent up anger and Wei WuXian still parenting and actually hugging him and telling him he’s grown up. I lived for that. The children are all just magnets for trouble, especially Jin Ling, and I love them all.

Speaking of Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng, I admit, like, I knew Trauma was there for both of them, so I was fairly neutral to their yelling. But I really loved how the novel deals with their feelings towards Wei WuXian. Jiang Cheng, of course, blamed Wei Ying for the deaths of his family and everything that happened after, adoptive brother or no. And Wei WuXian was responsible for killing Jin Ling’s parents (and oh, the angst of the older adoptive sister dying by out of control undead). In the end, it is impossible to resolve all of that. They both have their moments of breaking down and crying over it, because it happened and forgiveness isn’t something they can really give. But they can still accept Wei Ying, and they do and it was just so good. Wei WuXian could never make up for everything, but the things he did to help them were still valid. It was just, so refreshing to see “These are complicated feelings that really can’t ever be resolved, but they can still love each other as family” as how that plot point was wrapped up.

Also, I have a lot of feelings about how Wei WuXian gives his golden core to Jiang Cheng and pretty much sacrifices everything for him (and the reason Jiang Cheng got caught in the first place was to keep Wei Ying safe and not to find his parents bodies). Like, the Loyalty Kink here. I could have feels about this Loyalty Kink for days. Then when Jiang Cheng finally breaks down, what he’s angry about is not how Wei WuXian acting up is what caused his family to be murdered, or how his father always favored Wei WuXian over him, but that Wei Ying broke his promise to support Jiang Cheng as the sect leader always.

I have So Many Feels over that and how they’re still brothers.

And Wen Ning protecting them and being part of those complicated feelings and deaths. Speaking of Wen Ning, THIS CINNAMON ROLL. I love him. And how he told Jiang Cheng about his golden core, and just, everything about how shy he is, then as an undead Ghost General, he just fights everything, but is still loyal to Wei WuXian at all times.

Jumping back to Jiang Cheng, I do love his mother. Like, she’s a bitch (affectionate) and you just have to admire how she’s going to kick ass. She’s mean and badass and has no time for bullshit and I just mmhm, so good. She’s definitely unlikable and written that way purposefully, but she’s still just going to protect her son and adopted pain in the ass. The whole “You are inferior and I am superior” speech was beautiful. I clapped because God damn, why can’t we have more female characters like this?

The family issues were just so complex and I felt, very well handled. I enjoyed it all, especially how it ended.

Hm, what else... I did kind of love that for the Blind Fold Kiss, Wei WuXian was like... Well, here’s this Strong Buff Girl who is shy. I can’t take off my blindfold because she’s shy but obviously willing to do him and he’s definitely down to be done by Strong Buff Girl who took his first kiss. The amount of bisexual energy that kiss had for him was beautiful.

Also, The Most Feels did not actually come from any of the main characters, but from Yicheng arc. I’m pretty much aware I will be completely unable to interact with any of fandom for this, but like, I can’t handle any shipping for that. At all. Please note that if you do ship Xiao XingChen and Song Lan I support you, but you have to do it very far away from me because their friendship absolutely shredded my feels and I can’t handle romo for it. Like, tearing up as I type this about how Xiao XingChen pulled out his own eyes to give to Song Lan after his temple was destroyed because it was His Fault for standing Against Evil (mirroring Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng). And Song Lan blaming him and ending their friendship because of grief, saying things he later regrets so much, but when they meet again their Worst Enemy has been tricking the blind Xiao XingChen and has him kill Song Lan without realizing it. And Song Lan can’t tell Xiao XingChen what was going on because then he’d realize he just killed his best friend and that would kill him. Then finally, when he’s undead and Xiao XingChen’s soul is so fractured it’d be a miracle that pulls through, he’s going to watch over and nurture it until Xiao XingChen and A-Qing wake up. All so he can tell Xiao XingCheng that it wasn’t his fault.

Guys. Guys. I can’t. Actual sobbing, because it’s going to be centuries, but it wasn’t his fault. They mattered that much to each other not because of romance, but friendship and I just, refuse. No romo. Cannot do. You can tear their friendship to make it gay from my cold, dead aro/ace fingers. Not giving it up.

Hence me just having to stay out of fandom entirely, because like I said, ship and project on who you want. You deserve it. Just way over there and not over here.

I still have far, far, far too many feels about that arc and honestly, it destroyed me.

Things I didn’t care for would be the sex, honestly. Like, in general, sex scenes are things I just kind of skip over and ignore, not something I’d put as a con though. But this novel had So Many Pet Peeves. Blood is Not Lube. Seriously, that’s not going to be comfortable for either of them. Wei WuXian also has a rape fantasy kink a mile wide, which is, surprisingly mostly handled consentually, but very much Not My Kink as well. And for God’s Sake, I am far too ace to deal with where Wei Ying puts Lan Wangji’s sword in the after chapters.

Another thing I liked though was how the novel handled rumors and how things got out of hand. Again, there’s no real fix for it, but Wei WuXian sees it happen to him, then to Jin GuangYao and I felt like, it was really interesting how public opinion was portrayed.

As to the donghua, the animation is just so so pretty. Seriously, it’s gorgeous. If you’re a fan, please go watch it. I also like how it pulls out a lot of things you had to infer between the lines in the novel. Like, it was hard to see in the novel the times when Jiang Cheng actually liked Wei WuXian, because he’s constantly scolding him and they really focus on him being second in affection to his father. But in the donghua, you can see him smiling and actually being affectionate with Wei Ying. He’s also softer, I think, in the donghua, at least when they’ve shown him when they’re older.

And Do Not Talk To Me about how Lan Zhan cries twice in the book, but they added another time in the donghua. When Wei Ying comes back from the Burial Grounds and it’s the first time in months he’s had definite word that Wei Ying is alive, but Wei WuXian just thinks Lan Zhan hates him now. When Lan Wangji turns away and his lips tremble and his breath hitches and I’m suddenly nearly in tears because God, he loves so much but utterly fails at expressing it. Hiis feelings couldn’t reach Wei Ying. He needed so many hugs. I’m still not over that.

The fight scene of the ‘Twin Jades’ working together was far too short but blindingly gorgeous. I gasped. It was so good. And the animation for when Wei Ying comes back from the burial grounds with him being a Dramatic Little Shit was just so good. Like, I cannot gush how much the art of the show is so beautiful.

I feel like I should mention the end songs go Really Fucking Hard on the ship too. That first end song, damn. It’s Lan Zhan, Depression the Song. I also looked ahead to see how they’d do WangXian and boy, is it like... damn. Censors? What censors?

Anyway, I’ve still got the second season of the donghua and I might look up the manhua after. If you’re thinking I’m avoiding the live action, you would be correct. Anyone who has watched it could tell me how much blood and gore the live action gets, I’d appreciate it. Cause like, there’s things I can read with no problem, but seeing it not so comfortable, and even the animation kind of... well, not super pushed the boundaries, but still there were moments of undead that I definitely not so keen on.

#mo dao su zhi #mdsz #The Untamed #This is Mem's life #seriously I'm not going to go through the different name translations #my tag is just going to be mdsz #though again interacting with fandom will probably be minimal due to staying out of particular shippers way #I'd appreciate if anyone could answer that last question about the blood and gore in the live action though #so I can weigh my options

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bettsfic · 5 years ago

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loved the fansplaining episode! i would love to hear your thoughts on a little life by hanya yanagihara, i read it recently and had very mixed feelings. honestly, when you guys started to go on that tangent, i was hoping you'd keep going! what didn't you like about it?

i think it would be easier to start with the few things i did like.

structure: it’s difficult to give a bildungsroman (my favorite novel genre) any kind of urgency because it seems counterintuitive. clever writers can usually thread a long con, though, to keep some semblance of a cohesive plot. in the goldfinch (donna tartt), it’s the painting. in white oleander (janet fitch), it’s ingrid in prison. in body & soul (frank conroy), it’s claude’s music career. in ALL’s case, the overarching thread of plot is somewhat inverted – it’s being strung along for 2/3rds of the book by the mystery of jude’s past. so while you’re pumping the brakes on the present, knowing we’re barreling into a pit of despair, you’re also compelled to keep going to find out what made him the way that he is.

the realistic portrayal of PTSD: jude felt like a constant callout post to me, and i really appreciated seeing my more toxic behaviors rendered in such a clear light. like even in jude’s POV, there was no point where i believed his internal monologue was healthy or good, even though it very closely matched my internal monologue. on a character level, the thread of trauma was definitely well-woven.

the commitment to complicating and appreciating platonic love: it’s just rare to see a book that’s willing to tackle friendships-as-primary-relationships in such a serious and sensitive light. i liked the slowburn between willem and jude a lot.

law stuff: i learned a lot about law. and adult adoption. it seemed pretty well-researched on that front.

and that’s it! that’s all i liked about it. here’s what i hated:

first, the whole thing read like a really long cocaine trip. like yanagihara just got high as hell, locked herself in a cabin for two months, and pounded out this story. and an editor picked it up and was like “lol we good” and shot it out to print. on a very basic level, it’s one of the sloppiest things i’ve ever read, like a toddler running around covering an entire house in paint, and their parent goes “aw how nice.” somebody should have reeled it in. somebody should have said, “this is unnecessarily long, poorly paced, and in dire need of editing,” and then edited it.

it was difficult for me to turn off my editor brain while reading, and eventually the language started feeling like someone was trying to claw my skin off. did you notice that every single line of dialogue – EVERY. SINGLE. LINE. – had a person’s name in it? no one says the person’s name while talking to them! unless they’re mad, maybe!! it’s like, you don’t walk up to somebody and go, “how are you today, helen?” and helen doesn’t go, “well i’m fine, jason.” that just doesn’t happen!! and maybe i could have tolerated that in a shorter book, but in ALL it just made me want to gouge my eyeballs out and never read again.

on that front, the descriptions got so goddamn repetitive. the themes, repetitive. the plot, repetitive. somebody needed to give that story a mercy killing, just gut it. it might have been a good short story. maybe even a novella or a short novel. but it did not need to be 8000 fucking pages. jesus christ. (and i love long books!! but this was a BAD long book)

eventually jude’s self-destruction becomes so repetitive it’s unbelievable. i know a lot of people like jude, who have similar pasts, who do the same things that jude does to himself. and you know what happens to them at some point in their lives? they go to therapy. they get thrown in a psych unit. they get a psychiatrist. they have dozens of counselors. it’s even happened to me, and i’m the diet coke of PTSD. it would have been far more realistic to acknowledge that even with all the medical help in the world, sometimes trauma still destroys you. that would have been the more compelling story to me, one of recovery attempts and earnest efforts toward wellness. but what we got was jude repeatedly dodging therapy and hospitalization, and all the people in his life going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and here’s my biggest beef: it is not written with an ounce of integrity. the entire time, i felt like someone was trying very insistently to pull emotions from me. pity, specifically. i despise stories about pity. pitiful characters in pitiful narratives make me want to puke, and what i hate more is how easily sold readers (and editors! and publishers!) are by it. evoking sadness =/= good writing, no matter how hard you’re crying. you can write about somebody killing a dog and make a reader cry. there was no art to it at all. just manipulation. jude may have been sensitively rendered, but there was a certain sadistic impulse in the writing that felt disingenuous to me, and at no point did i have trust in the story. it’s just melodrama wrapped up as literature. eventually you have to stop kicking people in the nads and write a story that’s true to the characters and world you’ve established. i hate authors who power-trip on making readers miserable.

on that front, the ending was just so OTT. like what the fuck. i believe in tragedies as cathartic but this was just too fucking much. honestly i read to the jude/willem part (where the book! should! have! ended!!), read the wikipedia, and then skipped to the last few pages because i was just emotionally spent by that point. i was just being bludgeoned by “FEEL SOMETHING FEEL SOMETHING FEEL SOMETHING” and i couldn’t bring myself to care about anything that was happening anymore. i’ve written a bit on how good tragedies work, and the quick version is: you should know what you’re reading is a tragedy. here’s no point in hamlet you think he’s getting out of it alive, yk? but ALL (to me) gives just enough hope that you think maybe jude will get better. that’s definitely arguable, though; maybe other people read it and knew the ending all along, and i’m just a glutton for hope.

tl;dr a little life is sloppily written, too long, poorly paced, manipulative, and has a terrible ending.

obvs, if you liked the book, i’m happy for you. i can definitely see how someone might enjoy it, so don’t let my opinion change your perspective. you’re allowed to like whatever you like. but ALL was not my thing.

#negativity tw #a little life #dear people in the tag pls don't come after me pls keep enjoying the book you like #httprosetico

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diveronarpg · 5 years ago

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Congratulations, PARKER! You’ve been accepted for the role of LAERTES. Admin Minnie: It’s absolutely not a secret that we’ve been waiting for Lawrence for a long time, and boy did you deliver. Your characterization was distinct, your voice was so clear and your plots — Parker, your plots had me so excited and literally vibrating in my seat to see it all unfold. And trust me, I just came back from a long day of meetings and hours of driving and a flight; it took a lot for me to feel energized this evening. The way you brought Lawrence to life was so vivid and unforgettable in your application, and I have no doubt you’re going to do the same on our dash. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Parker

Age | 19

Preferred Pronouns | He/him

Activity Level | So here’s the tea, right? I’m a college student who never learned how to set up a schedule that doesn’t suck and am highly involved in student government because I am poor and it pays for my housing and meals. So when it comes to the school year, I’m busy. I’m hella busy, so I’ll probably do replies on the weekends and at ungodly hours in the morning for the vast majority of the year. However, this semester is coming to a close and as long as I survive finals, I’ll have five weeks where I can be on every single day!

Timezone | Mountain Standard Time (MST)

How did you find the rp? | My cousin showed it to me during Thanksgiving, of all the wacky things! She’s big into RP and she knows how much I love Shakespeare, and she thought I’d like this group. I thought I’d try and enter her world and see if I also like RP’ing/actually writing consistently with a set goal in mind.

IN CHARACTER

Character | Laertes - Lawrence Alvise Vernon. I absolutely adore Kendrick Sampson as Lawrence, so no faceclaim changes from me!

What drew you to this character? | So, I have a gut feeling this is going to get pretty long, so please bear with me. I think the first part that attracted me to Lawrence was the character he’s based off of. Hamlet was the first Shakespeare play I read, liked, and understood (though not in that order I don’t think). It was really awesome to see a character from something that had such a huge impact on me and what I want to do with my life still open and available! And Laertes is so important to that original story, even if the tragic Danish boyfriends overshadow him in the general story and in the fandom. The OG story doesn’t function as a tragedy without Laertes and the emotional impact of that last act and a half is only tear-inducing, to me, if Laertes was there. The story just needs him there, you know? One of the reasons I picked him to apply with is because I hoped the same could be said about the story of Diverona and I wanted to play that kind of role in a group filled with characters I think are awesome.

But it isn’t all source material that lead me to pick Lawrence, oh no! Lawrence is, as his bio shows, driven by a near all-consuming need for approval. He’s willing to keep pushing towards and striving for goals that would be completely out of reach if it wasn’t for his absolute, burning need to prove that he is capable of meeting those goals and surpassing them. For Lawrence, he expects that one receives love only if its been earned. He was never told that he was enough on his own merit and so the idea that he, as a person, is worthy has never crossed his mind, which is an absolutely tragedy! However, it’s something I understand and looking at that aspect of his character, I felt I’d be able to do it justice because I deal with a very similar thing far too often for it to be healthy.

However, there was one part of the bio that convinced be Lawrence was the character I had to try and get into this group with. Lawrence is a genuinely good person that has had to push that goodness aside to become someone his father prefers and someone his father would give the underboss title too. He isn’t, as you stated, cruel, but he has learned that in order to advance, he has to step on people, he must control every little itsy thing, and he must, above all, be perfect. But! Despite all these lessons, he is still a good egg! A good bean! I really appreciated you all making sure that was evident in his bio and it was really the thing that convinced me to apply for him!

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

Plot One - Little Sister, You’re All That I Know: So, we’re starting off with the most important plot of all, said from the perspective of another older brother to a younger sister. From what I can tell, the Vernon siblings are both extraordinarily in love with people, but not because of any other reason than the fact that they’re people. Or, at least, they were, up until Lawrence got so angry at Verona for daring to kill his father that he single-handedly took up the pitchforks and torches to make those responsible for that death pay. In the meantime, he’s managed to completely smother and override his sister’s opinion and free will which is so incredibly not good, even if it is well-intentioned. I want Lawrence to learn to back off, to trust his sister, and to learn that as strong as he is alone, he’s much stronger with his sister at his back. I imagine the jumpstart for this would be Odessa doing something really awesome, maybe even saving Lawrence’s life. By proving in a very direct way that she would be able to look after herself, that would allow Lawrence to begin backing off, to release the reigns of control, and trusting her to take care of herself in a way their father never imagined. Unfortunately, Lawrence is stubborn. He won’t change unless someone else kickstarts that change by being extremely impressive. Which is… Not ideal but it is, however, the only way I see that change happening.

Plot Two - Throw Me in the Delorean and it Never Happened: The thing about anger is that it is all-consuming. The thing about vengeance is that it is blinding. And the thing is: when you’re running on both and only on both, you are going to make a mistake. Lawrence is so desperate to be perfect that realizing he made a mistake would be devastating. So you know what I want? I want him to make an absolutely disastrous mistake and I want him to kill the wrong person that he was convinced was involved in the plot to kill his father. Think of it as his own blind stabbing through a curtain without checking to see who was on the other side. I want it because there is nothing like realizing your oopsie resulted in the loss of someone that should have seen the next sunrise to shake the foundations of your conviction. It would be perfect as it would show Lawrence he isn’t infallible and he isn’t perfect, no matter how hard he tries to be Personally, I’d love if he makes a go at a Montague and is forced to also check is loyalty and conviction to the family he’s worked with since he was a little boy. This could easily evolve from him keeping an eye on someone and completely misinterpreting what they’ve been up to and acting rashly. I feel like his failure of judgement would leave the Montagues shaken and reeling and it would further destabilize the city, which is frankly a big yes please from me. I also want Lawrence to try and cover his failure up and fail miserably. That’s really just because I feel like it would be a very interesting character study to see how Lawrence deals with trying to hide the evidence of his imperfection and doesn’t have a lot to do with Verona as a city, but alas, I am just a humble writer too focused on the golden boy and recognize that aspect of this may not come to play at all.

Plot Three: The Beauty of a Broken Bust: In the biography, you wrote that “he was put on a pedestal so high that a fall might’ve shattered him”. That foundation he’s on isn’t the sturdiest of things at the moment, considering the person that made that base is now dead. So, I want him to shatter and break apart. I want the pieces that had made him up, the pieces that he has forced to make him up to go flying to who knows where, leaving Lawrence with nothing else to do but to rebuild himself entirely without his father’s influence. This would change his perspective on the war as well as his relationships with nearly every character in this RP. It would also force him to confront the actions and choices he made while trying to become someone his father would be proud of. I truly believe this is something he must eventually go through because the person he is trying to be for a dead man isn’t sustainable nor is it healthy! Something has got to change and that something is code for Lawrence. I can see this happening because of the death of his sister, a very personal betrayal from inside the Montague family, or from the plot I mentioned directly above. If Lawrence stays the way he is, however, he’s going to burn himself out before he can give the Vernon name any sort of justice and he has to accept that. The issue with this plot is that he’s so stubborn and this happening would require a push so strong I’m not entirely sure I want to see it. (That’s a lie, I absolutely do want to see it, but my internal dramatics insisted that I state it that way.)

Plot Four - Now Would You Kindly: Now, I know y’all said three plots and I hear you, but I have more ideas and I want to share them! The first of these extra ideas is that it is a truth universally acknowledged by Montagues, Capulets, and Vernons alike that Alvise was not a good man. Lawrence knows this, Roman knows this, the pigeons that litter the city know this. I want evidence of his wrongdoings to come swinging back and to slap Lawrence so hard that he’s forced to question if the footsteps of his father are ones worth following. Maybe it’s in the form of letters of blackmail or an investigation into how many innocent people he helped kill, but I want it to happen and I want the evidence to be so overwhelming it almost drowns Lawrence. He’s spent a very long time pushing down what he wants to be for what his father wants him to be and I want Lawrence to question if it’s really been worth it, if that kind of person has been worth the outrageous effort he’s put in to make it happen. And maybe that person isn’t someone Odessa wants to be related to, which is something I think would absolutely impact Lawrence’s decision. She is his last living blood relative, after all.

Plot Five - I’m the King of the Castle: In Lawrence’s mind, I have no doubt that he believes he should be the Montague underboss now that he is back in town. He has, after all, fought for it, cried for it, and killed for it. However! He is not the underboss and that has no doubt rubbed him the wrong way. So, I want him, in his crusade to avenge his father, to also do his best to prove how perfect he is for the underboss role. I want him to leap into impossible jobs and to push down his morals yet again and brush on a mask of cruelty because he wants it, he deserves it, and it his in his name and therefore his legacy that he has the blasted title of underboss! He needs to fight for it and I want that fight to be obvious and also just flat-out brutal to observe. I don’t know if I actually want him to get it, if I’m being completely honest. Him having the title also raises some issues about what he did to get there, issues I want to explore, however I feel that such a role would push Lawrence too far in one direction on that vague scale of morality and loyalty he currently exists on and I kinda want him to keep waffling on it for as long as possible. This could change however! Especially with plotting. And I recognize that, so I will say that the core of this plot is his fight for the role of underboss and less about what would happen if he got it.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yeah, I’m ok with that! It would really suck, especially given how the Vernon family has been absolutely just. Destroyed. Uprooted. Left unmoored and drifting in the wind like last week’s laundry. But that same instinct that tells me that killing Lawrence would a) sprinkle in some awesomeness that is the original source material in a very satisfying way and b) would upend Verona even more than its already been, giving and taking motivations from people and maybe driving the rest of the Montague family just absolutely over the deep-end, which I would pay actual, real-life money to see. The slow destruction of the Vernon family is the slow destruction of Verona herself which means there is some drama to be had in Lawrence’s death! And I do love drama.

IN DEPTH

In-Character Interview (I only did two, please let me know if you want more!):

“What has been your biggest mistake thus far?”

Lawrence swallowed, face kept carefully still to give nothing away. Answers sprung to the tip of his tongue, eager to leap forward like hounds released from their kennel, but opening that door would destroy a lot more than just Lawrence’s reputation. Indeed, the perfect tool should not have so many answers to that question, but perhaps, Lawrence mused, his time away had done something to his obedience.

He stalled for time by taking a sip of the drink he had been neglecting in the warm Italian air. It was now unpleasantly lukewarm as the golden heat of the day made its way into the glass but it was better than nothing. It was only as he took a small sip that an answer sprung to mind, one that was both truthful and good for the image he was attempting to maintain.

“I have to say it was leaving the city,” he commented, returning the glass to the table. “I… left for reasons I am proud of, especially because there’s nothing wrong with being educated in this world. But if I had stayed, I could have done something!” Lawrence’s fist hit the table, making the glass and girl across from him jump. The sudden burst of temper was gone as quickly as it had arrived as his hand opened and his shoulders relaxed. “If I had stayed, this all wouldn’t have happened and a great man would still be with us. But I didn’t and now my father is dead.” He shrugged, meeting the girl’s eyes and hoping she wouldn’t see the emotion carried in them. “If I had come back earlier, Verona would be a very different place.”

“What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?”

His jaw clenched so tightly, a particularly attentive listener could hear his teeth protest the treatment. Lawrence’s hand held the chair like it was the only thing keeping him from leaping across the room to punch the smugly smirking man in the nose. “Just because I’ve only recently returned,” he gritted out, “does not mean I have gone turncoat. There is nothing,” he spat out, “nothing in this city more justified or honorable.”

His body eased the tension that it had so rapidly adopted as he noticed the nervous twitches and aborted movements to concealed weapons that had begun filling the room. As he eased, the rest of the room did too. “But you’re wrong,” Lawrence continued quietly, though there was no mistaking the vehmance leaking from his mouth like poison. “This isn’t a war. This is justice long overdue and more than earned. To call it a war is to imply the Montagues are not fully in the right.”

Lawrence took a deep breath, exhaling some of the passion he had been speaking with not long before. “I wish it wasn’t the loss of my fath–” His voice cracked and Lawrence swallowed, once, before continuing. “Alvise that had caused it, but it is only makes this city all that more dangerous for the Capulets. Because now I am back in Verona and I am coming for every single one with Vernon blood on their hands.” Perhaps it was dramatic, but the ice-cold certainty that hung in Lawrence’s voice stole any humor from the proclamation.

In-Character Para Sample:

He was eight years old, holding a pistol in shaking hands barely large enough to operate the thing. A slowly expanding puddle of red licked at his new shoes, staining them from cream to what would, by tomorrow, be an ugly brown. The shoes were what Lawrence focused on, the shoes and their new color. Because if he didn’t, if he looked up, he’d see the man slumped against the wall like a marionette without strings. If he looked up, he’d see the evidence of his actions.

Larger hands took the gun from Lawrence, trying and failing to be gentle. He wasn’t large enough to stop Alvise, though he wouldn’t even if he could. If his father took the gun, he could also take the body and the unbearable weight of its existence. Lawrence knew his father could fix anything, make any problem go away, and so he let the gun go. Maybe his father would fix this too. The two said nothing to each other as large men quietly entered the room, cleaning it, restoring it under the watchful eye of a king of Verona. Lawrence kept his eyes on his shoes.

Before long, Lawrence had been bundled into a car. The gun and body were gone as were his shoes. The next morning, there would be a new pair of shoes, cream and pristine, sitting at the foot of his bed. They stayed there, untouched, until Lawrence outgrew them.

He was thirteen at a new school, all restless energy that danced under his skin because, for the first time in his life, he was allowed to play a sport. He chose football, of course, but the black and white ball came with strings he never anticipated. Fitness was never the problem, it was balancing practice with everything else. Which bruise came from cleats and which came from fists during sparring was never an easy distinction, but as he got better at the sport, he began to look more and more like a poster child for the American Child Services.

It was a lack of sleep that ultimately did him in, made him sloppy. Alvise pulled him aside one Sunday morning before the sun graced the tops of Verona’s rooftops and told him to choose, choose between the sport and his last name. It was presented as a choice freely given, but the look in Alvise’s eyes made it clear it was anything but.

Lawrence quit the football team the next day, despite thinking that if he just kept with it, he could have made the national team. Somewhere, in a shoebox in the back of a closet, are a barely-used pair of cleats.

He was sixteen, armored inside a jacket of patches and studs, the handmade messages stitched to the outside screaming his fury at the world. There was a funeral scheduled that afternoon and Lawrence wasn’t going to be able to make it. The jacket weighed heavy on his back as he cursed Verona and the Montague name for letting his friend, the only one not tied to his father’s world, die because of it anyway.

But Lawrence was needed elsewhere that afternoon, Alvise’s steady gaze still hanging heavy across his back though the man had left some time ago. That coffin was going to go into the ground and with it, the boy affectionately nicknamed “Ray” by the body in that coffin was going to be buried too. The patches that the two had spent so long on, the quiet acts of teenage rebellion and freedom would join the nickname, and Lawrence would once again become the son of Alvise.

No one among the Montague family was going to mourn the dead civilian from two weeks before. No one but Lawrence, and he screamed it from the rooftop. It was only when his throat ached and the fire inside him was less of an inferno that he left the roof and changed into a suit. Alvise needed him elsewhere, and he was never one to disappoint. Lawrence pretends he lost the jacket, even though he knows exactly which trunk it’s collecting dust in.

He was twenty-two when he took the role of captain, the final stepping stone before Alvise’s throne, it seemed. It struck him like a plank of wood across the face when he realized being a Vernon wasn’t enough. His soldiers would listen, and yes, they’d do what he’d ask, but they lacked the respect they gave his father. For the first time, he needed to be more than a Vernon and he rose to the challenge with relish.

He never learned to address them like his father, a man who had perfected the harsh bark that made every muscle in a body snap to immediate attention. That seemed to be a skill reserved exclusively for the man Lawrence knew he needed to become. He never perfected it, but he did learn how to get close enough to command respect and the focus of a room. Then the Vernon name dripped from those around him, praising him for how like his father he was. But that wasn’t enough anymore.

He was twenty-four when he left Verona, determined to outshine his father. It wasn’t enough to just be a Vernon, he had to be better than that. He doesn’t talk about that time with Veronans, the free laughter and the hours spent in a library, writing essays on things he only cared about because they were things to outdo his father. But even as Alvise hung like a ghost over his shoulder, he was still thousands of miles away. His weight that had hung over Lawrence was lifted, and it was only when it was gone he realized it had been there at all.

He would never say it, but his time out of Verona was possibly the happiest times he’d ever had.

He was twenty-eight when Lawrence got the phone call that his father was dead. He is twenty-eight still, but his hands still shake when he fires a gun. He is twenty-eight, and he sneers when someone on the national team fails to score a goal. He is twenty-eight, but anger towards the Montague family still overtakes him at times, clawing at his throat and heart, begging to be released. He is twenty-eight and he has still not learned how to deliver orders like Alvise. He is twenty-eight and despite it all, Lawrence Vernon is his father’s son. He carries a torch alongside his father’s name and even though he is not Alvise, he has never let him down and he has returned to Verona with a bag of clothes and the Vernon name. Wars have been fought with far less and Lawrence has been fighting every day of his life for his father. He just never thought he’d have to fight Verona.There was a time for goodness, but now is the time for success.

Extras:

This app was submitted through Lawrence’s mock blog, so feel free to peruse it!

#accepted #accepted: laertes

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years ago

Text

14x03 watching notes

Just finished watching and said, out loud and to no one: “Awww Jack.”

(This is not a spoiler, he’s just so sweet.)

Hallo, I am watching from bed despite having 3rd hand inherited a 2nd monitor over the weekend so theoretically my watching experience would be back to giant comfortable side-typing glory.

But comfy.

Easily accessible stuffed toys because Bobo Fucking Berens in Dabb era has made me cry more at this dumb show in the last couple of years than I cried in the previous ten.

Expectations: it's our Dean episode to make up for no Dean until now, and also Jody is there to see Sam's beard, and also Cas continues to be party!Cas, and Jack's shirts get darker and darker.

Side note: I think I was rushing out the door before I could talk about our lil Nougat of Denmark properly last episode where he was all, so we're killing my uncle then, and Cas was all D: D: D: D: D: who raised you. (Dean. Dean did. In this regard the boy is his father's son.) This, of course, is another Shakespearean irony than is being returned to Dean via Jack.

The point of this focus is very much to show Jack vs Cas mindsets on it when we're getting Dean returned to us, and I assume considerably more nuance is being added to the story. But for now, Jack being ready to kill his father to kill his uncle because his father was ready to kill him to kill the ghosts he saw of his enemies in Jack is more than enough of a pile of tragedy level angst to be working with.

I just need it to be clear that as far as I'm concerned, Jack is working in a completely different genre from EVERYONE ELSE around him, and the fact that it's the protagonist of a tragedy is fairly alarming, as it's a mindset that Sam, Dean and Cas have hurdled over since season 5/6 and though Dean still assumes he'll die bloody, he is at least capable of dreaming of a happy ending, and a lessening of the angst load has allowed that. Their personal stakes in the story are dwindling, in a sense, while Jack has showed up with like FOUR FATHERS and an evil uncle, which is so much potential family angst Shakey would have exploded. "Wait you can just addeth extra fathers thence addeth extra angst!?!?"

Yes my dude, yes.

*hits play* *Sam ruggedly cocks his pistol* You're stealing this whole shtick from Dean and I think it is time for the angst that you were the one dramatically cocking a gun and being the yes reductive heteronormative blah blah penis of the dynamic while Dean was not there to do it.

Oh no we immediately start with more Jack angst recap and aside from everything I just said I remembered that Bobo personally murdered me in 13x03 with the Jack n Sam stuff and here we are a year later.

Mr Stark I don't feel so good

THE BEARD EXCHANGE IS LITERALLY THE OPENING SCENE. BOBO I LOVE YOU. Thank you for breaking the tension and immediately drawing attention to how Sam has been busy and miserable. I think 14x01 set up well that every time he even had a moment to sigh his phone would ring again, and hence the beard appears as Sam eskews personal grooming and comfort in exchange for finding his brother. Jody is gonna draw attention to it at some point too because we have the promo shot of her nice peach fuzz-ing him, and I sincerely hope this is bookends to the episode and the next episode Sam is clean shaven with no comment except Jody prodded him in the face, and let me tell you only Bobo has me fantasising about the narrative framing of an episode like this.

God i'm a nerd

Anyway more seriously, this exchange coming out of the blue has a clear motive: Dean is up and about, still so freshly de-Michaeled he's in a waistcoat (and LORDY the only other scene he was in a waistcoat? 7x12's ending scene where Sam turns into such a moron in Jody's presence he's waving blushily at the door still AFTER SHE HAS GONE). Complaining about not being able to eat and sleep might be a sense of hyperbole to catch given the lack of elapsed time, but it also warns us that this might be how Dean reacts to being un-Michaeled. Or would he not, given he's up and about and snarking like his old self? How damaged will he be and how much can he repress into snark? He is playing off the very idea that this experience will have been damaging to his psyche and of course Michael did a ton of stuff which was expressly tuned to BE damaging to his psyche, then punched a mirror and shattered Dean's reflection for extra emphasis.

So all this question of how Dean is doing is loaded into the very opening line before he's even taken off his waistcoat, or of course, had enough time to truly eat/sleep/develop massive tells of the psychological trauma he may or may not have taken.

Obviously the show wouldn't be the show if he were fine, so I'm taking it as a question posed.

Then of course it slides into Bro Banter to prove it's Dean, remind us JUST how much we missed this snarky genre savvy fucker, and to make Sammy smile.

Also we're mocking Jared for being friends with that one Duck Dynasty guy who Jared's fans insist is the least awful of the bunch and also who you end up hanging out with when you're most embedded in the Texan stardom scene rather than living in Hollywood or whatever.

(God imagine being famous and from Atlanta and sticking true to your roots and you end up with the Queer Eye guyses as your BFFs instead)

Listen Bobo showed his socialist party membership card on twitter, he has no fucks to give about waving his politics around and I love him.

"If you're going to ask if I'm okay, you don't have to" (I am making fun of your beard, what more do I have to give you, bro?)

Buddy, I have been watching your face for over a decade and you have the sad tired pink eyelids of a Dean who is both tired and miserable.

Oh NO Dean walks into the main room expecting his comfy quiet library and war room full of 3 trusted family faces, and finds the bustle of Boss Sam's operation. The upcoming noise of these people before he turns the corner is an immediate warning that we should have expected this as dramatic irony for Dean's comfort levels from the start, and now he's back, well.

Panicked eyes.

He needs quiet recovery with his peeps, not alarming sudden change. A rug pull immediately after possession is a terrible thing to deal with. I've been wondering if this is a full reverse of season 6 for Dean - from the trustability of the hunter compound to the fact he lives in it, to the Samuel running it. But the effect is the same. Dean comes back from quiet time off to a change he can't handle and Sam in a new position in a family/hunter heirarchy. In this case, not Samuel's soulless goon, but a fully bearded Boss Sam King Of Hell Sir who Runs Shit competently in a way we the viewer trust implictly as Sam having Done Well, and also that the AU peeps might be a bit rough or untrained in some ways but 100% reliable in that they really do have no ulterior motive and every reason to think of Sam as an AU Moses who popped up and walked them to another land of safety and comfort.

Like, Dean, welcome back, you have Hamlet, Moses and Mobby to deal with. Cas seems to be the same as you left him, though. If somehow, impossibly, squintier.

"Right, Chief told us"

GOD I MISSED JENSEN'S MICRO EXPRESSIONS

You know how Michael sucks? No micro expressions. Guy doesn't have an anxious bone in his body.

This little bundle of neuroses I have chosen to love is full on having a meltdown on the other hand.

"Dean? Is it really you?" "Hey kid"

HUG. THE. BOY.

I suppose this is better than last year when he had a hug from a shapeshifter and had to wait to episode 6 for a hug from his father, but REALLY this season has been tormenting me with how bad Jack feels and even a hug from his gramgram isn't enough to satisfy how he should have been hugged by Sam, Cas and now Dean already this season.

We're only on epiode 3 and he's already got more hugs than he had this point last year. Deep breaths, Lizzy

Children need a lot of cuddles to affect their development into sensitive people okay? Dean got a lot of hugs up to age 4 and Sam basically did not, and he's an awkward moose and Dean is snuggly. I want Nougat to have the same development into a sensitive lad because he has EIGHTEEN FUCKING PARENTS AND NONE OF THEM HUG HIM

CAS HEARD 'DEAN' FROM ACROSS THE BUNKER, ARRIVES IN A BLUR

GOOD NOUGAT, HUG DEAN.

But like, dude, Cas just showed up at a run and made the gooiest eyes at Dean who made them back, and now you're officially cockblocking, so naff off, kid

I watched with prayer hands and Cas just got gooier and Dean got sulky he didn't get a Cas hug and this is officially the worst. Bobo, you let me down, my guy.

I mean no, Cas's gooey eyes were

...

Cas doesn't do gooey eyes. He squints. Squintily.

Who is this guy

Lol Mobby aren't in the episode because they stayed back to clean up - Sam gets stammery to Jack. Is he scared to imply they're maybe banging because he finds it weird but everyone else present is an even worse audience to announce this to for one reason or another (historically coped much better with the concept of dad sex when discovering adam and also didn't drive the car off the road into a ditch on finding out mary banged ketch), or is he trying to protect Jack from the concept of Michael leaving a pile o dead bodies for one reason or another, knowing Michael is his rage button?

He was the one who dealt with Jack trying to stay back in the AU to fight Mikey instead of just coming home.

"Speaking of clean up, I need a shower" *gestures vaguely* *Cas opens his mouth like why did I have a reaction image here? Do you want -* *closes mouth* *dean leaves*

Guys. You fucking suck. Go take a shower together and work things out.

"Still okay, I promise" *bisexual finger guns at Cas*

cut to: Cas squinting after Dean like "is he implying something"

"..."

"I really feel like he was trying to communicate something to me"

"..."

"I have no idea what Dean just hinted loudly to me twice in short succession and now that he has gone to shower I guess I will never know what he was attempting to communicate to me"

"Where's Nick?" "Hopefully not in this episode. Let's just say he needs some time because he's in a dark place and hope that's ALL we have to say about him"

Oh no. "Sam. Dean. How is he really?"

Cas has a one track mind.

But then we get the shot of Dean opening his door and they're still talking about him over the top of it, but it's that same shadowed shot of himself silhouetted in the doorway, the inner darkness represented by his room... Sam went into his and stripped himself of the tools in his pocket but before he could sleep, Jo called and set them all off again with the next lead.

Now Dean opens his door and turns on the light so we can see his inner self in a moment of peace and privacy, but essentially with a voice over about how he's super not okay.

Just how we left it. You can't even tell that for the last 2 episodes/3 weeks Cas has been coming in and snuggling your pillow every time he's not in a scene because where the fuck was he inbetween scenes in 14x02

God I have missed lingering shots of Dean's room, equating his inner space to his inner feelings. *paws lovingly at the shot* Dean's room all tidy and orderly and as he left it, yet feeling somehow very very empty and off-kilter in an unfamiliar way because he hasn't been here for so long.

It was all serious then guitar music started playing as Dean started stripping

and look

I saw the promo pics

you saw the promo pics

some person in the audience is like... why are we lingering on Dean getting undressed alone in his room while guitar music kicks up?

Is this what all that winking and finger gun action was about?

(Dean didn't wink but I took a lil break to chat with Mittens and the moment has evolved into him gurning at the door for like a minute trying to remind Cas that this means he joins him in the shower in 5)

"Fuck this shirt in particular"

I still think it was the audacity of wearing a bow tie that dragged Dean to the surface last episode

I love how Dean changes from this plain white t-shirt which is completely clean and shiny, into his normal dark dark brown shirt between scenes. I hope he got to shower. Whatever happened, this scar could have said "Ha ha ha I'm behind you", and he would have finished stripping down right to the skivvies then started fresh with his own boxerbriefs before freaking out and rushing to show the others.

But yeah, he's PISSED and embarrassed about Michael. You don't throw a guy's shirt on the floor like that unless you feel SERIOUSLY used, and here we end up with a creepy sort of STD metaphor, complete with the visual similarity to the clap: https://www.giantmicrobes.com/uk/products/clap.html

Bad fling, Dean?

Poker!witch gave Sam the clap in the episode which was totally not a metaphor about Sam getting the clap then beating poker!witch at his own game like nearly 20 episodes before he was possessed by Lucifer then beat him at his own game.

"Do the whole vulcan mind meld thing" Listen, James T Kirk, you can't just MAKE yourself one of the most iconic slash pairings of all time by comparing - wait

wait a minute

*Checks slash history books and sees them as a dictionary definition or two*

Anyway.

Dean's so eager for Cas to jump into his head. Just, like. Again. We all said it but immediately after that shirt throw? It REALLY emphasises that Dean sees Cas in this transcendant way to being used by an angel that got in his head. And left an STD mark on his arm. He can just immediately think, well, that sucked. But here's MY angel and I'm just gonna rev myself up and present my head for inspection and this isn't even a thing I'm concerned about. Hit me, big guy.

Oh come the fuck on Bobo.

I didn't have time to hit pause to have a heart attack about Cas putting his hand over The Scar, the one on the wrong shoulder, to get a clearer reception, because there's a HISTORY in scars, okay? They leave a mark and to the discerning poker and prodder like Cas that history can be read in the mark... And Cas sees... Michael being stabbed by a spear. Not just, like. Seeing Michael being stabbed by a spear, mind you. He sees it in a Bobo episode in a way wildly reminiscent of Patience seeing Claire/Kaia getting stabbed by a VERY SIMILAR LOOKING SPEAR and getting her Wayward introduction that way, when the whole Dreamhunter thing ended up being a massive Destiel parallel and Kaia getting stabbed already mirrored CAS getting stabbed by a spear (Michael's, natch) in 12x12, never mind the other stuff.

So Bobo has just built up a Destiel Dreamhunter sandwich, with Destiel nonsense either side, complete with bonus shoulder scar imagery, and a nice gooey dreamhunter centre.

Bobo, if you hadn't noticed, is really really really really reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bitter he isn't off writing Wayward Sisters and hanging with his girls.

There's still a bunch of stuff to add up here, about why and who and how it all connects, which would involve dragging in these other spear-y episodes to assemble the full picture, so I'm just gonna hit play now I'm recovered from the shock :P

Oh dude it was a hooded figure who even LOOKED like bad Kaia and tbh at this point I'd say maybe even was?

Like, how many pronged spears are out there anyway and Jody's dealing with it so is it local? Did Michael pop up on Kaia like hey so you and I are both from alternate universes, what do you wa - OW FUCK JESUS FUKKIN CHRIST -

"Dean, who was that?"

Dean recognised her, and Cas was mind-melded enough with him to know that Dean did... Good grief I can not handle Dean and Cas existing on an emotional plane.

It's enough to mean they're the ones who call Jody with a tip off for HER rather than months of them asking her to help THEM.

Introducing us back to the Wayward world - South Dakota mug, and a text that Claire is a little angel who has been training her gals and even did the laundry.

I'm so happy

Eyebrow raise

God, Kim Rhodes is the most beautiful woman on the whole show and that's saying something considering, like. Ruthie. Lisa Berry. Something about the way she uses her face is so full of intelligence and humour that I am HELPLESS in her presence

God damn I want that fabled Girls' Night episode. Billie comes along too on a night off.

Rowena calls her up for chats sometimes these days, they're actually really good pals.

Sam you fucking moron you can't even finish a sentence in her presence. Just slap Dean on his WOUNDED arm and throw the ball to him.

Everyone leaning over the phone... This is the closest Cas has ever come to Jody.

"Jody, that's the good news."

Jody recognises that gravelly voice and snaps to holyshitanangel attention. "What's up?"

The implicit thing here is that Cas and Jody know each others' voices and are on at least chatting acquaintance. I would like to think they're invited over for beer at the same time but we have no proof..................... yet. This is Bobo on a "fuck you" rampage so I'm just, like, gonna wait see.

Bad Kaia has been going around ripping heads off things. DAMN, GIRL.

Considering the placement of the pronging was ~random~, in the sense that she can meat fork you anywhere, that means the placement of it on the meat of Dean's arm where the handprint once was on the other is even MORE significant in a metaphorical sense, of writing about "the scar" in the way of giving it a mystical property tied into the wider framework of all these relationships and events at once. The amount piled onto a simple stabbing is unbelievable, and the use of the scar as the vector for all this is definitely the byline of the episode given the title and all. It's brought Kaia back to us, given Jody the clue she needs.

And more dramatic irony that Claire was just asking to help, and Jody was like DEFINITELY HUMAN, SO ALL MINE. HAHAHA. And now we know, no, it's not all "human", it's bad!Kaia and that makes her CLAIRE'S.

I keep stopping to seal clap

it's 7:20am

Cas is packing up to leave with them!!!

And Jack looms blurrily into the background in his darkest t-shirt yet. And he's been RAPIDLY cycling through them.

In a sense this is good laundry practice, in order that you have a full load of lights followed by a full load of darks.

Metaphorically, however, this is BAD.

Jack sounds pissed they're all wearing jackets and packing bags, and he's wandering around in an over-sized dark grey t-shirt (one of Dean's? AUBobby's? It doesn't look like his standard fare which fits his body, this makes him look SMOL), with no idea we were off to kill the wizard.

Let's be charitable and say he wants to meet Jody and hang out with Kaia again.

But more likely Bobo is once again messing with Jack's inherent darkness in his presentation, especially as right now, once again while Jack is being The Sweetest Little Cookie, meeting his grandparents for ice tea and looking through the family photo album with misty eyes, he is ALSO Prince Nougat of Denmark and this is causing some serious darkness slippage because, well, revenge. Revenge is bad, kiddo. Don't need a ghost of your dead father (hey Dean's back) to tell you that.

The accusatory tone is enough to warn us that Jack's not doing so well and I'm going to assume drags Cas away from a mission with Dean followed by cooldown eating pizza and watching flicks with the girls.

"Kaia's killer is in Sioux Falls" Buddy. "He, she or it can hurt Michael" BUDDY.

I suppose they're bringing Cas because Bad Kaia kicked their asses and they assume Cas is the same height as her pet/metaphor for Kaia's inner fucked-up-ness so he can probably fight it??

"Michael's my enemy too! I fought him. For MONTHS." JACK sweetie. You can't just go around like, having an enemy list. And comparing it with your collective fathers' list.

The line about bringing Kaia into it and being responsible for what happened to her is good, though. Jack's got a social consciousness and that is lovely because he keeps doubting his goodness but when it comes down to it he wants to meet his grandparents and feels bad that Kaia got dragged into things and killed.

Of course, not realising this is Bad Kaia, they're all off to get MORE revenge on that thing that killed her.

Aw, Dean, no, don't point out how smol he is. He's wearing a huge baggy shirt to emphasise it already.

"I didn't - I didn't MEAN to be a dick" Whoops. Well, you were. You also missed the part where Jack went from smol precious child to angsty teen.

Fun fact: Hamlet was supposed to be like 18 or whatever, but because a famous actor wanted the lead role but was like, idk, 50, Shakey bumped up Hamlet's age a lil so he could get away with it, making him more of, like, a giant manbaby who is still functionally a teen in all ways except he keeps getting portrayed by middle aged men.

So, of course, we have our one and a half year old Nougat who is a 29 year old actor now getting into his terrible teens, and if that isn't the funnest nugget of trivia...

... then you are not as much of a nerd as I am about irony, coincidence, and neat overlaps of thingies.

Point is: get me a version of Hamlet where the other expected actors are adults of course, but Horatio and Hammy and his squad are dumb teens.

Lol Bobo just randomly introduces a cool lady hunter who is dragging a random victim of a hex down into the bunker to be healed by an angel. That poor girl is going to have a story to tell.

A lot just happened in a few seconds but at least Jack, who has stormed off for his nth teenage sulk of the season, now has a Cas trapped in the Bunker with him.

Dean n Sam gonna get their asses kicked by Bad Kaia

honestly is this just a ploy not to keep Cas where Jack is, but to keep Misha away from stunt fighting?

Anyway Dean communicates most of the above to Cas silently, and tells him that he should stay with Jack and also heal this girl and they have the most married eye conversation about what needs to be done, which is wonderful that they've been having these silent conversations all Dabb era but this is definitely the wordiest so far. I mean one of their more recent was just "Dean I can hear that cowboy music in your head" "what cowboy music?"

DEAN DOESN'T EVEN LOOK THRILLED TO BE DRIVING BABY AGAIN.

Sam mostly looks concerned he's hitting 80mph

I don't know anything about American speed limits but this is an alarming speed to me because in the UK 70 is usually like, the Most, and we don't have enough long straight roads that when there's no speed limit it's ever really recommended to go super fast because you will flip your car and die because all our roads are one and a half car length wide and extremely wiggly. And our motorways are congested enough you're more likely to be in a traffic jam than top speed anyway :P

I love that Dean measures people by their favourite Spice Girl. Hey Dean the 90s called, they want their pop culture relevance back.

You gay icon you.

(I'm reminded of 12x07 and Bobo and a similar conversation where Dean listed off all his manly manly historical faves)

Dean thinks Cas can handle it back home :')

"Something huge happened and you won't really talk about it!"

Okay Sam, he's traumatised and that's surface text.

You do realise the entire massive subtext is his repression and yet another metaphor for some huge queer experience and that this is the same conversation as 10x04 when he was grumbling into his chin about being embarrassed about what he did with Crowley? You realise that right?

Stop poking him about it, he'll talk when he's ready to open up. In the mean time he's feeling used and ashamed that this fling didn't go as planned after the whole first flirtation with waving his wings around and killing Lucifer where it all seemed fun to embrace his ~true self~ and have a crack at being a Flaming Michael Sword.

Also of course, we might just take him on his word that he really does NOT remember most of everything that happened because if he was truly repressing that much he wouldn't have been so gung ho for Cas to read his mind earlier but this mood pre-dates that so even if he remembered everything when Cas poked his brain, which seems unlikely as Cas saw it too, the wider sulk about his Clap Scar is more than just this.

It's a common experience, though, that Dean is repressed and moody, and Sam barrels in there trying to make him talk about it before he's ready, so the pressing is in character, regardless, that Sam doesn't trust that Dean is telling the whole truth and that there's some huge secret he's holding back.

The best part of queer subtext is that whether there is one or not it works - if there isn't, it's a metaphor for the obvious. If there is, same as above but the metaphor is concretely attached to whatever Dean is not telling Sam, and that in turn then becomes a part of the queer subtext, offered up on a platter to tell us more about how Dean is handling his post-possession shame of being, essentially, roofied after thinking he'd agreed to a consensual fling with a dude on his terms of entry and no strings attached, no walk of shame like he did when he was undressing earlier.

Poor guy can not catch a break. Shoulda hooked up with Aaron when you had the chance so your first time having a dude in you wasn't such a big deal, but just a nice booty call to keep in your phonebook. Now it's all Crowley this, Michael that...

"We need to deal with it." "Okay, I'm literally going EIGHTY to deal with it"

Dean, that's.

that's not therapy

"How can I be running from something when I'm RACING towards it" "I don't know, it's kinda your thing"

Sammy boy you have been trapped in the same car as Dean for way too long. Your analysis is getting deep. Deep deep cuts. Leave him alone.

I mean this is a guy who dealt with a gay panic by hooking up with Crowley and singing karaoke for him so.

"I just *need* you to talk to me. Slow down."

Oh SAM you said a good and interesting combo of words there. Dean, go 70 instead of 80, give us some time to feel this out because I've been FREAKED and, for you, you got a time skip but I lived it all real time and it SUCKED, and I'm hurt too by this. Reminder: our family does not do well with LOSING each other, and this is every conversation we've ever had post-thinking that happened, and I did things responsibly and grew a beard and became Boss of a bunch of peeps and also King of Hell but we'll talk about that later... Like, slow down. I have my issues too. There's 2 of us in this car and you can't go 80 and time skip to the end of this conversation either. Not when I have 3 weeks of angst packed into it.

Also: classic Sam projection. Trying to get Dean to open up because HE has pain he wants to air, instead of just bringing up how he felt, he tries to get Dean to open up, and when this continues, as always, not to be how Dean deals with things, Sam gets upset because it never gives him the opening to talk about his shit until it's an argument...

You could have just started the convo, sorry about the beard, I really mean it when I say I haven't had a moment to myself for 3 weeks, it's been HELL and funny I should mention Hell, er, did you know you can kinda just declare yourself king these days... heh

At least he's using racing metaphors about wanting to catch up and also, like, catch up

Dean responds to the sport metaphors

Dean is like nah call Jody we're almost there. I skipped ahead.

Look, I'm delivering you to your boo, what more do you want?

Jody smiles at the sight of them in a way which is almost as revolting as Cas smiling at seeing Dean again

Hugs!

Send Jody to the Bunker to HUG OUR BOY

"How'd you do it?" "What, me vs some assbag archangel? Who would you pick?" "You, every time."

And this, guys, is how Jody is never, ever patched into their angst, because they present a narrative where Dean just kinda chucked off Mikey and sent him packing and it's all cool and he's a hero.

Jody has at multiple points threatened to beat Dean into submission in order to hear a true version of how he's doing and he has so far not given in and sat at her kitchen table with a box of tissues to sob through his crap, but I hold out eternal hope like the fool I am.

Anyway it's also telling RIGHT AFTER that last conversation where Sam was probing Dean so intensely, that this is the version of "I'm fine" that Dean is going with, and even though Sam KNOWS there's more to it, this is the wall Dean is projecting, even to him. Even when he knows Dean is freaked by it and doesn't know all the details.

Jody goes up like 18 pitches "Heeey I liiIIIiiike it!" she squeaks, forcefully tweaking Sam's beard because "nice peach fuzz" is too understated both for Jody and the volume of facial hair Sam has produced without comment until Dean came back and Jody showed up.

Dean has never been so offended in his life

*Jody continues giggling to herself while Sam desperately looks for a normal conversation*

AHAHA "I haven't been home since I talked to her........... I may be avoiding her"

Yeaaaah, bringing up that it's not just a normal human beheading and weird stab mark, but ALSO a KAIA-RELATED ONE maaay be... too much.

i'm going to be honest I've been so thrilled about everything I forgot to check what cast is flashing up on the screen

Anyway there is very much a subtext to Jody's avoidance of telling Claire what's going on that she knows how much she loved Kaia and how much of an issue this is - even if it's gonna be for revenge, because they don't know it's Bad Kaia - this is something where Claire's feelings make a MESS.

Bobo gets in Sam's serial killer thing, Dean is staring into the void like am I still even here or am I in hell. Is this a hell that Michael conjured. Mikey. Hey. Mikey. I figured it out. We're done here. Let's go back to regular torture. Michael. This is the bad place. Michael.

Dean stomps off into the woods because waiting for daybreak means being stuck in the same room as Jody and Sam flirting for a few hours.

Jody firmly pokes Sam in the chest with a map.

Sam.

A raven caws in the background, and Jack is wearing layers, the darkest shirt yet, a thick corduroy jacket in the style of early Sam, and is packing a bag.

He wrote a note and his handwriting is as disgustingly adorable as I thought it might be.

Alex wrote "Jack" with a cutesy backwards K in an autograph for someone who requested it at a con and I thought that was a cute detail but not how Jack would write and the real story - and I assume like with others they made him write it in character - is much more nuanced. His letters are competently shaped like he knows exactly how they should be, but shakily written, like he's not used to holding a pen, because, well, he isn't. He's not developed the muscle memory for it, just as he hasn't for fighting and all the other stuff, because in may ways he IS still a smol toddler with no life skills. His capital letters are huge and precise, like he knows he has to write them big, but disproportionate - putting so much emphasis on the titles of the people around him, the capital letters a metaphor for their influence on him. There's something clearly unconfident about writing and yet for all that obviously written by someone intelligent enough not to make basic errors of backwards letters and other things. He knows exactly how he is SUPPOSED to do it, but the execution is shakey, and disproportionate and generally looks unschooled and painfully revealing of his entire state of being.

Is this the scene where Bobo said out loud to an empty room, awww Jack.

I've been dreading that since the hiatus.

Maybe I should dig up that post and use it as the title for this one.

Triss is gonna die, Jack stopped by the stairs up out the Bunker in the war room, heard and saw Cas moving around, then in a fit of conscience or missing him already or something, stopped by to open the door and look in.

They have DEFINITELY expanded the Bunker set, in the sense that they've attached extra rooms to it or Wanek has sat down and made some parts more standardised, because they've shown off the corridor connections in every episode so far, and in this one we're seeing a never-seen-before connection which actually explains what is behind that window and how it fits. I mean, I'm pretty sure we've seen this particular room a few times, window and all, but never actual connections which show connected sets, so much as scenes starting or stopping there with no transition.

"She's been enchanted" "Like sleeping beauty" Jack says with awe "Awwwwwwwwwww" Lizzy says with awww

I honestly can't tell which moment Bobo said "Aw Jack" out loud about because we're getting such a series of them

Anyway, Hamlet, the great procrastinator, is distracted away from his mission to kill his uncle.

Not sure about the overlap of hearing things from the other side of a wall but I mean at least he's not going around stabbing people so

Jack also seeing all the important work they do for other people, even randos, and Cas getting involved in huntery business, distracted from emotionally nurturing him because of sleeping beauty there, and phoning rowena, doing the work to unknot a spell...

If we get Cas doing spellwork I'm gonna die, it's been Too Long.

Cas [squinting]: "Are you going somewhere?" Sleeping Beauty: "ooooww" Jack: "No."

Hon, that was so suspicious you are lucky this is Cas and not one of your other dads.

But. Aww Jack to an empty room.

"If I get a vote I'm team stick together" Jody remembers 9x19

Also Sam remembers bad!Kaia kicking their butts. They're on her natural territory

she is the Predator.

Sam keeps LOOKING at Jodio.

Look, I just

Cas keeps looking at Dean, Dean keeps looking at Cas

Jam won't stop looking at each other

That head is a Warning.

Come no further, mortals

I think Bad Kaia lives here

Vampires.

they really need to figure out how to biologically identify them except for teeth because they really come up against a lot of dead ones

"I brought tissue samples home, Alex ran them underneath the microscope"

Look, girls supporting girls, I knew what they needed to do before they did it lol

Dean: I was stabbed here

YAY I went frame by frame before the reveal and that is Kaia's face in there, the hood less spooky than before and more open to reveal her

Dean: bout to be stabbed here again

Dean finally has the moves to take on Bad Kaia after a season or two with the new stunt guy

but then her hood falls back and he's STUNNED

Now everyone is stunned

I think they've been using the Wayward Sisters Bad Place soundtrack for this but I'd have to check

the music is so very different and I'm not good at music ear thing

Cas: *eye twitches violently* Me: Cas why are you having trouble with this line Cas: "... marked.................... 'gross stuff'"

Cas, internally: Why did I marry into this family

Future MoLHunter 100 years later: "Man, this place is sweet, but the filing system is balls to the walls." Other Future MoLHunter: "Babe, you did not read the Winchester Gospels before your initiation?" F MoLHunter: "There is a drawer here marked 'hands of god' and the only thing in there is a pair of chopsticks and a ladel" OF MoL Hunter: Okay I will give you that. -

Me out loud to an empty room: aww Jack

He's so concerned about Sleeping Beauty, and he can't do anything about it but he's curious.

Maybe he CAN fix her and this is how he gets a lil power back.

I hope so because awww Jack being so concerned about her.

This is a Good Procrastination From Revenge

Hamlet, take fucking notes

"Is that your dad?" "One of them, yes." Aw Jack

Aw Bobo

Jack's flipping around on family - he's accused them of talking about nick/Lucifer as his father, he's disowned everyone but grampa and grammy Kline, and now he's fondly thinking of his three hero dads

He's really struggling to work out his place and what sort of family set up he belongs to and to be fair, he has so many fucking options and all of them are somewhat disastrous or tragic, so he's 100% in his right to be fuckin confused.

On the other hand Sleepy Beauty has no context so she's gonna assume Cas is gay married with a kid Jack's age and that's like, not untrue.

"My mom... but she probably hates me" "Why?" Jack says, horrified at the entire concept that a mom could hate a child, because, well, Kelly's love was COSMIC for him "because I left," she anvils

"I was sick of being treated like a kid, and i thought I could make it on my own" Oh boy. She's just expositioning how Jack feels and immediately telling him if he leaves he'll fall in with a witch, who curses her with an AGING spell which will make her old before her time.

I feel like there is probably... a metaphor........... in here...............

Also a reverse of Dean's aged down curse, because the girl and her other victims were hansel and greteled.

I had a sudden whim a couple of nights ago to see aged down Dean and current Jack hang out. Bring back Dylan Everett to go play basketball with Jack out on the front step.

"Gave us all nice things," she says, clutching at a HUGE EVIL EMERALD PENDANT AROUND HER NECK

Jack.................................

Is that cursed

"She said having us there kept her young" She put her own age into that locket

dang I should get a bonus point for bringing up poker!witch before he was relevant

I'm always curious about the show's implications about witches maintaining their youth by sucking it from others, because almost every witch we've met who had a focus on age was doing it for that reason, whether it was eating children or playing poker.

And we have a 300 year old witch chilling around who we don't know anything about when it comes to immortality, except that she has it and she bestowed it on Oskar so it's clearly a spell she can do rather than an inherent trait of reaching a certain level of magic practitionery.

"Then it started taking me too. Even faster than the others!" yeah because she killed the witch so she probably has to suck poor sleeping beauty dry in order to regenerate and skulk away and start over somewhere

PS: Sleeping Beauty is really doing an amazing performance here. I 100% am in Jack's shoes of being horrified and wanting to protect her

"Cas is going to fix this. I promise" Sweetie! Have you ever called him Cas rather than Castiel before? It seems weird. He even wrote castiel on the letter

Sam deducts Michael's entire plan off the clue that Alex couldn't detect the vamps in her sciencing, and based on having been attacked by super werewolves.

But why is Michael cleaning up these people?

Unless he's taking threats off the board who would be too cool and powerful and may challenge him...

"Doesn't change the plan" "but Dean - "

Dean walks off

Dean has no time for Sam suggesting maybe this is something awful because of Michael that Dean might know about or else be weirdly intimately connected to because of his weird Michael-based condition.

We have no clue what's going on and Sam doesn't like that and Dean's powering through and Jody is hovering in the background like WOW I can see why you leave me out of all your dumb main plot angst normally. Never done me one of these MAIN PLOT ones before. Can we go back to normal MotW where you're low key angsting in the subtext about whatever currently ails you?

Jody slaps Sam on the lower back

lower, babe. Lower.

Cas does magic, boom purple smoke!

Aw no she's still withered.

Jack, take her necklace off and smash it

because you did the good work of a hunter and talked to her and through being kind discovered what was wrong with her

Jody has a phone provider that gets her signal in the wilderness

"Claire's been doing so good, but anything connected to Kaia... she's a powder keg"

"FIRST LOVE STRIKES QUICK, AND TO LOSE IT LIKE THAT"

okay no Jody didn't shout it, but Bobo did.

ILY Bobo

I'm like 0% surprised but I am guessing other people who had been less trusting are throwing a complete party to have it textually confirmed like that. I felt like Bobo's intent especially when he went on the record in that stream AND he had been saying already that he shipped it right after Wayward Sisters, that he never ever meant to be coy about Dreamhunter, and confirming that Claire was madly in love with Kaia was a top priority on his fuck you list since he didn't get to write the show he wanted in order to work on this naturally.

Sam nods like fair enough, happened to me with Jess, but uh wow okay no i did not - yeah okay yeah

"He's not ready for this case" "maybe he needs it"

Jam jam jam jam

I mean

Yeah mature adults discussing issues together and working out how they feel about Dean rage-hunting Bad Kaia

hey look it's that one cabin that has been in like every episode of the show in the same way that one little stoney valley was in every episode of BBC Merlin

Has she lost her spear??

Dean, that was RUDE, you're so horrible to all these versions of Kaia

That zoom up on his face is one of the top 10 Dean Is Not Okay zooms of the show

So not like "bad cas" or "new bobby" are Dean's definitions for AU peeps - no word on what Charlie is to him, maybe because AU Charlie is a real issue for him to define as he couldn't help treating her like his Charlie.

But Bad Kaia insists that she is to Kaia what she is to me - they're joined in a different way. A way that back in Wayward Sisters was implied to be a dreamwalking connection of a very different sort, something anchoring our Kaia to the bad place and their connection was... weird.

"That was an accident. I was trying to kill the blonde" She's remorseful about killing Kaia but upsets them even more by reminding them that she was out for Claire instead.

How about we kill no one, bad Kaia

Oh no, Michael keeps sending monsters after her... Now she sounds like the original Kaia just because she's got "always more" things out for her. I suppose Michael learned of her through Dean, found her, and either wants to stop her or capture her because she has universe-crossing dreamwalking abilities, and woooow that will be useful to him.

NOOO SLEEPING BEAUTY DIED. THIS IS REALLY BAD. JACK COULDN'T SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE HEEEEEEEEEER

waaaaaaaaaah

Stop fuelling Nougat having an interesting dark arc about his entire self and purpose and let him just hang around the bunker and watch TV and eat nougat and be hugged. Can we not just have a son who is okay and nothing is wrong with him?

Oh no even the random hunter (did I really catch her name as Brunhilda or did I imagine that?) is crying at Jack crying over Sleeping Beauty dying. Cas is contractually obliged not to cry or do complicated stunts but he looks miserable too.

Oh, jack figured out the pendant?

But can they actually save Sleeping Beauty?

Sam as usual getting in before I can - "Break her!??!?"

don't you dare hurt Kaia any more, she's already told you what she knows, Michael hurt her, you punched her out with the same face and then threatened her a bunch. She might be a snarky monster-hunting feral woodland weirdo but she's still Kaia-like and you have a history of being completely horrible to Kaia-like girls when you're in a bad place.

And it turns out Dean just wants the spear that pronged him, to figure out what it did and how to hurt Michael with it. To go on his own revenge mission that he denied Jack because, guys, we are now in competition for who gets to have the angsty anti-Michael revenge mission. Jack and Dean literally competing to be most angsty about it.

Jack is being considerably more productive even if Dean solved the Kaia mystery.

But yeah. Revenge sucks you guys.

Dean you need to eat a snickers and take a rest.

smiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirk because fuck you Dean for always hurting me and the other Kaia who is probably also me.

Jack is being much smarter.

The smartest cookie.

Who needs powers when you are a good cookie.

"She wasn't cursed. This was."

GOOD COOKIE.

I vote Jack gets to kill Michael. Dean has lost his Michael killing rights.

"You're no different from him. Threats, violence, anything to get what you want." "I am nothing like him."

Hon.

"Yeah you are. And you always have been."

I don't know if Kaia knows or if she's pulling a gambit, but acting like a mystic know it all and reading Dean stone cold in a villain way sure did take some of his rage away into that good old Dean self-loathing and fear, which was one heck of a good chess move regardless of if she can magically read him or not.

No I don't think Dean is these things but Michael is a means of exploring Dean's "blunt little weapon" sort of mindset that he has suffered from because of John's upbringing all this time, and Michael emotionally mauling Dean to the point of being a non-functioning worst version of himself who threatens Kaia (AGAIN) really is an on the nose way to display the sort of trauma that Michael tore into his psyche.

Crap I need to go to yoga, but this is too good to rush so even though I don't have much left, I will be back for proper notes in a bit!

Him smash magic glowy thing with hammer

just like i told myboy to do!

Cas's hair is ridiculously spiky.

"What happened?"

YOU MADE NOUGAT FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED

Aww jack to an empty room

Sam I have been gone for hours. How have you not tackled Dean to the floor and apologised to Bad Kaia

"I saw what you did to her, when you got angry. You shoved your gun in her face." To be fair, at the time Dean had also been emotionally mauled by the feels bear because Jack gave him a vision of Mary being tortured in Hell-equivalent and he was also fucked up beyond belief.

Kaias really are seeing the worst side of him all the time.

Bobo likes breaking Dean

That was enough to make Dean let go

Also to ask a really good question about how she knows!

I'm way more curious about Kaia than Dean yelling at her :P

Then she points out that he's angry and impatient because he's scared, like, duh, but sometimes he needs to be reminded that he can have "weak" emotions like that because he wants to be all tough and on the case and instead he's freaked out because Michael has messed him up completely. Like. Stay home. Help the boy with lore or something. Take a pyjama day.

Wheee full flashback!

The early evening light gives it a Bad Place colour tinge, which is awesome.

I can't believe Mikey shows up in his hat but not his jacket.

He says he's BORROWING Dean here. Hm.

Also, what I suspected, that he sensed her around and was just curious. Probably having a "what the fuck that's KAIA!?" from Dean inside him and being like Kaia huh? Time to chat.

Mikey do you literally not have your own version of that fuck off huge spear they stabbed Cas with a couple seasons ago, or do you just collect cool spears?

There's something more than usually terrifying about his face in this conversation.

And he now says there's a war coming and thinks something weird like Bad Kaia might appreciate being on his side.

Oh boy.

"Wild one" that's so cool

Michael really has some great lines for being a massive pillock

Omg he fight good too

AAH this is Kaia's memory and she's psychically implanting it in Dean's head

"Stop!" he says, clearly not enjoying watching himself beat up Bad Kaia and, like, realising exactly how awful it looks to do this when he has to watch himself from the outside and for all we know feel her pain too.

Of course Dean being desperate to get the spear to fight Michael could come across with a blur of ambiguity of Michael being desperate still to have it, whether to stop Kaia using it or because he just really wanted it and doesn't like being told no.

The concept that Michael just disappeared from Dean still lingers.

So many fights with a whole bunch of people this season. Maybe just because there's so many friggin characters

"Now you're in trouble" *Bad Kaia literally leaps through a window to avoid dealing with this* I love her

NICE STAB

thanks for saving Jody

Well that was quick

Also you're badass and terrifying and I think Claire might fall in love with you too >.>

"I'm used to it" Oh babe.

She literally raised herself in a terrifying doomy forest so

I mean at least this world has dry crackers and beans. SCORE

Jody has got a LOT of thinking to do about how to phrase any of this to Claire.

"So there's a feral Kaia living in the woods outside of town"

Awww Sam offering her a lift to the hospital

Bobo wants us to remember 9x06 and Dean having to tend Cas's broken hand maybe

Sam. Hug her right now. RIGHT NOW.

Nope Jody just looks really tormented

She's in a reverse Jack position - one mom to 3 hunters instead of one kid to 3 hunters :P

Hey look it is Jack and one of his fathers.

"Jules is off!" Hey look Sleeping Beauty was called Jules. Nerdylittleshit doesn't read these notes however so she will never know that I decided this character was named after her :P

Cas apologises for not being there for Jack, because it took this long to realise he's the father who's always at work while others have taken the stereotypically maternal role to Jack, Cas just gets to be the cool strong father who is usually dead, captured or just busy saving people and too busy for Jack as a result.

"It's okay," Jack says, sounding considerably more emotionally balanced about it than he had in 14x01 when everyone was neglecting him

"Today you PROVED that you have the mind of a hunter. And the heart of a hunter" Raised by the best, bitches!

Awwww Cas wants to be a hunter with Jack! They can get a terrible car and hit the road and do an easy case and bond as they go and eat crappy food at diners and

Jack develops Nephilim Flu in response to having a nice moment with a father because he's so unused to being treated with full attention.

Cas: *squints*

"Must be getting my first cold!"

I have a cold too Jack! Awww!!

Cas is going to make him some soup. This is too sweet. I don't even have words for any of this it's just gross. My teeth hurt.

Jack I swear to god if you stopped your revenge quest and it hurt you so bad inside you're about to cough up a lung I am going to LA to kick the writers' asses in person so if you dare be even the slightest bit consumptive

Oh thank god the scene changed before he coughed blood into his hand

Awww and then Dean admits Sam was right, while still being the one driving on the way back.

I wonder if they filmed these side by side. "Dean slow down" "Sam you were right"

"What Michael used me for" Ouch, hearing him say it like that... Sad sad thoughts.

He just wanted to skip ahead and have it all done because revenge makes you feel SO much better.

"Dean... you did what you had to do" Okay it's even worse hearing someone else justify it rather than hearing that phrase come out of someone's mouth. At least when they say it about themselves they're just in a bad place. I don't even know if this is a pavlovian response I'm having but really flipping it around to have Sam say it is a validation - Sam certainly thinks things are better off with a dead Lucifer and would have a favourable bias, because it got the job done and whatever Mikey is up to at least it's not Lucifer doing it. Because even if Lucifer were doing the exact same things it would just be intangibly but clearly worse.

"It wasn't a blink, being possessed."

Dean says to Sam, who has been possessed by an angel twice and when it was Gadreel, for almost as long as Dean was Michaeled

Dean's so freaked out because fighting the drowning sense of being possessed was so horrifying and made him feel so weak and useless and he didn't even win that fight, Michael just bailed and let him have it back. With the "I own you" hovering over him.

It certainly reeks of being haunted by a bad relationship. The sense the nasty abusive ex hovering around outside the place you work every night...

"And it's all on me, man" No it isn't, he got through because Lucifer told him how.

Well I mean if you wanna go cosmic consequences, yeah it is because Billie done told you not to go universe hopping and that's several billion dominoes you messed around with doing exactly that

But despite how I spent all of season 13 SHRIEKING at you not to do it while knowing full well you did, and how this is technically your cosmic hubris for doing that, I also don't actually blame you on a personal level, Dean. Just, like, so you know once I get back to the shrieking. Because ow you are very sad and in pain and if Nougat wasn't coming down with Nephilim Flu in the other scenes I'd basically rank you No 1 for wrapping in blankets and feeding soup.

You're still in the top 10. Jodi had a pretty bad day too :P

Oh COME ON JACK

*starts packing my bags for the ass kicking*

Aww Jack to an empty room

Um EXCUSE ME HOW MANY CONSUMPTIVE TISSUES HAVE YOU GONE THROUGH?

GO FIND YOUR FATHER RIGHT NOW

HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS FOR THREE WEEKS?

Well no wonder you've been in a panic to get Michael killed.

SHEESH.

Dean's back and he's gonna kick your ass because he remembers when Sam did this in the Trials and he is very very anti consumptive family members.

#Asks #rape mention cw #for thematic parallels to the whole Michael-ing thing #because consent drama and angels as per usual #14x03 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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