#logical error cassie

[reluctanttrabbit]

OKOK making this my final art post of 2023!! @dykevanny @walking-fnaf-encyclopedia GET OVER HERE 💥💥💥💥

TECHNICALLY THESE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS BUT THEY'RE SO OVERDUE IM SO SORRY LMAOOO,,, BUT HERE THEY ARE!!!! i hope i got the designs right ^_^

and as a little side note: thank you guys for being my mutuals!!! to everyone who is reading right now, thank you for liking my art and sticking with me <33 lets go 2024!!!!

[hearts401]

i had to

Calling Michael Afton straight should be considered mischaracterization

[radioactive-earthshine]

"Bart's aging has always been everywhere so it's not invalid to draw him like this [9-11 years old]."

Incorrect. While Bart's aging has been variable throughout the comics it has always been explained by a very clear and blatant events preceding the aging.

The youngest Bart has been in the comics barring flashbacks, and literal one-off aging time shenanigans, is 12 which was a thing for all of 3 pages then he rapidly aged to 14 and was stable for a long, long time.

Bart did not experience any changes in his aging (baring one gag issue where he was a toddler, and the Sins of Youth arc where he was an adult temporarily) for at least two years comic-time.

After apprehending Superboy Prime, Bart was aged to an adult, against the advisement of Geoff Johns and Mark Waid he spent time as The Flash until he was given a mercy kill.

Bart was brought back to life by Brainiac 5 in Legion of Three Worlds where he was reset back to his original age before he was aged up, landing him around 16-17 years old.

Flashpoint happened and he was taken out of comic continuity.

Bart come BACK into comic continuity but we are uncertain what his age is - and this is also something he himself is noted as saying he's not sure what his age is either. Logically, if he never aged while in the Speed Force then when he popped back out he would still be around 17 years old. This is the youngest he can be. Tim, Cassie and Cissie meanwhile aged around a year since Flashpoint and their ages are nebulous. Kon's age as well is uncertain.

Realistically, the Core Four should be in the 18-20 range at the youngest, but if we're going to be 'fair' and accept the reboot fucked age relationships up - then their last posted ages anywhere from 16-18 would be valid.

Bart is not being drawn anywhere near that age group currently in the current run of The Flash and is consistently being depicted as smaller than Jai. This could be valid, as 13 year olds can be VERY BIG and for some completely at their adult height - but the thing is Bart is being drawn SMALLER than he was pre-Flashpoint.

I am so sorry I am so agitated. Even being FAIR it doesn't add up or make sense.

Fixed typos and an error.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

so... what the hell was up with that book where jake gets sent to (a simulation of??) a bad end future where the yeerks have successfully taken over new york city? and have inexplicably named it yeerk new york instead of the much more obvious new yeerk, lol. i ended that book hoping for an explanation but received none, and then it never gets mentioned again for the rest of the series. wtf???

So the within-universe explanation for "What just happened there?" is that the whole thing is a dream, and therefore never happens, and it may or may not have been a dream which was sent by a mysterious voice that Jake appears on waking up. (Personally I think it was Literally Just A Dream, and the voice was hypnagogic hallucination.)

The out-of-universe explanation for #41: The Familiar... pure speculation on my part, but it feels like the series needed a Jake book, and the writers were low on ideas for what to put into one. All the emotional notes of a future where the yeerks won were already hit (faster, and better) by #7. There are a few interesting character beats — Cassie joining the YPM, Tobias re-nothliting as an andalite, Jake responding to the line "you must be mentally ill" by thinking about it and going "I must be" — but the whole doesn't hang together that well. Where's Ax? Why is Rachel so passive? Why does Tobias claim to be unable to morph but also pop up as a hawk? Where's Ax? Is Marco a voluntary controller, and if so what the heck would've motivated that call? If Marco isn't voluntary, then why is Jake so disgusted with him? If Marco's any kind of controller, how come the yeerks don't know that humans can morph? Oh, and where's Ax?

The use of dream-logic to handwave continuity errors in this book makes it unable to build tension. If nothing matters — Visser Marco's rank keeps changing, Tobias is stuck in morph until he isn't, Jake died eight years ago but also everyone expects him to be a living controller — then nothing in this book matters. Who cares if Jake destroys Moon Moon's kandrona source, because it's never going to get built anyway. Who cares about Cassie dying (from a fall! since apparently she forgot how to morph!) if Cassie isn't even real?

Like, I love the opening sequence of #41, and I think it has a ton of potential as a character study, BUT. I also feel like the series hits a low ebb in #39 - #42, and I cynically suspect that the need to get through the narration cycle to some more interesting stuff (Tobias's #43, Marco's #45, Ax's #46) might have motivated this particular book more than some of the ones like #36 or #44 that are minimally plot-advancing but still banging good adventure stories.

[tragedybunny]

Naming Day

Swain wants to do something special for his wife Katarina, but finds out it is easier thought than done. Takes place after my story "The Blade's Edge"

I just wanted an excuse to write something sappy and fluffy about these two. I hope it works in that capacity.

A decent husband would recall his spouse’s Naming Day. That is the truth as espoused by those most intimately acquainted with living in matrimonial harmony. And for once, I intended to prove I was capable of being a decent husband. I am, of course, not one to indulge in celebrations of a spurious nature, Naming Days being one of the foremost of those. In times long past, the Noxii tribes would not name their children until they had survived their first year, marking the occasion with much celebration. As this tradition was passed down, the time grew shorter, and no one really withheld a name in the current time. However, a notion occurred to me as I overheard the bragging amongst a number of the Officers of High Command about the celebrations for their recent progeny. Marking the occasion would probably be appreciated by my dearest wife, and I rarely had the opportunity to indulge her.

Mere seconds later that thought was followed by a terrible realization, the source of doubts about my status as a decent husband. I had no idea when Kat’s Naming was. The notion tormented me as I hurried back to my office, a tactical retreat to plan my next move. Surely she must have mentioned it at some point. Was I not paying attention or had I simply forgotten? After bolting the door behind me, I settled into the chair behind my desk, desperately needing to think.

After an hour of stern concentration, and even inquiring of my birds, I still had no answers. Cold realization washed over me, I couldn’t remember my wife’s Naming Day. The battle was not entirely lost though. She had not been angry with me for any reason I had not discerned, so if I followed logic, it implied that I had not yet missed it. There was still one route to victory left to me, a strategic reserve as it were. Noxian records were unparalleled and went back ages. There was no way a Du Couteau birth in the years of Darkwill went undocumented. I would have to go myself though, I couldn’t trust this to anyone else.

With Kat out on an assignment, and the sense of urgency I felt, there was no better day to accomplish this task. As soon as the last dispatch of edicts and orders left my office, I hurried off. The records hall was just concluding its daily business as I arrived. “I have personal business to attend to, leave me.” The stunned clerk vanished as I waved him away. My steps quickly took me through the endless maze of shelves and cabinets, laden with registry books and rolls of parchment, to the section that should contain the correct date. With trepidation, I assessed my adversary, a near endless amount of paper, and felt a sigh leave my throat. Truthfully, I couldn’t place the year either. I could narrow it down, but still, the task would be daunting. Should I have asked for the clerk’s aid? Would it have been worth the embarrassment? The Grand General cannot figure out his wife’s Naming Day or birth year. With a frustrated growl, my left fist slammed into the wood of the nearest shelf and it buckled, making a distinct popping noise. It would seem I fell short again, a pattern I’m tiring of.

But I had to know the year, I...I’d been at the damned celebration. At the time it hadn’t been very remarkable, I had little interest in the Naming of an infant. Marcus had been a friend however, and our two families had long been allies. It was enough of an occasion that my parents had insisted on my attendance, even if I was only on a short leave from my fledgling military career. A memory floated to the surface of my mind, as though summoned at last by my concentration. Marcus spies me from across the room and rushes over, a smile adorning his features and a tiny bundle in his arms. “Jericho, you made it! Here, you must hold her.” That bundle is passed to me before I can utter a protest. I stare down at the cooing little thing, green eyes wide and locked on me, a dusting of red hair matching Marcus’s adorning her head. For just a moment I think perhaps infants are not so terrible after all. And then she screams at me, the wretched little brat, with such force and fury that Marcus quickly snatches her back.

It could be a humorous memory I suppose, but my teeth dug into my lip as I was reminded of exactly how much difference there was in our ages. So, just to make a clear assessment of my current position, I don’t know my wife’s Naming Day or birth year, and I’ve just been reminded I’m old enough to be her father. What a miserable set of circumstances.

Lucretia had laughed though. Another unbidden memory from somewhere deep inside, the place where I’d buried all remnants of her. I clenched my fists and willed myself not to feel the burning in my chest that accompanied it. “Lucretia.” The whisper filled the empty air around me. It had been the last laugh we would share, she would be gone in mere months, my first companion and friend, my sister. I remembered the year now.

It was easy enough at that point to find the correct registry containing all the high born births for that year, and from there, the Du Couteau name within. Ah, a solid victory at last, it was not for some weeks. We hadn’t been living together at the time last year, so perhaps it just hadn’t come up. I doubted the likeliness of that scenario, but either way, this year was sorted. We’d been busy enough planning for the wedding we never had that a small celebration would be a welcome break.

When the day had at last arrived, I felt a small touch of pride. I’d considered the notion of something more extravagant, but in the end, I’d thought she’d appreciate time where my attention was focused solely on her, where she didn’t have to share me with the Empire. It was something we both understood would be a rarity, but she never resented that fact. So, to that end, I’d planned an intimate evening at home, and handed Darius all authority until sunrise. Her gift was tucked away in the small wooden chest it had arrived from Piltover in. Dinner was arranged to be all of her favorites, starting with Cress’s seafood bisque and ending with a confection laden with strawberries. The bottles of her favorite Shuriman red had been brought up and placed on the table.

When I greeted her at the door, her surprise was evident. “Home on time for once?” I knew she didn’t intend it with malice, still, I was reminded of my fears that one day, she would no longer tolerate this life.

“I can always work in my study if you decide to keep up the sass, Kitten.” At that, she bounded into my arms with enough force to knock me back a step. After a lifetime of war and ruthless ambition, I’m not a man who deserves to be loved like this, but I’m selfish to cling to it as tightly as possible. “Shall we?” I held out my arm and she took it with the soft, slight smile that I know is mine alone. The dining room door lay open, revealing the first course on the table, and the cake awaiting us at the center. She inhaled a soft breath and turned to me, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Jericho.”

Looking down, I brought up my hand to cup her cheek softly. “Kat, I wanted to make this evening something wonderful for you and show you how much I cherish you. Happy Naming Day, my love.”

I leaned down for a soft kiss, which she absent-mindedly returned. Panic clutched at me, she was not pleased. Perhaps she had expected more? The wooden box on the table offered some hope, and I led her to it. After opening the lid, I carefully withdrew what was inside and set it before her. The finely carved crystal reflected the gas lamps and set hundreds of small glowing motes of light on the walls and ceiling. Two figures stood at the top of it, frozen in a moment. One turn of the small handle in the back and they began to move, the room filling with the soft tone of a waltz.

Still, she stood rigidly, saying nothing. “It’s the waltz from our first dance, that night at Solstice.” I offered, my heart rending in two. I had botched this somehow. All the careful planning, all my lofty intentions, it was all coming to naught. Even when I put all my will into it, I could not be what she deserved. “If it doesn’t please you I could find something else. I know it isn’t grandiose, perhaps it was a poor …”

“I love it.” She cut me off, but the melancholy in her tone did little to convince me it was the truth.

Moving in closer, I took her hand again. “I promise I won’t be upset if you don’t.”

“Did you realize you couldn’t remember when it was?” Her fingers entwined in mine, even as her eyes avoided me.

It would seem she had found me out. “Yes. I had to work it out. I’m sorry for forgetting.” Was that what she was upset about?

“You didn’t forget. I never told you.” The figurines stopped moving and she winded the handle again before finally turning to me. “I don’t celebrate my Naming.”

“Oh.” I’d still made a grievous error, just an entirely different one, it would seem.

Her gaze fixes back on the music box, the tune filling the silence between us. “When I was younger, just after Cassie was born, we stopped celebrating it. Father was away on campaign, this was before the move to Uzeris, and I excitedly went running to Mother the day of, asking how we would celebrate it. But she had Cassie now, and she looked at me with that cold look I would come to know so well, and replied that she was too busy with the baby. If I was old enough for Father to take away for training, I was too old for Naming Days, and that she would beat me if I continued to whine. I was five.” For a moment, she was quiet, staring into the distance. “You know what the worst part was? Father never said anything to the contrary when he returned.”

My own parents had been absent, cold, and ambitious to the detriment of all else, in many ways though, it was too typical of an upbringing in Noxian nobility. Kat though had experienced so much outright cruelty and intentional pain, I sometimes sensed I had not even scratched the surface of it. I wrapped myself around her until I could feel her head resting just under my chin, the place it felt like she was made to occupy. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stir up old hurts.” Though I wasn’t sure how, I felt as if I should’ve known better. All the secrets I’d seen, all my ability to be ten steps ahead of allies and adversaries, I should’ve figured this out. Desperately clinging to her, I kissed the top of her head.

“You know better, you can’t blame yourself. You’re not all-knowing, as much as you’d like the pretend.” Sadness still colored her words.

“A failure is still a failure, no matter the cause.” All I had wanted was one night to love her right. “I told you I would make a terrible husband.” My forced laugh did little to lighten things.

“Oh shut it, you’re wonderful.” Her arms tightened around me, making breathing difficult, but it was worth enduring. “You know what? Fuck her.” She looked up at me, that fire that I adore burning in her eyes. “She’s rotting in her empty manor, and I’m here with you, celebrating my Naming with the man I love.” There was a feral intensity to the kiss she suddenly pressed to my lips. “I won’t let her keep controlling me.”

In that moment, I doubted the gods themselves could control Kat if she put her mind to it. “Are you sure? You don’t have to force yourself.”

“I am. I don’t want to let the past ruin what we have right now.” There was no denying the conviction of those words.

I kissed her cheek and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “In that case, I do have further plans tonight that involve the two of us, another bottle of wine, and the bath.”

She inhaled sharply. “Only if it ends with the bed a wreck and both of us exhausted.”

“But of course, my love.” I kissed her deeply again, hands wrapping around her waist to keep her close. She really is the best thing that ever happened to me.

[hairpintvrns]

Terry chuckled as they led her towards the living room and the home bar, the butcher block countertop dark and polished, resembling everything else in the wooden cabin. They didn’t join her in the seating area just yet, instead making a sidestep towards the shelves where their admittedly sparse collection of alcohol lay. They took out three bottles—a half-empty bourbon, a red with earthy, spicy tones, and a Chardonnay—and laid them on the counter. A limited selection, on account of the cabin not entertaining very many visitors.

Briefly, they indulged at the thought that the last person she drank with had actually been with her ex-husband, now Theo’s employer. The past colliding with the present.  “Oh, do you still have to do those?” Terry asked, absently, placing the assorted glassware on the countertop. With Theo’s life so marked by scrutiny, they figured that the move to Blue Harbor would’ve meant fewer prying eyes, fewer press shoots, fewer everything. “I just—well, I would’ve thought you moving here would make those less frequent.”

It did not take long to realize the error in their assumption. The flaw in their logic was the belief that in making a drastic move, one’s problems would immediately disappear. But in running away, one actually assigned meaning to the nothingness—transforming the nothing that was not there to the nothing that was.  

Dismissing the thought, they settled at the seat next to Theo’s. Lined up in this way, the nail polishes almost resembled the small, squat jars of paint swatches. Of course, their nails hardly matched the scale of walls, slabs, and columns, but it was the only canvas in the human body that did not wither with age, as hair or skin would. “Let me think,” they hummed, switching the positions of one nail polish and another such that the color gradation would be more coherent, before drawing their attention back towards the display. 

Terry placed their left hand on the countertop, making the evaluation, surprised to find their chest constricting a little. They weren’t vain by any means, but casting judgment on their own self, with their own keen eye, felt strange. Sturdy and strong, their mother had commented, once, and befitting of a butcher’s daughter. But the deep lines and knots that had grown over the years only served to underscore just how old they’d felt against Micah’s and Theo’s youth, Cassie’s vitality, even Saul’s fire. 

“Let’s go with silver,” they settled with the safer option—a choice decidedly familiar. “And you, what’s your poison? Red, white, or bourbon?” 

Terry extends her arm, and Theo takes the gesture for what it is — an act of trust, one she knows Terry reserves only for those they truly care for. With this in mind, she keeps their embrace short and sweet, not wanting to take advantage of the trust she’s placed in Theo, and pulls back with a soft, fond smile. “It’s great to see you too, Terry,” she replies gently. Terry’s face is remarkably the same, and yet somehow so very different — one could, perhaps, blame that on the passage of time, but Theo thinks there are less wrinkles seeped into their skin and more weariness. She doesn’t mention this, however; she can’t imagine how much Terry’s been through, as of late. Willingly moving here, for example, must have been quite a hard decision to make, with Saul so close. And now with Cassie back in the picture — well. Terry’s got several things to feel weary about, is all she means.

She raises an eyebrow at the other’s quip about the number of nail polishes in her bag and scoffs softly. “I’ll have you know options are important,” she reminds Terry, following them into the living room. “I just want to make sure you’ll be comfortable walking around with the color you choose for your nails,” she adds sincerely. “Though you are more than welcome to paint mine, as well, if you’re so inclined. I can’t promise they’ll stay that color, though,” she huffs. “Photo shoots, and all that.”

She drops the bag onto the makeshift bar she’s been led to, pulling out nail polish after nail polish gingerly. When she’s finished, she’s lined up about seven different shades, looking at all of them closely, eyes narrowed. It’s in her best interest, she thinks, to focus entirely on nails and colors and the like. This way, she avoids the burning curiosity about Terry’s run-in with Cassandra — avoids, too, spilling her guts about seeing Samuel outside of a sex shop just the other day, like she hadn’t thought him dead for the first couple of weeks after he’d abandoned her without a word. It’s easier, Theo thinks, to focus on such mundane things, lest she starts in on things that make her cry and would, she thinks, make Terry uncomfortable, by proxy.

She clears her throat of a slight knot, then looks back at Terry brightly. “Up to you,” she tells them, gesturing at the line-up. “I do enjoy the mint shades, but the silver ones might lean a little more neutral,” she hums.

[cordoniantrash]

Once Upon Another Time: Chapter Five

AU: In another time where the brothers Beaumont did not reach Cassandra in time, the waitress turned lady went back to New York to rebuild her old life. After finding an unexpected souvenir, she set off and joined her long lost family. Four years later, a newly divorced King of Cordonia arrives in New York in hopes of reuniting with his beloved. Instead of Cassandra, all he found was a postcard with the word Edgewater written on the back

Catch up here: Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four

Plus a masterlist if you guys are interested.

Hello, one and all! Welcome to this monster of a chapter, the longest one to date. My brain is tired, so grammatical errors are my own and comments are greatly appreciated.

Also, should I write a brief description of the chapters instead of the usual story description (as seen above)? Let me know guys. 

Thanks to @thequeennefertipi for betaing!

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters, Pixleberry has that privilege. Title for both the series and the chapter titles, plus the epigraphs are from Sara Bareilles’ discography  

Pairing: Liam x MC

Warning: swearing, mentions of drinking, brief non-graphic discussion of violence

Words: 5397

Chapter Five: Gravity

Something always brings me back to you

It never takes too long

No matter what I say or do

I'll still feel you here 'till the moment I'm gone

  “Can you see that? A future with me?” he hesitated, “with children?”

She took his hand, met his gaze, and smiled. 

“We’ll have adorable kids.”

Unbidden, the memory surfaced in his mind. Four years after he had that conversation with Cassandra, he found himself staring into another pair of brown eyes. It’s like looking in a mirror. Or an old photograph. 

He mentally shook his head. It can’t be. It’s just a coincidence. There’s a whole country of people that looks like me. 

But for all his rational thoughts, his reasons and logic, he can’t help but feel that this is a reunion, not a first meeting. Somehow, a part of him he didn’t know was missing had finally returned to him. His heart ached. His knees felt weak. 

Mechanically, he finished greeting the Countess. Without missing a beat, she smiled and held the little boy’s hand.

“I must apologise for my grandson’s outburst, Your Majesty. He’s an excitable child.”

“Oh, not at all, my lady. In fact, I find it charming,” Liam replied, barely remembering his training. “Though I’d like to introduce myself, if possible.” Her grandson. Cassandra’s grandmother died before we met and she had never met her paternal grandparents either. Then it can’t be. His heart was beating hard in his chest. Am I disappointed or relieved?

The Countess agreed, and the tension that he didn’t know he held was lifted. Ignoring royal protocol, he knelt down and met the little boy’s gaze. 

“Hello!” the little boy exclaimed bouncing on the balls of his feet. His grandmother cleared her throat, and the boy startled, quickly executing a bow. “Your Majesty.” He hastily added. 

Liam’s heart melted. He extended his hand for a handshake. The little boy gripped Liam’s hand. He didn’t want to let go.

“Hello,” the king replied. “My name’s Liam. Might I know yours?”

“My name’s Lucas and I’m four years old! And you’re the man from the telly!” Lucas flashed him a smile, beaming all the while.

Despite himself, Liam chuckled. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Lucas.” The man from the telly? What does that mean?

Behind him, his secretary cleared their throat. Reluctantly Liam stood up. After a few more seconds of pleasantries, he managed to walk away from the ambassador and his family. As Bastien whisked him away for the opening remarks, another thought came to his mind. I know that smile. Cassie has the same smile. His heart seemed to stop.

----

“Champagne, Mother?”

“Thank you, darling.”

Charles stared at her. 

“What are you playing at?”

Clara let out a tinkling laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Charles. Oh, and don’t frown, darling. People might think there’s a problem.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And that would be absurd, wouldn’t it?”

Clara smiled around the rim of her champagne glass. “Yes, it would.”

“Are you torturing the man then? Dangling the possibility of a child and then taking it away? When you asked me last week to look into him, this isn’t what I envisioned.” He paused, looking around and lowering his voice further. “If that is what you’re doing, then that is just cruel Mother. I know they hurt one of ours and I understand the urge to retaliate, but you were never one for mind games and power plays.”

“That’s an interesting possibility Charles, but have you considered another?”

“And what might that other possibility be?”

“The possibility that I might be interested in testing our gracious host,” she caught his affronted expression. “Oh, do calm down, darling. I just want to get a measure of him before an inevitable reunion occurs.”

“Might have been fairer if he knew he is being tested though,” Charles mumbled as his shoulders relaxed.

“I often find that the best tests are blind. Besides, we should always measure the depth of the water before diving in.”

“Why are we diving in in the first place? I thought you hated this place?”

“Perhaps it’s time we reacquaint ourselves with our extended family. Come to our suites later, your sister and I have something to show you.”

----

“You’ve outdone yourself, mon cher,” Kiara said as she handed Hana a glass of champagne. 

Hana blushed as she accepted Kiara’s offering. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. Maxwell and Olivia helped.”

Kiara raised her eyebrow. “Hana, we’ve talked about this.”

Hana blushed once more. “Right. But they deserve the praise too.”

“And I’ll give them one when I see them. But right now I’m congratulating you.”

“Thank you, Kiara,” Hana said as she smiled, “really.”

“So, how is charming the nobility going?” Kiara asked as the two of them started to walk around the length of the room. “Is there anything we should look out for?”

“So far there’s no mention of Madeleine,” Hana answered in French. “But if Olivia’s source is right, then she might arrive with her mother.”

Kiara sighed. “Why can’t she just run back to her hovel?”

Hana stifled a laugh. “Well, you know what they say about the bad ones.”

“Perish the thought,” Kiara said with a shudder. “Although I can’t quite gauge her motivation for crashing this dinner. She has to know that this would just make her look desperate.”

Hana shrugged. “There is virtue in being bold.”

“In other circumstances perhaps. But Madeleine has always been calculating,” Kiara answered, her eyes narrowed. “Boldness is not exactly her forte. We both know she is not one for gambits.”

“Well, whatever her reasoning is,” Hana shrugged once more. “We’ve got Olivia on hand should things go south.”

Kiara sighed. It took her a few steps to realise that Hana had stopped in her tracks. Kiara turned and saw the lady standing stock still, staring across the ballroom. Confused, Kiara followed her gaze. It was the British Ambassador’s party. She turned to Hana once more, a question on the tip of her tongue when Hana subtly nodded towards the little boy beside the Ambassador. Kiara looked again. Is she shocked that there are children during the state dinner? It might be odd but hardly scandalous.

The little boy turned and Kiara was able to see his face. Her heart lurched. There were some differences, but the resemblance was uncanny. She felt chills.

He looks like Liam. But how? 

The two ladies stood there staring at the little boy when someone cleared their throat behind them. Kiara whirled around and saw Olivia, eyebrow arched, a glass of wine in hand. 

“What are you two gaping at? The she-demon has been spotted near the gates!”

Wordlessly, Kiara nodded towards the little boy. She saw Olivia’s hand tighten around her wine glass.

“Fuck.”

Fuck indeed.

----

“My lady, can We welcome you to Cordonia one more?”

Lady Harper smiled. “My family and I thank you for such a warm welcome, sir. Have I mentioned that this is my grandson’s first time abroad? He was very excited to come.”

Liam smiled, ignoring the pang he felt when the Countess referred to Lucas as her grandson. 

“I could recommend some sights to visit during your stay here, the palace gardens, for instance. Cordonia might be a small country but we have a lot to offer.”

“So my son has told me.” Countess Clara looked at him and Liam couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being scrutinised. Just as he was about to fidget, the Countess smiled (it did not really reach her eyes, Liam noted), “if you want to talk to Lucas, you can just say so Your Majesty. He’s with his Uncle Charles at the moment.”

“Oh, so Viscountess Elizabeth is his mother then?” Liam asked, trying his best to remain casual. This is just small talk, he reminded himself. Earn her trust before you ask questions.

The Countess laughed. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but that thought is just too funny,” she straightened, seeing Liam’s confusion. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. My Lizzy is of the Sapphic persuasion if you catch my meaning. She’s quite loud about it.”

“Oh. My apologies, my lady. I did not mean to presume—“

“It’s quite alright, King Liam,” she said saving him from fumbling, “I know you meant no offence. In truth, Lucas is my sister’s grandson.”

Liam tried his best to maintain his composure. He swallowed.

“I see.”

“Oh, but enough of the past,” Lady Harper said, sipping her drink, “you are more than welcome to talk to Lucas. Not that I’d blame you, he’s got his charm from his mother.” 

“Thank you, my lady. I’m sure he is a credit to you and your family.”

As he walked towards the Ambassador and his nephew, Liam couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being examined, judged from one angle to another. But on what exactly? He quickly set aside the thought as he approached the boy.

Lucas beamed when he caught sight of him. Liam couldn’t help but smile in return. 

“Hello!” Lucas said as Liam approached them. The Ambassador bowed and his sister curtsied. 

“Hello Lucas,” Liam said, he then nodded to Lord Charles and Lady Elizabeth. “Might I interest you and your family in a tour of the gardens later tonight? I would be remiss in my duties as the host if I don’t show you one of the best features of the palace.”

“We would be quite honoured, Your Majesty. But it will be Lucas’ bedtime in a few hours. We promised his mother that he’ll be in bed after a course or two,” Lady Elizabeth said apologetically.

“But I wanna see the garden, Aunty Lizzy! I’ll be good!”

The Ambassador and his sister hesitated.

“You can come along if you like Your Excellency, My Lady. But I give you my word that Lucas will be safe with me.”

“I’d like to come along if you don’t mind.” A voice piped up behind him. Liam turned and saw that Countess Clara had joined their little circle. “You two can keep on socialising here, but I for one would welcome some fresh air.”

Lucas let out a little cheer. Liam’s smile grew wider.

“Shall we?” he asked. 

Lucas grinned and grabbed his grandmother’s hand.

“Let’s go!”

----

Edgewater

The sun’s almost setting, Cassandra mused as she looked through the windows of the sitting room. She stood up, closing her laptop and leaving it on the couch. That means the guests are already arriving. I bet dinner will be served soon. I hope Lucas has been cooperating. State dinners can be stuffy and boring. Is he behaving?

Has he seen Liam yet?

Has Liam seen Lucas yet?

Why did I agree to this in the first place?

She sighed. Cassandra opened her laptop again. It showed an airline’s website. The destination was Cordonia.

Could I really go back there? Should I? But what about my family here?

He’s divorced, yes. But showing up there after years of no contact? With a little boy too. What if he really believed those photos? What if he doesn’t feel the same way? What if he doesn’t want me? 

What about Lucas?

----

The Palace’s Garden, Cordonia

Clara walked a few paces behind Liam and Lucas. She could barely keep up with the stream of questions that her grandson was asking the King. To his credit, Liam was attentive, actively listening and patiently answering the four-year-old’s questions. He seemed relaxed and in his element, trained to perfection. But Clara’s sharp eyes did not miss the way the monarch could barely take his eyes away from the child, a question silently asked every time he turned to Lucas.

The pair stopped in front of a tree. Liam turned to Lucas and said, “This is the centre of the maze. You win maze tag when you reach this tree.”

Lucas oohed and aahed, as he reached out and touched the tree. He peeked to one side and gasped.

“Oh! A swing!” Lucas exclaimed, and the King froze for a moment before offering to push the child on the swing. Then the pair looked at her for permission. She chuckled. After Clara gave her assent, Liam still kept on glancing at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. 

I wager you’re too wary to ask me if he’s yours. She’d seen the way he reacted to the child. This one’s quick on the uptake. That’s a good sign. You’re already a step ahead of your nobles.

Remaining composed this evening had taken all her willpower. These are the people who stood by and let her niece be humiliated. Some of them even relished the chance to drag Cassie’s name through the mud. 

Having Charlie look into the events that happened in that same ballroom years ago had been illuminating. It certainly shed a light on why after everything that happened, Cassandra would still be quick to defend Liam. 

She tries to hide it. Denies it to herself on most days. But she still loves him. 

Looking at the way Liam was staring Lucas, Clara is stuck with the feeling that her niece’s affection is returned. 

Smiling at Lucas, Clara’s mind wandered to the journal she had brought with her. If Cordelia’s right, then the King Father’s death means Cassandra and Lucas can come back here if she chooses to. My family might be safe. 

Looking at the father and son at the centre of the maze, Clara imagines that dear Cassie would go back here, one way or another. 

----

“Are you sure the girls will be fine?”

“Relax hun. The royal staff is more than capable of handling the twins for a night.”

Katie nodded, shoulders easing up a little. “Right. But can we still call them after dinner?”

Leo nodded and said, “We can even check up on them later if you want. They won’t notice if we slip away for a bit.”

Katie smiled and squeezed his hand. 

Before Leo could continue to reassure his wife, he noticed Olivia stalking towards them with Kiara and Lady Hana in tow. Huh, I didn’t know Liv had friends.

“Uh…” Katie trailed off beside him. “Leo, what did you do?”

Leo looked at his wife, his eyebrows drawn. “I don’t think I did anything…” 

Both husband and wife looked on with confusion as Olivia approached the pair.

Before either of them could ask anything, the Scarlet Duchess had passed the nobles and staff still mingling near the entrance and had grabbed both of their arms.

“We have a situation and we need both of you to distract the she-demon.”

Leo and Katie exchanged a glance. Katie shrugged.

“I don’t mind.”

Olivia raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Really?”

His wife smirked then replied, “She never really got over the fact that Leo broke their years-old engagement to marry me. That should be enough of a distraction.”

Olivia smirked. “Oh, I’d love to see this.”

Leo raised an eyebrow and readied a retort when his wife elbowed him. Lady Hana cleared her throat.

“There’s another matter,” she said, turning the attention on her. “There’s a little boy in the British Ambassador’s party and well…” she trailed off.

What now?

“He looks like Liam.” Kiara supplied seeing Leo’s confusion. 

“What?”

Olivia sighed, impatient. “It’s better to show you.”

With that, she stirred Leo and Katie towards a corner and directed their gaze to a little boy chattering away with Liam. 

Huh. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Liam had a love child with someone. 

Does this mean I’m finally an uncle?

“Oh, my…” Katie murmured.

“Look alive,” Olivia said, interrupting Leo’s musings, “she-demon’s just arrived.”

“Well then,” Leo sighed as he extended an arm towards his wife, “I assume that aside from pissing her off, we also have to prevent her from seeing Liam’s mini-me?”

Katie hooked her arm with his. “I think that goes without saying, hun.”

----

The Beaumont Estate, Ramsford

He was having a headache. If I have to skim through another document, I’m gonna throw myself off the building. We’ve found a mention of the place. Is that clue not enough? We should just go there now, really. 

Drake stood up, stretching this way and that to try and fight the sleepiness that was threatening to come over him. He understood the need to be covert, and the threat of hackers is a real concern, but he would kill to just have a computer do this job for him. I should have stayed in as part of the security at the dinner, even if it means putting up with Olivia’s barbs. 

“Continue the investigation he said,” Drake muttered as he walked around the room, “keep up appearance he said. When Maxwell gets back here, I’m gonna let him have it.” 

He groaned. God, I sound like Bertrand. Drake shuddered. 

Deciding to fix himself a drink, he began to walk out of the room. He paused at the doorway.

“Can’t have the staff see what we’re looking at.”

Drake doubled back and collected the papers on the desk. Deciding to put them in the drawer, for the time being, he opened the first one. It was full of loose papers. 

Grumbling, Drake took the papers from the drawer and placed them next to the gathered documents. 

“I can’t believe I’m more organised than this,” he muttered.

As he finished stuffing the documents into the drawer, his eyes caught a name.

Savannah Walker

Drake blinked. He picked up the paper with shaking hands.

Underneath the name was an address.

An hour later, the skeleton staff at the Beaumont estate would see Drake Walker walking out of the doors, practically shaking with anger. They then heard his car take off, disappearing into the night.

----

The Palace

She held her head high as the herald who looked visibly uncomfortable, exited the foyer, presumably to announce her into the ballroom. Her mother shook her head and sighed. Madeleine glanced at her as they started walking toward the doors. 

“What now, Mother.”

“This will get people talking.”

“I thought you liked gossip?”

“Not when we’re walking towards the lion’s den.”

“Oh, please. We have Aunt Regina and half the court on our side.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, dear. Regina’s beginning to rebuild her relationship with Liam. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Then we still have the court and the media on our side.”

They were almost at the door.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that either.”

Madeleine raised an eyebrow.

“They will be if they know what’s good for them.”

Adelaide glanced at her. 

“After your Reign of Terror, I doubt they’ll be too eager to ally with you.”

Madeleine opened her mouth to retort when the doors opened. 

The nobles gathered near the entrance avoided her eyes. Madeleine narrowed her eyes but still held her head high as they entered the ballroom. A cursory glance of the room told her that Liam wasn’t at his throne. Probably talking to some dignitaries. No matter, I’ll see him soon enough. 

“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s Maddy!” a voice behind her said. Her heart lurched. She turned around. Standing before her, wearing a suit was her former fiancé. On his arm was the woman who ruined Madeleine’s first chance of becoming Queen. Ignoring her narrowed eyes, Leo turned towards her mother.

“Hey, Adelaide! It’s been a while!” he inclined his head towards his wife. “May I introduce my wife, Katie?”

“Hello, dear. I must say, that gown is stunning!”

The minx smiled. “Thank you, Your Grace. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Adelaide’s smile grew. Madeleine could feel herself glower.

“Mother,” she interrupted, her voice clipped, “I think Duchess Joelle wants a word.”

“Hm… Joelle is fun at parties,” Adelaide said, glancing at Madeleine. “I’d leave you youngsters to your conversation.”

Madeleine barely glanced at her mother as the Duchess flounced off to join her peers. Her gaze was fixed on Leo’s wife. The woman met her eyes without flinching. 

“How are you finding the festivities, Madeleine?” Katie asked.

“I see that you’ve forgotten royal etiquette. It’s Countess Madeleine, Katie,” Madeleine retorted, “and it’s quite the prestigious event. I’m sure you’ve rarely seen the like.” 

Leo tensed but stayed silent. His wife just smiled.

“Well, if we’re going to address each other by our titles, then I suppose you must call me Mrs Rys,” the shorter woman smirked, “that shouldn’t be hard to remember, seeing as I’m the only one with that title.”

Leo smirked, drawing his wife close to his side.

“Oh, do lighten up Maddy! Let’s not add etiquette to an already stuffy occasion.”

“Oh yes, we’re all friends here,” she paused then added, “Well most of us.”

Madeleine felt herself tense. What do they know?

Leo perked up. “Hun, there’s Anna de Luca,” indicating to the journalist near where they’re standing. “She was the one that asked to interview you.”

What?

“Oh, then I’d better talk to her before dinner starts. Talk schedule and all,” she looked at Madeleine. “If you’ll excuse me, my lady.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned her back to Madeleine and strutted towards the reporter.

“Bless, Anna,” Leo mused, “she was quite eager to score an interview. But, you know all about that, don't you Maddy?”

Madeleine scowled. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? It’s not as though you’ve spent years calling me a nickname I don’t like.”

“Have you come here to gloat?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Gloat what? That I married the love of my life or that my brother divorced you?”

Madeleine opened her mouth for a retort that never came.

“Face it, Maddy. There’s nothing here for you. Especially since you’ve been badmouthing the host of this party.”

“You don’t know that,” she shot back. “I’m still the rightful queen.”

“So what?” Leo shrugged. “You’ve alienated the nobility since you became queen. The media, your last ace, is losing interest. So why continue?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand the intricacies of politics, Leo.”

Leo huffed out a laugh then shot her a look. It was achingly familiar. Madeleine glanced at him. The young girl within her still longs for some affection. Feasting on the scraps he tossed her all those years ago. Her pearls felt tight against her throat. You gave these to me, remember?

She shook her head.

We’ve always been taught how important reputation is. Kill the figure and a dozen will take his place. Destroy the power structure, the trust, the reputation, and he’s as good as dead.

“So that’s what you’re after,” Leo murmured and she startled, horror quickly taking over her, “you’ve gone down and you want to take everything else with you. You’ll bring us all to our own graves. All because you were denied a crown.”

Shit. 

Madeleine felt as though she was suddenly dunked underwater. Her vision blurred. She dimly heard the bell signalling the start of the dinner, sound travelling towards her slowly. 

“Well,” he said, clapping her shoulder. “It was nice talking to you, Maddy.”

What have I done?

Her entire being was submerged in water and it was slowly freezing over. She could vaguely see Leo’s back as he walked towards the double-doors. Her feet refused to move, frozen solid by the horror that gripped her throat. Around her, people were making their way towards the dining room. That’s where I should be. But why can’t I move?

Time seemed to slow down, like water reduced to a trickle. I have to go…

Slowly, painstakingly, she spun around towards the outer doors.

And walked. Just another ghost inside the palace walls.

At the doorway, she turned for one last look.

That was when she saw him.

A little boy holding an elder woman’s hand. Foreigners perhaps, but that was hardly what caught her attention.

The little boy looked just like Liam.

For a moment the boy turned, and she caught sight of his eyes and suddenly, she remembered another lady, another foreigner. It was in the way he tilted his head and in the shade of brown in those eyes. Another ghost from years ago. One that stood between her and Liam throughout their whole marriage.

Her mind went blank. She whirled around and stumbled out into the night. 

----

“The grounds are secure Your Grace.”

A passing server whispered to Olivia. Granting her a subtle nod, the Scarlet Duchess then walked towards the dining room, where most of the guests had already gathered. 

Maxwell was waiting for her on the other side of the door. The look on his face gave her pause. 

“What is it?” apprehension colouring her tone.

“Drake’s gone.”

Olivia seized his arm and dragged him near the corner of the room, mindful of eyes and ears that might be trained their way.

“What do you mean gone?” she hissed.

“The staff just saw him storming out of the estate!” Maxwell said, doing his best to lower his voice. “I don’t know what caused it, I swear!”

Olivia let out an aggravated sigh. 

“D’you think — “Maxwell began, hesitating at the face of her ire.

“That he rushed off to find Cassandra because of your little clue? Probably. Who knows?”

“But we had a plan! Why would he do that?”

“I assume it has a little bit to do with the little flame he still carries for her,” she shot him a look, “as to your last question, we all know that he’s got an impulsive streak.”

“But this isn’t like him at all!”

“Hm. You’re right about that,” Olivia narrowed her eyes. “Tell me, Maxwell: Is there anything in your estate that might set him off?”

Maxwell gulped, his eyes wide. Bingo. 

“Urgh. I’ll send some of my people after his trail. We’ll sort it out once we find him.”

“What if we don’t find him?”

“He’ll go back here sooner or later,” she bared her teeth, “and he will not like what he finds.”

----

Later that night, the guest bedrooms in the Palace    

Clara watched as her son flipped through their cousin’s journal. After a few moments, she stood up and checked on the four-year-old safely tucked in her bed, safely sleeping. 

“Good Lord,” Charles said from his seat. Clara turned back toward her son.

“Indeed.”

“And to think he was also the mastermind behind Cassie’s scandal.”

“In a way, I suppose we should be thankful that that’s all he did,” Elizabeth added from her perch on the bed. “However despicable that was.”

“He, uh, took care of a whole family just because they were associated with a dissenting group.” Charles countered.

“Murdered, Charles. You can say it. He murdered a whole family, down to their little baby, just because they disagreed with his policies and dared form a group over it,” Clara sighed, “he also orchestrated the disappearance of several aristocrats. Goodness knows that’s just another word for murder, too.”

“But he changed.” Even as he said it, Charles grimaced. 

“Yes, after cousin Cordelia gave him a son,” Elizabeth answered. “I saw him earlier, by the way. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve heard about him.”

“And to think he could have been King,” Charles mused. “Although I find his younger brother more agreeable.”

“Of course, you do,” Clara said with a chuckle. “Liam’s a more capable King than Leo. That’s as plain as night and day. Thank goodness they don’t share the same mother.”

Charles glanced at Lucas. “Then this means that our little Lucas is actually a prince.”

Clara shrugged. “That depends.”

Charles leaned towards his mother. “Depends on what mother?”

“On what Cassie chooses of course. Technically, Lucas is still the King’s bastard.”

“What else would Cassie choose? Her name’s been cleared, her lover’s divorced and pining for her if tonight was any indication and the man who orchestrated her scandal’s long dead.”

Clara raised an eyebrow. 

“Exactly. It’s too easy.”

“You’re complaining that things are too easy?” Elizabeth said as she and Charles shared a befuddled look. 

“Yes, darlings. From what this journal has told us, Constantine was a master manipulator and a tyrant to boot. He was obsessed with his legacy. He changed his tune and sheathed his claws but that does not mean it’s still not there.”

“The man’s dead mother,” Elizabeth said. “Even you can admit there’s not much he can do beyond the grave.”

Clara sighed. Charles raised his eyebrows.

“Unless you’re concerned about something else?” Charles added. “Two little birds leaving the nest, perhaps?”

Clara scowled. Charles had the gall to chuckle and Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. Clara changed the subject. 

“Aren’t you the least bit curious about why he tried so hard to prevent them from reaching Cassandra?”

“I’d imagine that’s because she’s also a Foredale,” Charles stood up and walked towards the window, “Cousin Cordelia was fortunate enough to escape with her life, let alone with that journal and all its secrets. You said it yourself, Mother. The man’s obsessed with his legacy. Imagine finding that one of his son’s suitors was related to his first wife. Of course, he’ll try to eliminate the threat.”

“Perhaps.”

Her son turned to look at her. “I know you’re worried. I am too. But there’s no need to rush just yet, nor is there any use. Let’s just take this one day at a time and figure this out.”

Clara nodded, her thoughts swirling.

“Are we going to tell her?” Elizabeth asked into the silence that covered the room.

“… I don’t know,” Clara answered. 

----

The Lady 

Hana sighed as soon as her mother closed the door. Lorelai had been nearly impossible to shake earlier. Thankfully, Rashad had offered to distract her parents while she kept track of the nobles at the dinner.

They are her parents, yes, but Hana was tired. An ambitious mother and a guilty, well-meaning father. Years of neglect and impossibly high expectations. Their insistence that all this was for her own good. But now that I’ve secured a suitable match, what comes next? A decade of my mother hovering near to instruct me on how to be a proper wife? Am I going to be their pawn forever? Why can’t they leave me be? They insist on moulding me to be the ever accomplished, capable lady then turn around and say that they must hold my hand at every step. 

Hana shook her head. Now is not the time for morose thoughts, as Kiara would say.

Kiara. Hana smiled at the thought of her. Maybe I am not the daughter you want me to be, but at least there’s someone who sees me for me.

Her phone vibrated, snapping her out of her thoughts. It was Maxwell.

Emergency meeting! Usual place in an hour.

Hana quickly got up. Her room was the closest to their usual meeting place. The corridors were still and silent. She quickly slipped inside Liam’s private study.

Kiara was already in the room.

“Do you have any idea why they called a meeting?”

Kiara shook her head. “Non, mon cher. Although I suspect it might be because of the little boy earlier.”

Hana came closer and Kiara took her hand. Hana laid her head on Kiara’s shoulder. Together, the two ladies sat in comfortable silence for a while.

Olivia was the next one to enter.

“Urgh. Express your affection somewhere else.”

Hana could practically see Kiara roll her eyes. She chuckled.

“Are we going to discuss the little boy?”

Olivia pinched the bridge of her nose. “That among other things.”

“Other things?” Kiara echoed.

“It’s better to talk when we’re all here.”

“We’re here!” Maxwell said as he rushed through the door, Liam following behind.

Hana’s eyebrows furrowed. “Where’s Drake?”

Olivia scowled and Maxwell fidgeted. Liam looked out the window, his gaze far off.

“That’s why we’re here,” Olivia spat out. “Bastard’s runoff.”

Liam frowned. “We don’t know that, Olivia.”

“No. But we know that he booked a flight and ran away.”

“Where exactly? The UK?” Kiara asked, straightening up. Hana missed the warmth.

“No…” Maxwell mumbled. “He’s gone to Paris.”

“Why Paris?” Hana asked. “The clue you found and –“she hesitated looking at Liam.

“And Lucas is from a county in England,” Liam finished for her. He turned towards them. “His grandmother is the Countess of Edgewater.”

Hana’s eyes widened. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Olivia standing still with Maxwell’s shocked face at her side. Beside her, Hana felt Kiara tense.

“I think— “Liam’s voice broke. “Lucas might be my son.”

#

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[mittensmorgul]

i obviously did not think this through

So the other day I thought it would be fun to make up my own Essential Rewatch List leading up to 15.01, and boy howdy was I ever wrong! This post is the result of that. Instead of a conveniently streamlined list of important episodes for meta and character development highlights, instead have this 15k word probably-useless behemoth...

I debated not even posting this on tumblr because it’s just so massive. But heck this was a lot of work so here it is.

For reference purposes, I refer a lot to my rewatch notes, but mostly in later seasons. If you’d rather just go to the beginning of my tag for the most recent rewatch, 1.01 is the last post on this page, and then you can just continue chronologically from there:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s14+hellatus+rewatch/chrono/page/3

If you want to read more about a specific episode, every singe episode is filed on my blog with the episode tag. For example, all posts about 1.01 are tagged like this:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-1.01

To find a different episode, just plug in the correct episode number and voila.

If you’d prefer to skip an episode but don’t fully recall it and just want a quick refresher, every episode is linked on this page of the superwiki. Those links will serve you up a tidy synopsis as well as link you to the transcripts for every episode (linked at the bottom of each episode page):

http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/Category:Episodes

I started out making reasonable, logical entries for every episode, and then... kinda went off the rails toward the end... apologies for how chaotic this might read. Most of it was typed off the top of my head, and I haven’t edited it so apologies for any errors. Under a cut because FIFTEEN. THOUSAND. WORDS.

Good luck.

1.01 Pilot Obviously this episode sets up everything that comes after, and gives us a platform from which to understand exactly how the show’s mythology will eventually evolve. It also establishes a baseline for understanding Sam and Dean and their personal character evolutions and family dynamics. Probably essential viewing in any rewatch...

1.02 Wendigo Like so many early episodes, we learn more about Dean and Sam, and the missing father they’re searching for. And here we get “Saving people, hunting things, the family business” that becomes the motto of the Winchesters.

1.03 Dead in the Water

Sam is shocked to learn that Dean’s good with kids, and how Dean was traumatized as a 4-year-old. Like, dude, he practically raised you, Sam… makes sense he’s good with kids...

1.04 Phantom Traveler Specky the Wonderdemon, who was terrifyingly beyond their pay grade at the time. Kinda hilarious in retrospect… (also first use of Dean’s homemade EMF meter)

1.05 Bloody Mary Aah, Sam is keeping secrets from Dean (about his psychic powers and that he’d foreseen Jess’s death), and we learn ghosts can be attached to items that must be destroyed to banish the ghost.

1.06 Skin ooh Dean, take off that shirt yes… no… wait… stop… you can stop with the shirt you don’t… no please put your skin back on… (no, seriously, we learn A LOT about Dean from the shapeshifter, and so does Sam… There’s a heck of a lot Dean keeps buried. Also a reminder that shifter episodes tend to involve these sorts of buried secret things for Dean. Also Dean’s first “legal death” even if not actual death)

1.07 Hook Man Another ghost attached to an object, Sam’s first flirtation with anyone after Jess’s death, and Dean’s proficiency and innovation in hunting techniques continues to surprise Sam-- with the first use of salt shells for a shotgun.

1.08 Bugs Oh look more first season talking of their different experiences and memories of childhood and especially their very different relationships with John. If you can ignore the bug-related portions of the episode. Also I think still the only time in canon Sam and Dean have used umbrellas.

1.09 Home

Well if you absolutely need an in-depth exploration of the Winchester Family Dynamic as it stood in s1, this is a good baseline episode. Mary’s guilt expressed by her ghost in the house where she died, more exploration of Sam’s psychic powers, and we first see John on screen in the “present day.” Sam also learns it was Dean who carried him out of the house when he was a baby, and uses the exact same line John told Dean in this episode (take your brother outside as fast as you can and don’t look back)

1.10 Asylum So much of s1 was Dean getting orders from John and… following them. We get an interesting glimpse inside Sam’s head (having heard some of Dean’s dark secrets in 1.06) and via ghost interference Sam says some pretty bitter things to Dean (and would’ve shot him if Dean had been dumb enough to hand him a loaded gun. lucky Dean’s smarter than that). But now we have their baseline issues laid out on the table for us.

1.11 Scarecrow Sam is sick of taking orders from John and decides to go find John on his own rather than following another order. He meets Meg hitchhiking, and she tries to lure him in. Luckily Sam realizes Dean is in trouble and goes back to save him. They decide to stick together again. Of course.

1.12 Faith Here we go… the first moment the show realized it had the potential to be something bigger than a MotW horror/fantasy road trip. Dean’s first brush with capital-D Death (in this case, a reaper). The first time in canon anyone suggests that Dean was “chosen by the Lord” for a greater purpose.

1.13 Route 666 Racist Ghost Truck. But also the first time we learn an important difference between Dean and Sam. Sam hid everything about his life from Jess (a woman he was planning to propose to), but Dean fell in love with Cassie over a matter of weeks and told the whole truth to… and she dumped him for it because she thought he was lying to her. That heartbreak goes a long way toward the cavalier attitude Dean puts on toward relationships in general in the early seasons. Tell them the truth and they’ll leave you for it, but he won’t live the lie that Sam was perfectly happy to...

1.14 Nightmare Aah, more of Sam’s powers (darkest timeline edition with Max), and Sam credits John for being a better father… until he sees Dean’s reaction to that comment… and we get that Dean stood between Sam and John’s… lack of parenting skills >.>

1.15 The Benders “Plain old people are often worse than monsters”

1.16 Shadow The return of Meg, who is Up To No Good messing around with scarier demons than good old Specky was. We finally have John in the picture, but he deems it too dangerous for them to stick together, blaming their vulnerability on their care for each other, and just PFFFFFFT how often has the show kicked this notion to the curb? Give it a few more episodes… Sam also expresses his desire to finally get their revenge so he can leave hunting for good and go back to his “normal life.” Dean is crushed and upset by this revelation.

1.17 Hell House Aah, the prank war :’), and the idiot ghostfacers :’). It’s a tulpa.

1.18 Something Wicked Well if you need your heart ripped out with Dean Feels, you’re in the right place. Sam learns even more about Dean’s struggles as a kid under John’s orders, and what “failure” to obey meant to Dean-- that it once almost cost Sam his life. Sam gets a better idea of the burden of guilt and the weight of responsibility that Dean has carried for far, far too long. And Dean gets a bit of closure, finally killing the shtriga.

1.19 Provenance Sam gets to unburden himself a bit from Jess’s death and make a real connection with a wonderful woman who gets a real peek into the reality of their lives and the supernatural. Still, he walks away, and completely loses touch with her for like… 7 years...

1.20 Dead Man's Blood Sam and Dean are sick of blindly following orders, and sick of wild goose chases. And they demand answers from John. We learn about vampires for the first time, and are finally introduced to The Colt, which will take on so much significance over the seasons that it’s RIDICULOUS. A weapon Mary heard bedtime stories about as a child, now become real to be used to get their revenge on the demon who killed her? Which will resurface again and again to either become their hope or destroy their hope… so much baggage attached to a single gun.

1.21 Salvation So much plotting, but the demons get their way and get the Winchesters separated and set up. Sam fails to shoot the demon with the Colt and John is captured.

1.22 Devil's Trap As the title suggests, this is where we learn about the Devil’s Trap. And see the “single step” exorcism performed (not the two-step Specky exorcism from 1.04). Dean rejects John’s orders and “wastes” a bullet from the Colt to save Sam’s life. But it’s still all a trap, because the demon is possessing John. Dean realizes it when John is NOT FURIOUS that he “wasted” that bullet. It nearly kills Dean, and Sam refuses to kill John in order to kill the demon. The demon escapes, the Winchesters have one bullet left in the Colt, and then they’re run over by a demon-possessed semi trucker.

2.01 In My Time of Dying Dean’s second brush with Death (again, reapers). He learns a lot while mostly dead that unfortunately he won’t remember for a long time (until 4.15, to be precise) about reapers and their powers (manipulating reality, etc.). Sam is desperate to save Dean, and John trades his life (and the Colt) to the Demon for Dean’s life, lays one HELL of a burden on Dean-- either save Sam, or you’ll have to kill him. No further details, just that horrific fact which Dean will try to shield Sam from as long as he can, which will (as per usual) probably only make things worse when they eventually come out. Dying wishes on this show SUCK DONKEYS. Remember that when we get to 5.22...

2.02 Everybody Loves a Clown Spoiler alert: nobody actually loves a clown, especially not Sam. But heck Dean driving the soccer mom minivan is priceless. And we’re introduced to Ellen, Jo, and Ash at the Roadhouse. Sam and Dean are like… whoa there are actual hunter gathering places? And begin to uncover just how sheltered and weird their lives have been, even for hunters.

2.03 Bloodlust like 1.15, “sometimes people are the worst monsters,” with a generous side helping of “sometimes monsters aren’t actually monsters.” Dean gets to question a lot of what he was taught his whole life by John, via the proxy of Gordon Walker and his hate-on for vampires. But Dean realizes there’s a limit to killing everything not-human… the beginning of the era of “killing what deserves to be killed and not just anyone will do”

2.04 Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things Zombie. Considering Jack’s longtime fascination with zombies, and how 14.20 ended… possibly relevant thematically on several levels… Girl resurrected by a dude for love (she didn’t love him in life… but was basically a “soulless person” as a zombie, as we will come to understand in later seasons). It’s a terrible idea to try and bring back the dead… >.> But this is all wrapped up in grief and how Sam and Dean each deal with grief in their own ways, and how they don’t really understand how the other is processing John’s death. In the MotW language of the show, zombies are about grief for the past and an inability to express it or move past it. They’re just emotional baggage (like shapeshifter eps reveal hidden truths and vampires are about revenge)

2.05 Simon Said More special children affected by the demon exhibit psychic powers… Sam is unsettled by the mind control, but unlike Dean he’s immune to it… He’s scared he’s gonna turn “evil” (and this is the first hint he gets that Dean might feel the same, based on the horrific dying promise John extracted from him that we still haven’t heard, and which we’re reminded is clearly weighing on Dean anyway)

2.06 No Exit Aah, Jo. They hunt the ghost of HH Holmes with her and learn some terrible things about their father’s history-- that he probably played a part in Jo’s father’s death. We also learn Dean sleeps real funny in chairs...ow it just looks so dang painful :’D (but they do comeuppance real well on the ghost…)

2.07 The Usual Suspects I love this just for the structure of the episode, showing us Hunting with Sam and Dean 101-- how to avoid arrest and imprisonment edition. This just gives us so much insight into how well they work together as a team, and the degree to which they’ve developed code words and references and how they are able to craft seamless backstories in the event a hunt goes south. It’s just… delightful.

2.08 Crossroad Blues The introduction of Crossroads Demons. And the first confirmation to Dean that John did indeed sell his soul for Dean’s life. Uncomfy revelation. The demon offers Dean a deal… his father resurrected and ten years to enjoy his company before Dean’s soul would end up in Hell instead. Dean declines. But their arsenal of weapons against demons (and the newly-introduced Hellhounds) grows to include goofer dust.

2.09 Croatoan Aah, a terrible time was had by all… the demons are scheming, creating demonic viruses and testing Sam’s immunity to them. But of course Dean and Sam don’t know that… Dean’s comment as they leave town: “I'm already starting to feel like this is the one that got away.” And ends on a cliffhanger of Dean about to tell Sam what John told him in 2.01.

2.10 Hunted Sam is enraged Dean would keep that from him, and wants to seek out more Special Children to learn what they can, but Dean wants to hide out and bide their time for safety’s sake. And maybe it’s just because I was in my 30’s when I first watched this show, but Sam pulls what I still think of as one of his signature childish moves and runs away in the night. But down that path lies revenge against the demon, so of course Sam runs into vampire-adjacent Gordon Walker. We learn more about how the Winchesters work together, the secret code word “funkytown,” and that sometimes they actually get the authorities to work in their favor. They’re good at manipulating the system...

2.11 Playthings Ghosts, Hoodoo that wasn’t to cause harm, but to protect against the ghost. Sam gets spectacularly drunk and makes Dean promise to actually kill him if he goes bad. Yikes. We also have the “why does everybody think we’re gay,” and Sam’s reply of “you’re kinda trying too hard to be butch” that Dean… doesn’t have a response to. Sam gets to SAVE somebody (he puts a gold star in his book as proof he’s not turning evil yet)

2.12 Nightshifter This is one I recommend actually watching… another shapeshifter (not a mandroid), so uncomfortable truths time. Sam lies thinking he’s protecting someone from danger, but it just drives Ron into even WORSE danger (and gets him killed). Everything about this hunt goes sideways, except they do actually kill the shifter, but now they’ve got the FBI on their tails. This is Winchesters Scrambling In A Tight Spot nirvana.

2.13 Houses of the Holy The first hint that the show… could possibly someday include angels, but they’re still on the BS list by the end of this episode. We learn more about Sam’s belief in God, Dean’s utter disdain for the idea of God, and the fact that Mary had believed in angels. Dean witnesses something he can’t explain, and Sam points in Dean’s direction when asking, “That’s Michael, right?”

2.14 Born Under a Bad Sign From holy to Hell… Sam is possessed by Meg, who leads Dean on a wild goose chase and does some pretty horrific stuff with Sam’s body. >.> They learn about the antipossession charms from Bobby (and probably get the tattoos shortly after this). Dean still refuses to kill Sam even when he begs (though we learn it was Meg testing or goading all of them).

2.15 Tall Tales We’re introduced to the Trickster (who’s even tricking them about his actual identity). Sam and Dean are completely bamboozled until Bobby shows up and points them to what’s really going on. There’s a lot of fun stuff about Sam and Dean’s relationship and how they see themselves and each other in here, though. And of course we know who the trickster actually is, which makes this all so much more interesting in retrospect… bit of comeuppance and lessons learned.

2.16 Roadkill An interesting take on a ghost MotW episode, where one of the ghosts doesn’t realize she’s dead, and how Sam and Dean work with her to save them all.

2.17 Heart Sam’s first actual sort-of-relationship with a woman. Who happens to be a werewolf… oops. There’s a lot of Sam Pain in this one, and Dean feeling like he’s failed in protecting Sam, yet again. But we are introduced to werewolves, which take on the monster meta shorthand of exposing or understanding their own inner monstrousness.

2.18 Hollywood Babylon And it’s Dean’s turn to have a little fling, where their concept of a “vacation” is “deal with mysterious haunting and death on a movie set.” And like in 1.12, this all comes about because some dingdong thinks he can do whatever he want. ALSO! The true monster of the week here… IS A WRITER. A writer who is furious that his story was trashed, and produced into something unrecognizable as his actual writing. I think this one might be HIGHLY relevant to 14.20, just for that. For the deadly tantrum of a writer who didn’t get his way. (plus the brilliance of Dean going from complete noob to the best PA in the history of Hollywood in like… a day… he’s just that good :’D)

2.19 Folsom Prison Blues In doing a favor for their father’s marine corps buddy (so the ghost of John hangs all over this one), they deliberately get themselves arrested and put in jail. Dean fits in there just as well as he did as a PA. He’s… really just that good at acting. Now I have Green Onions stuck in my head and I want a milkshake. And a donut.

2.20 What Is and What Should Never Be DJINN. aka the monster meta signal of deep personal introspection. What we learn about Dean in this episode is just heartbreaking. What he would wish for (Mary alive, Sam happily at Stanford Law School engaged to Jess) and the consequences he’s willing to endure for that to be a reality (his own life’s work negated, where everyone assumes he’s a drunk and a thief and a loser). 

2.21 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One Dean just wanted pie. Instead Sam gets taken by demons. We finally find out what the demon wanted with him (sort of). Sam plays in the Demon Hunger Games, and loses at the last moment… (Dean gets to feel what it’s like to have a psychic vision, and hates it)

2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two Dean sells his soul to resurrect Sam for the bargain price of one year before he’ll be dragged to Hell. Well learn about Samuel Colt’s Hellgate, which can ironically be unlocked with the Magic Kill Anything Gun (the Colt). In retrospect, this was just the beginning of the larger narrative arc of the Apocalypse, where Azazel released Lilith (along with a lot of other demons) to get that party started now that they had their hooks in Dean’s soul, but hey, at least Azazel won’t live to see it all happen (Dean finally shoots him with that last Colt bullet, rendering the gun useless but at least it did what they needed it to, with an assist from John’s ghost).

3.01 The Magnificent Seven The Seven Deadly Sins, the introduction of Ruby and her Magical Demon Killing Knife. Dean tells Sam he can’t be saved because if he breaks his deal, Sam would die.

3.02 The Kids Are Alright We meet Lisa (who Dean had a fling with years earlier) on Dean’s “relive his greatest hits before he goes to Hell denial roadtrip.” And Dean thinks he has a son for a hot minute (he does not, but he likes the kid anyway). Weirdness with them will ensue until they finally get to move on with their lives in s6. >.> But we’re introduced to our first fairie-adjacent creatures: Changelings. And Sam learns Ruby is actually a demon...

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock Sam lost his shoe. We learn about curse boxes, Sam and Dean learn that John kept a secret storage unit full of weird and possibly dangerous stuff. But also some relics from their childhood-- Sam’s soccer trophy, Dean’s first sawed-off shotgun. And if that isn’t shorthand for the fact they had very different childhoods, I don’t know what is. Anyway, we meet Bela, and are entertained by good luck going bad… kinda the theme of s3?

3.04 Sin City more demons, we learn more about bigger plans they had for Sam, and Dean comes THIS CLOSE to actually considering letting a demon go… but Ruby helped Bobby make the Colt work again, and Sam kills both demons.

3.05 Bedtime Stories A pseudo-ghost of a girl trapped in a coma acts out fairy tales as a cry for help. Dean doesn’t want to kiss a frog. The pie is poisoned and Dean has to fight the big bad wolf… I swear that all makes perfect meta sense.

3.06 Red Sky at Morning Bela again. And like the ghost they’re hunting, we learn she got her revenge against a family member. The first use of the name “Castiel” in the spell to summon the ghost’s brother’s ghost so they could splish-splosh each other out of existence. That’s… all you really need to know.

3.07 Fresh Blood Gordon Walker, vampires, and vengeance. Taken to an extreme. Dean basically throws himself into danger because what does he have to lose if he’s already destined for Hell? But he’s beginning to crack, and Sam’s getting pretty desperate to get Dean to admit he’s scared and do something to save himself. Gordon’s desire for revenge gets him captured by a vamp and turned… and Sam ends up beheading him with razor wire. Yikes… so much for that revenge, eh?

3.08 A Very Supernatural Christmas Yuletide fun and eggnog. Pagan gods they end up killing with a Christmas tree. But they do reach a personal emotional plateau with Dean’s whole “half a year to live” clock ticking down.

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum Witches. Ruby. And a demon who knows Ruby leading a coven of suburban housewives who believe they’re just doing something harmless and not slowly selling their souls to said demon. Ruby saves Dean’s life, earning his reluctant gratitude for the time being, but not exactly his trust. This is the first we learn of Lilith, the demon apparently leading all the rest of them. Dean also learns that demons are just human souls that have been tortured in hell, and that’s what awaits him after he dies.

3.10 Dream a Little Dream of Me VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE. African Dream Root, which mimics the sort of djinn-dream experience. Dean has to literally confront his demon self. For the first time he admits he didn’t deserve any of this, any of what John put him through. And he admits to Sam that he is scared of going to Hell. Oh, and Bela steals the Colt, aka the only weapon they have against Lilith.

3.11 Mystery Spot If 3.10 was about Dean’s internal trauma, 3.11 is about Sam’s. The trickster puts him through a time loop forcing him to relive endless Tuesdays, and Dean dies each time and he wakes up again. The power to do this is just… insane. Just when they think they’re out, Dean apparently dies “for real,” and it drives Sam on a six month long rather terrifying revenge mission. Only to finally come face to face with the trickster again after having proven the horrific lengths he’s willing to go to in order to save Dean. Also a very, very important episode. Trapped eternally in someone else’s looping story and forced to act it all out endlessly? Yeah. That’s not 14.20 at all >.>

3.12 Jus in Bello very nearly the series finale. They work with Ruby after FBI agent Henriksen discovers they weren’t lying about the supernatural and they exorcise him from demon possession. Dean gives him The Talk about what’s real, and refuses to sacrifice someone to perform Ruby’s spell that would supposedly save them all and kill all the demons. Everyone lives… for a little while, at least. At least Sam and Dean are marked among the dead, so they won’t have to worry about law enforcement chasing them for a while, but Ruby holds this over them (in addition to losing the Colt, if they’d just listened to her everyone would still be alive… in theory… she’s really good at this manipulation thing!)

3.13 Ghostfacers And interesting perspective to see what Sam and Dean would look like uncensored and unbound from the traditional episode format, and through the eyes of other people.

3.14 Long-Distance Call Crocotta. Dean is lured in by John’s voice over the phone, believing it might be a ghost situation, and that John may have a way to save him from Hell. It’s all just a trap that leaves Dean feeling even more hopeless, knowing he can’t expect John (or anyone else) to save him from this. 

3.15 Time Is on My Side Sam gets desperate, and we have another mention of zombies… which if you’ll recall, signals grief and desperation and an inability to let go of the past. Which kinda defines Sam’s state right now. Dean tracks down Bela to retrieve the Colt (but it’s long gone, and Bela’s about to be dragged off by hellhounds herself). Sam tracks down Doc Benton hoping to get him to share his secret for immortality as a last desperate attempt to save Dean. But Dean doesn’t want to live like that, killing other people for their organs as his would wear out, just to keep himself out of Hell. And honestly good for him because ugh.

3.16 No Rest for the Wicked Dean’s seeing through the veil, able to see demons’ true faces, and the hellhounds that are on their way. They steal Ruby’s knife and go after Lilith, and fail completely. Dean’s dragged to Hell, and Sam’s immune to Lilith’s powers.

4.01 Lazarus Rising CAS GRIPPED DEAN TIGHT AND RAISED HIM FROM PERDITION. Honestly if you don’t know the meta import of this episode, this list ain’t gonna help you.

4.02 Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester We really learn about the Apocalypse, the seals breaking that will eventually free Lucifer. Supposedly the angels want to stop them from breaking… and Dean and Cas have their first real conversation about all of this. And this is the episode my tag for God comes from, “If you say mysterious ways, so help me I will kick your ass.” Dean’s already set himself up with Cas to defy God.

4.03 In the Beginning Angels can send you back in time! Dean sees Mary and John’s relationship, the death of Mary’s parents, and the fact Dean talked John into buying the Impala AND now feels responsible for having lured Azazel to Mary in the first place… he witnesses the deal she makes to bring John back that would effectively shape the entire narrative on both sides of this episode. The things we do for love… Cas told Dean to stop it, and in the end tells him he never could’ve stopped any of it. It is what it is. It’s the first instance of Dean getting this glimpse at the bigger picture, and taking away his OWN lesson from it rather than the one he was supposed to learn… 

4.04 Metamorphosis Dean finds out about Sam working with Ruby to exorcise demons with his psychic powers. And the inevitability of falling victim to those psychic powers plays out in the MotW, the rougarou who gives into his hunger. Sam promises to give up using his powers lest that happen to him.

4.05 Monster Movie A straightforward, black and white case. A shapeshifter (so buried truths), but this one becomes Hollywood movie monsters trying to give the monsters a happy ending… essentially trying to rewrite his own story. Sound familiar? Dean gets the girl, at least. I love this episode.

4.06 Yellow Fever Dean vs his own fear, compounded by the fear of a ghost who infects him with ghost sickness, inflicting his own suffering on Dean. This was Dabb’s first episode, and as such, is definitely worth watching for the themes, and what Dean is truly afraid of-- i.e. of going back to Hell and being tortured by Lilith, of Sam being a yellow-eyed demon. The rest is just awkwardly fun watching Dean squirm.

4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester Sam breaks his promise not to use his powers when Samhain rises. We meet another angel- Uriel- who isn’t as fond of humanity as Cas. Sam meets Cas, too. But this is truly the episode where Cas begins to differentiate himself and show his doubts in Heaven’s orders. He warns Dean that bigger tests are coming, but he doesn’t know what they will be yet. This is still the true foundation stone of Cas’s entire personal character arc for the entire series, when he went from maybe-three-episodes-then-dead interesting side character to 11-years-and-counting truly a Winchester.

4.08 Wishful Thinking I love this episode… you can’t just wish for what you want without consequences. This was like primer-level Cosmic Consequences stuff.

4.09 I Know What You Did Last Summer Dean learns what Sam was up to while he was in Hell being tortured by Alastair (conveniently the antagonist in this episode), why he trusts Ruby now, and voluntarily works with Ruby to save Anna-- a woman who hears angels talking. This is effectively continued in:

4.10 Heaven and Hell Where Anna remembers that she’d been an angel who fell from Heaven by choice, removing her grace to experience life as a human. Which… is kinda important a concept to know exists… >.> Heaven (and Cas) judge her harshly for that choice, and yet… there’s just too much just go read my rewatch notes from this episode at the very least.

4.11 Family Remains They think it’s a ghost but it’s not a ghost. All you need to know is this is the episode they wrote on a dare to see if they could write an episode that the network would refuse to air ever again. They were actively trying to write the worst possible episode they could imagine, and this is the result.

4.12 Criss Angel Is a Douchebag

Sam had a thing for stage magic as a kid, but now he runs around with a demon. The concept of “will we be in this life until we die or it kills us” and “what would life even look like to us if we were actually to grow old” is batted around for possibly the first time. 

4.13 After School Special

From contemplating retirement to flashbacks to high school. Another look at Sam and Dean and who they are as people, and how their very different childhoods shaped them into who they are now.

4.14 Sex and Violence Dean’s Siren was a dude. (oh, and the director of this episode? whose last episode was 6.15? is directing 15.03, so maybe worth a peek...)

4.15 Death Takes a Holiday Dean vs Death again. The return of Tessa the reaper from 2.01, and Dean finally remembers. They save Tessa, save a seal, and capture Alastair, but discover they’ve been manipulated into doing it by Cas/Heaven. Heaven loves its manipulations… Pamela the psychic warns Sam that what he’s doing, despite his intentions, is not good. He ignores that advice. At the very least read my rewatch notes for this one. >.>

4.16 On the Head of a Pin There is absolutely too much going on in this episode to sum up in this post. Read my rewatch notes, read the superwiki, watch the episode. This one is huge, for Dean and for Cas.

4.17 It's a Terrible Life Heaven’s Grand Manipulator, Zachariah. Or he thinks he’s pretty grand… he’s really not all that good at his job

4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book CHUCK. The inevitability of destiny, or at least his attempt to write that version. In this episode, all of Chuck’s plans go according to plan… until Dean drags him back into the story and forces a different ending. (and we learn Sam’s demon blood drinking is so distasteful to Chuck he didn’t even include it in his books) Remind you of anything? Like, oh, 4.22, or 5.22, or 11.23, or 14.20? Yes, this episode is the key to everything.

4.19 Jump the Shark Since Adam will reportedly be back in s15, watch this one and understand Dabb’s exact intention in creating the character in the first place-- literally as a decoy who never existed with any narrative weight of his own, as a ghoul (a creature that feeds on the dead and takes their shape). I wrote about this one recently, so I won’t waste space repeating myself here.

4.20 The Rapture CAAAAAAAASSSSSS. He gets dragged back to heaven for disobedience, and is tortured back into obedience. Obviously this one is huge for Cas as a character, and for Dean’s relationship with him. But they both learn about why Sam’s powers were getting stronger, and are not pleased...

4.21 When the Levee Breaks Sam’s detoxing from demon blood until Cas lets him escape. Cas rounds up Anna and has her sent back to Heaven for her own round of torture/reprogramming. And Dean and Sam have her Big Falling Out that drives Sam to do the horrific… however good his intentions are, what he’s doing is still bad.

4.22 Lucifer Rising The grand manipulation is unveiled. Dean talks an angel into rebelling from Heaven to stop the apocalypse, but they’re still not in time to stop Sam from breaking the world. Chuck… is less than fully helpful, despite Cas literally volunteering his own life to protect Chuck. Pretty sure this is a critical episode for rewatching. Chuck’s mostly pleased his story is going to plan.

5.01 Sympathy for the Devil Ugh, no we do not have sympathy for the devil on this blog. Chuck recruits his biggest fan to deliver cryptic messages to Sam and Dean. Dean learns he’s Michael’s true vessel, destined to be his tuxedo for the apocalypse. Cas returns without having a clue how he’s even alive. And it’s all Chuck’s doing… even if we don’t know that yet.

5.02 Good God, Y'All

The apocalypse is in full swing, and the Horsemen are coming out to play. In this case, War manipulating people into destroying each other. Cas sets out on his mission to find God and convince him to help stop this mess. We learn Dean’s amulet had the power to find God all this time, and they’d never known it until now. Convenient!

5.03 Free to Be You and Me Just watch it already, you know you want to. Defines Dean and Cas’s relationship for years to come, though. Plus Sam learns he’s Lucifer’s destined vessel. I’m sure that will all go fine… 

5.04 The End I know most people will disagree with me on this, but the only useful meta takeaway from this episode is the same as one from 4.17: Dean doesn’t learn the lessons he’s “supposed to.” He makes his own lessons. There is literally zero other relevant information to take from this episode, aside from it being Cas who saves him from it. Watch if you enjoy it… but literally nothing about it is any more real than the djinn dream in 2.20 or the dreamroot dream in 3.10, and it’s all been rendered irrelevant by later canon anyway. Especially by 14.20 and that moment Dean refused to play Chuck’s game anymore.

5.05 Fallen Idols More John baggage disguised as an old god. Worth watching just to hear poor Consuela the housekeeper wail about Abraham Lincoln killing Mr. Hill, and Sam being attacked by Ghandi.

5.06 I Believe the Children Are Our Future Dabb’s second gag on the fandom… the antichrist. Dean admitting Cas is his friend. :’)

5.07 The Curious Case of Dean Winchester Dean gets to be an old man for a day.

5.08 Changing Channels Just watch this one, read about it, whatever. Refresh yourself on it. The trickster is unmasked as the Archangel Gabriel, and he’s attempting his own ploy to force Sam and Dean to “play their roles.” They convince him they’re not gonna do that, but to break out of the endless loop of literal television shows he’s forcing them to act out for his own entertainment (and sort of to teach them that lesson), they’ve got to do more than just refuse to play their roles, they’ve got to best him at the game. Kinda like they’re probably gonna have to do with Chuck in s15. 

5.09 The Real Ghostbusters Oh, speaking of Chuck… here have a Supernatural fan convention, and a key piece of information on what actually happened to the Colt after Bela stole it. But most importantly, Dean gets to yell about how much he doesn’t appreciate the story of Supernatural.

5.10 Abandon All Hope… They find the Colt, and Crowley, and discover it never would’ve worked against Lucifer anyway, and then promptly lose the Colt again. Lucifer gets to stare down Cas and Cas doesn’t blink, Meg’s hellhounds kill Jo and Ellen, and really everything’s kinda bleak. Lucifer raises and binds Death.

5.11 Sam, Interrupted WRAITH, aka a monster that uses mind altering venom to “cook” her victims to perfection, so like a djinn and other mind-altering, perception-altering creatures, when they sneak up on you unawares, things get… complicated. Massive insight into the essential character of Sam and Dean.

5.12 Swap Meat Body Swap. That one time Sam was actually Gary.

5.13 The Song Remains the Same More time travel, Sam’s second resurrection, we finally meet Michael face to (Young John Winchester’s) face. Mikey seems pretty confident in his “destiny.” Dean’s second warning to Young Mary about her death is wiped from her mind. Contemplation of Cosmic Consequences: it’s better never to be born if it means stopping the Apcoalypse-- clarified in 12.23-present that… nope, definitely worse. “Team Free Will” coined. Watch this one. It’s the stage on which all the s12-present Family Dynamics will be set.

5.14 My Bloody Valentine We learn Heaven set up John and Mary, that they couldn’t stand one another before Cupids intervened and made them “the perfect couple.” I’ve written a lot about the effect the Horseman Famine had on all of them-- especially Dean and Cas, with the reminder that s5 was the season of “lol nope” to the category of beings attempting to manipulate all of them, including the Horsemen. Important just for all of that (and Edlund’s confirmation that Cas’s cravings were actually his own, and that my read that he was being a shifty liar blaming it on Jimmy was correct-- Cas does have his own human cravings, going all the way back to this point, that he was ashamed of, or terrified of, or both...) As well as Sam’s struggle against demon blood addiction, and his fear of and gradual acceptance and internalization of his own powers)

5.15 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid ZOMBIES. ZOMBIE PIE. JODY MILLS. As I’ve said above, zombies are grief and unresolved baggage from the past, and in this episode, the denial was so strong even the normies in town were willing to accept the return of their dead loved ones, clinging to them until they “turned” and devoured them… the Mary parallels, Karen’s talk with Dean about what we do for the people we love… this one’s important.

5.16 Dark Side of the Moon Dabb, and our first look at the structure of Heaven, and how human souls see the place. Probably one of THE most misunderstood episodes in the entire series. Please see everything I’ve ever written about it for reference. FINALLY they toss out the toxic, worthless samulet. (which we literally learn in 11.20 that chuck “switched off” and INTENTIONALLY rendered worthless, because it suited his plotline and amused him). Still think this is vital to understanding Dabb Era overall.

5.17 99 Problems We see what it looks like when Dean gives up, loses hope, and is about to do Stupid Things™. Cas too. Probably useful just for that.

5.18 Point of No Return We finally see Cas really let loose on Dean, and admit what he gave up because he believed in Dean. Because Dean asked him to. Dean nearly gives in to destiny, but because of Cas, because of Sam, he fights through it. Zachariah and his manipulations end (getting stabbed in the face tends to end that sort of thing). Also the irritating return of Adam only to be the meatsuit for Michael when Dean refuses. (and we learn the truth about Adam-- that everything ghoul!Adam told them had been a straight-up manipulation, and Adam only ever cared about his mom. by the time he learns the truth, it’s too late for him, the gullible idiot vs the power of propaganda)

5.19 Hammer of the Gods The return of Gabriel, aka Loki, and a ton of other pagan gods Lucifer will slaughter. Interesting in light of Gabriel’s return in s13, and because of the mirror of Chuck in each of his archangels. And the Winchesters win another angel to TFW.

5.20 The Devil You Know Crowley’s good at manipulation, but again proves himself to be… mostly trustworthy (as long as they’re all working toward the same end). And re: manipulation, Sam gets a glimpse of just how thoroughly his entire life has been manipulated by demonic forces, which… relevant to the revelations of 14.20 vs Sam’s persistent faith in God despite everything.

5.21 Two Minutes to Midnight Cas is effectively human. Bobby sells his soul for Death’s location, and Pestilence falls to teamwork. Cas learns the value of a shotgun. Dean has pizza with Death, who WANTS him to succeed at locking Lucifer back up and explains exactly how to go about doing it. Sam thinks he can overpower Lucifer if he gives in and says yes.

5.22 Swan Song Sam was not totally wrong in 5.21. Cas resurrects Bobby, and explodes and is resurrected (again!) himself. Sam drags two (2) archangels into the cage and is promptly pulled out (only missing one critical bit…). Dean… actually tries to live up to at least one of Sam’s dying wishes, and it basically ruins his life for the next year. Chuck is a smug, self-satisfied bastard who pats himself on the back for a story well-told before flapping off and proceeding to write variations on his original fic using his favorite characters. >.>

6.01 Exile on Main St. All I can hear is Dean’s heartbreak and anger that Sam had been “alive” for a year and forbade anyone from telling Dean that he wasn’t actually suffering tortures in Hell all that time. If ever there was a YIKES moment on the show, this is it for me. This one’s probably good to watch just for the setup of soulless!sam and s6 in general.

6.02 Two and a Half Men Dean’s even good with monster babies. And after a year of unsettled living with Lisa, he’s more duty bound to protect them than he is wanting to stay because he’s actually happy there. Sam is a creepy hunting machine.

6.03 The Third Man CAS! But heck he’s acting shifty, but so’s Sam, and Dean’s feeling even more alone now. The introduction of the concept of Angel Marks on souls, the Profound Bond, and biblical weapons. And the war in Heaven, and the seasonal antagonist stepping up into Michael’s shoes: Raphael.

6.04 Weekend at Bobby's BALLS. Woodchippers trump everything. We discover that burning a demon’s human bones will perma-kill them, and learn a bit of Crowley’s backstory.

6.05 Live Free or Twihard Dean becomes a vampire for a hot minute. We learn there is a vampire cure that works as long as they haven’t had human blood yet. And we learn something really, really is wrong with Sam...

6.06 You Can't Handle the Truth Dean is now 100% positive that something is horrifically wrong with Sam, and is distraught that nobody else seemed to know it for a YEAR.

6.07 Family Matters Cas figures out what’s wrong with Sam and promptly becomes even shadier around the Winchesters. We meet the Alpha Vampire. And vampire eps are about revenge, right? There is a LOT of shady going on here.

6.08 All Dogs Go to Heaven weird dog episode that I always forget exists between rewatches.

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe… hands down the best soulless!Sam episode. You fight those fairies! I’m still waiting for another fairie episode where Dean can still see them and nobody else can :’D. Just watching Sam try to logic his way into being more human is educational about the struggle to be human in general.

6.10 Caged Heat Family betrayal, Sam and Dean nearly get fed to ghouls, Cas would rather be with them then fighting his war in Heaven. Angel blades can kill hellhounds. They finally entrap meg into working with them instead of always trying to kill them >.>

6.11 Appointment in Samarra I think this is still in my top five favorite episodes ever, and one I think everyone needs to rewatch. Dean and Death episodes usually are. And in this one, Dean IS effectively Death for 24 hours. But there is a LOT in this episode, from Death “testing” Dean on multiple levels-- forcing him to make choices AND process the consequences of his actions and how it affects other people… this is a big one for the cosmology of the SPN universe and Dean specifically. Even in Dabb era.

6.12 Like a Virgin Dragons are a thing. Eve pops over from Purgatory.

6.13 Unforgiven Sam’s soul/hell flashbacks start when he goes poking at the wall, but he keeps poking anyway. Giant spider people. Eurgh. But unfortunately the whole “web of lies unraveling” thing kinda fits.

6.14 Mannequin 3: The Reckoning The haunted kidney episode. But Dean finally breaks it off with Lisa (again… >.>)

6.15 The French Mistake We actually learn something about the angel wars… sort of. We also learn AU’s are actually real. (this was also the last episode the director of 15.03 directed, so probably worth watching if they’re bringing him back after all these years…)

6.16 ...And Then There Were None Monster Possession is apparently a thing now. The last of the Campbell hunters die (that was a quick trip through the family dynamics there >.>). The main takeaway here is from Rufus’ funeral: Life’s short, and it’s not worth carrying guilt and regret (takes them a really REALLY long time to actually internalize it with each other, but at least they got the spirit)

6.17 My Heart Will Go On Cas just lying to their faces, creating an alternate timeline just to generate souls as a power source (the specific number of 50k souls comes up, and will come up again in 6.20, as the number of souls Crowley “loaned” Cas at the beginning of the war in Heaven, with the suspicion that Cas was attempting to “buy his way out of their deal”, but the plan fails and he’s forced to put everything back… but he does ensure Sam and Dean both remember the entire experience, but we get an idea of the extent of the power angels can actually wield.

6.18 Frontierland Dabb has referenced this one several times during his era, but again, the history of the Colt is involved, a Phoenix, and Dean in a cowboy hat. We learn even the other angels think Cas is up to something super shady. But it’s their first real moment of hope.

6.19 Mommy Dearest Eve uses Mary’s face to torment Dean, we learn Crowley is not dead, and Cas… has been doing shady things with him. Cas is again effectively human for an episode.

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King Well this is where everything both falls apart and comes together. This episode makes sense of the entire rest of s6, as painful and sad as it is. If you only watch one episode from s6, it should probably be this one.

6.21 Let It Bleed Dean’s worst fear comes true, and people he cares about but leaves behind for their own protection are used against him. Not just by bad guys, but by Cas. Ouch. Still incredulous that Dean did recognize HP Lovecraft, or even make a Metallica reference at the mention of “Call of Cthulhu.”

6.22 The Man Who Knew Too Much Sam putting himself back together. Cas tearing things apart.

7.01 Meet the New Boss That one episode where it looks like Cas will be the unwitting bad guy and s7 will be about saving him, until it’s really really not. That whole exchange between Dean and Cas about forgiveness and finding some way to make it up to him, though… that’s what will carry us through the bleak middle of s7 and generate the grief arc for Dean in the meantime.

7.02 Hello, Cruel World It looks like Cas is really, truly gone, and all Dean has of him is his trenchcoat. And we’re stuck cleaning up his oozy black mess for the next 15 episodes before getting him back again. Sam’s Hallucifering all over the place and finds a connection to reality through squeezing the scar on his hand, which will become a symbol in show for reconnecting with reality for him for years to come.

7.03 The Girl Next Door Sam thinks pie and cake are the same. In their own respective messed up mental states, Sam thinks Amy is worth saving, Dean doesn’t trust that and kills her. Let the guilt ensue.

7.04 Defending Your Life A good setup of Sam and Dean’s issues for s7.

7.05 Shut Up, Dr. Phil I can’t believe they melted Tula’s painting. But it takes a couple of bickering witches for them to finally get a hold on the Leviathan, so that’s something.

7.06 Slash Fiction Aah, going back to the beginning as a trap for Sam and Dean-- the Leviathan using the Supernatural books to lay a trail case by case from Sam leaving Stanford (Crowley will do the same in 8.22, and the end of 14.20 gave a lot of people the impression there will be a similar progression in s15… but honestly that’s really only sustainable for a single episode, but this may be relevant for like… 15.01-02). Also, Dean finds it satisfying to behead himself (or the leviathan version of himself)… so yikes.

7.07 The Mentalists I love this one just for the Dean feels. He’s really hurting.

7.08 Season Seven, Time for a Wedding! Sam’s love-spelled. Mind control is always a terrible thing. Demons trying to game the system and cash in on deals ahead of schedule. So that’s a thing.

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters I love this one. Poor Dean. This is the first time he’s actually felt good in like… ever. Too bad it’s from monster goo.

7.10 Death's Door Bobby :’( And Dean essentially falls apart.

7.11 Adventures in Babysitting Vetala. Which only Dean knew hunt in pairs, so hunter after hunter had been falling victim to them, including Sam. Meanwhile Dean finally got a decent nap.

7.12 Time After Time Dean gets booped back to the 1940’s to hunt with Eliot Ness. Still, they defeat Chronos, yet another god whose prophecy will be tossed aside by the Winchesters.

7.13 The Slice Girls Dean accidentally has a monsterbabby, Sam kills her. Amazons.

7.14 Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie Just watch it. This is the only episode in the entire series that just… is purely good and fun. Sam has to confront his fear of clowns, Dean faces a villain who was blamed for his brother’s death when he was just a kid and his parents should’ve been doing their jobs instead. I mean...

7.15 Repo Man The guy who was trying to lure back “his demon” exorcised during the Apocalypse era, by continuing his murder spree. Sam loses to Hallucifer by acknowledging his existence as separate from Sam’s own subconscious. There’s… a lot in this episode. At least read my rewatch notes.

7.16 Out with the Old Sam eventually succumbs to his Hallucifering, Dean nearly succumbs to a pair of toe shoes. Peter Yankit of Johnson Lane nearly succumbs to a cursed porn magazine. Cursed objects are fun.

7.17 The Born-Again Identity CAAAAASSSSS! He’s back, even if he doesn’t remember who he is. Dean tries to break it to him slowly, but instead unburdens a lot of his personal hurt over Cas’s actions to the oblivious “Emmanuel,” And Cas tells Dean his feelings are completely understandable. This is setting up the entire rest of Cas’s arc, probably through the end of the series. This is what motivates him, his need to repent. And He gets a start by taking on Sam’s trauma, healing Sam.

7.18 Party On, Garth An alcohol spirit enacting personal revenge, and despite all evidence, Sam continues to doubt Dean’s theory that Bobby is somehow still around. Dean’s season-long grief-drinking becomes a punchline, and Dean’s literally the only sober one in the final fight scene.

7.19 Of Grave Importance Yep, Bobby is a ghost, been there all along. Also, ghosts can sort of… cannibalize each other? For their power? whatever, moving on.

7.20 The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo CHARLIE.

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental KEVIN. But also CAS! Is awake but not quite himself and in full denial mode, like he was awakened against his will before he was done cooking >.>. we learn a bit more about prophets as we see Kevin awakened to serve the Leviathan Tablet.

7.22 There Will Be Blood more manipulation, and the Alpha Vampire is back, so we get a double whammy of manipulation/deceit AND revenge. The alpha vampire cooperates with the Winchesters. So does Crowley.

7.23 Survival of the Fittest Cas doesn’t want to fight, but in the end he steps up. They get the Leviathan, Dean and Cas are beamed to Purgatory, and Sam’s left alone and pulls a Sam. He runs away from reality.

8.01 We Need to Talk About Kevin Dean comes back from Purgatory without Cas, but with a vampire friend… so s8 is about Dean making pals with revenge. This will fuel his arc for a good long while to come until he can finally make his peace with it. It affects his interactions with Sam for most of the first half of the season… because while Dean was fighting for his life, Sam was… pretending to be a normal guy and ignoring everything else. Including Kevin.

8.02 What's Up, Tiger Mommy? The push to do something drives them to seek out the Demon Tablet with the promise of closing the gates of Hell forever at Kevin’s suggestion. Plutus, the God of Greed is the baddie in this one, if that’s any sort of meta statement on their overall plan to take this particular course of action… the narrative basically condemned their plot before the season even started. Hubris, ahoy. But we also find out why Cas ran away in Purgatory-- to protect Dean. And why he wanted to stay-- guilt and penance.

8.03 Heartache Oh, a case where a curse is passed on to others after death? And the original death didn’t actually end the curse as intended? Nice.

8.04 Bitten I love episodes were we see Sam and Dean through other people’s eyes. And this one, an episode where we learn new things about werewolves (remember: an examination of inner monstrousness).

8.05 Blood Brother I’d point out the agony of Winchester Secret Keeping being toxic, but since we’re largely out past that by the end of s14… *shrug emoji*. Dean helps his vampire friend get revenge against the vampires who killed him. Double revenge! And Sam… does not like Benny. But we know exactly why DEAN does… he literally saved Cas’s life in Purgatory, despite repeatedly wanting to leave Cas behind. He saved Cas for Dean.

8.06 Southern Comfort Garth again, and his serenity is basically there to point out how toxic Sam and Dean are by comparison. The spectre that possesses Dean to leech off his vengefulness has zero effect on Garth. But Dean gets out his feelings of anger that Sam never looked for him in Purgatory, so that’s on the table to provide drama for years to come.

8.07 A Little Slice of Kevin CAS IS BACK AGAIN! But he has no idea how he got here (he’s been mind controlled by Heaven again, and is desperately trying to make amends, but is literally blocked from doing so at every turn, which is a tidy mirror for what Chuck’s done to the entire story since… forever… so this is probably a must-watch episode, or at least read my notes on it.

8.08 Hunteri Heroici This one’s fun, until it’s owie, and then sad. Magical powers don’t save the day, they only end up hurting people. Cas desperately wants to make amends, but he is afraid to face what he’s done. Instead, he just gets manipulated even harder. At least read my notes for this one, too.

8.09 Citizen Fang Oh, manipulation moves directly to the Winchester brothers, no heavenly interference required. Vampires again, but this time Dean again sides with Benny, but against Sam… who again refuses to hear the truth and pulls another Sam. He forgot the lesson that sometimes it’s not the monsters being monstrous, and it’s important to kill the RIGHT monster, not just the convenient one.

8.10 Torn and Frayed Just like the episode sounds… Cas goes to Dean for help,  and then brings Sam onboard and asks them to stow their crap. By the end of the episode, Sam and Dean will have resigned themselves to being on their own again because Cas is… something is not right with him...

8.11 LARP and the Real Girl CHARLIE! Fairies! Dean does one (1) fun thing for his birthday. But this is about using a book to manipulate events to suit the Bad Guy’s whims. Sound familiar?

8.12 As Time Goes By Sam and Dean meet their grandfather, fill in a huge gaping hole from their past, and discover their legacy, the Men of Letters, and the Bunker that will become their home.

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler Yep. It’s true! Nazi necromancers, and another new ally in Aaron. They settle in to the bunker.

8.14 Trial and Error They take their first steps toward closing the gates of Hell, killing a Hellhound. I wrote about this one recently, so go read that. :’D

8.15 Man's Best Friend with Benefits another weird dog episode

8.16 Remember the Titans Prometheus, Artemis, and Zeus. Curses passed down through families to fall on innocent children. And Zeus is delighted because it causes even more suffering.

8.17 Goodbye Stranger oh the agony. We see what it took for Heaven to control Cas, and what it took for Dean to break through to him, only to fall to yet another mind whammy by the angel tablet. Of course Dean takes this personally, abandoned again. Definitely watch this one. Read the notes. All that.

8.18 Freaks and Geeks In case anyone missed the point, we have manipulation and vampires. And Dean reminding everyone that finding the truth is important (let’s not be so bloodthirsty that just anyone will do).

8.19 Taxi Driver The second trial, the horror that Bobby’s wrongfully been in Hell all this time, and Sam is stranded in Purgatory until Benny shows up to escort him to the portal. Sam finally gets why Dean’s loyalty to Benny never wavered. He was literally willing to die for Dean. This guilt will carry Sam into the third trial eventually but for now...

8.20 Pac-Man Fever Let’s look at Dean’s guilt/fear. That he’s failed to protect Sam and won’t be able to save him from the trials. Fear is a terrible thing. But we have djinn AND dreamroot, so all the false realities.

8.21 The Great Escapist This is still among my favorite episodes, but Cas finally begins fighting for himself, and we uncover the extent of Heaven’s duplicity, and meet Metatron, aka Chuck Lite. Definitely watch or at least read.

8.22 Clip Show Aah, I mentioned this one back in 7.06. This is Crowley’s turn to use the boys’ history against them, but instead of manipulating them, they trap him (at the beginning of 8.23, after whoopsie accidentally freeing Abaddon because of Crowley’s manipulation distracting them from their job…) We learn that “curing a demon” is a thing.

8.23 Sacrifice Cas is so embittered by his experiences with heaven that he refuses to believe Metatron is lying, and thus falls victim to the worst manipulation yet. Sam’s dying from the trials, Cas is human, and angels fall. (and also some of the worst, most toxic relationship stuff between Sam and Dean, which contributes to all of that, along with their hubris to think this was a good idea in the first place… I mean it’s literally what the big bad of s9 did to Heaven so why were they trying to do the same to Hell again?)

9.01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here Cas is human, confused, and alone. The big bad is basically Diet Chuck, and Dean is manipulated into doing a Terrible Thing to save Sam that will strain their relationship for the rest of the season. (Don’t worry, Sam will return the favor in s10 >.>) Buckle in for a season all about manipulation by more powerful cosmic forces but with all new levels of guilt over having caused these problems in the first place!

9.02 Devil May Care Abaddon makes a play for the role of big bad, but will ultimately lose the title to Metatron.

9.03 I'm No Angel The Worst Possible Take on Human Cas. Mostly I ignore this episode.

9.04 Slumber Party Oz. Dorothy. Wicked Witch of the West. Sam’s angel possession gets a bit tricky… Direct mind control instead of the manipulative sneaky kind we usually see. and CHARLIE. The Winchesters lives are directly compared to Dorothy Baum’s, where her “fictionalized” version didn’t even come close to describing the horror of her lived reality. (also that one line swap incident that still pisses me off… and pissed Robbie Thompson off enough to write a whole SCENE in 11.04 they couldn’t screw around with like that… “god helps those who help themselves”)

9.05 Dog Dean Afternoon oh look another weird dog episode

9.06 Heaven Can't Wait the Best Possible Take on Human Cas. Well, while Dean’s still being held hostage against telling the truth to him about the angel possessing Sam… and not being able to just bring Cas back home with him. :’)

9.07 Bad Boys Sam learns another major lesson about just how much Dean was manipulated into lying to him his whole life, and another look at what Dean has given up over the years to protect Sam. The origin of my “the story became the story” tag. 

9.08 Rock and a Hard Place Breaking vows is frowned upon. Vesta. And Dean tries to tell Sam about the angel possessing him, but he’s prevented from doing so. And he’s really beginning to realize just how bad a decision this may have been...

9.09 Holy Terror Cas is back in town. He can’t stand by when he might be able to help, but again Gadreel (because now we know that’s the angel possessing Sam) refuses. Gadreel is lured in by Metatron, and things for Sam go from bad to worse. Cas steals another angel’s grace because he had no choice. And Gadreel kills Kevin and runs off. All of a sudden, Dean’s alone.

9.10 Road Trip Just when Dean can finally tell the truth to Cas, Cas isn’t human anymore. They literally never got to actually just BE. Crowley poughkeepsie’s Sam into kicking Gadreel out. Abaddon is becoming more of a problem. Probably at least read the notes on this one. At the end, it’s Dean that “pulls the Sam” and runs away. Which is interesting because they’re essentially gonna swap narrative roles for like… the next season and a half. Buckle up. Things get rocky >.>

9.11 First Born And definitely watch this one. Cas and Sam bonding hour, while Dean goes off with Crowley and is manipulated into taking on the Mark of Cain so he’ll be able to kill Abaddon for Crowley… (and for everyone else, but mainly for Crowley).

9.12 Sharp Teeth Sometimes family can be a werewolf pack. And Garth is now part of one of those, but there’s still zero monstrousness in Garth. As Dean’s beginning to wonder if he should regret taking the Mark (just as Cas wondered if he should regret cannibalizing grace… which he said made him barbaric)

9.13 The Purge A genuinely altruistically intentioned monster, or at least one who attempted to use her monstrousness for good. But her blind spot was her brother, out there just devouring whatever he wanted and not wanting to play by the rules of society or worrying about staying hidden and safe. Plus, DONNA. Even if she doesn’t get to play a big part in the monster hunting.

9.14 Captives We learn more horrors about the s6 angel war from Bart, and pushing Cas toward siding more and more with humanity and against all the heaven nonsense (until he’s manipulated back in DIRECTLY by Metatron and his magic typewriter… but that’s four episodes in the future yet). Linda Tran gets a bit of revenge for being held prisoner for half a year anyway...

9.15 thinman ghostfacers, back to face their own ghosts. If you like getting hit in the face with anvils...

9.16 Blade Runners Crowley’s addicted to humanity. Dean finds his own addiction in the First Blade. And we get our first glimpse of the darker side of the MoL.

9.17 Mother's Little Helper Misha directed it, and it’s got one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole series (Sam freeing the stolen souls, but Dean drinking and playing pool ain’t half bad either). Soullessness, which Sam handles on his own, and learns the truth of how Abaddon infiltrated the MoL.

9.18 Meta Fiction A MUST WATCH. Writers lie. Read my posts. What makes a story? Seriously, Metatron is just Chuck with training wheels.

9.19 Alex Annie Alexis Ann Vampires. More revenge. This time for stolen childhood and lost family. Plus Jody, and the first seed that would become Wayward. Dean is also beginning to succumb to the Mark’s darker urges.

9.20 Bloodlines Dabb’s idea of a joke, I’m pretty sure. 

9.21 King of the Damned Well, Abaddon’s dead, at least. Time trave wtf’ery. Dean is… not okay...

9.22 Stairway to Heaven Sam and Cas pop culture road trip. The level of Metatron’s manipulation becomes horrifically apparent. And Cas gives up his army because he refuses to kill Dean. (also Dean really loses it at the end…)

9.23 Do You Believe in Miracles? Crowley reveals the truth about what the Mark is doing to Dean, and we see the final truth when Dean wakes up as a demon.

10.01 Black Demon Dean Part 1. Bad karaoke and random murder. Cas is languishing because of stolen grace, and Sam is off the rails interrogating demons for Dean’s location.

10.02 Reichenbach Demon Dean Part 2. Cas struggles to teach Hannah about humanity, Sam struggles to find Dean.

10.03 Soul Survivor Demon Dean the conclusion. Cas hugs the demon outta Dean. Er… that’s what happened, pretty sure. But he’s still got the Mark.

10.04 Paper Moon More fun with Werewolves: Siblings edition. While Dean struggles to come to terms with his own literal inner monster...

10.05 Fan Fiction Just watch it. And read my rewatch notes for it. I mean, it’s about rewriting the story. And Chuck shows up at the end and gives it a “Not bad.” Probably kinda relevant.

10.06 Ask Jeeves Supernatural: Clue edition. With a shapeshifter that Bobby had known about for decades. Buried secret things again.

10.07 Girls, Girls, Girls Our first real introduction to Rowena. :’) She’s not a friend in this one...Hannah finally gets a taste of humanity through her vessel’s grief and pain, and decides that it’s wrong for her to remain in her vessel. She returns to Heaven, and Cas is left to ponder how he affected Jimmy’s family (since Jimmy’s long dead now) by his possession.

10.08 Hibbing 911 DONNA AND JODY. Donna gets “the talk,” in a vampire case, and finally gets to prove her mettle as a hunter.

10.09 The Things We Left Behind Cas has found Claire Novak, and does what he can to help her. She’s been taken in and manipulated by an unsavory character, who Dean kills in a fit of mark-induced violence (granted he was surrounded by dudes who wanted him dead, but it was still upsetting and mirrored his nightmare from the opening scene). The burger date. (go ahead and watch it)

10.10 The Hunter Games More Claire drama, but this time she stops it. The Longing Retcon. Cas uses emoticons. And Dean nearly kills Metatron while demanding he tell him how to cure the Mark. Things are getting kinda desperate on that end… All Metatron says is “the river ends at the source”

10.11 There's No Place Like Home OZ. CHARLIE. At least read my watch notes. I’ve been banging on about this episode since it aired. But at the very least read the last round of watch notes. Possibly relevant again because of how it was relevant to Chuck and Amara in 11.23 (yes, this is basically how Dean saved the universe).

10.12 About a Boy Dean gets zapped into a 14-year-old version of himself by a witch. Plus: the mark disappeared for a few days, probably giving him a mini-vacation from enduring it and refreshing his control a bit.

10.13 Halt & Catch Fire ghosts in the machines… plus a John reference that is reinforced when a clip from this episode is reused in the horror movie trailer in 14.04 (so skim my rewatch notes for that if you’re still following along for that sort of thing… post 14.13… *shrug emoji*)

10.14 The Executioner's Song Watch it. Read the notes. This is a big one. Free will-wise.

10.15 The Things They Carried Khan worm: homoerotic sweat lodge edition.

10.16 Paint It Black Worth it just for Dean’s confessional scene. At least read my rewatch notes.

10.17 Inside Man We learn some interesting things about Heaven, Cas gets Bobby’s help to break in and talk to Metatron, they sneak him out, steal his grace, and have their leverage over the one person who might know how to cure Dean AND get Cas what’s left of his own grace back… Meanwhile Rowena tries to kill Dean, and he has a heart to heart with Crowley about what Family really means. Definitely watch, or at least read my notes. A lot happens in this one.

10.18 Book of the Damned CHARLIE. And the wtf’ery of the Styne family begins >.> Sam has a good chat with Charlie about his own life. Metatron leads Cas to another book containing his grace and then escapes with the demon tablet. Family dinner. At least skim my notes on this one. (basically anything with metatron is probably relevant to Chuck stuff…)

10.19 The Werther Project Watch this one. I just wrote notes on it. The beginnings of an interesting relationship between Sam and Rowena (yes that started in 10.18, but this is where it gains weight in Sam’s own subconscious). Dean confronts himself in his own vision about the burden he’s laid on Cas (to kill him if he goes off the rails again). There’s a lot of emotional baggage in this one, too. But seroiusly-- watch this one for the Sam and Rowena stuff, because Rowena… isn’t even really there… 

10.20 Angel Heart Claire, and Cas’s finally laying to rest his baggage associated with the Novak family. Dean and Claire finally bonding. Dean and Cas went to the Hot Topical.

10.21 Dark Dynasty w. t. f. (if you want to be pissed off, give it a watch)

10.22 The Prisoner If you just want the comforting revenge portion of the program, just watch this one instead. Or if you can’t bear to, at least read my notes on it.

10.23 Brother's Keeper Whoopsie, Dean kills Death. Whoopsie, Sam doesn’t stop everyone else from executing the spell to cure the mark. Whoopsie, that releases the Darkness. Also for people who don’t “see Samwitch,” uh… please note that this is a major inciting incident in Sam and Rowena’s relationship-- she’s being held prisoner to complete this spell, and literally kills the only person she ever loved for it, on Sam’s order… (technically…), which will fuel the ongoing antagonism of early s11. Their relationship isn’t fluffy. It’s built on this mutual pain.

11.01 Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire Amara. I think a lot of s11 is gonna be relevant thematically to s15, but...

11.02 Form and Void I think a better focus of “what is relevant thematically” will be found by looking at Dabb’s episodes and influence over this season… I’d start a rewatch with this one, and the introduction of Billie, who will become Dabb’s in-show avatar as he takes over the reins.

11.03 The Bad Seed Rowena finally undoes the spell she’d cast on Cas. but they’re all traumatized. Please at least read my notes on this one, too.

11.04 Baby This episode sets the new tone for Sam and Dean’s relationship going forward. They are more open with one another, and the main drama isn’t them hiding things that eventually blow up in their faces like it had been in the past. There’s still elements of that, but things never really go back to the toxicity of s9 and s10 after this. Ghoulpire.

11.05 Thin Lizzie Fake haunting at Lizzie Borden’s house, Amara eats souls.

11.06 Our Little World Cas is clearly struggling with PTSD, hiding in the bunker until he spots Metatron by chance and finally gets upset enough to go after him. Dean’s first confrontation with Amara outside of his Darknado Vision, and she… tosses him aside like a used tissue. Sam’s still having visions of the Cage and still thinks the visions are coming from God… >.> 

11.07 Plush Donna! And haunted masks! Foreshadowing that Sam’s about to confront Lucifer in the cage-- creepy clown in the elevator.

11.08 Just My Imagination Sam’s childhood imaginary friend was actually real.

11.09 O Brother Where Art Thou? Dean is yoinked from a park by Amara to have a chat about how they’re destined to become one and all that creepy nonsense, while Sam decides to go directly to Hell to talk with Lucifer and doesn’t wait for Dean. Granted, Rowena has been manipulated with lies from Lucifer in this scheme… but she’s about to learn how bad a decision that was. Dean does get to see just how casually Amara can destroy angels, though… which will become relevant it...

11.10 The Devil in the Details Where Dean tells Cas to run if Amara isn’t actually dead… but Cas is convinced he’s useless by the end of the episode and says yes to Lucifer. Owwwwww. At least read my notes on this one. They’re from last week...

11.11 Into the Mystic We meet Eileen, and I just wrote notes about this episode a few days ago. Banshee, which feeds on broken hearts, Dean’s told he’s pining for someone, and is concerned that Cas doesn’t seem himself… >.> He’s also asked if he wants to know the secret to a long and happy life… “Follow your heart” (and he confesses his powerlessness in Amara’s presence to Casifer) https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186891847375/1111-into-the-mystic-heck-ive-written-a-lot

11.12 Don't You Forget About Me Wayward! Family learning what it means to be family. Vampires-- so the element of revenge, but this time it’s the vamps seeking revenge on a human. 

11.13 Love Hurts Quareen. A monster that basically feeds on obsession, toxic “love.” For Dean, that manifests as Amara trying to rip out his heart. I mean… this is the episode he confesses to Sam that he can’t control himself in Amara’s presence, and Sam reassures him it’s not his fault. And he explicitly says it’s not love. It’s horrifying to him, because this episode, this monster, had nothing to do with love, but with possession and control.

11.14 The Vessel What a wonderfully apt and layered title. Thus begins Dean’s s11 “pining for Cas” arc, where his entire focus shifts to Cas after unburdening his Amara issues onto Sam in 11.13. I also consider this episode to fall definitively into Dabb Era. Probably goes for episodes back to 11.10, but this is where that shift is truly evident to me. Definitely watch this one, read my notes, etc. etc.

11.15 Beyond the Mat https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186962895400/1115-beyond-the-mat-jerry-wanek-directed (just read my notes, this is a Dabb co-writing credit episode)

11.16 Safe House Maybe I should just start copying my rewatch notes here for every episode… https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186963627365/1116-safe-house-more-blasts-from-the-past-in-a 

11.17 Red Meat You should just watch this one, and remember this episode isn’t glorifying the codependency between Sam and Dean, it’s shattering it… It’s werewolves, after all (inner monstrousness brought to light) and read some of my past notes on it.

11.18 Hell's Angel The first half of the episode is just a lot of talking, but hooboy.. Rowena is back from the dead and we learn more of why she seeks out power-- self-preservation. Worth watching just for the second half, the failed Poughkeepsie scene, Dean’s heartbreak and fear for Cas, and Amara’s shock that with Cas standing between them, she doesn’t seem to have any affect over Dean at all… 

11.19 The Chitters For a MotW episode, I think this really captures on a meta level what Dabb intends for the whole series. It’s worth watching for itself, but have my notes as to why: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184690946610/weve-finally-hit-1119-on-the-tnt-loop-this

11.20 Don't Call Me Shurley Chuck, and Metatron. I think everyone really needs to watch this one, just to remember how absolutely shady Chuck was. Basically from here right through the end of s11, if you pay attention to these episodes, nothing about 14.20 is the least bit shocking...

11.21 All in the Family Just like 11.20...

11.22 We Happy Few Just like 11.20 and 21

11.23 Alpha and Omega Do we not all think s14 is gonna end on a similar thematic note? Minus all the cliffhangery stuff?

12.01 Keep Calm and Carry On I can picture Dabb rubbing his hands together preparing to run the narrative in loops ad infinitum until he gets word they’ve got one season left to wrap it up. Worth it for the Dean and Mary and Cas. :’)

12.02 Mamma Mia https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184126233100/cass-flashback-to-his-time-hunting-with-mary-as (written recently…)

12.03 The Foundry The companion notes to the link in the last episode: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/187007192830/1203-the-foundry-yes-ive-already-written 

12.04 American Nightmare If you haven’t noticed, I’m just pasting rewatch notes links now… >.> https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184740345285/im-watching-1207-on-the-tnt-loop-and-yeah 

12.05 The One You've Been Waiting For See the link at 12.04 (Dean also killed Hitler)

12.06 Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox see the link at 12.04 (Also Billie is in this one, so of course I think it’s important to the ongoing Dabb Era narrative)

12.07 Rock Never Dies see the link at 12.04 (Lucifer’s nihilism laid bare, no different from Michael’s in s14)

12.08 LOTUS The episode that brought us Jack. Well, eventually…  I’m putting these notes here, even though they also cover 12.09: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184761652205/so-the-tnt-loop-has-continued-into-s12-and-after 

12.09 First Blood (see above, plus Billie, plus Cas laying it out on the table what he will do because he loves the Winchesters... he does a lot of pining for Dean)

12.10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets Nephilim, Lily Sunder, Human souls as angelic power sources, the deceptions of heaven (and love versus obsession again). https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184762915965/last-ep-on-the-tnt-loop-today-1210-reminders 

12.11 Regarding Dean Watch this one, 100%. But also have my whole tag for this episode… I haven’t actually made rewatch notes for it recently, apparently? Which is a shame, because we have Sam working with Rowena, Dean riding Larry BEFORE losing his memories to a curse. There’s a lot of excellent character stuff in this one, for all of them.

12.12 Stuck in the Middle (With You) Watch this one. Cas is family. He loves them. This is the point I became frustrated with myself because there’s a huge gap in my hellatus rewatch notes that I thought I covered and apparently… did not… I don’t have recent notes to point you toward for convenience...

12.13 Family Feud Rowena gets her revenge on Crowley for making her kill Oskar in 10.23. Too much time travel wtf to even bother mentioning anything else.

12.14 The Raid The lengths Sam will go to to have any sort of relationship with Mary… including lying to and manipulating Dean. Vampires… and the Colt, and Sam finally kills the Alpha Vampire.

12.15 Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell between the Crowley and Lucifer drama, Sam kills the Alpha Hellhound (essentially). A lot of other deceptions and lies come to light though, and Cas disappears off to Heaven and from just one call, Dean’s already concerned about him. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184853801830/still-on-s12-in-the-tnt-loop-and-heck-s12-looks

12.16 Ladies Drink Free (covered in the notes linked in 12.15) Werewolves, and an actual werewolf cure.

12.17 The British Invasion (covered in the 12.17 post) Eileen is back for her last real episode.

12.18 The Memory Remains https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184854556715/that-last-scene-of-1218-where-sam-and-dean-are 

12.19 The Future https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184875554515/i-find-it-endlessly-fascinating-that-i-can-rewatch (this post covers… most of the rest of s12 and loads of s13)

12.20 Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes (see the link in 12.19)

12.21 There's Something About Mary Mary is being stripped of her will. And Free Will has been what this show has been about… forever. And what will be recontextualized in the wake of 14.20.

12.22 Who We Are And here’s where Mary’s will is restored to her.

12.23 All Along the Watchtower The proof of the spiral narrative. But also the point writing this post that I’ve determined this is all probably neither useful nor interesting to anyone other than myself, and I lose the ability to simply discuss these episodes individually anymore. From here on out, it becomes a weird blur of everything. This post is already over 14,000 words long and I still have 43 more entries to make, and I have no idea how to convey the meta import or Character Development highlights from this point forward. I don’t even know how to eliminate most of these from a watch list of essential character and meta points. So I’m just gonna… wing it… 

13.01 Lost and Found Watch this one for the soul-crushing agony, and our intro to the Nougat.

13.02 The Rising Son Jack is nearly manipulated by the Kentucky Fried Demon

13.03 Patience Our second Wraith. Watch it for, if nothing else, Dean shouting down Sam about Cas.

13.04 The Big Empty TFW in group therapy with a shapeshifter. Cas vs the Empty, defending his life with a statement that he wants to live, but… again he is unclear on his mission going forward.

13.05 Advanced Thanatology Must watch for Billie, for Dean’s complete loss of hope, and Sam’s inability to “fix him” with things that worked in the past.

13.06 Tombstone Yeehaw! Cas is Dean’s big win.

13.07 War of the Worlds Michael has been effectively “playing God” in the AU. The first rumors that Rowena is actually alive after 12.23, and Cas is captured by Asmodeus, who manipulates the Winchesters into thinking Cas is still at liberty… That’s probably all you need to know. >.>

13.08 The Scorpion and the Frog https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184946657745/so-im-still-out-ahead-of-the-tnt-loop-but-i (this also covers 13.15)

13.09 The Bad Place Wayward!

13.10 Wayward Sisters Wayward again!

13.11 Breakdown Donna! Wayward part 3! And the reminder (via Vampires) that not everyone who has a brush with the Supernatural will feel compelled to pick up a life of hunting.

13.12 Various & Sundry Villains Zombie! (which makes it relevant to Jack stuff even indirectly) Rowena! And Sam giving Rowena what she needed to protect herself, which honestly is what she’s been seeking since her introduction in s10. Sam. Just handed it to her. Let that sink in. Maybe watch the episode. It’s fun, anyway.

13.13 Devil's Bargain Heaven sucks. The bits about Sister Jo describing the feeling of weakened grace allowing her to feel a little bit human is relevant to our interests, though. 

13.14 Good Intentions Watch this one. It sets up Cas’s special power to strip memories from a human mind, and the results of that. And Dean’s wishy-washiness about just telling Cas he’s wanted, not just needed.

13.15 A Most Holy Man (see 13.08)

13.16 Scoobynatural Dude… it’s scoobynatural. just watch it because you want to.

13.17 The Thing this post covers 13.17-13.20, for convenience’s sake: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184996231285/so-ive-watched-four-more-episodes-since-my-last 

13.18 Bring 'em Back Alive (see above)

13.19 Funeralia Billie and Rowena, Sam’s “destiny” to kill Rowena, and Castiel’s forgiveness by Naomi in Heaven as she explains how badly heaven is broken and shows him to the door, knowing he won’t stay. This is a must watch.

13.20 Unfinished Business Revenge doesn’t fix anything.

13.21 Beat the Devil https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185000752455/still-watching-s13-and-1321-is-owie-but-im 

13.22 Exodus (see 13.21) https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185000920730/dean-in-1322-so-close-to-ready-to-letting-all 

13.23 Let the Good Times Roll (see 13.21) But I have a list for this episode… maybe just read my tag starting with the posts I made on May 19, 2019… https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185002926095/1323-vs-1420-lets-start-with-1323-jack-tell and https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185003462010/1323-was-so-ridiculous-i-mean-dean-basically 

14.01 Stranger in a Strange Land At this point, I think everything is at least tangentially relevant… I mean look at this nonsense: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185004920575/on-to-s14-and-one-of-dabbs-big-pet-themes-for

14.02 Gods and Monsters https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185014835950/aah-only-18-more-episodes-to-go-and-48-hours-to

14.03 The Scar https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185016627975/aah-1403-power-doesnt-fix-anything-dean-is 

14.04 Mint Condition https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185018115175/im-gonna-lump-1404-and-1405-together-here-for 

14.05 Nightmare Logic (covered in the post linked for 14.04)

14.06 Optimism https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185030339610/1406-jack-im-already-writing-isnt-that and https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185030940270/jack-vs-zombies 

14.07 Unhuman Nature (see that first post in 14.06)

14.08 Byzantium https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185042798280/omg-wait-literally-in-1408-while-theyre-all 

14.09 The Spear https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185043896890/haaaaa-1409-and-michaels-speech-at-the-end 

14.10 Nihilism Not rewatch notes, but a post made after the episode aired: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182171684160/were-working-on-the-power-of-love

14.11 Damaged Goods https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185047861195/the-boxes-of-1411-omfg-a-demon-trapped-in-a-box 

14.12 Prophet and Loss https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185048948905/aah-1412-tony-you-cant-you-cant-do-this 

14.13 Lebanon https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185050918250/ive-been-holding-off-starting-1413-because-i 

14.14 Ouroboros aka the point where I firmly believe they were 100% sure s15 would be the final season, and began actively setting up the endgame. (I mean I think they knew well before this, but this was where the turn happened narratively) https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185052705595/i-wrote-a-little-about-1414-earlier-today-in 

14.15 Peace of Mind WHEEE! My delightful personal vendetta against Chip, the MotW, the direct Chuck parallel who even called himself a god, and who manipulated everyone else around him to make HIMSELF happy… like seriously, major definitely must rewatch. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185074234960/mittensmorgul-once-again-in-1415-cas-is (I wrote so much about this episode it’s ridiculous)

14.16 Don't Go in the Woods https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185056380525/so-i-started-watching-1416-intending-to-write 

14.17 Game Night (see 14.16)

14.18 Absence https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185065385445/1418-and-1419-both-will-require-additional 

14.19 Jack in the Box (see 14.18) 

14.20 Moriah Writers lie. I think this is now officially my favorite episode of the series… 

[inkperch]

Because Roxy needed to not know you (Cassie) were there. We see it in her scripted jumpscare, she thinks you're Gregory, and realising you aren't snaps her out of it, possibly even completely snapping her out of the virus, given that the last thing we hear from her in that scene is 'error'

From an in universe perspective, I've got two options for ya depending on how helpful/evil you consider Helpi-

Helpi knew full well that Gregory angered Roxy in a way Cassie would not- we see in Roxy Raceway that Helpi, as the a in the mask, knows Cassies backstory with Gregory and, presumably, her backstory with Roxy. Either using this knowledge to better distract her, and thinking nothing of revealing it can Mimic Gregory as well as it can you seeing as it's just a logical conclusion, or intentionally taking advantage of Roxy's lack of eyes to keep her hunting you, weighing the cost of you maybe getting suspicions against maybe not being willing to deactivate Roxy and free Mimic, Helpi is willing to use Gregory's voice.

forever wondering why they only decided to properly splice gregorys voice at the roxy section of ruin, like it was obvious since helpi was like “i can splice your voice!” so why make it SO obvious at roxy. why not drop little hints before then and splice like. One word every now and then, and only splice a little of the dialogue at roxy because good lord it has never been more obvious before then and it honestly just ends up like. throwing you off like ?? why now….

[dru-and-ash]

I don’t know how you’ve been responding to the whole, ‘Ash has a third arm,’ bullshit. But, personally, I’ve been feeling annoyed for the past few days. Not only have these bloggers created such an uproar, but they even have the audacity to be happy with themselves after Cassie spoke out about it. I understand people in this fandom dislike certain characters, and that’s fine. To each their own. But the entire scandal was a pathetic way of showing it.

Honestly Anon I took a six weeks off Tumblr and was just returned minding my own business started making Ash posts then one day This ask appeared on my inbox:

So I was like yeah that's some weird fanfic

I paused only when @ashrosales told me one of her printed books might have a printing error like that except the book wasn't with her. So it could only be photoshopped or a printing error (but honestly what sort of printing error would never be addressed for 11 whole months) Because Koda was having fun with all this so I don't blame her She's the cool mom I'm the old-fashioned one

So I chose to believe it was a joke but avoided Tumblr coz lots of people found it funny Maybe I'd too if it were four

As for what I think about all this happened after, the logical explanation is:

It's on Cassie when deprived of new books This Fandom loses it's sanity If Chain of Gold would come out on November as planned everyone would be minding their own favorite characters

Not that Fandom is sane at other times, just a little better

I mean Banana Jace and Meme kid Kit are taken facts of this fandom 😂

Everyone is free to like/dislike characters as long as no hate spreading is involved I wouldn't go out shouting people (which wasn't the case here)

I'm really sorry if any of you felt confused, uncomfortable and bad amidst all this just don't look at the tag I'm still not checking it but I'm sure it'll go back to normal in a day or two

Love you Anon, take care of yourself 💖

[bookdragonlibrary]

Third Tuesday YJ appreciation

1-3 ; 4-6 ; 7-9 ; 10-13 ; 14-16 ; 17 ; 18 ; 19 ; 20 ; 21 ; 22 ; 23 ; 24-26

—————————— Early Warning

- Star Girl is back.

- We didn’t see their mission in Chicago :(

- “The Outsiders are bigger than the Big League.” Seriously? So Gar has reach his goal to inspire people.

- We’re 21 December. Will we have a Christmas episode? 

- Santiago de Cuba. Is this the whole city name or it’s just to specify is the Santiago located in Cuba, because you know USA have a lot of countries which names already existed in other countries, so it’s confusing...

- Mother of Goat xD

- 04.31 is indeed too early to go to school...

- “You mean I’m Gabrielle’s corpse brought back to life by the energy of a dead motherbox.” Violet, you need to chill. It’s really sad you see yourself this way :( 

-  What do you mean she’s dying? She has better superhealing than a speedster!

- I like that the first thing she does is healing herself. 

- Months left? Well, all her previous dead must have been painful... But I’m sure Jace had misinterpreted what she saw. Maybe Violet has a high metabolism like a speedster with a fast regeneration of her cells so maybe they would discover this later by her aging slowly. 

- Her mentor? Who could that be? Was they the person she called in the 15th episode?

- Wait to tell them? How is this supposed to be a good idea? One secret is enough of a burden.

- A funeral? Who’s funeral? :’( 

- They are up against who to make Zatanna worry? Maybe she would bring Traci with her *finger crossed*

- What is this big pink cloud? It’s up to no good...

- Klarion? Of course Zatanna would be worried! The Team never succeeded to win against him! It was always Dr Fate.

- So he was the one who chose Project Rutabaga name? It’s difficult to understand which only one side of the conversation, more difficult than with Jaime and Scarab actually.

- “Stop to ruin my fun, Teekl.” He’s indeed the Witch Boy with that pouting xD How old is he to still be considerated as a child?

- I didn’t know human can have a reddish brown skin. Where is she from? 

- It’s me or he’s dumb not remember what he’s supposed to do?

- No need to explain it to us, I’m pretty sure we all understood as we are now in an adult plateforme...

- So the teen could speak? I thought she was mute. Because of trauma maybe?

- Change of eye and hair color plus... gills? She can’t breathe? Can’t she be like Kaldur and has a double breathing system? :( 

- So that’s where the mark in the forehead comes from... So he already sent teen in to Granny before. How could he forget if it’s not the first time he does it?

- So now she’s a red gaz and... does it where the big cloud comes from? 

- That monster looks like the one in FMA. So the Light is trying to create a mix of metateen with different powers combined for one super powers soldier? We already saw of terrified it could be with Amazo in season 1...

- So the minidrones come indeed from Blue right? 

- RIP  minidrone :(

- “We saw so pretty weird days.” Does he speak about the Reach? :( 

- The way Gar said funeral shows he’s so used to it...

- Joan is dead?! So quickly? From what? Aging?

- Virgil is so cool with blue eyes!

- “Outsiders away!” “Dude, that catchphrase, need work.” You mean “Outisiders go!” right? it was an easter egg right?

- Klarion seriously didn’t recognise them? Or never be against them? 

- “Flesh Monster” I know you are sadistic demon, but it was really disrespectful :( 

- Gar is so clever to attack Teekl! Mouse to elephant, the two opposites! 

- Klarion, we really don’t need your explanations, everyone had seen season 1... (why are you watching season 3?)

- No don’t use a bazooka on those kids! :( Yeah Geo-force! o/

- “No, not in the house.” New Team catchphrase?

- Did he just killed Beast Boy? Desintegrated him? It’s not possible! :’( Not another funeral! 

- Yes he’s alive! Stop with the fake deaths! 

- No Cassie! :( Did anyone how the monster become huge with Wonder Girl addition? She’s really strong!

- Virgil horrified to see his BF like that :( 

- Yeah! They are free! Except for the girl who still can’t breathe. 

- We need to bring Zatanna to Granny’s place so she could free the other teens. 

- Klarion is still busy with a hornet? Seriously?

- They are in Tower of Fate? So the balance between order and chaos are unbalanced in the place of power of one of them?

- “Still in the Tower? *meow* Dang it!” It shouldn’t be that funny! xD

- Virgil, you’re hanging out with Ed and Jaime, your Spanish should be better than this... 

- Yep, the girl still can’t breathe! :( Gar save her! :D She said “Thank you!” :3

- “Where is Violet?” Probably not well after learning she’s dying... 

- Tara’s struggle with English vocabulary (especially oral expressions) feels so real!

- We’re going to see Harper? :D 

- Is that guns and alchohol? Seriously? Is that beer or stronger alchohol? --’ Violet doesn’t seem at ease....

-  It’s cool Harper ask about the alchohol being allowed for Muslims. She’s the first one in the serie to ask VIolet about Islam. You can’t learn about it if you don’t ask to people :) But maybe Violet isn’t the best to ask as she probably doesn’t know much. Wait, does she know about alchohol by the way? 

- “I’m not a Muslim.” Is Violet rejecting everything about herself because she’s dying? Or is alchohol a way to cope with the big new? Or is she rejecting everything about Gabrielle’s identity because of the murder or Brion’s parents?

-  She doesn’t want to talk to Brion and doesn’t like the taste :/ 

- What? 

- “I have a boyfriend.” She clearly doesn’t need this to her emotions... And she sounds surprised? Is this a reminder or a news for Harper? It’s like 2 months she’s dating Brion so she should have told Harper right? 

- “So do I.” The bi cheating trope, really? I HC a lot of characters as bi or pan and it’s not the first rep I wished... And it could have been handled better. Like Harper not kissing her a second time after she said no (I have a boyfriend so I’m not available for kissing someone else, if it wasn’t clear for everyone...). Harper not having a boyfriend but a crush on Violet for a long time, for example? Because the kiss seem to mean nothing to Harper, just a funny thing to do... You know, because bi people can’t stay in a relationship and get bored... --’

- How Violet could be so good at firing? Thanks to her training with Artemis? Motherbox senses? 

- Wait, they are in Mount Justice beach, isn’t it private? How a cop could be there in the middle of nowhere or almost? Why didn’t she show up when Dick were firing with an ever bigger gun? It doesn’t make any sense! Or it’s just plot convenient...

- Violet’s hesitation really show how much she became self destructive because “I’m dying so why not? I have nothing to loose” kind of logic...

- Why they made the General so heartless? :( The cliche of the male soldier who is heartless and the female soldier who cannot do her mission properly because of love/mother instinct...

- I need to check YJ comics because I’m sure I can find some of them in it. *check* Ok I just found Serpenteen...

- Colonel Ramon Bracuda. So he’s indeed a Colonel xD

- Tara and Artemis! 

- The slap at the end was unnecessary, Slade. She was already down... è.é

- Artemis is so good as a mentor! She understood what Tara had been through!

- Tara is surprised and afraid Artemis discovered she was trained. Maybe Artemis will be the one who understands she’s a mole and try to reason her. (Like she tried with her sister...)

- I love how Artemis shows her she can relate to her trauma and reassure her she won’t do the same.

- Tara’s smile again!

- Police station. Right. 

- So Harper’s father is an alcoholic? That would explain why Harper want to forget about her life too... And where she found the bottle. Did she try to take the bottles away and wanted to try it instead?  

- A whole day waiting? That parental abusive!

- I’m not sure Violet truly understood what happened to be honest... It’s a lot in a day! She’s sure having a bad one :( 

- Guess it was an animated error last episode: Wendy still has her collar :( 

- Of course Kaldur will find a solution for the girl :) 

- Virgil, awkward... When he said “excuse” and then close his eyes because he realises it wasn’t the best word choice and Bart reassuring he understood he meant no harm :3 I love the Team dynamic :)

- With Ed, I’m never sure he’s looking at Bart or Wendy...

- “I want in.” In the hug? Of course he’s talking about the Outsiders xD Wait, what?! Doesn’t it seem out of character?

- Even Virgil  didn’t seem to know. 

- So Ed went to the funerals to support/confort Bart?

- So he talked to Bart and Jaime first? Ouch for Virgil... 

- So half of the Runaways in the Outsiders. When do we get to see Tye and Asami? They should have been there in episode 16! Are they ok? Are they kidnapped again? :( 

- “The kids here just don’t know you.” Yet! Come on, Ed, you could have invited all the Runaways, the first abducted metateens so the kids could relate to someone who go through the trauma. Virgil should be known in the Center! He is one of their own already! And that should have been Virgil’s character motivation to be part of the Outsiders and not the skin color... Black characters are more than just black they’re humans, you know? Where are the writers who wrote the other POC characters in the previous seasons? Anyway, the reason to do this for the kid would have been unnecessary if it was written properly with this character arc for Virgil because Ed was fine as a peer councelor to show to the kids there are other ways to use your powers than fighting bas guys, the living example for Paula’s point. 

- So great everyone supports Ed’s decision. 

- Yeah Virgil, his dad would totally freak out...

- Wendy is so small compared to the others! She seems to be 12. And Ed seems to have a big brother reaction who wants to be praised by the little sister ^^

- The comments said “The Outsiders are the best” in Spanish, no idea for the second one and “The Outsiders are unbeatable” in French :)

- “the Outsiders are bigger than the JL.” *Kaldur raises an eyebrow* priceless xD

- Klarion is still trapped in the Tower and it’s still so funny xD 

[humblystark]

Choose Your Own Ending: The Conclusion to Steve Rogers’s Arc in Endgame

I’ve seen a lot of people grappling with the ending Steve Rogers got in Endgame, and I wanted to share my thoughts. I was incredibly moved by it, so, naturally, I was a little taken aback when I read that some thought it was OOC — not because I think those folks are inherently wrong, but because I thought I’d overlooked something big about his character.

Because this is the internet and things get taken out of context and misinterpreted, here’s a few things this post isn’t:

It’s NOT me telling anyone how to feel

it’s NOT me papering over issues of representation in the MCU 

it’s NOT me thinking the time travel logic makes a lick of sense :P

What this post IS about is me sharing why the choice worked for me. I hope that my thoughts can lend a slightly different perspective to the Disc Horse.

There was an idea. What if you made a series of movies featuring beloved comic book heroes, then brought those characters together in one, big, epic crossover event? And, thus, The Avengers came into being in the summer of 2012.

Seven years later, the MCU has completely defied my expectations of what storytelling on this level could be. The fact that they wove 22 movies and I don’t know how many characters into a narrative as coherent as the one we got is, frankly, astounding. Case in point, look at the DCEU, which largely failed because they made the critical error of skipping to the team-up movie before laying the proper groundwork (dare I even bother mentioning Universal’s The Dark Universe?) 

But this is a post about Steve Rogers.

One of the the themes of Endgame is passing the torch. We see it in moments between Tony and Morgan as well as the mentorship between Tony and Peter. The movie opens on it in a scene between Clint and his daughter. We even get a nod to Cassie Lang who, in the comics, becomes a hero in her own right as a teenager. Even Thor hands the keys to the kingdom over to Valkyrie. If you wanna get meta, you can read Endgame as the OG6 Avengers handing the MCU over to the next gen.

Now Steve passing the shield on to Sam is all fine and dandy, you say. But would Steve really just up and leave his team to go back in time and live out his life?

In this universe, yes. 

Here’s the thing about comics (and I know I’m not exactly blowing anyone’s mind here): they just keep going. Our heroes never get to retire. They just get rebooted. Tony Stark will always wind up back in the jungles of Vietnam or a cave in Afghanistan. Rhodey, Pepper and Riri can all wear suits of their own, but Tony Stark will always be the Iron Man, and he’ll have adventures of his own ad infinitum. So of course comics Steve would never leave his team. Tony gave him a home, and he’s here to stay.

But movies have actors. And actors age and have contracts and move on. That presents a really unique storytelling opportunity. What happens when you get to definitively craft an ending to a comic book character’s story? Where would you leave them?

Five years following The Snapture (full credit to NPR’s Glen Weldon for that one), we find Steve leading support groups for survivors. He’s been relentlessly optimistic about their new reality seemingly because that’s what’s expected of him.  “I keep telling everybody that they should move on,” he says to Natasha. “Some do. But not us.” You get a sense that underneath his calm exterior is a man who is deeply, deeply depressed and battling feelings of powerlessness (a thread you can arguably trace back to the moment he woke up from the ice). Hell, the minute Captain Marvel shows up to propose literally flying to space to kill Thanos, he’s all in. It’s the first chance he’s had to do anything about their situation, and he’s taking it, consequences be damned.

The same can be said for the Time Heist. He doesn’t hesitate to march straight to Tony to ask if it can be done. Steve is grappling with his failure to stop The Snap by following through on any dumb plan that could reverse it.

And then it works. 

Having just helped win the battle of his life (and watch Tony sacrifice everything to seal the victory), we find Steve at a crossroads. Where does he go from here?

In CA:TWS, Peggy tells Steve, “The world has changed. None of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best we can do is to start over.” Steve tried that. For five years he tried that, and all he could manage was signing on to a plan that could reverse their mistakes. 

Earlier in the film when Steve visits Tony at the lakehouse, you had to imagine that Steve saw what the future could be for him. He was confronted with this same vision in AOU when visiting Clint and his family on their farm, too. In AOU, he rejects that future, but that was before the team suffered the massive defeat they did in Infinity War. Those five years gave Steve perspective and a lot of time to think. In CA:TWS, when Sam asks Steve what makes him happy, he answers with a shrug and an “I don’t know.”

He knows now.

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters of the Captain America movies and Infinity War and Endgame, said around the time of CA:TWS’s release that Steve Rogers is a character who doesn’t change. Instead, the world changes around him. He’s got high morals, an unshakable sense of decency, and is always willing to make the sacrifice play. The conflict in his stories originate between external tensions between him and the rest of the world rather than anything internal. In Endgame, we get to see Steve finally change in one important way as a character. He chooses to live.

Whether you wanted to see full resolution of the Steve/Peggy romance or get more of a payoff of the Steve/Bucky relationship, you can think of this choice to go back in time to live out his life as symbolic of this character growth. For perhaps the first time in his life, Steve chose his own happiness over his duty as an Avenger, not in a way that was selfish but in a way that was well earned by the culmination of his previous sacrifices. 

And that’s why that ending left me a sobbing wreck in the theater. 

If you’re interested in a more inside-baseball look at the MCU, please check out Patrick (H) Willem’s recent three-part video series on The Limitations of the MCU. He’s a guy who who clearly loves comics, the MCU, and Hollywood and has a nuanced understanding of all three. His frustrations are often our frustrations as both fans and storytellers. But he also gives credit where credit is due and puts the MCU project in context in a way that you don’t often see in fandom.

[thatfanficstuff]

Bound (3)

Pairing: Klaus x OC

Warnings: death, killing, i.e. canon typical stuff

A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long but the feelings.... There are probably errors here. Let me know if they are too distracting. (I kinda love this chapter)

***

When my morning started, I certainly hadn’t anticipated stomping through the woods in search of werewolves. My hybrid boyfriend was currently giving me a piggy back ride after making one too many snarky remarks about how slow humans were. He had refused to leave me behind for the length of time this journey was likely to take though I had all but begged. I’d just have to trust him to protect me. While Nik carried me, my head rested on his back though I would occasionally press a kiss to his cheek. Stefan carried the wolf they’d tracked down. Nik had fed the wolf his blood and broke his neck but the man had yet to wake up.

Nik came to a stop and lowered me to the ground. It took me a moment before I heard the sound of voices. I peered around his side to see a group of people setting up camp not too far from us. He placed a hand on my arm and gently pushed me back behind his body. “Stay here until we’ve properly greeted our friends, all right love?” I didn’t offer a response, but I knew he wasn’t really expecting one.

I hid myself behind a tree and kept watch. Stefan dropped Ray to the ground in the midst of his friends. He landed with a hard enough thud that it had me cringing in sympathy. Not that he was likely to feel it, he was technically dead after all. The other wolves justifiably panicked, demanded answers. When Nik announced who he was, the panic remained but the noise quieted immediately.

It was then that Ray woke. One of the campers was the human boyfriend of one of the wolves and Nik compelled him to act as dinner. It hadn’t even occurred to me to question what Nik had intended to feed them to help them transition. Hell, knowing him his initial plan was to let them run wild and find their own food. As much as I loved Nik, I had to admit he lacked forethought sometimes. 

“Cassie,” he called. “You can come out now, love.”

I tried my best to keep my gaze locked on him rather than the bodies that littered the ground around us. He’d made quick work of the wolves. As if sensing my unease, he hooked a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me into his chest. He made soothing sounds as he nuzzled against the side of my head.

“They’re dead. They’re all dead.”

The sudden outburst had me pulling back in surprise. Nik turned to face Ray who was now on his feet and crouched, an angry scowl pulling his features.

“It’s your fault. You killed them,” he yelled.

Nik tilted his head as he stepped in front of me, casually placing himself between the raving hybrid and myself. “Easy, mate. Calm down. They’ll be right as rain in no time. You’ll see.” He held a hand in front of him in a calming gesture and took a step in Ray’s direction. “You’ll all be much better off. No longer a slave to the moon. Won’t that be freeing?”

If the way Ray snarled and ran off was any indication, he wasn’t convinced by Nik’s spiel. “Bloody hell,” he grumbled, just audible enough for me to catch it. “Stefan, do you mind?”

Stefan’s mouth quirked as if he was amused. “Yeah, I got it.”

As he ran off the wolves slowly began to wake. Nik moved the poor human around to feed them one at a time, then he would offer his own blood to the human so he could heal before continuing the cycle. I was so caught up in watching him, I barely heard the crack of a branch breaking to my left. I glanced toward the sound to see a woman with her attention focused solely on me.

“Nik?” I did my best to keep my voice calm as if that would somehow keep the werewolf from making me her meal.

“Yes, love? I’m a bit busy.” He sounded distracted but I didn’t dare take my eyes from the woman to check.

Before I could make another move the werewolf lunged at me, flashing yellow eyes and fangs. A scream tore from my throat and I closed my eyes bracing for the impact there was no time to avoid. When nothing happened, I opened them to find Nik holding the woman by the throat. His entire body was tense and his face showed that quiet fury that made him so terrifying. “Now that’s not very nice,” he said, his voice sharp.

The woman struggled in his grasp for a moment longer before he shifted his grip and ripped out her throat. I gasped and Nik spun to face me. He closed the distance between us in one long step, his face still full of fury. Even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, instinct overrode logic and I stepped backward away from him, the rocky ground making my steps unsteady. His hands found my arms, steadying me even as we continued to move.

When my back hit the trunk of a tree, Nik crowded against me, boxing me in. “Why?” he bit out.

“What?” I asked, not understanding what he was looking for.

“She would have killed you had I not reacted in time. Why would you allow this?”

“You’re blaming me?” My chest ached with the shock.

“For not protecting yourself? Yes!” He all but roared. “You’re a witch, Cassie. Whatever you may think, you’re are far more important to me than any of them.” With the last word he gestured to the werewolves that surrounded us. No. Not werewolves, not anymore. Hybrids. “I nearly lost you to the ritual. I will not lose you do to your failure to put your life before theirs. Do you understand?”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. He was right. I did think he valued the hybrids over me, but that of course had nothing to do with my reasons for not defending myself. Despite his fury, despite his claim that I was more important, I still found myself reluctant to admit my magic was gone. My gaze found Stefan as he reentered the clearing and dropped Roy at his feet.

Nik grasped my chin gently and turned my head back to face him. He looked half-crazy. “Please tell me you understand, Cassie.” All the fury was gone from his voice to be replaced with a plea. His eyes searched my face.

“It’s gone,” I managed to choke out.

“What’s gone, Cassie?”

When I didn’t immediately respond, he pressed his forehead against mine. “Talk to me, sweetheart. Tell me what you’ve been hiding.”

Apparently I hadn’t been as sneaky as I thought all summer. I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes. “My magic. It’s been gone since the ritual.”

There was a long stretch of silence. The voice that broke it surprisingly wasn’t Nik’s, but Stefan’s. “What the hell, Cassidy? Why didn’t you say anything?”

I shrugged and kept my eyes cast down so I wouldn’t see the disappointment on Nik’s face. After a moment, Nik pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Stefan, take Cassie to the car. I’ll be along as soon as I have a word with our friends here.”

He stepped away as Stefan approached. “Damon, Elena and Alaric were here. Ran into them when I caught up with Ray.”

I looked up in surprise, the motion catching Nik’s eye. He gave me a soft smile and winked in my direction. What the hell did that mean?

“I assume Alaric was checking on his niece. I can’t fault him for that. What did your brother and your girlfriend want?”

“They still have a problem believing we’re here under our own free will,” Stefan said.

Nik rolled his eyes. “I don’t have time to be bothered with their antics at the moment. Protect Cassie. I’ll deal with this lot.”

Stefan nodded as he scooped me up in his arms. “Close your eyes, Cass.”

I did as he ordered and we arrived at the car moments later. He tried to start a conversation with me several times, but I wasn’t about to explain myself to anyone but Nik at the moment.

Sooner that I anticipated, the hybrid himself appeared and announced his presence by opening my door, startling me. He held out a hand to me and offered a smile of apology. “I need a minute with my girl, Stefan. Turn on some music and relax for a bit.”

Stefan nodded as he started the car and flipped on the radio. Nik helped me from the car and shut the door behind me. He led me a short distance away and frowned down at me. I squirmed under his inspection but waited for him to ask his questions.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked finally.

“At first, I wasn’t sure. I just felt unsettled, incomplete. I’d barely survived. I wasn’t going to freak you and Elijah out by mentioning I thought something was wrong but didn’t know what.”

“And once you were certain your magic was gone?”

I shrugged and shook my head. “Our relationship started based on my usefulness. I already feared you would have no further use for me after the ritual was completed, I wasn’t about to tell you I couldn’t even light a candle any more.”

“You really think so little of me?”

I couldn’t miss the hurt in his voice so I was quick to correct him. “It’s not you, it’s me. My entire purpose since the accident was to break your curse. I did that. We did that. What good am I now, especially without my magic?”

“You can’t honestly believe that is all you are worth?”

“I went from Cassie, kick ass witch willing to pay the price for her magic and able to cast some killer spells to Cassidy Grimes, overly smart anthropologist specializing in a curse that no longer exists. What value do I have? I am just like every other human out there. A liability in the supernatural world and you know it,” I said, finally voicing the fears I’d been holding onto for months.

Nik huffed a laugh of disbelief. “You are more valuable than anything has been to me in my thousand years of existence. You will never be just anything. You will always be my Cassie. My love. Did you really think I would abandon you once I knew the truth?”

“I didn’t know what you would do, Nik. I only knew I was terrified to find out. I’m not sure I would want to live a life without you in it. Without Elijah. I’m a Mikaelson now, I’m afraid, whether you two want me or not.” I forced a teasing tone into my voice.

He grinned then. “As if we would ever let you go.” He looped an arm around my shoulders. “Come, love. Time for Stefan to drive us to Chicago.”

I pressed against his side as he walked us to the car. “What’s in Chicago?”

“Besides history? A witch that just might have some answers for us.”

Tag List:  @deadmanwalked @the-doctor-9-10 @kawaiirepublic @xlosttdreamss @tkdgirl2012 @cacti-succulents-andlesbians @killerheelsanddullknives @readeity @kayla-03-blog @star-incandescent 

@bookwormstrawberry - this is the first time I’ve gotten your tag to work for some stupid tumblr reason. Sorry!

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Honestly, my biggest problem with the Aftran infestation plot is the Natural Morphing resolution to Cassie going Nothlit is uh... weak is the kind word for it.

To quote a writing buddy:

Some fans… approach stories in terms of what would be most ‘logical’ for one character to do in a story… Which not only misunderstands the whole need for characters with different points of view within storytelling, but that getting into these nonsense-logic debates belies the deeper intent and functionality of storytelling itself.

Because there is literally no point to approach the ‘bad logic’ of a given story choice like you think you are fixing flaws of a film. Instead, you are literally erasing conflict from the movie. The obvious problem there is that the entire damn point of a movie is to create conflict. We want stories that get at the heart of strife between two people, and through the dramatization of that conflict, will say something about the human condition. But in the humane desire for an audience member to seek resolution to that same conflict (which I think speaks to the power that stories have upon people), they will often subconsciously try to resolve it with an outside-the-box practical decision that reflects their own brain, over the logic of the drama itself.

I guess what I’m trying to say with that quote: it’s not necessarily logical for the story to function that way, but the goal of the story was never to be logical.

K.A. Applegate isn’t writing a rhetoric and rationality manual.  She’s a) trying to tell a complex story about enemies coming to realize they have common ground, b) making a point about the messy nuances of privilege and the fact that lack of privilege doesn’t give one the right to hurt others, c) trying to entertain readers as young as eight, d) building an emotional arc for six main characters and a handful of supporting characters, and e) trying to educate children about animals.  That last one is actually the motivation Applegate herself sites for writing the Animorphs series in the first place and (I’d argue) one of the strongest aspects of the series, that she manages to make nonsensical morphing into these very real-feeling experiences.

Is it “logical” for Rachel to be allergic to crocodile DNA?  Of course not.  Does the scene with Rachel involuntarily turning into an elephant and nearly crushing Sarah to death feel utterly, horrifyingly, nightmare-inducingly real anyway?  At least to me it does.

Sure, I agree with you that authors’ Rules of Applied Phlebotinum should be internally consistent.  That said, I also feel like pushing the envelope a little to achieve a desired effect is perfectly fine, because Charles Dickens constantly gets away with much, much worse.  The ends have to justify the means, but I think that they do in this case.

To explain what I mean: in my utterly uninformed opinion, the moment in #1 where Tobias “hears” Jake’s thoughts while Jake isn’t in morph is kind of a frustrating error.  It doesn’t advance the plot, it doesn’t get an in-universe justification, it doesn’t achieve a character or setting effect, and it’s not cool or otherwise emotionally evocative.

HOWEVER, the moment in MM2 where Tobias tries and fails to morph in order to fix a broken wing is a little annoying but I’m willing to overlook it.  The crisis of Tobias being injured and alone with Rachel achieves several effects:

It forces the decision that Rachel could just morph and fly off in search of the others, but that she is entirely unwilling to leave Tobias mostly-helpless and alone to do so.  It draws attention to the fact that Tobias is new at morphing, and self-conscious about that fact.  It helps set up the Big Honking Character Moment at the end of the book through showing that Tobias is a much tougher person, willing to make much bigger sacrifices, than that soft-skinned starry-eyed kid we saw in the first book.  It causes Rachel and Tobias to confess their feelings for each other, which at that point in the series they’ve yet to do.  It allows Rachel (and by extension the reader) access Tobias’s dinosaur knowledge while denying the rest of the team that knowledge, creating some great moments of dramatic irony.  It highlights Tobias’s dual identity, that he is more willing to navigate a strange environment as an injured bird than as an uninjured human.  It separates the group, thereby setting up the same conflict that each Megamorphs book faces: a reduced team deciding under desperate and unfamiliar circumstances just how far they’re willing to go to survive.  It’s one of the forces that drives Rachel and Tobias together as a couple.

Does that moment still bug me, in that I wish Applegate had found a different way to achieve the same effect?  Yeah, a little.

Anyway, that moment with Cassie not becoming a butterfly forever and ever:

Allows Cassie to demonstrate that she is Committed As Fuck to this deal with Aftran, in that she actually goes through with the nothlit thing.

Justifies Aftran’s own heel-face turn, because it calls BS on Aftran’s “even death is preferable to life without a host” argument.

Keeps Cassie in the narrative in spite of her becoming a nothlit, without resorting to an attempt to explain how she could also do a favor for the Ellimist while stuck as a butterfly and then regain her morphing but be a semi-permanent butterfly…

Presents one of the stranger realities of nature — that little worm-things make shells, crawl into those shells after shedding their skin a quadrillion times, dissolve into goo, and pop out with completely different morphology — in a way that actually incorporates it into the drama of the story, in contrast to all those children’s books with characters droning straight at the reader about The Life Cycle of the Butterfly.

Foreshadows not only Aftran’s eventual fate but that of all the yeerks — Aftran might have been born a little worm-thing, but that doesn’t mean she can’t transform and achieve nearly infinite potential without needing a host to do so.

Grounds Cassie within her team through showing that she and Marco especially might be at odds a lot of the time, but that all five of her friends would be devastated if she could no longer be in their lives.

Affirms Cassie’s connection to her parents as well, amidst the ongoing narrative of her becoming so adult that she views them almost as children she must protect, through forcing her to be separate from them for a few weeks.

Gives the book directly before the David trilogy a happy ending, a much-needed uplift just before the horror to come.

Conveys a really important message about how doing the right thing is often hideously difficult.

And shows that doing the right thing is usually more about making a commitment to something and then following through no matter how difficult it becomes, less about throwing oneself in front of buses to save innocent children.

And gets into the gritty details of there being consequences to doing the right thing, not just adults coming in at the end of the adventure to pat one on the head for a job well done.

And forces the issue of The Right Thing sometimes being the thing that hurts a hell of a lot, when it’s not just a matter of destroying the ring you happen to like also destroying the whole army of orcs.

Does not end the book with Cassie stuck as a bug forever, using an excuse based in nature itself, thereby fitting well with the motif of the series as a whole that nature is disturbingly powerful.

Anywhoo, I’m not sure what K.A. Applegate could have done differently under the circumstances to achieve the desired result.  Maybe it’s “weak” to assume that a naturally-occurring metamorphosis process could derail the limits of a technological reality like morphing.  But this is a book series with shapeshifting, time travel, alien invaders, and New Yorkers still having landlines in 2009, for cryin’ out loud.  I think it’s entitled to a little illogic in order to achieve a desired plot-character-setting-emotional arc effect.

[walking-fnaf-encyclopedia]

i am <3

me 🤝 you

making characters nb

(me w cassie… u w evan….. were so right abt this)

Anon u get me

[canaryatlaw]

OKAY. well today was pretty sweet. I had my alarm set for 10:00 am but ended up waking up at 9:42 am and just said fuck it and got up. I checked my messages and as expected I had a message from Jess asking about getting brunch and then confirmed our plans for the rest of the day. I got dressed and we met up at the spot, which had more people around it than usual because the place that’s right there was doing a branding makeover and I got a free sample of pie so that was cool lol. we went to the vegetarian place for brunch, and while we were eating it started snowing which is super fucking annoying because it’s the fucking END OF APRIL we shouldn’t have to still be dealing with this lol. we had some autographs to mail out and the ups store is right next to the vegetarian place so we ended up going there once we finished eating and mailed the two domestic ones, I have the international one that I’ll mail from the post office on Monday because ups has an international surcharge that would’ve made it super fucking expensive to mail from the ups store. once that was done we walked back through the snow to where Jess had parked her car and started our journey for the day. we were heading up to the suburbs because Jess had managed to get some emissions check thing get lit up in her car because she tried to top off the gas but apparently her gas tank is very sensitive (it’s one of those that doesn’t have an actual cap to it) and according to the internet it was something about a software error that was recalled because of it so basically we had to bring it up to the dealership so they could fix that, hopefully for free, and that is what ended up happening, we brought it in and told them what was going on, they took a look and confirmed what they had to do, so we waited for like 45 minutes or so (I wasn’t actually keeping track of the time but it was around there) until it was done and we were good to go. It had overall taken less time than we’d expected, but we moved on to the next part of our plans, which was late lunch at the cheesecake factory, then we would return to actually get cheesecake after we saw the movie that evening. Since it was, you know, lunch time, we could get the lunch sized version of the pastas we always get to which I was like wow I could actually finish this! and then my acid reflux kicked into high gear for no particular reason and I was like okay I can not in fact finish this, so sadly I didn’t end up eating all that much of it. The movie showing we had tickets to wasn’t until 5 and at that point it was only a little after 2 so we checked to see if we could get tickets to any earlier showing, but they were all sold out, so we just had to kill some time. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue since there’s a whole mall there, but given that it was still snowing and it’s an outdoor mall made it a bit trickier. but we started at forever 21 as always since it was right there and had big signs for sale lol. we each ended up getting something from their buy one get one free clearance, Jess got this hideous jacket (she enjoys ugly clothing) and I got a somewhat equally hideous (as do I sometimes) cardigan along with a pair of floral pants that I saw and knew I needed in my life, then when we were going to check out there was a pair of “avo-cat-o” socks, which had an avocado with a cat peeking through where the pit would be on them so of course we had to get those, and then we picked up a bag of hi-chew at the counter. Once we checked out there we walked around a bit and went into a few stores in search of sunglasses, and ultimately ended up each getting a pair from Francesca’s. We continued to wander for a bit and got bubble tea at some point (where I could confirm I have the legit stuff they actually use, so that was validating) then waited for the movie theatre to start letting people into the theatre for our showing. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, of course we’re seeing Avengers Endgame, THIS POST FROM HERE ON WILL CONTAIN ENDGAME SPOILERS, I WILL TRY TO TAG IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU COULD POSSIBLY BLACKLIST BUT READ ON FROM HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK. We got some popcorn and waited in the fancy theatre for it to start. Overall reaction, I liked it a lot, I really wasn’t crazy about Infinity War so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this but I ended up liking it a lot. I thought it was a very good choice narratively to have Thanos get offed way at the beginning of the movie (to be fair to Thor, if I were him I probably would’ve chopped Thanos’ head off as soon as they got in the door, so I can’t really blame him) and then focus the movie on bringing everyone back, only to bring him back in the end, that was good storytelling IMO. THAT HAIRCUT THOUGH, I was dying, just looking at it like I. NEED. THIS. that haircut spoke to me okay lol, my hair is longer than it’s been in like three years right now but it’s not going to last very much longer. I probably can’t get that exact haircut because, you know, work shit, but I’m sure we could figure something out. I was kinda disappointed that she wasn’t in more of the movie, her presence in the beginning was perfect, I was dying when they were like “where are you going?” and she’s just like “to kill Thanos, I’ll let you know when I’m done” so nonchalantly and perfect and like, the scenes of her coming through the atmosphere and everything was so damn cool and GAH I LOVE HER SO MUCH. I had gotten spoiled, willingly though because I don’t really care about these things, as to the two major character deaths of the remaining alive characters, but that definitely did not make it any easier to see. MORGAN STARK IS SO FUCKING PRECIOUS I would die for her and also I’m so fucking glad they didn’t have Cassie Lang get dusted because I would’ve been pissed about that, Scott coming back from the quantum realm and finding her five years later was so damn emotional, it killed me. I appreciated them finding Thor in what was clearly filmed in a coastal new england town, getting fat and playing video games, lol. I know of course him looking fat was fake, but it looked so damn funny. I do take issue with several of the choices they made with how the time traveling was working because there were definitely quite a few logic jumps in there that went unexplained, but for the most part I’ll give them a pass for not wanting to get too into the nitty-gritty of it all. Their journeys into the past were interesting, the New York trip was great and everything involving Loki, I was fucking dying when Cap was just whispered “heil Hydra” and they just totally handed over this huge weapon to him 😂that was pretty funny. Then there was their trip to the 70′s, which messed with me that 1945 would only have been 25 years prior to 1970, like that kinda blows my mind lol. Tony’s whole conversation with his dad was so damn precious, I was like ready to cry at any given point really, and then there was Steve getting into Peggy’s office and watching her and not doing anything and I was like UGH you’re killing me Rogers lol but at least they got back to that at the end. Then there was Clint and Natasha on the planet with the soul stone that randomly featured red skull?? not sure where he came from. that whole sequence was so fucking heartbreaking, they really did it so well, and I definitely cried when they were literally trying to jump off the cliff before the other because they didn’t want the other person to sacrifice themselves, but in the end Nat gave her life because Clint had his family to get back to and man I had all the feels. Then of course there was our third team with Rhodey, Nebula, and Rocket, who end up tying Thanos back into the plot again, which was interesting but ultimately well done I think. When they all got back to the Avengers headquarters and Nat wasn’t there I was like 😭this is so damn sad. but then of course they’re able to have Hulk!Banner snap and you just get the first hints of it working before they immediately get launched into a huge battle. Not gonna lie, for a while there it was looking like they were really fucking screwed when they had armies upon armies ready to fight them, BUT THEN THAT SCENE where everyone comes back god I was crying, it was so fucking perfectly done I just cried at all of it, getting to see everyone back like that in such a triumphant way was too damn great. I liked that when Captain Marvel showed back up she was legit able to take on Thanos and literally had to be stopped by the full power of an infinity stone. I ultimately liked how they did it with the stones going to Tony while you didn’t realize it until Thanos snapped and you see all of them with Tony, and he then snaps and all of them turn to dust and just like, it was so great. Now of course I knew Tony was going to go, but I was glad it was ultimately the most heroic thing that really saved the day, he truly went out as a hero that saved literally everyone in our universe, which is really quite the achievement. The funeral scene killed me of course, especially with the little girl, but you know she’s gonna grow up surrounded by all these awesome people and she’s gonna end up being just fine. I was at least glad they put the stones back in where they were taking from, even if their time travel theory was flawed in a few parts. Cap coming back as an old man after having lived his life with Peggy was so damn good, I cried just because it was all so damn good and pure. And of course we had Peter meeting back up with Ned which was the cutest damn thing really. and yeah, I guess that’s it. I did like it a lot and will probably watch it again at some point once it’s available outside of theatres. Once we had confirmed there was no post credit scenes (thanks internet) we headed out and walked back through the snow (because it was still snowing like 10 hours after it started!!!) to the cheesecake factory where we ended up doing apps and dessert, except we didn’t get quite through our apps and ended up taking the cheesecake home with us. We split the fried mac and cheese balls and Jess got a salad, and I got their grilled artichoke which I’ve had before and is always really good, but takes forever to actually eat (so many layers!!) so I ended up taking some of that home too. Thankfully the snow hadn’t managed to stick to the roads much at all so the drive home was mostly safe. Jess dropped me at my place after she was convinced it wouldn’t be covered in snow (they’re bad about plowing the side streets, but none of the snow ended up sticking on the roads so it was ok), I put my stuff down and then grabbed my pajamas to get in the shower and get ready for bed and then started writing this, and now I’m here. It’s 12:34 am and I did volunteer to take a shift in the babies’ room at church tomorrow morning so I should definitely be getting to bed now. Goodnight loves. Hope you had an awesome Saturday.