#now i'm on to s4

[yekokataa]

the end of season 3 of skinwalker ranch was kind of a disappointment. you could tell they thought launching the rockets would be a big finale, and when the main rocket misfired, they had nothing to fall back on and had to resort to what was basically two episodes long of a clip show where they summarized their findings to the former govenor of utah and then the audience

[dyleeart]

How s4ep11 should have ended

[drawsmaddy]

[ID: A digitally illustrated two panel comic of Martin Blackwood and Jonathan Sims from The Magnus Archives. In the first panel Martin is stood at a counter preparing a cup of tea. He is smiling softly with his eyes closed and a thought bubble next to his head shows a small image of Jon with some hearts around him and text reading "ah... Jon...". The second panel shows Jon sat at his desk with the mug of tea from the first panel in his right hand and papers in his left. He is growing and saying "Martin's such a fucking idiot I hope he dies". End description.]

Stupid season 1 jonmartin dynamic ily forever

[feralnumberfive]

[shanastoryteller]

i know spn hates good writing and also sam, but the dumpster fire of s4 really could have been salvaged if they'd just played ruby and castiel straight

by which i mean

ruby should have been one of the good guys (honestly it feels like the writers changed their minds last second regarding her anyway)

castiel should have been the villain (which, let's be clear, he totally was)

the point of this is that it would force dean to confront his own bullshit and maybe figure himself out, which not only would have been good television but would have been satisfying to me, personally

sam's problem is that he wants there to be a good equal to every evil. that he believes goodness exists even where it doesn't, that he always wants to give things a chance, that he always has hope. they sound like good traits, up until they're used against him. they reach the station of angels are bad eventually, but it should have been more immediate and visceral, that there is no greater good here. sam should have had this knocked out of him, which would have shattered him in way, to lose this thing he's depended on his whole life, but it really would have hammered home that it's choices that really do matter, not circumstances

dean's problem is always that he sees monsters as monsters with no grey area, that sam always has to play his moral center the second anything becomes complicated. then he goes to hell, breaks, tortures innocents, and an angel yanks him out and tells him that he's a righteous man

dean desperately desperately wants this to be true

because it's sam who they had to look out for, sam who was destined to go darkside, sam with the demon blood

dean doesn't have that excuse

he's just a human man with a hunger for violence who never learned to curb his appetite. who was instead pushed to gorging himself on it, who is left broken and desperate and angry by what he did to save himself. his whole life, his whole self perception for thirty years, was about protecting innocents. then he betrays that in hell. do you think he kept count? how many innocents he destroyed against how many he saved? the day it equaled out, do you think he wished he could weep?

dean is so unbelievably messed up by hell. not the torture he endured, that's barely a blip, but the torture he inflicted is what haunts him

so he needs for sam to be the bad guy

he's using his powers, he's hanging out with demons, he's drinking demon blood. he's the monster. he's inhuman

(he's using his powers and hanging out with demons and drinking demon blood and still he's doing less harm than dean, still he's trying to save people. dean can't accept this, because he can't be the rotten one. he'll forgive sam anything, but never himself, so it has to be sam. because he can fix sam, he'll always love his brother, so if he's evil there's stil a path forward there. but if it's dean? if he's the one going evil? sam's left him before. why would he stay now? if dean is the one going darkside then he loses everything. himself. his brother. it has to be sam)

dean is projecting all his own shit onto sam because he can't deal with any of it, which is why he treats sam like shit, why he treats him in a way that he's never treated him before. it's how he treats himself. and sam has no idea what to do with this, is left reeling and hurt and broken himself by dean doing this to him. sam never thought dean would leave him to die in the panic room, because dean wouldn't, not the dean he's known his whole life, not the dean that loves him. not alone.

but dean would do that to himself. and since sam is his proxy for himself, it's what he does to sam, but sam doesn't know that so all he feels is the weight of betrayal and grief and rage

isn't it funny, almost? the demons brought sam back just as he was, exactly the same. the angels bring back dean but he's not the same. dean comes back wrong, comes back different. but no one wants to say that. to deal with it

having ruby be evil and castiel venerated justifies all of dean's spiraling, all of his punishment. he was right all along, sam was the problem, don't you see?

boring

ruby stays loyal to sam, a demon who chooses something different, who chooses the boy with the demon blood because there's something compelling about sam winchester, as tempting as the apple before eve, and ruby didn't get where she is by knowing better

(remember when sam pulled all the psychic kids together, acted as leader, and resisted azazel? there is a leader in sam, a compassion in him, that azazel had to cheat in order to beat. and if ruby can show him how to win against demons then-)

castiel let sam out of the panic room. he's following orders, because that's his job, and damn the consequences. this should have been seen as the act of betrayal and evil that it was, castiel proving he was never really on their side at all, never on the side of preventing harm. it also would have made his redemption arc mean something, it would have given castiel a lot more to work with if they'd had to really bring him back over

ruby realizes too late what killing lilith means. tries to stop sam, but now that she's here it's too late, kill or be killed. sam accepts that, is willing to die rather than start the apocalypse. but then dean is there, and he can't watch his brother die again, he just can't. so he kills lilith to save dean, when he would have been willing to die himself

ruby gets them out of there. they discover what castiel did, that he pushed forward the apocalypse rather than prevented it

this breaks dean. he finally snaps, but it's good, because everything he'd used to shore himself up before had been terrible and rotted and corrosive

a righteous man is not a good man. dean is forced to confront everything he's done in hell, and after he'd gotten back, everything he put sam through, how he left him in that panic room and almost killed him, how he's treated him for the past year. how it was a demon who tried to help in the end and an angel that damned them

and how sam saved him anyway, damn the consequences

we should have returned to what the show had been building up to from the beginning - that sam loves his brother enough to do terrible things and dean has no idea how to deal with that

so we've got sam and dean on the run with ruby, castiel's slower and much juicier redemption arc, and dean having to pick up the pieces of himself while sam tries to figure out how he gets them out this mess. and sam's guilt is justified here, his aching sense of responsibility, because this time he kills lilith knowing it'll free lucifer. he makes that choice, for dean. and he's determined to fix it

just. demon blood tainted sam and turncoat ruby trying to save the world. the angels trying to end it. all while dean finally accepts the crushing guilt of what he's done and starts to work through it, starts to work on becoming the brother sam lost, on once more being the steady thing sam can hold onto no matter what it takes, because sam choosing him reminds him of something he'd told himself he forgot

he doesn't want to be a righteous man, a torturer, a demon, a victim, a martyr

he just wants to be sam's brother. the one he looks up to, depends on, loves

he wants what he's always wanted

to feel worthy of his little brother's affection

[eg515]

don't you just love it when a series has a good ending that takes care of all of its characters, shows how their futures will look like, ties up all loose ends, reminisces about old times, references important moments from before, and brings back elements of the very first episode, giving a nice frame to the whole series?

[smileyobrien]

STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS — SEASON 1 (2020)

[vanitasmagoria]

metamorphosis. yes there's a man transforming into a literal monster and yes it's about sam's descent into demon blood freak monsterhood but to me, above all, it's the episode in which dean's controlling codependency takes a monstrous turn.

he's petty and he's jealous and he's violent and he hits sam for lying and he hits sam again for talking back and he's trashing the motel room and he's the image of an abuser. dean is threatening to leave sam and to hunt sam and they both know he's not going to do either (i can't escape you, you can't escape me). there's dark fury and despair and panic in dean's eyes because sam (in tears, bleeding, taking it) is becoming more than he can control.

sam says "this blood, it's not in you the way it's in me" and dean can't fucking stand it. he immediately tries to write himself into this, sam's not doing this alone. that's his brother, his blood, how dare he go there. their blood not being the same is the gravest, most personal insult to dean.

sam says "i'm not doing it for you" and "this is my choice" and dean cannot STAND IT. sam still craves autonomy and dean STILL. CAN'T. STAND. IT.

[m4rs-ex3]

well there was somebody...

[stubblesandwich]

[hellomagicalsouls]

i saw this as Klaus either being upside down or floating? or maybe he's just lying down and I'm looking too far into it. I mean he has to be upside down. look at his coat?

is he in prison? or? idk man honestly. my brain has been zapped

I hope he isn't being tortured again. also cute shirt. very themey. stars and shit cute as hell.

my dude isn't having the best time. I think he's discovered he has anxiety for the first time and doesn't know how to deal with it

also eyeliner or eyelashes? they look dark as hell. s1 Klaus eyeliner reveal yourself. Ben in the back is looking forward to just being a squid, good for you babe.

also me not being able to sleep and falling asleep just as the trailer was posted and then sleeping through until I wake up much earlier than needed

(also netflix looking at all of us being rapid over not having the trailer)

[elviehun]

I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH

MY WIFE IS BACK FROM WAR AND SHE'S UNSPEAKABLY GORGEOUS 😭😭🥹🥹🥰🥰

(Photos and screenshots taken of videos via smeagles here, and endlessnigtmcr, gerrardwayy, wonderfulgerard, thougtsofendlessnight, divinesharpestlives and gwayupdates on Instagram and Gabriel's, Robert's and the official Netflix account).

[patheticrafeenjoyer]

need an arc of them being the 2 most toxically co-dependent ppl on earth actually.

[flowerakatsuka]

edit i made for my own mental health.

[the-carlos-cow-eyes]

What Bellamy Blake deserved: NOT FUCKING THAT

[peonypyxels]

my sanity has been restored