#nvm dagon says

[shynrinn]

Have to get this off my chest, I'm telling you...

[rowaning]

The Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft rated by me, someone who read them all* but has a terrible memory

The Beast in The Cave: uh a guy goes on a cave tour and finds a creature that was like a human that got lost and adapted to its surroundings. 0/10 just because im pretty sure there was another one with this exact premise and neither of them were memorable at all.

The Alchemist: dude achieves immortality and lives in the narrators basement and has pledged to murder his entire lineage or something. 4/10 the alchemy stuff was actually kind of interesting

The Tomb: im pretty sure this is the one where a guy starts hanging out in a tomb and like travels back in time/becomes one of his ancestors? 5/10 if its the one im thinking of i did enjoy reading it

Dagon: guy lands on a mysterious island with signs of a long dead civilization. 1/10 i do not remember what happened in it

A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson: 0/10 i have no memory of this

Polaris: also 0/10 i forgot all about it

Beyond the Wall of Sleep: could be any of the dream focused ones. if its the one about the dude sailing into the void or whatever than 4/10 not too bad

Memory: ironically, i dont remember it. 0/10

Old Bugs: 1/10 for the title god i wish i remembered this one

The Transition of Juan Romero: i got nothing. 0/10

The White Ship: this might also be the one about the dude sailing into the void? i liked that one he lived in a lighthouse and boarded a dream ship and just fucking left it was fun. 4/10

The Street: uh i think really steep street that didnt actually exist. 3/10

The Doom that Came to Sarnath: i wanna say another one of the dream centered ones where a town discovers some old relics and blatantly disrespects them and gets exactly whats coming to it. 5/10 they deserved what they got

The Statement of Randolph Carter: ok this dude shows up several times. i think this one is about how he returns to his childhood home then travels back in time and creates a time loop paradox thing. 1/10 meh

The Terrible Old Man: uh some thieves harrass a weird old guy and get got. 5/10

The Cats of Ulthar: someone is mean to a cat in a dream city, all of the rest of the cats get revenge and are revered for the rest of time. 2/10 (-3 because lovecraft has a specific name he gives to apparently every fictional and real cat he encounters and wow i wish he hadn't)

The Tree: i feel like this is something to do with a person becoming a tree but i cant actually remember. 0/10

Celephais: yeah no i got nothing 0/10

The Picture in the House: also nothing 0/10

The Temple: nope 0/10

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family: is this the one where the dude's great grandfather married an ape? i dont think so but im not sure. 0/10, -5/10 if it is that one cause that one was especially shitty

From Beyond: nope 0/10

Nyarlathotep: charismatic dude shows up and is like get in bitches we're going to the void. i love nyarlathotep cause hes the one who directly interacts with humanity and like wears a human suit or whatever so hes just some dude whos like hey im gonna feed you to azathoth 5/0

The Quest of Iranon: got nothing 0/10

The Music of Erich Zann: narrator makes friends with an old musician whos being hunted by supernatural forces. 2/10 because i remember it but it was just ok

Ex Oblivione: 1/10 for the title but i have no clue what it was about

Sweet Ermengarde: lovecraft's sole attempt at comedy. not to my taste like at all 0/10

The Nameless city: nope 0/10

The Outsider: also nope 0/10

The Moon-Bog: sounds cool, dont remember it. 0/10

The Other Gods: dude tries to find the gods of humanity where they live on a big mountain, actually finds them, is immediately smited by the Other Gods who protect the gods of humanity. 3/10 he deserved it

Azathoth: dont recall, 0/10

Herbert West- Reanimator: Arkham man Herbert West and his assistant ressurect the dead with little thought to the consequences, then get murdered by a band of said resurrected dead. 5/10

Hypnos: nope 0/10

What the Moon Brings: also nope 0/10

The Hound: still nope 0/10

The Lurking Fear: again, nope 0/10

The Rats in the Walls: dude returns to his ancestral home, hears rats, excavates the basement and finds out that his ancestors ate human flesh, eats his friend. 1/10 it was an interesting read but can lovecraft please stop calling cats that.

The Unnameable: no clue 0/10

The Festival: nope 0/10

*Under the Pyramids: ok im pretty sure this is the one with houdini which is the only one i could not read. i went into this mentally prepared for lovecraft's bigotry but i was not mentally prepared for him dropping harry houdini, avid skeptic who absolutely would have beat the shit out of him for this, into the middle of his super racist paranormal horror. -1000/10

The Shunned House: nope 0/10

The Horror at Red Hook: also nope 0/10

He: cool title, no memory of the story. 0/10

In the Vault: wow im bad at this. 0/10

Cool Air: still no 0/10

The Call of Cthulhu: kind of all over the place, there was a thing about artists and then a thing about a cop investigating a cult. 3/10 meh but ill give it a bonus for being a staple of horror fiction.

Pickman's Model: uh artist sees some wild shit and draws it and then it eats him. 2/10 i forget the details

The Strange High House in the Mist: if this is the one im thinking of, dude does a dangerous climb to find a mysterious house and meet the inhabitant who is kind of interdimensional and also being hunted by interdimensional things. also maybe the house eats people? 2/10

The Silver Key: another Randolph Carter one, and i think this is actually the one about him travelling back in time so idk what the other one was. 3/10

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: randolph carter goes on a quest in the dream world to find the gods of humanity and ask why they wont let him check out this cool city he can see from his window. lots of action and very wordy and went a lot of different places. 4/10 good read but extremely xenophobic

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: guy investigates his ancestor who looks disturbingly like him, ancestor comes back to life and kills him and takes his place and a bunch of other stuff happens. mostly a dramatized genealogical study. 3/10 not bad, very suspenseful

The Colour Out Of Space: meteor lands on a farm, scientists get weirded out by it, everything in the area gets weird then dead, alien thing gets enough power from draining nearby life-forms to escape earth. fun twist ending. 4/10 bonus for being one of the better ones, detraction for writing out a 'rural accent'

The Descendant: nope, 0/10

The Very Old Folk: nope again, 0/10

History of the Necronomicon: very dry. fake history of lovecraft's fake book thats super important to a lot of the stories. 0/10

The Dunwich Horror: isolated witchy family has a kid who no one likes that grows up real fast. graphic descriptions of renovation. a horror gets unleashed on the area and the local folklore scholars have to deal with it. 1/10 nothing good enough to counter the xenophobia

Ibid: i remember this one. no idea what it's deal was. pseudo-bibliography? it was weird. 0/10

The Whisperer in Darkness: guy has a correspondance with another guy about local folk legends based on evil crab things. other guy gets straight up replaced by an evil crab thing and first guy doesnt even notice. imagine if you followed up on a scam email and didnt realize anything was up until you saw that the face of the dude you were talking to in person was a mask. 4/10 for the comedy this guy would not last in the internet age at all

At The Mountains of Madness: guy whines about penguins and how awful it would be if there were civilizations that predated humanity. also commits grave desecration. i get hit by the realization that if lovecraft was less of a racist coward he wouldve made a great speculative sci fi author. 3/10 i would love to watch that old asshole get absolutely torn to shreds by the monster fucker community

The Shadow over Innsmouth: Fish People! Leave Them Alone! Or Else! 5/10 the protagonist gets to live the dream by escaping human society and becoming an immortal fish person

The Dreams in the Witch House: dude rents an objectively haunted room, doesnt listen to people trying to help him, gets murdered by a weird rat. later they find a shit ton of bones in the attic. 2/10 meh

Through The Gates of the Silver Key: Randolph Carter transcends time and space, then de-transcends time and space and immediately gets stuck on another planet in the distant past, makes a long and difficult journey back to earth to find that his estate is being divided amongst his heirs. the comedy potential of a man stuck in an alien body dealing with a legal system that has declared him dead is not examined. 2/10

The Thing on the Doorstep: narrator's good friend marries a fish person witch who steals his body. thats basically it. 3/10. at this point im like wow these narrators really refuse to believe the heavily foreshadowed supernatural explanations that turn out to be correct huh.

The Evil Clergyman: dude is in a room. some ghosts (?) show up. dude has a UV light for some reason. Gets his face stolen i guess and just has to live with it. 5/10 for being absolutely buck wild and refusing to explain anything

The Book: nope 0/10

The Shadow Out Of Time: dude gets his body stolen by ancient scholar species. agonizes about it for a while. finds archaeological evidence of said species. finds a book he wrote while living with said species. almost gets eaten by something. 3/10 more cool speculative sci fi but lame protagonist

The Haunter of the Dark: you'd think id remember it bc this was the last one and i read it last night. oh wait, nvm i do remember it. dude finds an old box in a run down culty church and unleashes a horror that then comes and fucks him up. 1/10 meh.

[mittensmorgul]

I think there's a zero % chance of the nephilim being truely good without a catch. Having a superpowered child as a plotline that just a innocent babs is not a storyline. Not to mention it's already enforcing some form of a plan and it's not even born yet; saving Kelly, getting rid of Dagon, getting Cas and Cas to protect him even over Sam and Dean, the fact after the golden eyes Kelly and Cas are both super invested in the nephilim beign born with powers, it wants these powers for a reason

RIGHT?!

Honestly since that creepy shot in the doctor’s office in 12.17 where the baby turned its head like it was looking directly at the doctor on the sonogram I’ve been giving it a lot of credit for being “decidedly not human normal.”

(I mean that whole scene happened because WE NEEDED TO SEE HOW NOT-NORMAL THAT BABY WAS. So not-normal that Dagon IMMEDIATELY reverted to mind-wiping the doctor in order to stop him from saying just how not-normal the baby was out loud to Kelly…)

I will start by reaffirming that the creepybadwrong magically growing baby thing is ubergross to me. I wish they’d written pretty much ANYTHING else this season, because dammit we just HAD Amara doing the creepy baby thing LAST SEASON. Okay, enough damn creepybabby stories. We get it. It’s gross. Pls stop *coughbucklemmingcough*.

But it’s what we have, so…

I’ve got SOME suspicions of what might be going on with the kid, some of which are just wild speculation, but some of which I’m pretty confident about. I’ll be vague and leave you to decide which are which…

The kid is half-human, but also half-angel (which means grace). We know very little about how angels are made, but speculation seems to run high toward “they spring fully formed into existence.” I love comics and fic of the “baby angels” growing up and learning how to be good grown-up angels as much as the next person, but I have no illusions that canon angels were ever “babies.” Or that they were ever anything other than fully-formed celestial wavelengths of intent. They were very literally created by God.

(and great now I can’t stop thinking about Athena springing fully formed from Zeus’ head… but honestly? That’s sort of how I’m imagining the nephilim here. Because Kelly ISN’T an immortal god who can recover from something like that…)

(have I mentioned today JUST HOW MUCH TIME I spend thinking about the nature of angel grace? Okay. I mentioned it now. :D)

So because this child IS “half angel,” or at least “half angel grace,” I firmly believe that even if its “human side” is just a human-ish looking baby, the part of it that is an angel is already fully-developed. The only thing holding it back now is the biologically human bits. And it’s even building THAT at a much faster than normal-human rate.

No wonder it’s sort of “using up” Kelly in the process. At least that’s how I’ve been thinking of this.

It’s not good or evil, it’s selfish. Which I suppose might be considered “evil,” but it’s not making that choice for itself. That’s just what it does. Like, mosquitoes aren’t inherently evil, they’re just trying to live. Heck, even like most of the monsters in SPN. They’re just trying to survive, stay under the radar of the hunters who’d see them dead, and go about their business.

The difference with the nephilim is that combination of human free will (that comes with the kit!) combined with the unwavering nature of angelic certainty (I won’t call it “faith,” because in this case, it’s not).

Think of this particular baby’s parentage, too. Yes, Lucifer is Fallen, but he is still an archangel. He’s inherently a creature of Heaven even if he’s been exiled to Hell. He’s still made of the same grace that all the other angels (or archangels, since they seem infinitely more powerful than run of the mill seraphs) are made of. There’s nothing inherently “evil” in Lucifer’s grace.

Heck, even LUCIFER was set on destroying his own creations, the demons. He has just as much disdain for demons as he does for humanity. So nursemaid Dagon never really stood a chance here.

And now I can’t help think back to Jesse the Antichrist, whose powers came online when the final seal broke. But he’d had what, 9 or 10 years to learn how to Human properly before he had his powers sprung on him? Yeah, this baby doesn’t even have that…

So it senses Dagon’s intentions for it, and has already decided (because it’s half ANGEL remember), that this demonic abomination must die. It must know Kelly cares for it, and I think it’s pretty clear that we’re supposed to assume that she cares for it because IT IS MAKING HER CARE FOR IT, because it needs her the way an angel needs a vessel, and honestly that’s where my brain just wants to start screaming and run away from talking about this entire plot arc, but the show insists on giving it to us so here I am stuck with this squicky horror…

Where was I? Right… 

(nvm I have no idea where I was because I had to take a mental break from typing this. have i mentioned that everything about the nephilim completely squicks me out? okay… deep breaths mittens we can do this)

We’ve seen Lucifer communicating with Dagon in some sort of hybrid angel radio/prayer/demonic blood bowl phone without the bowl of blood telepathic way. I assume that’s because he can’t perform that trick directly with Kelly (or with the baby). So Dagon’s been the go-between out of necessity. But Dagon is still a demon. Not a creature of Heaven, not a creature of Angel Grace (despite having a lot of similar powers to angels). By angel standards, she is an abomination.

I mean, so’s the nephilim, but I don’t think the nephilim would consider itself an abomination, you know? It is what it is. And it wants to be born and to live and continue to do its thing, and has the power to manipulate its environment to suit its needs.

I think it demonstrated that admirably when it healed Kelly from her suicide attempt. It couldn’t allow its current vessel (because I honestly don’t think it considers Kelly anything more than a vessel it needs to grow its human body for it) to “fail.”

But we’ve seen how Dagon was able to “influence” humans, via her mind-wipe of the doctor. I think the “angel side” of the nephilim has been mostly “dormant” up to this point, either because the human side was still developing enough for it to actively engage this way or because Dagon was somehow keeping it under control until it grew powerful enough to thwart that control.

Going back to what we learned about nephilim in 12.10, they apparently “grow into their power.” So that theory isn’t coming entirely out of left field, here.

So this baby is “growing into its power.” It’s less than a month from being born. At the beginning of 12.19 Kelly was so adamant that it NOT be born that she attempted to kill herself. Then she agreed to Joshua’s suicide plan of walking through the Heaven Portal. But the nephilim thwarted THAT as well.

It saw its opportunity in Kelly’s moment of weakness with Cas in that motel room, and I can’t help but believe that when her eyes flashed gold, that was the death of Kelly’s free will. That was the nephilim taking full control over her beliefs and actions. If only they’d showed up with the grace extraction sooner, I think she would’ve agreed to let them try it. But it was already too late, and she refused. Because the NEPHILIM refused for her.

She says she has “faith” that the child being born with its full power will “save the world.” But I think that’s the nephilim talking through her.

She went from actively trying to die and take the baby with her to doing EVERYTHING in her power to see it born, even though she knows it will kill her. And Cas confessed his own weakness, that he wished he had her faith, and that’s where the nephilim granted his wish… Kelly took Cas’s hand at the sandbox and the nephilim gave Cas faith.

Do I believe this is “real faith?” Absolutely, 100% NO.

And here’s where my second anon in my inbox seems relevant to mention here:

What do think will happen to Cas’ narrative and endgame now? I had been predicting (hoping) that his whole arc has been moving closer to a point where he’d choose the Winchesters for good. Now, after 12x19, it seems different. It’s like a bit of season 4 Cas was revived. He’s got this same type of faith he used to have, and maybe he’ll be raising a baby next season. Do you have any predictions? I’m hoping his endgame is still with the Winchesters, but now I’m concerned…

CAS DOES NOT HAVE “THE SAME TYPE OF FAITH HE USED TO HAVE,” and I honestly DO NOT BELIEVE that he will be raising this baby next season.

He’s being CONTROLLED by the nephilim right now.

Remember in 6.06 when Dean asked for truth, and then got SLAMMED with it? Remember in 4.08 when people were making wishes on this ancient cursed Babylonian coin and all the wishes turned very bad? Remember in 12.17 when Mick of the MoL mentioned he was brought into the MoL when he pickpocketed an ancient cursed Babylonian coin?

The wishes go bad. They violate the natural order. They invoke Cosmic Consequences.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I think the nephilim itself is a sort of embodiment of this concept of Cosmic Consequences. It’s a factor of chaos, a violation of the natural order.

I am so freaking tempted to go off into an expository rant about how Dean Winchester is the embodiment of Balance and Order (despite having “violated the natural order” again and again). But he IS “Humanity.” He is Free Will. He was the one Cas did everything for, and he was the one both God and the Darkness designated as “the firewall between light and darkness.” He’s the one Death taught his lessons to about the natural order, and he’s the one who KILLED Death… Essentially every character on the show has eventually bent to his will. INCLUDING FREAKING GOD HIMSELF.

Dean wanted the universe to be in balance, so it was balanced. Hooray 11.23.

But then Mary came back. Because DEAN needed to discover that balance in himself, and the only way to find balance is to understand the imbalance. She’s been the cosmic consequence unbalancing the natural order since she showed up.

All season I’ve been waiting for the MoL storyline and the Lucifer storyline to intersect… and I think it’s all going to hinge on Mary, and on Dean finally getting “what he needs most” from Mary… i.e. an acknowledgement of the imbalance within himself that’s been built on the pedestal he’s kept Mary on since he was four.

The nephilim, in contrast, seems to be a force of anti-free will. And this goes right back to one of the show’s core principles, that free will and choice are greater than blind faith and destiny. Right now it’s seemingly stripped Cas of all his doubts, all his free will, all his choice. He asked for faith, and he got SLAMMED with it…

But NOTHING about it is CAS. It’s not his choice, not his free will. Because we know he’d rejected Heaven and duty and destiny, and had been doing EVERYTHING FOR THE WINCHESTERS. HIS FAMILY. So this sudden attack of “faith” that came in the form of the same weird glowy-veiny laser-eyes treatment that we last saw him suffer in 7.17 when he took on Sam’s Hell Damage and left him CATATONIC and damaged… well… 

What I’m saying is he needs something to break free from the will of the nephilim, to regain his own free will…

What broke the connection, Cas?

He’s gonna have to plainly answer that question this time.

Okay I think that’s as much brain as I have for this :D