#s13e6

[annoyinglandmagazine]

I’m currently watching the Tombstone episode of supernatural and oh my god????

Are you seriously telling me Jensen Ackles wasn’t onboard with destiel because that little swallow and look away when Cas does the cowboy voice is 100% a decision that was made. There is legitimately no platonic explanation for that, none. This is literally canon, I don’t know what to say.

Also very much appreciate that Sam canonically listens to Amanda Palmer, the things Runs In The Family must have done to his brain chemistry-

[ananke-xiii]

Maybe they titled it “Tombstone” because that’s when s13 stopped making sense.

Or: how the “Jack made Cas see Paradise” beat was dumped on Kelly and how Jack is very much like Fleabag because “No one’s asked me a question in 45 minutes”.

I wish I could share in the general excitement surrounding this episode but, to me, its “feel-good” energy is too much of a foreboding for the rest to come that I’m like, nooooo, I can’t take iiiiiittt. After this episode the season completely derails: Castiel’s character doesn’t make sense anymore, Sam and Dean go back and forth in a plot that’s a joke and Jack… where’s Jack? Do we still have a character named Jack? Ah, yes, here he is, maybe I see him.

In the second scene of the episode we have on one side of the room Jack and Dean, the two characters who are very much emotional because of Cas’ return.

Jack is super tender when he approaches Cas and tells him that he missed him. He’s also super zealous to show his father that he’s been learning to master his powers (he can move a pencil!) and that he has gathered enough knowledge about the family business to find a case, a hunter’s case. His purpose in this episode is to demonstrate to his father that he fits in, that he’s good. 

Dean’s also in high spirits and it’s because of Cas’ return as well but the reason is, of course, different. Clearly, he doesn’t have anything to prove to him but he’s euphoric about his “win”. He was literally dead not even 24h prior when he was desperate for an anchor that would reconnect him with meaning and reality. Well, not any anchor. He specifically needed Castiel because, unlike with his mother, Dean didn’t get to have any reconciliation with Cas in s12.

CASTIEL: I don't... What are you doing here? DEAN: Saving your ass. SAM: You and Kelly just taking off was a stupid move. But there's no way we're letting Lucifer get his hands on that kid. It ain't happening. DEAN: Look, Sam's right, okay? We'll work through our crap. We always do. But right now, we are here to get you, get Kelly, and get gone.

Narrator’s voice: they’ll never work through their “crap”. Sigh.

On the other side of the room we have Castiel, who’s fresh off the Empty and looks like he could use a day or two of rest, and Sam, who’s mentally trying to figure out if it was Jack who resurrected Castiel and how he can apply this knowledge to saving Mary. Both Cas and Sam are the ones who are, if not downright contrary, not particularly over the moon by the prospect of working a case.

The tragedy is that both Jack and Dean are so happy about it that it almost feels like they can all forget about the fact that they had to burn Cas but now he's here, that Dean had thoughtlessly run towards death 2 seconds before and that Jack very much doesn’t know yet how to control his powers. In other words, this scene forecasts disaster.

This episode also marks Cas’ first attempt at parenting Jack and it goes both well and disastrously bad for him. Now, parenting is a fucking hard job consisting of infinite responsibilities, one of which is saying no and setting boundaries. This is how Cas starts parenting Jack.

The good news for Cas is that he seems to instinctively predict Jack’s actions, thus knowing when it’s time to say “no”. The slightly bad news is that Jack doesn’t listen to him. And, I mean, this totally makes sense because 1. Jack’s all happy and energized about “his” case; 2. he’s very eager to show off what he has learnt; 3. this is his first chance with his father, it’s like a clean slate for him and he really wants to pass the exam with a “good” stamped on his forehead.

Three times Cas tells Jack “No” and three times Jack disobeys.

The first time is when Jack wants to wake up Dean to tell him about the police update and Cas tells him that he “wouldn’t do that”. Jack, however, would very much want to and so he finds himself face to face with Dean’s gun. Things will get very bad.

The second time Cas tells Jack “No” is when they’re outside the bank and Cas tells Jack to stay where he is but Jack tells him that he’s “got this”. Which he doesn’t because he accidentally kills the security guard.

The third and final time that Cas tells Jack “No” is before he disappears from the bunker. He does it anyway.

Now this might sound strange but, so far, Cas hasn’t done that bad. This is the super-secret that SPN doesn’t want you to know but disobeying the father is actually not that big of a deal, rather it’s quite healthy and it also makes sense for Jack because he’s known his chosen father for maybe less than two days. Their relationship has just started and they need to find their own balance. What’s more important here is the fact that Cas can foresee and understand Jack’s actions, which is a victory for everybody because so far in the season he’s the only one who’s been able to do that.

What he totally fails at is, unfortunately, trying to understand who Jack is. Sam, Dean and Cas have their own (different) opinion about who Jack is and they all hold tight to their beliefs. One thing that always struck me is that nobody asks Jack any question. For me this means that nobody is trying to understand him, they're not curious enough to want to get to know someone like Jack.

Jack is good or evil or special and that's it. And "that's it" because Sam, Dean and Cas see him that way but there isn’t much communication going on in that damn bunker. For instance, when Cas comes back he tells Jack that Sam and Dean have told him that he’s doing well. I don’t want to say it’s a lie but it’s a lie. Nobody is doing well since May 18th. Jack agrees but promptly changes the subject by showing him the pencil trick. This is deflection 101.

One thing that Sam and Cas have in common, though, is that their idea of Jack is strictly dependent on what they think about Kelly and I can’t help but grimace because of it.

Sam, for completely unknown reasons, thinks Kelly was a “good” person, therefore Jack must have a good, perhaps “stronger” side in him that can win over Lucifer’s evilness. Leaving aside for a moment that this a backward, problematic view of maternity, Sam can’t possibly know if Kelly was a good person or not because the two maybe talked to each other one or two times and both times weren’t particularly meaningful moments for either of them. Not saying Kelly wasn’t a good person, just underlining that Sam’s beliefs about Jack are based on his own assumptions bearing zero evidence of reality and founded on outdated notions about maternity.

Cas, on the other hand, thinks Kelly believed that Jack would change the world for the better and so he does too. The thing is, though, if we look back at s12 it’s not Kelly who thought that her son would change the world, it’s Castiel. Kelly thought that she was part of a plan, that she and Cas were destined for something great. She wasn’t the one who had the vision of the future, Castiel had. We have to consider two things here: what Kelly meant by “something great” and Cas’ utopic vision that we don’t see.

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again: not even one writer was interested in giving Kelly a little bit of backstory so that we could have an insight on how she is as, you know, a Real Character. As far as motherhood (the sole defining trait of her character) is concerned, we know she wanted to do the “baby thing” with the President and that she had always dreamt about being a mother.

What we do know for sure, however, is that she was a pregnant woman who: was sexually assaulted, abducted, forced to suddenly understand and comply with the supernatural world’s dynamics, abducted again, chained, had committed suicide, had been resurrected, was abducted again, was intimidated by two strangers to get into their car to go to an underground bunker so that they could perform whatever the hell Sam planned to do on her. So, I ask, maybe, just maybe, is it possible to view her behavior and her words in “The Future” as those of someone who probably had all the rights to be on the verge of a mental breakdown? They could’ve framed her “fanaticism” re: Jack's birth as, perhaps, a way to cope with the living hell she was subjected to during her pregnancy. To give meaning to what was happening to her. Regardless of the framing, the show makes a point to tell us that she first and then Cas, Kelly thought, were the ones destined for something great. The writers compared her to Rosemary (from the movie/book "Rosemary's Baby"), like, three times. I hoped that it was a way to signal the abuse she had to endure but I don't think it's the case, sadly.

This is a part of Kelly and Cas’ dialogue in “The Future” that I particularly hate:

Kelly: Maybe. Or maybe it was a miracle. Maybe – maybe everything that I've been through, everything that I still have to go through, is happening for a reason. Maybe it's part of some plan. Castiel: No, it isn't. I used to believe in a plan. I used to believe that I had some mission. But I have been through enough now to know that everyone is just winging it. Some of us quite badly. Lucifer, he's just breaking toys. He's sowing destruction and chaos, and there is no grand purpose at work. And there's no special role for you. When Lucifer took over Rooney's body, I'm sorry. You were just there.

While I understand that Castiel here is more speaking about himself than about Kelly and he, as well, is very well much on the verge of a menty b, I find it so utterly unfair to tell her that she was “just there”.

First of all, NO, if anything, Lucifer was “just there”, she was where she had her right to be, doing her job, sleeping with her partner, talking about her dreams, living her life. That was her life and it was destroyed in an instant, it was only human that she needed a way to make sense of what she was going through. Pregnancy is already a nightmare and, on top of that, she had to go through all that?

And second of all, she literally came back to life after suicide, how couldn’t she not start behaving weirdly? I know the writers were writing Supernatural were Death has only value for characters without any “special role” in the narrative, but come on, they literally just wrote a character telling another character that she has slit her wrists and this is the reply she gets: you’re not special, what happened to you was because you were just there. Brrrrrrrr.

But let’s move to my second point.

Let’s talk about Castiel’s vision. Because, you see, we think that Jack manipulated him but how do we really know it? Yes, there’s that cut scene but it was cut nevertheless and it’s crucial that we don’t see it because, by not seeing it, we can’t really know for sure if Jack had manipulated Cas for real.

Let’s compare it with what Kelly sees when Jack sends her “visions of the future” and what we see: Kelly sees what will happen next in the episode. Period. We see the same thing. Period. No mention of destiny, just the future in the very sense of “what’s going to happen in the next few hours”. She, like us, doesn’t know what Jack has supposedly made Cas see. We know she hasn’t seen anything because in “All Along the Watchtower” we have this little scene here:

KELLY: Tell me again. Tell me again what you saw. CASTIEL: Right, I saw– I saw... I saw the future. I saw a world without pain or hunger or want. I saw the world that this child... that your child... KELLY: Mm. CASTIEL: ...will create. KELLY: Mm. CASTIEL: And it is a world without fear and without suffering and without hate. KELLY: Mm. CASTIEL: I saw paradise.

So the one who was in love with the idea of Jack’s special destiny was not Kelly but Cas.

This is why this dialogue from “Tombstone” seems suspicious to me:

CASTIEL: Yeah, I know she is. Kelly was… She was a very brave woman. JACK: She left me a message. She said I had an angel watching over me. CASTIEL [sighs]: Jack, I'm so sorry. I-I should've been here for you. JACK: No. It's okay. It's just… I understand why she trusted you. Why I trusted you. CASTIEL: You remember that? JACK: I remember feeling… safe. CASTIEL: Jack, your mother, she believed that you would do amazing things. She said that you would change the world for the better. And now, looking at you, talking to you, I know that she was right, that we were right. Kelly would be so proud of you.

I think that the reason why we don’t see Cas’ vision in s12 is because the show wanted to do something with it in s13. It might be the case, what with all the talk about how “Paradise on earth” the Original World seems to be compared to Apocalypse World in s13. I mean, these are just my speculations but it could be. Because, as a matter of fact, Cas’ vision of Jack’s future is dropped in favor of Kelly’s vision of Jack’s future and this… actually never happens?

What we know , though, is that Kelly tells Jack the following in “Patience”:

Kelly: Jack, don’t let anyone tell you who you’re supposed to be. Because who you’re supposed to be isn’t fate, it isn’t me, it isn’t your father. You are who you choose to be. And I know you’re going to okay. You are going to be amazing. You have an angel watching over you.

She’s telling Jack that who he is isn’t fate, that he can choose who he wants to be. I mean, there’s definitely something off going on here.

Maybe they just dropped Cas’ “I saw the future” beat (that was presented as what convinced Cas to save Jack) on Kelly because, by the time the writers started planning s13, they decided that they weren’t gonna use it anymore? I don’t know, what I’m saying, though, is that Kelly was more focused on her kid being good rather than evil as everybody assumed, whereas it was Cas who “saw” Jack change the world for the better. But we don’t see what Cas sees so we have to take his and Dean’s word for it. And both words seem to be pretty biased. At any rate, something doesn’t add up in between s12 and s13.

So, to recap: what we have seen is that Kelly has never actually said that her son would do great things, but that she believed that her son would be good. It was Castiel who believed that Jack would create great things in the future because of a vision neither us nor Kelly have ever seen. Even if we consider the cut scene it still doesn’t account for the difference between Kelly’s and Cas’ visions and/or why Kelly didn’t see what Cas saw.

Another person that underlies the “to be vs to do” dilemma is Mia Vallens where in “The Big Empty” she shapeshifts into Kelly:

JACK: Sam thinks you were right, that—that I’m good. He wants me to believe it, and I wanna believe it, too. It’s just, I… I’ve hurt people. I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. And I know I should feel bad, and I say I feel bad, but most of the time, I mostly… I don’t feel anything. And that’s why I think maybe… Maybe I’m a monster. MIA/KELLY: Jack. It doesn’t matter what you are. It matters what you do. And even monsters can do good in this world. JACK: You really believe that? MIA/KELLY: I have to. I have to.

First of all, Mia is telling Jack that he’s a monster, lol. And she literally doesn’t know he’s a Nephilim so WTF? Anyway, the things are two: either the writers were drunk when they wrote this (Jack: “I’ve hurt people, I think I’m a monster” Mia: “It doesn’t matter what you are, only what you do”. MIA, ffs, THIS IS WHAT HE HAS JUST TOLD YOU, HELLO????? HELLO???? He’s just told you that he has done something that makes him think he’s a monster, how do you not see how your advice is shit?) or, more probably, they blatantly wanted to remind us that the person who’s speaking is not Kelly but a shapeshifter who tries to do good things to atone for her past crimes. She has to believe that because of her own past, not Jack, not Kelly, Mia.

What’s more, Jack saying he doesn’t feel anything… doesn’t really mean he doesn’t feel anything. Since he was born he’s been living with two men obsessing over “good and evil”, two concepts he still clearly and rightfully doesn’t understand because nobody is explaining him shit. How is he supposed to know? Of course he’s confused as to how or what he should feel.

For example, by the end of “Tombstone” Jack is evidently confused and ashamed. He feels shame because he has “failed” in front of his father, his “failure” resulted in the death of an innocent man and, what’s more, Sam, Cas and Dean are talking about him in the other room like he’s just proven that he’ll never be good. Excluding and talking about someone when this someone is feeling shame is, like, the worst response ever.

No wonder the episode ends like this:

SAM: Jack, look, this life, what we do, it's… it's not easy. And we've all done things we regret. JACK: Just don't. You're afraid of me. CASTIEL: Jack, no. JACK: No, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just another monster. DEAN: No, you're not. I thought you were. I did. But… Like Sam said, we've all done bad. We all have blood on our hands. So if you're a monster, we're all monsters. JACK: No, you don't… Every time I try and do something good, people get hurt. I thought I was getting better. I'm not… I don't know what I am, but I know I can't make the world a better place, not like this. I can't even do one good thing. And I know that if I stay, I'm gonna hurt you. All of you. And… I can't. You're all I have.

My heart aches a little at the words “You’re all I have” because they have all failed him so much and he literally doesn’t have anyone else.

Also, Jack echoing of Cas’ words “She said that you would change the world for the better” resembles what Chuck told Sam and Dean in s11 and that Dean paraphrases in his prayer to him: “You said the earth would be fine because it had me… and it had Sam” discarding them as false (can’t shake the feeling that they wanted to go somewhere with that “Paradise on earth” crap).

All Jack has has unfortunately failed him: Sam has failed him with his training mentality that bore no fruit and made Jack think that he had value only if he succeeded; Dean has failed him because he both threatened to kill him and provided “shelter” for him putting Jack in the position of basically having to live with his possible executioner (we know Dean wouldn’t eventually do it but the point is that Jack doesn’t and Dean’s threats deeply, deeply affect him).

Cas was the only one who could have had a real shot with Jack but he arrived tooo lateeee! And he (understandably) came back with his own package of preconceived ideas, ideas that made it all worse because Cas didn't know that Jack was noooot doing well! I hate SPN, why would they do this to meeeee?

Of course Jack would eventually run away. Perhaps the major takeaway from all this is that he did way better on his own than with the three of them. And that says a lot.

[cascaps]

[platinum-iridium]

LMAO bayard ellis pulling up on olivia after whooping her ass in court and getting her to take his number is insane. levels of game previously unseen

[deviousdayz]

“Healing begins when someone bears witness. I saw you. I believe you.”

benson vs tearing my heart out at 5 in the morning

[thethreemustyfears]

[umjamlam]

y'know, as a straight man who poops transgender

[cassael]

Okay first of all cas is back so :D

His ass ?????

[drulalovescas]

Widower arc is absolutely insane because Dean's grief was ultimately over the loss of ... Cas. And every single writer on that cursed show put extra effort to highlight how DEAN'S GRIEF WAS ALL ABOUT LOSING CASTIEL.

[hellerradio]

Join us and our very special guest, Janine aka @artymcart, as we discuss two of thee most Destiel episodes of all time! Cas’ return and confusion, Dean’s profound sadness and joy, and slightly overestimating how much we hear “I’m your huckleberry” in the original Tombstone (per Editor Josh’s correction 😉) 🤠

TW for discussion of suicidal themes

Episodes discussed:

13x5 - Advanced Thanatology

13x6 - Tombstone

[stellernorth]

help

[alfalfapie]

the scene in spn s13e6 (tombstone) where Dean and Cas talk to the sergeant for the first time is what it looks like for one character to roll a nat 20 persuasion and the other to roll a nat 1.

[cascaps]

[mlobsters]

the great british bake off s13e6 (c10e6) halloween week

*rimshot*

[thetrolltolls]

dee in s13e6 my beloved

[whump-or-whatever]

4th Doctor Whump - Classic Doctor Who

Here’s all the whump moments I noted for the fourth doctor in the show.

Spoilers ahead!

S12E2- hit in head, knocked to ground

S12E3- arm bent behind back

S12E6- shot with stun gun, headache

S12E7- mental pain from bonding mind to wirrn

S12E8- punched, knocked out

S12E9- shot unconscious, grabbed by hair, manhandled, falls down a hole

S12E10- knocked to ground, shot unconscious, in a fight

S12E11- gassed, trouble breathing, hit in back, falls to knees

S12E12- weakened by security scan, elbowed in gut, shoved to ground

S12E13- electrocuted

S12E14- aftermath of electrocution, wakes up weak, manhandled, bound to chair

S12E15- knocked unconscious with blow to head, groggy

S12E16- strangled by baby dalek

S12E17- coughing

S12E18- circuit blows up in face, shot unconscious by cybermen

S12E19- grabbed painfully by neck then shoulders, caught in rock fall, knocked unconscious

S13E4- electrocuted, grabbed by ankle, strangled

S13E6- shoved to ground

S13E7- passes out, shot

S13E8- almost falls over

S13E10- passes out

S13E12- tortured by sutekh, strangled

S13E15- manhandled, tied up, bound to table, painful memory extraction

S13E16- punched, thrown around

S13E17- passes out

S13E18- tied up

S13E20- knocked out, strangled, discomfort from mind bending contest, passes out

S13E22- tied up

S13E24- manhandled, thrown into a bunch of garbage cans, grabbed by the hair

S13E26- wrestling with a guy trying to pull him into a fertilizer machine

S14E1- knocked unconscious with rock to back of head, knocked out again falling off horse

S14E2- headache from mandragora energy

S14E3- bit more headache, manhandled, chained up

S14E4- electrocuted repeatedly

S14E5- caught in a quarry blast, sore arm

S14E6- falls to floor

S14E7- headache from mind reading, falls over

S14E9- painful vision, falls to floor

S14E10- tortured, pain from going into the matrix, falls down hills, foot stuck in rail

S14E11- cut knee, shot in arm, in a fight, drowned

S14E12- wakes up disoriented, shot with stun gun, hit by falling debris

S14E13- bound, blindfolded

S14E15- falls to ground, strapped to table, falls to ground from mental strain

S14E16- on the floor holding head in pain, wakes up weak, grabbed, in a fight, pain from using mind to destroy zoanon

S14E17- trapped in a hopper being filled with ore

S14E18- strangled, strapped to wall

S14E20- strangled by robot, hit by robot and manhandled, knocked out, strapped to table, tortured, grabbed painfully

S14E21- in a fight

S14E26- on the floor, dragged

S15E5- collapses unconscious, wakes up disoriented

S15E6- falls to knees fighting mind control, self-induced coma

S15E11- pain from touching mutation generator which absorbed lifeforce

S15E13- coughing from gas

S15E14- in a straight jacket, unable to speak

S15E15- punched in the stomach, threatened with red hot metal

S15E17- thrown to ground, manhandled

S15E18- passes out in gas

S15E19- random dude is tortured

S15E22- hurt by having the matrix put on his head, falls to ground

S15E25- shot with sontaran weapon

S16E5- hits lip off tardis console

S16E6- passes out from psychokinetic blast

S16E7- captured, restrained with hands cuffed from ceiling, dropped to ground, shot at and made to walk the plank

S16E8- backhanded, knocked down by explosion

S16E9- knocked out with blow to head

S16E10- unconscious and tied up, knocked down

S16E11- shocked and falls to ground

S16E12- shocked and falls to ground

S16E13- shocked repeatedly

S16E14- poisoned and knocked out

S16E16- punched in the stomach, shocked, prolonged sword fight

S16E17- shoved to ground

S16E19- hands tied behind back, put on stretching rack

S16E20- grabbed by Kroll tentacle

S16E23- manhandled, kidnapped, briefly tortured with electrocution

S17E1- crushed under collapsed block

S17E4- shot unconscious

S17E5- stumbled and collapses

S17E7- has thumbs put in thumb screws, threatened to tighten them

S17E9- attacked by weird ass plant ball things, manhandled, put in stockade

S17E11- enveloped by creature, hit in chest, held at knife point

S17E13- shot and stunned unconscious

S17E14- in a fight

S17E15- grabbed by plant roots, attacked by mandrill

S17E16- unconscious, attacked by mandrills offscreen and stumbling

S17E17- hand shocked, thrown to ground several times due to tardis troubles

S18E2- aged

S18E8- punched in the stomach

S18E13- attacked by bats, bit on neck

S18E17- thrown to ground of tardis, burnt hand

S18E20- hand stepped on, strangled with his scarf, kicked in the head

S18E22- caught in a net, stunned

S18E24- cowering from explosion, forced to kneel

S18E27- shrunk inside tardis

S18E28- held at gunpoint, dangling off tall radio dish, falls from a height, dies, regenerates

That’s all folks!