#sam's so contained

[zmediaoutlet]

They don’t hug, so much as Sam drags Dean in by his biceps and holds him very tight and close for five seconds. Their foreheads together and Dean breathing shocked against Sam’s mouth. Adrenaline shocks up from Sam’s guts and he wants—to throw Dean on the ground, to pick him up and push him against the wall, to do—what he can’t, when Bobby’s calling down, saying boys! Dean gets his hands on Sam’s chest and pushes off, looking up into Sam’s face with this wide-eyed weird expression, and Sam realizes he still has his finger on the Colt’s trigger. He crams the gun into his belt and yells back, “Down here!” and ignores how Bobby says I know that and watches Dean’s face instead, watches how it shifts and locks down, a problem to be dealt with—later.

Later comes after they’ve dug two graves out back of the girl’s house. Whether her real name was Casey or not, Sam doesn’t know. They plant the bodies the demons had used and burn them and Sam thinks that Dean’s going to bitch about the Impala’s windshield getting shattered yet again, but he just watches the flames licking up out of the hole in the dirt. His face set and his eyes steady in the glare, looking past it at something Sam can’t see.

The motel, then, pre-dawn. Bobby’s somewhere. Sam locks the door behind them and watches Dean drop his jacket on one of the beds and set the keys down on the table and then he watches Dean sigh, long and kind of quiet. Not the kind that’s meant to be heard so he can loudly complain about something dumb and distract them both. More just—tired. Long day in a long life.

“You hurt?” Sam says. Not surprised when Dean shakes his head but relieved, anyway. Dean drops to the bed with his back to Sam so Sam comes and sits on the other one, and Dean’s cheek hollows deep on one side before he drops all the way onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. Sam looks up, too. Weird view. Dean mirrored, distant. Like he’s in some other place already.

“What’d you do, anyway?” Sam says. For something to say mostly. “When you were stuck down there. She seemed…” He bites the inside of his lip. “I don’t know. Not like a demon.”

“You an expert?” Dean says. It stings at that deep raw place that’s always open to be stung, but Dean’s not saying it to be an asshole, or not any more of an asshole than he usually is by being Sam’s brother. He tucks his hands behind his head, meets Sam’s eyes in the mirror. “I don’t know, either. Guess she kind of didn’t. Didn’t try to use weird mojo on me or anything. Other than her rack hanging out of that shirt.”

“If we start calling that demonic we’re gonna have to exorcize every bartender you’ve ever asked for their number,” Sam says. Dean grins up at the ceiling and some coiled hard thing in Sam’s stomach loosens, slightly. He stretches out his legs, doesn’t pretend he’s not sort of tangling them with Dean’s. Dean doesn’t move away but his grin softens. “She say anything?” Raised eyebrows and Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. You were together a long time. I’m guessing you weren’t playing canasta.”

“Jealous,” Dean says, half-singing. Sam rolls his eyes, but Dean’s grin is all gone, now. He bites his lower lip and then turns his head, looking toward the headboard. “Said a lot. Not much worth listening to, though. No worries, you didn’t miss out on the demonic church sermon.”

Tired, again. Expression shuttering, turning inward, again. Sam looks down, not at the image of his brother but the one in real life, warm. Still here.

He kicks against Dean’s ankle, not all that gently. Dean says ow! and sits up on his elbows, glaring at Sam. “The hell was that for?” he says.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Sam says. He glances up at the ceiling. “Thought you wanted to make use of the decor.”

Dean stares at him and then huffs out a laugh. “Well, damn, Sammy,” he says. “You can pick your moments, huh?”

The adrenaline’s gone but Sam still wants Dean as close as he can get him, as long as he can get him. Here, not looking for the echo of flames in the dark. Where Sam will keep him, no matter the cost. “Sin’s not really my forte,” he says, “but I figure we could give it a shot.”

“Wow,” Dean says. “Okay, you’re banned from trying out lines.”

“That worked!” Sam says, and Dean sits up all the way, says, “It really didn’t, little brother,” but he’s looking Sam in the face and he’s grinning and he’s maybe thinking about the mirrors over their heads and not about anything else, so. Maybe the line did work, after all.

[spn2006]

the fact that eric kripke isn't even christian really adds something to the way christianity is depicted on supernatural. because its really not about being christian at all, but about living in america, a country dominated by christianity, and having to decide for yourself how to handle that. faith is huge in supernatural, and the mythology of the show is very bible-centric, but notably, christ is never there. even sam, who starts out revering the angels, who once said he prays every night, doesn't actually call himself a christian or imply that he believes in jesus--the show is steeped in christianity and biblical lore and yet neither sam nor dean are christians. in fact, over and over again the church itself is depicted as a haunted house that sam and dean will only ever enter as strangers, as outsiders. priests, preachers, faith healers, chapels, crypts, etc. are all just iconography that create an intense sense of unease that sam and dean respond to instantly. as a jew, its very relatable. an essential part of living in america when you're not christian is that exact sense of unease, of knowing that the culture of your country has ensured that you'll get knocked over by christianity no matter where you go, that you'll see hundreds of people truly believing they're good people while doing awful things in the name of their god, and you have no choice but to confront that. kripke gets it

[myimmanence]

I bless you with not a holy lamb on this Christmas Day, but Sheepenatural. Ok I’ll leave now.

[cowgirls-blues]

So the Pilot Program's motives are teamwork (Jammer), network (K), community (Sam) and belonging (Evan). Something something the strongest magic is the links we forge with people (as seen in the first season and it's true more than ever now that the world is changing again, and they/people are more isolated). Hell yeah.

[starheirxero]

A redraw of this post I made a couple months after Bloodmoon had first died lol

Fun fact!! The flowers shown here—Lycoris Radiata, Higabana, Hurricane Lily, Spider Lily, etc etc—are associated with death, grief, painful memories, and sometimes reincarnation! They're my favorites <3

[clarionglass]

so i have been bitten by the sam reich!master bug courtesy of some phenomenal art by @northernfireart and uh. as is too often the case i had to write something otherwise if i didn't get it out of my brain i would go absolutely insane

(there may be more vignettes coming if i have ideas..... there are definitely other episodes i'd like to give the Treatment to, plus with the new dw series coming out on the weekend i may have ideas for how to incorporate the dw gang! however, i promise neither more writing or no more writing. that said, this was a lot of fun so there'll probably be more at some stage :D )

this has full spoilers for the game changer ep "escape the greenroom", but hey that's been out for a while now so,,,, if you haven't seen it i'd highly recommend it as an episode!

so, without further ado:

--

Samuel Dalton was a complete fiction, of course, but that didn't mean that when Sam Reich snuck back upstairs to get tied up in the “out of order” bathroom, the Sam that remained on the monitor, laughing at the contestants, was a pre-recording. And if Brennan, Siobhan and Lou had snorted at the idea of a time-travelling evil magician great-grandfather (for good reason), going in with the actual truth of the matter would have sounded like jumping the shark.

It sounded bizarre, but the time travel bit was the only part about his new partner in crime that was confirmably real. Admittedly, the jury was still out on “evil”—he gave off a weird vibe at times, but so far, no lines had been crossed, and it had all been funny as hell—so for now, Sam was willing to roll with it. But perhaps most surprisingly, there wasn’t even the possibility of blood relation between Samuel Dalton Reich and the guy who had shown up out of the blue one day with his exact face and a plan to really fuck around with things on Game Changer.

Yeah, the whole alien thing had really ruled out that particular prospect.

There had been various bits and pieces of confirmation that this guy wasn’t human through the time Sam had known him, but the final nail in the coffin for that one was when his doppelganger had looked him dead in the eye and tried on one of the heart rate monitors—sorry, “range extenders”—for As a Cucumber. The damn thing had literally sparked up, then died completely. Trying to process input from two separate heartbeats at once would do that, apparently. 

His doppelganger was a Time Lord, or so he had nonchalantly said one afternoon in casual conversation, though Sam still wasn’t sure if that one was a joke or not. It was hard to tell, sometimes, because he said the wildest things with the straightest face, and so far, most of them had turned out to be one hundred percent certifiably true. The time travel, the space travel, even the changing faces thing—it sounded objectively insane, but the proof was undeniable. 

There were some notable exceptions, though. Saying he’d been trapped for aeons inside Neil Patrick Harris’s gold tooth went just that bit too far to be believable, though Sam did appreciate his double’s slightly warped sense of humour.

It was that offbeat line of thinking that lent itself well to game design, as it turned out. He had a knack for coming up with ideas for Game Changer episodes, albeit with the occasional suggestion that went way beyond the bounds of good taste, and, as in the case of Escape the Greenroom, had devised some blinding twists on concepts Sam had already half-formed. The letter puzzle unlocking the secret door? It was perfect.

Understandably, Sam’s doppelganger had wanted to observe the fruits of their labours in real time, rather than watching the recording later. It happened, sometimes, particularly when it was one of his ideas that had made it through to the episode list—they’d swap places for a session, with nobody being any the wiser. Watching those edits back always felt a bit weird—it was uncanny how flawless the mimicry was—but hey, the guy was right. It was always fun.

Escape the Greenroom, specifically, with its “Samuel Dalton” conceit, provided them with a unique opportunity. Instead of swapping out the camera feed for a recording when the cast piled into the tiny secret room behind the wall, as per the original plan to get Sam in position to be discovered in the bathroom, they could just swap out the people. Sam would go upstairs, and his double would take his place at the podium, ducking out of sight when everyone came back to the main stage to “defuse the bomb”.

Sam was keen—hell, if their situations had been reversed, he’d want to be there to watch, too—but caution raised a flag. “You don’t think it’s too risky?” he’d asked when the subject was first raised. “Both of us being in the same place?”

His doppelganger had shrugged one shoulder with supreme unconcern. “The crew won't notice.”

At the time, Sam had shot him a sceptical look, but right now, Sam-Reich-in-a-purple-tie and Sam-Reich-in-an-orange-tie were standing backstage post-record, clearly visible and and calmly chatting, and not a single member of the crew had given them so much as a second glance. 

…Hardly even a first glance, come to think about it. If anyone looked over their way, their eyes seemed to… not exactly go through them, but slide over the two of them like water. He was tempted to wave to Nico or Ash or someone, just out of pure curiosity, but something in the back of his mind told him that wouldn’t be the world’s greatest idea. He had a funny feeling he wouldn’t like to see what would happen next.

(He’d given the prop bomb back to the crew once the cameras stopped rolling, and though it looked the same as the one he remembered from before he’d headed upstairs, it felt different in his hands. Heavier, more… serious, somehow. He was sure nothing would have happened—but at the same time, he was suddenly very glad that the cast had cut the correct wire with no less than a minute fifteen to go.)

(The jury was still out on evil, after all.)

“Worth coming in for?” he asked instead.

“Absolutely,” his double replied with relish. “Locking those three in a small room for an hour? Brilliant, fantastic. Inspired. It was absolute chaos.”

“Have you seen up there?” Sam asked, a smile starting to spread across his face. “They messed up the set real bad.”

His doppelganger smirked at him. “You know it took literally two seconds from you telling them to escape the greenroom for Lou to smash that guitar?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh my god. Yeah, they were stressed.” 

“Mmm. Some real panic in that room,” his doppelganger agreed, and Sam chose to ignore the faint note of satisfaction in his voice.

He shifted his weight, settling back to lean against the table behind the set, in the exact instant his double decided to do the same thing. It really was freaky how similar they were, down to the smallest mannerism—like looking in a mirror, only weirder, because the face that looked back at him was truly his own face, not mirror-reversed. Even now, it still caught Sam off guard from time to time, but at least it had faded into a more comfortable kind of strange. He had an exact lookalike who was an actual time-travelling alien. Cool. Doesn’t everyone?

The pair shared a companionable silence for a few moments, before a thought Sam had been turning over for a while rose to the top of his mind. He shifted again, this time on his own, and he felt his double’s regard swing up to fix on him like a magnet. 

“Okay, real talk,” he started, and his doppelganger frowned back in an approximation of confused innocence. “What’s all this for?”

“Who says it has to be for anything? Aren't we just having fun?”

Sam hummed, considering. “Yeah. No, I'd believe that, if I didn't sometimes walk into production meetings and find out I'd apparently been very specific about the people I wanted for certain episodes.”

“Point for Sam,” his doppelganger acknowledged with a grin. “You got me. Wasn’t hard to make a few phone calls on our joint behalf.”

“Yeah, but why?” Sam pressed. “I mean, Siobhan, Brennan and Lou are always great comedy value when you put them together, and it was awesome to have them for this, but I get the feeling you’re thinking of something other than making good content.”

“Who, me?”

With that, his double gave him a look of such overdone pantomime innocence that Sam suddenly and thoroughly understood why, not half an hour earlier, Brennan had very seriously threatened to push him down the stairs. 

He rolled his eyes, which earned him a smirk for his troubles.

Dropping the act, his doppelganger continued. “I’m expecting an… old friend, I guess, to show up at some point, and—well, I’d like to put on a really special show for them. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a few things out, you know?”

Ominous pause aside, that was actually kind of sweet. Sweeter than he’d been expecting, that’s for sure—he was half anticipating the revelation that he and his cast were subjects in some weird experiment. Hey, that still couldn’t fully be ruled out, but still.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “Well… just let me know, next time? Before you start ordering in my cast like takeout?”

“Who says they’re your cast?” his double shot back with a twinkle in his eye, and Sam snorted.

“Fine. Our cast, then. But seriously, let me know?”

His doppelganger nodded, which, if not quite fully convincing, was good enough. 

“Oh, and do you know when your friend might be arriving?” Sam asked. “Because if you wanted to plan something, we can—”

“I don’t know,” his doppelganger interrupted. “So yeah, we’ll have to move fast when they do get here. But I’ve got it under control.”

He broke off, then shot Sam a mischievous grin. “In the meantime, though, I’ve had this fun thought about time loops…”

[lilacpaperbird]

About Sam's music taste

Okay so I've always been really intrigued by the kind of music Sam might like, since we seemingly didn't get much information about it in the show. So I did a deep dive, and this is everything I could find/remember in relation to Sam and his taste in music:

Kripke, interview from 2007

From the Supernatural Wiki - There's a small mistake here. I checked the video and Jared said "Jack Johnson", not "Jackson"

Good catch, thanks anon whoever you are! - I checked and yep there it is! I added a pic of the poster so you could see what it looks like

11x04 Baby - Sam knows the lyrics to the song "Night Moves" and sings it enthusiastically, like he did with "Dead or Alive" in 3x16

14x20 Moriah

Bands/singers mentioned:

Green Day

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Fall Out Boy

The Killers

Jack Johnson

Death Cab for Cutie

Jason Manns

Bon Jovi

A Wilhem Scream

Bob Seger

Elvis Presley

Celine Dion

[themusicsweetly]

" Y o u a r e m y h o m e n o w . "

[parallel requested by @gotham-ruaidh 💜]

[mlobsters]

winchester family photos

season 1

season 2

season 5

season 8

season 10

season 11

season 12

season 14

season 15

posted here about the repurposing of the john and mary picture, including john removal

[anghraine]

Speaking of Sauron, I've been amusing myself by thinking about how a disproportionate number of people who super ruined his day are descendants of Melian:

Lúthien, obviously, kicked his ass.

Elwing retaining Lúthien's Silmaril and giving it to Eärendil led to the utter defeat of Morgoth's forces including Sauron.

Tar-Telperiën and her nephew Tar-Minastir, descendants of Elwing's son Elros, were responsible for the vast Númenórean fleet that crushed Sauron's attempts to seize Eregion in the Second Age.

Tar-Minastir's descendant Pharazôn (a usurper and terrible person, but nevertheless) led a massive force against Sauron that intimidated Sauron's armies into giving up. Sauron tricked Pharazôn and managed to take out Númenor, only to end up drowning with it, and was significantly damaged and limited by the event.

Meanwhile, a different descendant of Elros, Elendil, survived! He led Númenórean dissenters away just in time to establish sprawling Númenórean-controlled kingdoms in Middle-earth.

Elendil and the Elvish king Gil-galad proceeded to defeat Sauron in single combat after a long siege. The effort killed them but also took out Sauron himself for a very, very long time. Elendil's son Isildur cut the Ring away from Sauron's body as repayment for the deaths of Elendil and Isildur's younger brother Anárion.

Anárion's children produced various lines of descent that would go on to include the Stewards of Gondor, resolute enemies of Mordor who recruited the Rohirrim into Team We Hate Sauron.

Isildur's and Anárion's descendant Aragorn spent decades criss-crossing the map to spike various evil plans, like when he torched the Corsair fleet as Thorongil and disappeared into the night only to turn up decades later to threaten Sauron with Elendil's reforged sword.

The Ring ended up in the hands of Frodo, who would be only too happy to turn it over to Aragorn as Isildur's heir. Aragorn promptly rejected the idea, crucially leading to Frodo remaining as Ringbearer while Sauron came to mistakenly believe Aragorn had the Ring and meant to use it.

The only time Frodo was ever truly captured by Men (the people easily assumed to be the greatest danger to the quest) was by Anárion's descendant Faramir. Faramir could have taken the Ring with disastrous results for everyone but Sauron, but instead shrugged off the temptation and laughed at it before helping Frodo on his way.

Sauron understandably panicked about the Aragorn situation and sent his forces to Gondor earlier than planned, despite knowing at that point that the Steward Denethor was much better prepared than he'd hoped. Faramir used his abilities to lead a retreat across favorable ground that inflicted large casualties on Sauron's armies, as planned. This tactic functionally sacrificed Faramir and Denethor but bought enough time for the Rohirrim and Aragorn's mainly southern Gondorian armies to arrive and turn the tide of the battle of the Pelennor Fields. Sauron's forces in that battle were defeated. Again.

Aragorn exploited Sauron's understandable fixation on him by making a flashy frontal assault as (unofficial) king of the Dúnedain to distract Sauron's attention from the real threat (three hobbits making their way to Mount Doom). This was 100% successful. Through a series of good and bad choices on the part of the hobbits, the Ring was destroyed and Sauron with it.

Bad day all around for Sauron! Aragorn, meanwhile, married Elrond's daughter and became overlord of Sauron's allies with Faramir as his prime minister.

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Oh my gosh Isaac Newton!!! My boy Isaac Newton committing atrocities against God and nature!! You’re doing amazing Isaac!!!

[faramirsonofgondor]

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about Roy’s blanket and Jamie’s boot while discussing the bonfire scene in Ted Lasso but I think it’s important to acknowledge that Sam’s photo of the Nigerian team is also extremely sentimental and an important item! I’ve seen so many say that Roy & Jamie were the only ones who gave up something important or sentimental to them and that’s just not true! And unlike Roy & Jamie’s items, Sam’s photo wasn’t just tied to his past, it held his goals and drama for his future as well. And sure he can always get a new photo, but he specifically says that he vowed not to take that one until he made the Nigerian team himself. But he offers it up anyways! And I honestly think that afterwards he very well might’ve been sad/upset about giving it up even though he might not necessarily regret it, because it did mean something to him.

I also think his item is a great juxtaposition towards Jamie’s item and establishes a good connection towards the differences between them. Jamie’s item used to serve as a reminder for why he decided to start playing football in the first place, but eventually he lost his way and hasn’t done what he set out to do and he only begins to realize it as he’s giving up his item. Meanwhile Sam’s item serves as a reminder for what he wants to accomplish in football, and I think him burning it is the start of him gaining more confidence and realizing that he can achieve his goals.

[spn2006]

"However, where Supernatural fails in execution, it succeeds in concept, meaning that it's almost more fun to write about the show than actually watch it."

This is from a review of Supernatural on SMRT-TV from literally 2006. Barely a full season of the show had been out yet and people were already talking about the blackout poetry-like appeal of this show for 90% of fans I'm fucking screaming

[hamsamwich23]

Puts Wooly in the containment bucket and slowly pushes it under my desk with my foot...../Slash skeptical

[hunkydorkling]

And Mommy loves you so much.

(gif version under the cut)

[dragonaqe]

small selection of sam for @malefiicarum's birthday ♡