#sams grim bm

[socksandbuttons]

So now it's sort of canon??? Minus the hostage situation with the other AI. I drew these like the night before? (the first doodles, then the comic was last nigth!) I like the idea of them still using both looks (canon just lets them switch! wasnt what I intended, ones just more emo lol two dif bodies but the end result IS the same actually. I intended to make sure they end up in one body as thats how they are suppose to be!) Anyway the thought of Ruin just as likely to backstab them... prevails! Decided the nickname Grim, actually for another au, but in this case for differentiating bloodmoon designs yeah.

[blueiight]

What light do you see Loustat in? Some people see loustat in a grim light where the abusive aspects of their relationship are brought to the front but others see them in a way where they work through that and are happy in each other’s space. Though, I could never really pin how you see them.

i feel like this is a very flippant answer to what is a well thought out question but TLDR i l think lestat x louis are foundational to the western yaoi canon..

yk how bell hooks has a book all about love i dont feel like she was fair in some aspects namely in suggesting that ppl who harm u cant love u . love like anything else is a feeling, that does not always translate in the material. taking this to the head we can see in history how ppl can be galvanized into commiting the worst of deeds based off a ~belief~ or abstract notion of love or loyalty (that materially benefits them/the party theyre on). so i dont feel like love is inextricable from harm , ppl can hold feelings that do not always manifest in ideal ways. this goes both for my lesypoo would neva types & my lou dont love dat evil bitch types. love is complicated especially the love of immortals. cuz thats ultimately what monsters r. a rhetorical device in fiction to explore humanity’s capacity for evil. book leslou was fascinating in part bc louis was an old school bougie planter who got outdaddied by this noble land-poor european country lord.if the vampire prior to this was the fear of the exotic immortal east; then in book!iwtv& its response tvl , the roguish european hero imparts itself in creating the colonial planter (louis) & later… in a battle against the old east (twmbk). meta wise yes louis was bitchy to lestat in tobt bc anne at the time wanted david to be w les but even looking at tvl & qotd louis hes exceptionally tender to lestat in no small part bc he adored lestat’s inner strength as a man (using this to mean disposition here. very antifeminist of me), and struggled between acknowledging his longing for him .. and in tobt he struggled with the sort of subversion of dynamics . what could a weakened lestat do for him? what could he do to a weakened lestat? that scared him. he cared for a weakened lestat in mtd enough to claw at walls soo. who knows! and in both adaptations louis is lestat’s baby.(even if show lestat put louis in an A/C compressor) comparing this to show leslou, theres no need for an older lestat to cosplay being the gold digger here (or be viewed as such in louis’s narration?), especially in the face of a black younger louis. whos given an addled sort of anger / passion rooted in his encroaching disempowernment v the power he possesses intracommunaly as a creole bm .. lestat asking louis howd u get in here? XXX HOT EBONY—[is shot]. and the second interview louis is certainly more readily able? or willing? or ??? w/ his longing for lestat? if not himself in a moment (‘bled him like a pig’) then we as the viewers can deduce such (seeing past louis cry over a bleeding out lestat). thats the nature of adaptation baby. and going back to the love point, it reminds me it was either jacob or sam who said it its a shame my recall is failing atm cuz i rly liked the way they put it. leslou love eachother but dont really like eachother. of course people can syncretize aspects of the later books (s/o barbara and retirement in auvergne!) or even extrapolate a lot from their scenes in the show in hopes of seeing their show counterparts grow to like eachother in fan content irdgaf. the show has adapted what was priorly universally agreed to be the darkest period of lestat and louis’s relationship. where people diverge is in the semantics & decisions made in adaptation, but it serves a purpose to a story that is yet unclear to us! bear in mind this is the first cour of interview, 1 book of 15.. for example nobody was predicting that the show would weave in the wider chronicles by incorporating a second interview before s1 came out. i guess thats why my take on leslou (presuming the show vers is wym) is so unclear bc im an uncreative boor & can only look at whats given on text or in screen… this is sublime western yaoi

[mittensmorgul]

I was sitting there watching that episode and so sad for Sam and looking at Dean and thinking how he's doing ok just knowing Cass and his mom are alive and I literally yelled at the tv "Sam just needs a damn win!" and then wondered what a win is for Sam. Only thing that came to me was having Jack back (and the Lucifer protégé theory disproved) might be categorized as a win for Sam. Dean needs family. Sam needs something bigger then himself working in their favor. jmho

Well the early bit of the season paralleled Sam’s hope to rescue Mary against Dean’s hopelessness over Cas’s death. But now that Cas is back (beyond their wildest hopes– I mean even Sam believed he was perma-dead and that there was nothing more they could do to change that, but it hadn’t destroyed him the same way we saw it destroy Dean over the first five episodes of the season), but Sam’s ONE HOPE of finding a way to rescue Mary from the War World seems to have been lost now that Jack has disappeared and their single-minded drive to save Mary at all cost has apparently cost Kaia’s life in the process… well, that just piles a whole new level of guilt and hopelessness on to Sam.

Dean got his win, he got Cas back. Sam had been hopeful from 13.01 that the one thing they might potentially be able to get a win with was finding a way to save Mary. And with Kaia’s death and Jack’s disappearance, the tenuous thread of hope he’d been clinging to with both hands seemed to snap all at once.

At the beginning of the episode, we saw Sam NOT sleeping in. His clock turns from 5:59 to 6:00 am and he’s awake. It’s 8:22 am and he’s awake again when Dean knocks on his door to announce pancakes and he doesn’t answer, just rolls over. Finally at 10:00 Donna calls, and we don’t know if he’d been sleeping or not but he does hear the phone vibrate and answers…

NOT SLEEPING on Supernatural is pretty universally A Bad Sign. At the very beginning of s1 the fact that Sam was not sleeping well after Jess’s death was a plot point. Then the next time Sam wasn’t sleeping was when he was soulless after the end of s5 and in early s6 (aka 5:59-6:00?). Then toward the end of s8 (hey, like, around 8.22?) Sam was in a really rough way from the trials, practically burning himself from the inside out.

Then in s10 it wasn’t Sam who wasn’t sleeping, but Dean. Dean was a demon, and Sam was on a single-minded mission to save him, which drove Sam to some incredibly extreme measures. It was the sort of desperation and hopelessness driving him to horrific acts trying to save Dean that was reminiscent of Sam’s early s13 drive to save Mary.

And through the beginning of s13, we saw how much of Sam’s hopes to save Mary had been pinned to Jack and Jack’s powers being “trained” so that he might be able to purposely reopen the rift.

Sam’s words in that last BM scene in 13.11 (beautifully presented here in gif format), “Everything I’m saying is the truth. It’s our lives. And I tried to pretend it didn’t have to be, I tried to pretend we could have Mom back, and Cas, and help Jack, but we can’t.” It just sounds so Dean.

Dean in 13.03:

Patience: I talked to my Dad. He thinks I should put it away. Dad says we should just get back to normal. Maybe he’s right.Dean: He is. This life – hunting, monsters – there’s no joy in it. There’s nothing but pain, horror, and death. So if you get a chance at normal, you take it.

and

SAM: No, Dean. He’s messed up because of you. Dean, you said you’d kill him.DEAN: It wasn’t exactly like that.SAM: Then how exactly was it?DEAN: I told him the truth. See, you think you can use this freak but I know how this ends and it ends bad.

and

DEAN: Look, I know you think that you can use him as some sort of an interdimensional can-opener and that’s fine, but don’t act like you care about him! Because you only care about what he can do for you! So if you want to pretend, that’s fine! But me? I can hardly look at the kid! Because when I do all I see is everybody we’ve lost! SAM: Mom chose to take that shot at Lucifer. That is not on Jack! DEAN: And what about Cas?SAM: What about Cas?DEAN: He manipulated him, he made him promises, said, ‘paradise on earth’ and Cas bought it and you know what that got him? It got him dead! Now you might be able to forget about that, but I can’t!

Then we had basically all of 13.04 to underscore their feelings, leading up to:

Sam: What if you’re right? About Mom. What if she is dead, and I’m just in denial?Dean: Don’t say that.Sam: What? You’ve been wanting me to admit that since it happened.Dean: I know I have, but don’t say that. I need you to keep the faith, for both of us. ‘Cause right now, I… Right now, I don’t believe in a damn thing.

And 13.05 drives Dean to his darkest point, while Sam desperately tried everything to help Dean move past his grief:

Dean: I’m fine.Sam: No, you’re not, Dean. You said you don’t believe in anything, and – and that’s… that’s not true. That’s not you. You – you – you do believe in things. You believe in people. That’s who you are. That’s what you do. I know you’re in a dark place, and I-I just want to help.Dean: Okay. Look, I-I’ve been down this road before. I fought my way back. I will fight my way back again.

And this was shortly before Dean essentially resigned himself to his own death. 

Billie: You’ve changed. When you bargained with me just now, you could’ve asked to go back, to live.Dean: Well, I figured with you in charge, there’s no getting back for me.Billie: That doesn’t sound like the Dean Winchester I know and love. The man who has been dead so many times but it never seems to stick. Maybe you’re not that guy anymore, they guy who saves the world, the guy who always thinks he’ll win no matter what. You have changed. And you tell people it’s not a big deal. You tell people you’ll work through it but you know you won’t, you can’t and that scares the hell out of you. Or… am I wrong?Dean: What do you want me to say? Doesn’t matter. I don’t matter.Billie: Don’t you?Dean: I couldn’t save Mom. I couldn’t save Cas. I can’t even save a scared little kid. Sam keeps trying to fix it, but I just keep dragging him down. So I’m not going to beg. Okay, if it’s my time, it’s my time.Billie: You really believe that. [Dean shakes his head yes] You wanna die. Dean…every notebook on this particular shelf tells a version of how you die. You specifically, heart attack, burned by a red-haired witch, stabbed by a ghoul in a graveyard, and on and on. But which ones right? That depends on you, on the choices you make.Dean: Well, I guess I made my choice. Billie: But…unfortunately none of these books say you die today.

And ALL of this is so reminiscent of Dean during s7– the Dean that Frank told to essentially suck it up, put on a smile and be professional, or don’t do it at all. And the Dean that Bobby gave the “you’re talking like one of the dead ones” speech to in 7.09. When essentially, to use s13′s opening montage song title, “Nothing Else Matters.”

Sam: You okay?Dean: No. Sam, I’m not okay. I’m pretty far from okay. You know, my whole life, I always believed that what we do was important. No matter what the cost, no matter who we lost, whether it was Dad or – or Bobby or –. And I would take the hit. But I kept on fighting because I believed that we were making the world a better place. And now Mom and Cas… And I – I don’t know. I don’t know.Sam: So now you don’t believe anymore.Dean: I just need a win. I just need a damn win.

*cue Dean’s win*

And now in 13.11, Dean even lampshades the fact that Sam had done his best to keep Dean going through most of the first half of the season:

Dean: You got up at 10 a.m. this morning. 10 a.m. You. Mr. Rise and Freakin’ Shine. And then you turn down pancakes.Sam: I wasn’t hungry.Dean: They’re pancakes. Y – Look, I know you’re in a dark place right now, okay? I mean we lost Jack and Mom is… I think about 'em, too. All the time. But you can’t let it eat you up. Now look when I was – when I was broken up, you were there for me. Well I’m here for you now. And I’m telling ya, the only way out of this is through. Now when everything goes to hell, what do we do? We put out heads down and do the work. We’ll find Jack. We’ll save Mom, we will. But right now, Donna needs our help.

The thing is, even when Dean is at his most nihilistic, he still cares about other people. He reacts differently to this sort of grief and depression than Sam does. Dean’s go-to is to “put his head down and do the work.” When “the work” is all he feels he has left (and even when he’s doing it in a blatantly self-destructive way like in 13.05, or even back in s3 after he’d sold his soul).

Dean’s “go down swinging” is blatantly different to Sam’s “it ends bad.” Their depression and grief manifests differently, because they’re different people, you know?

And right now, to quote Bobby in 7.09, Sam’s looking like he’s got a case of the Anne Sextons.

Sam needs a mission, he needs something to put his hope in. Back when he’s maintained a grim-but-hopeful outlook, or when he’s managed to maintain his drive to continue hunting in any way whatsoever, he always had a larger mission to focus on– Saving Dean from going to Hell, stopping the apocalypse, closing the gates of Hell, saving Dean from the Mark of Cain, saving the universe from the Darkness… but what’s his mission now?

All Sam’s got left is the impossible hope of finding a way to save Mary, and the one key to that door is now locked on the wrong side of it… To Sam right now, he’s lost both missions that had sustained him for the first half of s13. Dean doesn’t need him to keep hope alive for the both of them anymore because Dean got his win (confirmed to Sam in 13.06), and with Jack gone he has no hope of being able to reach Mary, either.

So what does Sam have left now?

Even Dean at his most hopeless back in 13.03 was able to put aside his own hopelessness to go help Missouri and Jody without a second thought. Again when Donna asked for their help in 13.11, Dean didn’t need to be asked twice, or even told exactly what was wrong. A friend needed him, especially a friend he considers family, he was there. No questions asked.

Sam, though… in 13.03 he pawned off Missouri’s plea for help onto Jody because he’d one-tracked his focus on gaining Jack’s help in reaching Mary. And in 13.11 Sam was putting up every excuse to back out of the case– 

Sam: This isn’t even our kind of case. And you know, with the real feds here? We should back down.Dean: You’re joking, right?Sam: We’re still fugitives.Dean: They think we’re dead.Sam: Do you really want to get on the FBI’s radar again?Dean: Okay, so what do you wanna do? Hmm? You wanna call up Donna and say, ”Hey, sorry about your niece. These kinds of things happen. Later!” and then head back to the bunker so you can mope some more?

And then after the whole speech about Dean being there for Sam now…

Sam: Okay, look. (contrite sighing) Obviously, I’m here for Donna. All right? I wanna help.Dean: I know you do. So, let’s find the son of a bitch.

And then Doug choosing to stay out of the hunting life after learning about monsters only seemed to confirm to Sam that people are better off staying far away from him and the life in general.

All of this seems to be setting Sam up for something as desperate and terrifying as Dean’s emotional nadir in 13.05, and I am Concerned™ for Sam Fucking Winchester.