#spn 3.09

[scoobydoodean]

You really just can't unsee it once you see it though, can you?

Sam starts blaming Dean for what he's going to do (work with Ruby) way back in 3.09 because Dean isn't going to be around to be Sam's mommy, which is going to force Sam's hand.

After Dean comes back, Sam actually blames Dean for him working with Ruby by saying Dean wasn't there to protect him (4.04).

Dean repeatedly begs Sam not to work with Ruby and is ignored repeatedly (3.03, 3.04, 3.09, 3.16, 4.01-4.04, 4.12-4.22).

After telling Dean to open up to him and trust him (4.08), Sam calls Dean weak and pathetic for being traumatized by hell and says Dean is holding him back and therefore deserves to be lied to because he can't be of use (4.14) Sam says it's not what he really thinks when they both know it is (and Sam repeats it to other characters in 4.16, and 4.18) and then he admits it's the truth again to Dean's face in 4.21.

Sam accuses Dean of not trusting him enough (4.21).

Bobby blows up at Dean for not supporting Sam enough and calls him a pansy after Sam strangled Dean near unconscious, and tells him family is supposed to make you miserable (4.22).

Dean tries to reach out to Sam and Zachariah and Cas actively prevent him from doing so (Cas only at first) (4.22)

Zachariah (5.01) and Cas (5.02) both tell Dean the apocalypse is his fault because Dean didn't reach Sam in time to stop him from killing Lilith.

Dean says Sam hurt him, Sam is the one Dean depended on the most and Sam hurt him in ways he can't even voice (5.01). Sam apologizes, but then in the very next episode, shoves Dean into a wall for not trusting him like Dean is crazy and irrational when Sam doesn't even trust himself (5.02).

Sam says he thinks they should go their separate ways and is shocked when Dean agrees easily. Dean says that he spends more time worrying about Sam than he does doing the job right and time apart would be good. Sam reiterates that he's sorry and Dean gently says he knows Sam is (5.02).

Cas asks Dean if he's okay even without his brother, and Dean says "Especially without my brother. I mean, I spent so much time worrying about the son of a bitch. I mean, I’ve had more fun with you in the past twenty-four hours than I’ve had with Sam in years, and you’re not that much fun. It’s funny, you know, I’ve been so chained to my family, but now that I’m alone, hell, I’m happy." (5.03)

Sam says he wants back in. Dean objects, on the basis that he thinks they're stronger apart. Dean says they're each other's weaknesses and it's being used against them (5.04, but the weakness line is repeated from 3.03 and 3.16).

Zachariah pushes Dean into a future 2014 where Dean never met up with Sam again, and as a result, Sam said "Yes" to Lucifer, and billions of people died. All because Dean didn't want to be around Sam after being hurt and never reconnected with him (5.04).

Dean reconnects with Sam (5.04) even though he clearly doesn't want to, because the first case we see them on again, Dean struggles to trust Sam and leaves to go drink alone because he doesn't want to be around Sam (5.05).

Sam says part of the reason he went off with Ruby was to get away from Dean, because Dean is smothering. Dean is the problem in the relationship, because Sam feels inferior compared to him. Dean apologizes for being too smothering (5.05).

What does all of this tell you? Dean can't win. Dean will always be the bad guy in the family. He loves too much, or he isn't loving enough. Sam needs him and Dean wasn't there for him and so Sam went down the wrong path, but also Dean is smothering and Dean being smothering is the reason Sam went down the wrong path. Sam is not a trustworthy person, but Dean doesn't trust him enough. Sam not being trustworthy is Dean's fault. Dean doesn't deserve trust, but Sam deserves Dean's trust no matter what and not giving Sam his trust is the worst possible thing in the entire world and also again makes him smothering. The apocalypse is Dean's fault. Every single thing Sam does every single mistake he might ever make in his life is always at least partly Dean's fault and Dean's responsibility.

[lower-the-volume]

dean winchester. malleus maleficarum

[castiellesbian]

Robbie Thompson:

7.06 Slash Fiction

7.12 Time After Time

7.20 The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo

8.04 Bitten

8.11 LARP and the Real Girl

8.17 Goodbye Stranger

8.20 Pac-Man Fever

9.04 Slumber Party

9.11 First Born

9.18 Meta Fiction

10.05 Fan Fiction

10.11 There's No Place Like Home

10.18 Book of the Damned

10.20 Angel Heart

11.04 Baby

11.11 Into the Mystic

11.16 Safe House

11.20 Don't Call Me Shurley

Ben Edlund:

2.05 Simon Said

2.12 Nightshifter

2.18 Hollywood Babylon

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

3.13 Ghostfacers

4.05 Monster Movie

4.08 Wishful Thinking

4.16 On the Head of a Pin

5.04 The End

5.10 Abandon All Hope...

5.14 My Bloody Valentine

5.20 The Devil You Know

6.03 The Third Man

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe...

6.15 The French Mistake

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King

7.02 Hello, Cruel World

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

7.15 Repo Man

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental

8.05 Blood Brother

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler

8.21 The Great Escapist

[spnfanficpond]

Weekly Pond Newsletter

Daylight Savings Time has ended in the US! Did you remember to turn your clocks back? (Note: Only turn your clocks back one hour, not all the way back to Tuesday, no matter how much you want to relive Halloween and the spooky boops.🤣)

Old Business:

2024 Secret Santa Fic Exchange - The signup form is open for Secret Santa for this year! We've already had 24 people sign up, and you've still got plenty of time if you want to join in the fun. Click here for all the details on how to participate!

SPNFanFicPond Fic Highlight - It's a series called Samnesia by @princessmisery666, and it's pretty awesome! Sam x OFC, 54k words, and it's got a little bit of everything! Click here for our review and links to each chapter!

New Member Spotlight - We got eight new members in October, and they're all pretty cool! Click here to meet them all and maybe make a friend!

November Monthly Prompt - This month's theme is Dean's all-time favorite food... PIE! Click here for some mouthwatering images to inspire you!

Last week's #TweetFicTues prompts -

New Business:

Competitive Writing Sprints - Manta Ray Arthur will host sprint sessions on Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. Add words to your WIP and win prizes! If you've never sprinted with us before, stay tuned for announcement posts with more details.

SPN Rewatch: FanFic Edition - On Saturday at noon EST, we will be discussing 3.09 Malleus Maleficarum and 3.10 Dream a Little Dream of Me. If you've never participated in our rewatch chats before, stay tuned for announcement posts with all the details!

Tuesday is Election Day in the US! Please please please get out and vote, if you haven't already!! No matter who you're voting for, voting is the backbone of a government that is for the people AND by the people. If you think you will have trouble getting to your local election headquarters, there are a lot of places where rideshare companies are offering free rides to vote, and all kinds of other help is available in many areas. Make your voice heard!

(Divider by @glygriffe!)

That’s all for this week! To see all Pond events, and also other SPN-related things like conventions and online concerts, check out our Google calendar! Click here for a static view in Eastern US/Canada time (desktop only, no mobile app access, sadly), and click here to add our calendar to your own Google calendar! We try to keep it as up-to-date as possible. If there’s something you want to see on the calendar that’s not there (maybe a convention we missed, cast birthdays, or something similar), send us an ASK and let us know!

Hope you have a great week! - From your Admins and Manta Rays, @manawhaat, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @mariekoukie6661, @thoughtslikeaminefield, @heavenssexiestangel, and @spn-fanfic-reblog-writes!

[ballsdeepinturbohell]

SPN 3.09 - Malleus Maleficarum

MEG WALKED SO RUBY COULD RUN

[spngeorg]

Episode 53: 3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

aka that one where we learn about witches, hex bags, and how demons are made...

For an episode that does a TON of work and covers a lot of ground creating lore that will become a core part of the show for the rest of the series, I am SHOCKED, I tell you, at how short I managed to keep this podcast ep! I think I finally settled on a good format that I can work with! YAY! So as always, I’m interested in feedback from listeners, if there’s anything I can do to make this more enjoyable, more informative, or more entertaining, I’m open to suggestions. Also, adding “the birds and the bees of demon creation” to my long list of specific meta topic podcasts I intend to make someday... >.>

Ruby though! Being her awesome manipulative self! Witches! Dean feeling specifically bad for the poor bunny rabbit! and Sam completely losing his shit and charging head first after a coven with zero info, immediately after telling Dean that Sam has to change to become more like Dean... well, there he is, demonstrating the point, with predictable results!

Also, Dean is forced to really look hard at himself, his lifetime of choices, and confront why he felt he’d had no other choice when he accepted some truly messed up self-sacrifices... i.e. oh look Dean might have just a kernel of self-worth buried down deep in there somewhere, and we’re gonna be poking a big pointy stick at it right at the end of this episode!

Things referenced in this episode that may be of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

Casting sides for Tammi, Renee, and Elizabeth

Also, you can always find me on tumblr or twitter at spngeorg or mittensmorgul, or discord at mittens#4865. Come say hi! :)

Listen now on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[foxthefanboi]

3x09 - Malleus Maleficarum

[mittensmorgul]

Re: demons. So I'm thinking it's invite only. Most people get tortured for eternity, but some get the offer Dean got to pick up the knife (or MLM scheme demon deal making kit) and thus get corrupted into a demon. Who you were in life determines exactly which deal you get. Plenty of idiots make it through (see some of Crowleys more idiotic lackeys(but then who else goes for the MLM)) but then they always do (like seriously I've worked with absolute idiots with better degrees than me)

AHA! Re: This post I made the other day:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/188481674845/any-thoughts-on-the-differences-between-ghosts-and

(sorry I’ve been slow to reply, I know you sent this a couple days ago…)

We’ve seen that people get tortured in different ways. Like in 6.20, we saw Crowley’s “eternally standing in line” torture. 

At the rate that line was moving, someone could theoretically be standing in that line for centuries, you know?

And Dean’s specific offer wasn’t about him becoming a demon. Alastair wasn’t making him that offer because he was tempting Dean into becoming a demon, but tempting him into becoming the torturer in fulfillment of a specific prophecy in order to break the first Seal and start the Apocalypse. We have no other information on the state of Dean’s soul before nor after that, only that when Cas returned him to his body he was not a demon. I don’t know how broadly we can apply Dean’s specific circumstance to other souls, because no one else was tied to that prophecy the same way, you know?

Like Sam’s soul, which was in the cage for about 4x longer (in Earth Years, I’m still not convinced that “Hell Time” is a standard thing across all areas of Hell) than Dean’s soul was. Was the “Hell damage” Cas eventually took from Sam’s soul something akin to “demonic stain” or was it something else entirely? If we do learn that Adam has been in the cage with Michael this whole time, that might shed some light on it. I don’t think we’ll find that (if he has been in the cage for a decade) Adam will be a demon, you know?

So I do agree with you in that there’s some other factor at work here, aside from concentrated torture and time elapsed. There’s got to be other factors in determining who becomes a demon and who just ~stands in line for eternity~.

Like, we saw Bobby’s Hell, where he’d been for about a year (from the time they burned his flask in 7.23 and when Sam goes to rescue him in 8.19). He’d experienced a stone cell where he’d been continuously visited by demons pretending to be Sam and Dean there to save him. So in addition to the general “torture by eternal annoyance” devices such as waiting in line for nothing, which honestly, could account for most of the people who made crossroads deals even… something tells me a lot of those sorts of folks won’t be doing “great things” in Hell, if they traded their soul for like… something really petty or dumb, you know? Then there are the souls that sold themselves altruistically for someone else’s sake (like the guy in 2.08, or Ellie in 8.14) who knew their eventual fate and felt it was worth it to help their loved one (like John trading his soul for Dean) (and Dean would’ve fallen into this category if it hadn’t been for his Very Specific Purpose of breaking the Apocalypse seal). Those folks might be destined for something other than “general group torture.” But to what end?

I’m not sure if it would just be a matter of choice, you know? Because given the choice after enough time, I think it’s unlikely that a lot of people wouldn’t make that choice. Being a demon with some power to move about, potentially even to LEAVE Hell once in a while, and not being chained to a specific torture after years (decades? centuries?) of standing in line or being flayed to bits on the daily… who wouldn’t choose to escape that torture eventually?

Not that being a demon is such a fun alternative, but after that long, it would still be something not-that, you know?

Several demons have commented on how awful hell is, even for demons. Ruby, and even Crowley. His “Palace” isn’t even in Hell, because he just hates being in Hell that much. The demons who have regular access to Earth, either because they’re powerful enough (like Abaddon, or any of the other higher-level demons we’ve seen on the show), or have a reason for walking the Earth (crossroads demons, etc.) and who haven’t been exorcised back to Hell seem to have a lot of freedom, comparatively. I can’t imagine anyone trapped in Hell wouldn’t see choosing to become a demon as a potential escape from the constant torture.

Until 15.02, I’d always assumed that the process of “demonization” was something that just ~happened~ if a soul was in Hell long enough. And honestly that might still be the case. But the speed at which a soul is turned seems to vary. Perhaps those with magic or direct connection to a demon turn more quickly, maybe the process of being turned into a demon is only a torture for specific souls for a reason that we don’t (and will likely never) know. Maybe it’s just cosmic consequences, you know?

Extrapolating out what Anubis said about the destiny of souls after death, that it’s not anyone “deciding” where souls go when they die, but the souls themselves. (Obviously Chuck and shady reapers have the power to override a soul’s destination, but for the vast majority who aren’t on Chuck’s radar, things just happen without that sort of interference.) So maybe “who becomes a demon and who remains forever tortured in Hell” is determined the same way? Could be.

Again, I’m not sure if the show has any intention of ever clarifying any of this in canon, so at this point it’s all just a fun lil headcanon exercise. 

ETA: GAH I forgot to mention Abaddon in s9, and her scheme to “demonize souls in jars.” She was trying to create a lot of demons very quickly, and whatever was happening in those jars would’ve theoretically created a host of demons within a very short period of time if Sam hadn’t freed them. So… was there some sort of magic involved in that process?

It was implied that Abaddon used this method to make demons because Crowley’s crossroads deals took too long to collect on, and she wanted her army NOW. The implication at the time being that all souls who make crossroads deals will eventually become demons, but I don’t know if that theory can still hold now. But Abaddon seemed confident that all of her random “canned souls” could be demonized. It just took a specific concentrated effort to make it happen.

[criticlog]

SPN S3E09 - Malleus Maleficarum

Wow witch lady, why are you being so fucking rude?

Fair. Also, that’s interesting, anyone old human can be a witch

Amanda, you piece of shit, why do I get the feeling your motives are gonna be petty?

Yup there it is, it was about an affair and you kill the woman who did absolutely nothing to you, wow..

Oh damn, that backfired for Amanda quick!

Oh hell, how many witches are in this damn town? They roam in packs?

Yikes what’s with the attitude Renee? You’re just making yourself and your witch friends super sus

Jeez Dean, I know you don’t like Ruby but enough with the rudeness

Boys please stop arguing and find the hex bag that is definitely killing Dean right now please

Ouf that’s what you think of Dean

Y’all are lucky this hex killing took so long

Oh damn, demon witch can stopped that bullet just like that?

Lmao drag The Secret, yes!

I mean, to be fair, they had to know. It’s literally in the spell you have to chant that you pray to this demonic force and pledge your life to it. I think this demon gave you ample warnings

lmao Dean

Oh shit Ruby was a human once? all demons were? well damn

✨I’m not like other demons✨

Tbf though, Ruby is good, she is very good cause we all know how this all shakes out!!!

[gendzl]

3.09 also known as Further Reasons Not To Eat Meat

[subcas]

season 3: uncensored dean, p. I

[scoobydoodean]

Supernatural | 3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

[lower-the-volume]

malleus maleficarum

[castiellesbian]

Ben Edlund:

2.05 Simon Said

2.12 Nightshifter

2.18 Hollywood Babylon

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum

3.13 Ghostfacers

4.05 Monster Movie

4.08 Wishful Thinking

4.16 On the Head of a Pin

5.04 The End

5.10 Abandon All Hope…

5.14 My Bloody Valentine

5.20 The Devil You Know

6.03 The Third Man

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe…

6.15 The French Mistake

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King

7.02 Hello, Cruel World

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

7.15 Repo Man

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental

8.05 Blood Brother

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler

8.21 The Great Escapist

Steve Yockey:

12.06 Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox

12.10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets

12.20 Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes

13.05 Advanced Thanatology

13.12 Various & Sundry Villains

13.19 Funeralia

14.06 Optimism

14.10 Nihilism

14.14 Ouroboros

14.15 Peace of Mind

15.05 Proverbs 17:3

[punch-the-devil-in-the-face]

Dear Dean Winchester — Sincerely, women

[sensitivehandsomeactionman]