#the man who would be king

[roundandroundthemulberry]

At that time, in one of the PR releases, Ben Edlund said their relationship was something akin to a long-distance marriage and that Dean was gonna cry a bit about that betrayal, so ...

Q: How is Castiel's bromance with Dean going to suffer after Dean finds out about his dealings with Crowley?

Ben: Well, it's not the kind of thing you want to hear in one of those long distance marriages …. Betrayal is a little hard for that poor chap. He's [Dean] going to have to go and cry a little bit, not on the outside, but on the inside.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110510024332/http://www.tvsquad.com/2011/05/06/supernatural-interview-producer-ben-edlund/

Thinking about how the plot of season 6 wouldn’t make sense if you do not acknowledge the fact that Cas and Crowley working together was an affair, or at least it felt like so to Dean.

Majority of the people that I heard saying that they disliked that conflict, say that it doesn’t make sense because Dean should’ve understood Cas’ point of view. And that Dean has also worked with demons before, more than once, out of desperation. Which is why he doesn’t have the right to be mad. And I understand that. But it wasn’t about working with demons. No. Not really. The thing that hurt Dean the most about Cas’ choice was how he chose to ask for help from Crowley, instead of him. Cas chose Crowley over him.

“Look me in the eye, and tell me you’re not working with Crowley…”

“You’re in it with him? You and Crowley?? You’re going after purgatory together??? You have, huh? This whole time!”

“No, you had a choice. You just made the wrong one.”

“I was there. Where were you?”

The plot literally doesn’t make sense if you do not acknowledge destiel or crowstiel or deancascrowley. And I think that’s insane, especially for a show from 2005.

[gabalicious-g]

just finished watching 'the man who would be king' for the first time and holy shit??? the amount of betrayal in this is fucking insane the fucking jacting joices for when he realizes Cas has been spying on them the way that Crowley tries the same trick twice with cas ("you're the new God"/generally hyping him up as a leader) but it doesnt work the second time because Cas realizes he doesnt even WANT that anymore because the way Dean looked at him physically hurt??? im tweaking. the way Sam had to question if Cas brought him back soulless on purpose??? devasting. literally so so so good. Dean tried SO HARD to believe Cas was on their side and it literally took until cas snitched on himself for dean to really let it sink in helpppppppp the angst is angsting and it aint even on ao3 anymore it's on the show itself

[sirlancenotalot]

[hufflepuffheaven]

will never stop thinking abt how the man who would be king is such a destiel centric episode like dean defended cas to bobby and sam until he absolutely couldn’t and was in so much pain thinking about them accusing cas of working with crowley behind his back but also worried that the angel he has a profound bond with was turning against them. he wanted so badly for what they felt to be true to be wrong because it meant he would lose his best friend and the angel he secretly had feelings for YOU CAN JUST SEE IT ON HIS FACE !!!

and don’t even get me started on castiel’s narration of this episode - he talks so much about how dean has changed him and feels the worst about his betrayal because of his bond with dean. LIKE DESTIEL IS IN THE DETAILS COMMMMEONNNN !!!

[t00muchheart]

do you understand?? dean winchester, trained since he was a child to hone & trust his instincts and be suspicious of the world because it was dangerous fought against those instincts and against bobby and sam’s belief that cas was working against them because he wanted SO BADLY to believe in cas, he cared SO MUCH about his friend and chose to put his faith in him do you understand how wild that is ??

[anbeeo]

Ohhh to be smote by castiel

[strawlessandbraless]

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

Sometimes I wish I was a fish, but then I remember Castiel wouldn’t step on me

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

[dicklessthewonderclown]

theyre orpheus and eurydice theyre orpheus and eurydice he cant help but look knowing that looking back will be awful theyre orpheus and eurydice AND IM SUPPOSED TO BE NORMAL ABOUT IT???

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean and Cas every day not often enough -- 32/?

Supernatural 6x20//The Man Who Would Be King

[sixofcrowley]

spn is so funny sometimes cuz 95% of the time the writing is so casual and unserious and then like once a millennium they’ll pull out some poetic shit like “freedom is a length of rope, god wants you to hang yourself with it”

[annmariethrush]

Supernatural is very quotable, but unfortunately the best lines are “you gotta go be gay for that poor dead intern” and “freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.”

They encompass the full spectrum of the show from a complex interrogation of religion and free will to satirical borderline homophobic comedy.

[im-some-lionheart]

why is the holy fire scene in tmwwbk edited Like That? whenever the camera is on Sam or Bobby it's medium shots and they're in the background, their faces are kinda hidden by the shadows

but Dean's shots are perfectly illuminated close ups of his face so you get a perfect view of the hurt and betrayal and anger in it and the beauty of every millimetrical jacting joice

Ben Edlund, sir, let's talk.

[trashblossomart]

The Man Who Would Be King

[longwuzhere]

My Adventures with Superman Season 2 Easter Eggs

Welcome to another week of My Adventures with Superman! Oh man what a good ep and some fun easter eggs in this one too! Ok lets begin!

My Easter eggs lists for season 1 is here if you haven't seen it!

My season 2 episode 1 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 2 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 3 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 1 post is here

My season 2 episode 4 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 5 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 7 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 2 post is here

My season 2 episode 8 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 9 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 10 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 3 post is here

Spoilers if you haven't seen the episode

Ok so starting things off Superman wakes up from the capture coffin and is immediately like WTF Kara?! He tries to escape the ship he's on but needs a helmet to breathe in space and the suit grants him one. The way it looks really evokes either Injustice 2 Superman's default costume or his Electric Blue Superman look from the comics [Cover art of Superman #123 (1997), the glow in the dark variant cover, by Dan Jurgens, Joe Rubenstein, Patrick Martin, and Todd Klein].

The title of this week's ep is based on Rudyard Kipling's book, The Man Who Would Be King which is about two British adventurers who become kings in Kafiristan. Appropriate for the ep considering Brainiac who wants to flex his strength and might on other planets by sending Kara and his robots to level the entire civilization. How British colonizer of him. Fuck the colonizers.

On Kara's ship, Clark tries to get to know her better and show her that Earth is cool, being kind and gentle is not a weakness, anything to get her away from the whole might makes rights idea and Kara name drops some locations Brainiac and her sacked after seeing some trinkets she stowed away on her ship. The locations are Thanagar, H'lven, and Euphorix. Clark asks Kara to take him to Thanagar where they see that its all just ruins. Later in the ep we learn why. The screenshots of the last two locations are from later on in the ep.

Thanagar makes its first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #34 (1961) [W: Gardner Fox, P&I: Joe Kubert, L: Gaspar Saladino] where Hawkman and Hawkwoman make their first appearance too. They are looking for the criminal Byth Rok. They meet Midway City's commissioner and tell him about their planet and people and explain who Byth Rok is and what he did. Later in the ep we do see a Thanagarian, but I doubt its Shayera/Hawkwoman cuz she would be using a Thanagarian mace not a polearm. Give the latest Hawkman series a read to explore more of not just Hawkman himself but also a look into Thanagar. Also read Batman: Universe if you want to see Batman get humbled by a Thanagarian guard because the guard assumed his cape was wings and Batman says "I can't fly, only glide with the cape" and the guard replies "ha, cute".

H'lven makes its first appearance in Green Lantern #148 (1982) [W: Paul Kupperberg, P: Don Newton, I: Dan Atkins, C: Anthony Tollins, L: John Costanza]. Its a heavily tree covered planet home to Ch'p and B'dg of the Green Lantern Corp (more on the GLC later). It's located in space sector 1014 where the inhabitants are all chipmunk/squirrel-like aliens. So yeah Brainiac destroyed a civilization of adorable anthropomorphic squirrels and chipmunks, what a piece of shit.

The final place Kara mentions and returns to later in the ep is Euphorix where its first appearance was in The Omega Men #2 [W: Roger Slifer (yes that Roger Slifer who Slifer the Sky Dragon from Yugioh was named after), Keith Giffen, P: Keith Giffen, I: Mike DeCarlo, C: Petra Scotese, L:John Costanza]. The silver planet you see in the panel there is one of the last free planets that has not been touched by the Citadel and it is where the Omega Men operate out of.

Kara and Clark have to cut their Thanagar visit short and she mentions that they must return to Kandor which if you know your DC universe is very different to the main satellite/mothership that Brainiac helms.

Unlike what MAwS did with Kandor so far, in the comics, Kandor was a bottled Kryptonian city for trading and commerce that Brainiac stole before Krypton's destruction. It's still populated too. It and Brainiac's first appearance was in Action Comics #242 (1958) [W: Otto Binder P&I: Al Plastino] where Superman was also shrunk down by Brainiac after he stole several cities on Earth and Superman finds Kandor and eventually rescues it. Most of the time the bottled city of Kandor is always seen located in the Fortress of Solitude or its been brought somewhere else to be enlarged to its normal state in different DC continuities. Very smart of the MAwS team to use the name as Brainiacs main transport to keep that Kandor-Brainiac connection and speaking of Brainiac...

Brainiac is, as Kara designates him, Primus Brainiac who I talked more about here. Very smart of the MAwS crew to use the DCAU origins of Brainiac to really make it personal when it comes to Brainiac and Superman. Btw if you've never seen Superman the Animated Series, go watch it its fantastic. It and MAwS are my favorite adaptations of Superman.

Brainiac takes Clark to his combat training chamber where we see a Parademon of Apokolips, a Green Lantern, and a Thanagarian who are just more robots taking on these projected forms of aliens that Brainiac has conquered or battled. I talked a bit about the Thanagarians already but...

Parademons make their first appearance in The New Gods #1 (1971) [W&P: Jack Kirby, I: Vince Colleta, L: John Costanza] as the army troops for Darkseid. They're usually sent out in waves as an advancing force for whatever invasion Darkseid has plans and they swarm like crazy. The New 52 continuity makes them even more horrifying because Parademons are made from living or dead native species the planet the troops are invading and get genetically modified to be additional Parademons for Darkseids army.

As Clark fights the alien monk, we see that they wield a Green Lantern ring so we can presume they are from the Green Lantern Corp. The name Green Lantern was first used in All-American Comics #16 (1940) by Alan Scott who became Green Lantern and his ring was more mystical based compared to how everyone things of the Green Lantern Ring is now which is more sci-fi based.

That Green Lantern was Hal Jordan who gained his ring from a dying Abin Sur who was the protector of space sector 2814, our solar system, and Abin Sur's ring chose Hal to take up the Green Lantern mantle. This is the Green Lantern that pop culture is more familiar with. Any time a Green Lantern Corp member dies, their ring will fly to another person who has the strongest willpower to be a Green Lantern. We can assume that alien monk has their ring fly somewhere to find a new worthy owner. Very cool that the MAwS crew were able to bring a Green Lantern ref in this ep! Also this is how I envision my War Forged monk that I use in DnD fights.

Clark gets swarmed by the robots after beating the three and we see that Brainiac also has a red sun emitter on his craft. I talked more about that Superman weakness here

Kara discovers whats going on between Clark and Brainiac and after a chewing out, Kara goes into a trance like state and wakes up in an empty room. She finds her treasures from Thanagar, Euphorix, and H'lven and that wakes her up. She flies off to those planets again seeing them all in ruins and Thanagar shows that she caused all this. All alone and sad by this discovery in the emptiness of space, Kara sees a blue portal open up and its Lois, Jimmy, Mallah and the Brain from season 1 who I talked more about here and here.

And with that we are at the end. Come back next time to see how Lois and Jimmy meet up with Mallah and the Brain again!

My Easter eggs lists for season 1 is here if you haven't seen it!

My season 2 episode 1 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 2 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 3 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 1 post is here

My season 2 episode 4 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 5 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 7 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 2 post is here

My season 2 episode 8 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 9 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My season 2 episode 10 Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman post is here

My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 3 post is here

[all-yourn]

destiel & "romeo's daddy" by ethel cain [on youtube]

[therealvinelle]

From what I can tell, in the actual books there's just one line from Sirius saying Alphard left him some gold, and not much other canon mention of him. How did Alphard become such a big character in your fics/Tom Riddle's love interest?

You know, that's a very good question.

The true and full story behind how Alphard Black became an important character in our fics is laden with a lot of spoilers and back-and-forth, though I will say it wouldn't have happened at all if @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin hadn't already used him in When Harry Met Tom. When we later then needed to add a character for The Man Who Would Be King, Alphard's name lent itself easily and on discussion we found he was the only that really fit the role we needed a character to play. He went on to become a surprisingly large part of secret fic, now we've imprinted on him like baby ducks and he's in everything.

So, what makes Alphard Black so fitting for what we need him to be?

We have little to go on from canon, but compared to some of the other characters fandom has decided on characterisation for, we at least have something to go on when we make stuff up. Oh, we have to conjecture, fabricate, and headcanon away, and for every possible Alphard Black we draft up someone could have used those same clues to create a different Alphard, but we would both be following certain constraints.

By contrast, characters like Alice Longbottom or Abraxas Malfoy have very strong fanon characterizations, a lot read into them, but I'd argue we have just as much, if not slightly more, to go on with Alphard Black.

With that said, here is the information we have on Alphard and how Muffin and I used every bit of it to make up as much as we could.

Teen pregnancy 1.0: Pollux edition

Alphard's sister was born when their father Pollux Black was twelve, and his father married her mother. Going by his young age, I assume this was so Walburga wouldn't be a bastard. Walburga, by her painting's ravings, appears to have spent all her life in 13 Grimmauld Place, she feels a connection to "the house of my fathers" and always had a strong sense of Black identity she tried to pass on to her sons: I think it's a very fair assumption that the Blacks raised the baby, and not her mother's family (as her mother would have been in Hogwarts as well or else a statutory rapist, either case spells a grim homelife for Walburga).

Now, Alphard's birthdate is unknown since he's struck off the family tree, but it was sometime between 1925 and 1938.

Muffin and I have decided that he was born the next year, since this gives Tom a dorm mate, and more importantly it gives Alphard a teen father, one who learned nothing from last year and assumed no responsibility. Tom now has a fucked up dorm mate, and we didn't have to (completely) invent a character.

You now have two kids raised by family members not their parents since their father is a literal thirteen-year-old, and the generational age gap is so narrow that when Walburga starts school her paternal aunt Dorea is canonically a fifth year. They want for nothing materially and the family does step up, but the complete parental absence in their life has an impact.

For the sake of funny, we thought Arcturus Black, who is already raising Lucretia and Orion, is our candidate for raising his cousin's spawn. Now Walburga's marriage to her second cousin is to someone who was raised alongside her, which is funny and so awful. Another feasible candidate is Cygnus Black, Pollux's father and currently raising four kids, but... not as funny.

Teen pregnancy 2.0: Cygnus edition

Cut to 1951. Alphard is a happy bachelor, his father has stopped having kids (legitimate ones anyhow), Walburga's happily married to their cousin, and then... their brother Cygnus does a booboo.

Bellatrix is born, Cygnus is thirteen. Andromeda's birthdate is unknown, but must have been while he was in Hogwarts because Narcissa is born in 1955, while he is still seventeen.

The same problem as with Pollux arises with Bellatrix: who wants baby? And, as with Walburga, I think a fair argument could be made that the Blacks took her in, not the Rosiers.

There are many options here (and can't rule out the Rosiers), but I think it's fair to assume Bellatrix went to live with close family.

Per the Black family, this gives us three options that I find feasible: Walburga, Alphard, and Pollux.

I don't think it was Walburga, I think that would inevitably have come up in canon, either as Walburga lost her shit when Andromeda eloped, handled her grief differently after Regulus died if she had surrogate daughters, or Sirius had a different dynamic with Bellatrix. The Orion-Walburga-Sirius-Regulus family unit doesn't come across at all as having had three nieces raised alongside the boys, so Walburga's a no.

Which leaves us with Alphard, Pollux, someone in the Rosier family, or extended Black family raising Bellatrix.

Pollux, per his wild youth, might not be topping the lists. One could posit that Pollux wants a second shot at parenting and would take in his granddaughter based on this, but he already has Cygnus if he wanted a second shot at parenting. Still, he's a candidate.

So is Alphard, however, who is living alone and has no wife to worry about, no children of his own, and a pile of gold. Per his choice to give Sirius gold after he ran away, one can also assume he's one to come through for family, which fits with taking in his much younger brother's daughter.

TL;DR: we can't prove Alphard Black didn't raise the Black sisters, or at least care for them in their early years, but someone must have and it might as well have been him.

Let there be no pregnancies and no marriages

We then enter the bit that had Muffin go "oh, gay. I will use him in my fic" long before any of the detective nonsense to come up with the above, which is that Alphard did not marry. Now, that could mean anything, perfectly straight people don't marry and gay people do marry.

However, from 1938 through 1960, no Black heirs are born. Which isn't necessarily a long time, on the contrary, Cygnus has been supplying the family with children for years now, luck just had it so they're all daughters who can't pass on the family name.

Still, taking a step back, Orion, Walburga, Alphard, and Lucretia (who married a Prewett) are all adults who are just not having any children. The Orion and Walburga are perhaps not even married, we don't know when they married, and it could be they married specifically because neither of them had found anyone else to marry and there were no sons. Alternatively, they married earlier but then did not have children until they were in their mid-thirties. Considering Lucretia's childless marriage, it might be some Blacks struggled with infertility.

A bit of nerding about why I think Walburga waiting so long to have children is odd

The tldr for Western European demographics is that if you can afford to have children and provide for your family, you will marry and have children early. The upper classes have historically married and had children much younger than the lower classes because of this. The mother's education will also impact when she has children - higher education means having children later.

I think we see this reflected in the wizarding world, in that education is both low (arguably nonexistent, considering the curriculum at Hogwarts) and in magic making material considerations Muggles must make obsolete. And we do see a lot of young parents - Lily and James are both 20 when they have Harry, Andromeda is maximum 24 when she has Nymphadora Tonks, Molly Weasley is 20 when she has Bill, Narcissa is 25 when she has Draco, Fleur would have been 23-25 when she had Victoire, Harry and Ginny are 26 and 25 when they have James Sirius, Hermione and Ron are 26-27 when they have Rose...

Young is the norm.

And with the Blacks, who were lineage obsessed, and where Walburga is never reported to have had a career keeping her busy, I find it very interesting that Walburga doesn't have children until she's 35.

There are three possible explanations I can see:

Walburga and Orion didn't want to have children, and waited for Alphard or Cygnus to get on with it, only for Cygnus to only have daughters and Alphard to have no children at all (bit unlikely since they had two sons, a couple who pointedly did not want children would have called it quits after the first)

They had fertility issues

Walburga and Orion did not instantly marry, but waited for years until it became clear Orion wasn't going to find anybody else, Alphard apparently not either, and Cygnus said "fuck you all, I've contributed three kids already", at which point Walburga and Orion were both single, both cared about the lineage, and went for it.

We've gone for option 2 since it's just funnier to have a pair of cousins all over each other at Hogwarts, "Aren't they-" "Yes and they're very happy together :)", but I think option 3 is pretty feasible too.

Either way, you can read into Walburga and Orion from the late births of their children and you also get free Alphard characterisation, because his choice not to marry starts to look rather pointed.

Back to Alphard

While the Blacks were not dying out at the time, they also weren't swimming in children. Only Cygnus was passing on the family name, and that was exclusively to daughters, and he went on to have no more (legitimate) children after leaving school. Pollux wasn't having any more (legitimate) children, and while there are and grandfathers uncles on the family tree who could do the deed they were quite old, many unmarried, and most importantly they canonically had no children.

We're down to Alphard, Orion, and Cygnus having to pass on the family name, with Orion and Walburga a decade into their marriage with no sons to show for it. Sure, Cygnus could have sons, but that would be placing all their dragon eggs in one dragon basket (and indeed, he had no sons).

Why doesn't Alphard marry?

The family must have brought it up, if not pressured him. Alphard not marrying in a world where arranging a match would have been the easiest thing in the world looks to me like a deliberate refusal.

The giving of the money to the Sirius

This all brings us to the one thing we know for sure that Alphard did in his life: he willed money to Sirius after he'd been disowned.

We know Alphard was not a blood traitor prior to this, or he'd have been burned off earlier.

I frankly take this to mean Alphard most likely subscribed to pureblood supremacy, or at least he did not mind it enough to do anything else to cross his family. Giving money to Sirius isn't a political act, it's an uncle providing for a family member who has suddenly lost everything.

(And, if we assume Alphard himself is gay: it's an uncle who sees his nephew run away from home to be with his best friend, and perhaps drawing a few conclusions of his own about the strength of Sirius's friendship to James. There are many ways to interpret his choice to support Sirius financially, is what I'm saying.)

It also seems a distinct overreaction to me that Walburga would burn him off the family tapestry for something like this, and... it seems very much like one angry, mourning, woman's way of hurting a brother she can no longer confront. If she had been hoping Sirius wouldn't make it out in the wild and be forced to return, then Alphard giving him money would be a betrayal of the highest order.

Walburga putting a cigarette to her wallpaper isn't the same as the entire Black family disowning Alphard posthumously, it's an act of grief and anger.

Where we make things up wholesale

I'll go ahead and assume Alphard was gay, had a good and stable but slightly fucked up family life, and got overly attached to his dorm mate Tom Riddle as a stranger to all of this who perhaps seemed above it all. I also vote he raised Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Andromeda, because it's a more interesting option than Pollux. (In case you didn't notice, Muffin and I subscribe to the Black family being as fucked up as we can reasonably make them.)

Vinelle, what was the point of this?

My point is that we may not have any canon appearances to go on with Alphard Black, but we do have dates, biographical facts, what he did with his will, a few statements from Walburga's insane painting and other characters, and a whole lot of imagination. And an obsessive tendency.

And a willingness to say "Mm, no. Can't read. Sorry, that fact's just wrong." when we don't like things (more specifically, Sirius's phrasing making it sound like Alphard died not too long after Sirius ran away from home, which would make him dead for The Man Who Would Be King, a fic that takes place in 1982. We will assume Sirius meant "gave", not "left".)

Wee.