#wait. we should bring back fighting about dean and cas’s other relationships | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tearsofgrace · 4 years ago

Text

endings are hard... but they aren’t impossible

tldr; the good place fucking nailed the finale, supernatural completely and utterly bombed it.

tags: wc--4.5k, gif heavy, spn meta, the good place, supernatural finale, spn wank, all gifs are mine, if you read til the end there’s a pretty gif

so i recently finished the good place (i was watching w my family and we finally had time to sit down and watch the last season) and god fucking dammit that ending is FLAWLESS. literally flawless.

and because i’m, well, me… i spent most of the time during that hour long finale thinking about how supernatural could have had even a fraction of that and avoided so much heartbreak.

anyways. i decided to compare them. to REALLY compare them. to get into the nitty gritty of why the fuck the good place ending left me feeling, as the finale is all about, sated and complete. and why the spn ending left me confused, lost, broken, betrayed, unable to even enjoy my comfort show at all until a dear friend finally just watched an episode (8.08) start to finish with me.

so without further ado (always wanted to say that) here’s the good place/supernatural finale meta that no one asked for

comedy

we’ll start small. both these shows have excellent comedy. in extremely different ways… but still

in the good place finale, the comedy was perfect. whether it was jason reappearing in the forest, michael trying to get through The Door, tahani reversing the “hot bod” bit on eleanor, every comedic moment was actually pretty emotional and added something to the show. they deepened characters’ meanings, added to their relationships, and made the audience think as much as they made the audience laugh.

in the spn finale… the comedy was the pie gag. the whole sam shoving pie into dean’s face. beyond this being… like meta as hell (the whole prank thing) it doesn’t have any depth to it.

and to add salt to the wound, this “hilarious” thing happens RIGHT AFTER salmondean have a conversation about missing jack and cas that is equal parts flat and infuriating. the brothers, in particular sam about jack and dean about cas, should care more. this is their family. and family is everything to them. but, no, by all means pie dean in the face.

last lines

this one IRKS me. okay.

the last line of the good place "I'll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart and all the wisdom of the universe: Take it sleazy.” “All right.” is ICONIC. okay?

it’s a reference to season 1 that doesn’t feel fan-servicey. it’s kinda honestly emotional cuz it’s like a message to us, the audience. it perfectly completes michael’s arc. it captures the light-hearted vibe of the show while also somehow managing to be poignant. you can see it coming like the second before it happens but it’s also not the obvious choice. it’s just. goddamn it’s good.

the last line of supernatural…. is… “and cut.” not even said by one of j2. i mean i know it’s a meta show but COME ON ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??????????

now i hear you shouting wait but that’s just the end of the thank you message. okay fine whatever. in that case the last lines are “Hey, Sammy.” “Dean.” (i couldn’t bring myself to gif that moment)

i’m sorry but. that’s predictable. that’s obvious. that’s boring. that’s flat. sure, it celebrates the bond between the brothers. but like… that’s not what this show is about anymore. it’s not just about sam and dean winchester it’s about what they’ve created. it’s about the world they’ve saved, the family they’ve made, about how they always keep fighting but nope we get bland, boring, coulda seen ‘em coming from miles away lines for the very end. that’s fine.

montages

the spn finale is like 50% montages that don’t make sense and are poorly done and not emotional

the good place has a montage of michael being human that brought me to tears

timing

here’s another short section. the good place finale was 53 minutes long as opposed to the usual 20 minute long runtime of every episode. granted, the fandom of the good place is very different, but STILL there was no documentary telling the fans things they ALREADY knew (there was a short special after the ep, but the episode itself was still far longer than normal). it was 53 minutes of plot. of really fucking good not rushed plot.

the supernatural finale was… what 36 minutes long?? as opposed to the normal 40 minute runtime?? granted, we did get an hour long documentary of things we’ve all heard in cons and interviews a billion times so hey. take what you can get i guess.

character arcs

this is most of the meat of this meta. one thing we’ve all been harping on a TON is how they RUINED character arcs. soooo let’s go through and juxtapose some character arcs shall we

eleanor

eleanor shellstrop starts the show completely self-obsessed. she died getting hit by shopping carts while picking up margarita mix and let’s be real she’s a total icon. love her to death. she grows a ton, becomes one of the most selfless characters on the show, and starts to actually (jack forbid) CARE about things. it’s one of the most satisfying and relatable character arcs i’ve ever seen.

it’s not just her selfishness either, her character is super multi-faceted and complex, and i feel like even in the end we’re getting to know her better. she’s afraid of commitment, always worried about what others’ actions will do to her, loves the trivial side of life, is queer as fuck (as acknowledged by the show in a way that’s not harmful at all but also isn’t explicitly bi/pan/unlabeled/omni etc, allowing queer fans to see their own identity in her), and is all around a HUMAN BEING. her ending at the beginning of the show was her death. her stupid, trivial, meaningless death where she was, as she puts it, all alone. and her final ending ISNT that. yes, everyone goes before her. and i think that’s purposeful. to show that she’s grown enough that being alone in some sense is okay.

but she’s never TRULY alone. and in the end. the REAL end. janet is there. the whole time. because eleanor asked her to be!! she got over her crazy need for independence and simply asked for help. and eleanor dies an amazing person that has become selfless, has found joy in philosophy while still enjoying trashy content, has fixed her relationship with her mother, and has found a sense of completion. eleanor’s life ends on her terms, and it’s beautiful.

dean

alright. now just as you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy let’s look at dean winchester’s ending. you’ve heard it a million times, so i’ll be brief. dean was raised to be a hunter, a soldier, a killing machine with no feelings and no purpose. he was raised to die scared on a hunt, his life over because of some mistake he made because he will NEVER measure up. at least that’s what john and everyone else told him with the exceptions of some of his family (and family don’t end in blood). he started to accept that he didn’t have to have this. he started to realize that he could CHOOSE what his ending was.

the beautiful thing is, we never truly got to see what that was. i personally like to think it’s similar to the roadhouse michael locked him in while he was trapped in his own mind. a safe place for hunters, somewhere he (and cas in my opinion, but that’s not important) could settle down and still be in the life. it would be an amazing tribute to jo and ellen, and just all around a great ending. he wouldn’t have to be scared, but he wouldn’t have to conform to some apple pie facade of normalcy. and ya know what?? say that he died so he could have peace i dare you. because dean doesn’t find peace until sam is there anyway so i beg of you WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT.

dean winchester died scared. dean winchester died on a hunt. dean winchester died on one of john’s old hunts. dean winchester died not directly at the hands of a monster, but at the hands of a mistake. his mistake. dean winchester died without ever working through the trauma of his best friend in the entire world confessing his love in a final act of self-sacrifice. dean winchester died in a way that leaves a sour taste in my mouth and does not at all show the audience what he’s been through and how much he’s grown. dean winchester did not die on his terms, and he deserved better.

chidi

okay back to happy. chidi anagonye. by far my personal favorite good place character (don’t tell anyone i always say jason cuz he and i are very similar). chidi in the last few episodes is SO DRASTICALLY different than the chidi we meet at the beginning. he’s decisive, confident, self-assured, and it’s amazing to see. he’s not afraid of life anymore. he’s not afraid to make the wrong decision and forever alter his reality, because he’s okay with failure.

at the beginning, chidi was so petrified of life that… it killed him. and in the end, he’s completely at peace with every decision he makes, even the final one. yes, he considered staying for eleanor, but that just shows how his moral code and his compassion for others is still very much still intact. it shows the audience that you can be confident and decisive without being a selfish asshole.

chidi leaves the good place knowing that it’s the right thing to do. knowing without a doubt that his time has come. the old chidi never would have been able to fathom being that sure about something. it’s beautiful. it’s a development that can give the audience peace, can show them that this drastic of change is possible, and that chidi became a better person for all of it. chidi went on his own terms, and it was beautiful.

sam

… this one might be controversial… but sam winchester. god i hated sam’s ending. at first i was kinda okay with it. like, okay fine he got his normal life. but, really, in the end that’s not what sam wanted. he started to realize that he didn’t need that apple pie, white picket fence life. he didn’t need the wife and the kids and the backyard and the barbecues because that is NOT sam’s personality and i will throw hands on that.

that’s not to say he doesn’t want some sort of romance, maybe even kids, but not in that way. he lets himself see that he doesn’t need to be defined by his rebellion to john. doesn’t need to be defined by going to college or any of those “normal” smart kid things because it doesn’t fit him. and that’s okay! but how does sam’s story end? it ends with a wife (that isn’t even important enough to show her face). with kids. with a goddamn white picket fence. we think he’s still hunting to some extent… but it’s not the arc we were led to believe would happen. it’s not this amazing leader sam that we see in season 12-14, uniting hunters and organizing them.

he had SO MUCH potential and they throw it away on a vanilla ending that shows only surface level pain at losing his brother. he doesn’t even invite the rest of their family to the wake for fuck’s sake. jared did an incredible job. pls don’t think i’m saying he didn’t. but that script…. sam winchester’s arc was cut short. he didn’t go on his terms, and he deserved better.

jason

jason mandoza. the only character that has ever embodied my complete dumbass energy to the insane extent that it exists. he went to hell for his impulsivity. he never thought before a decision. i aspire to be as reckless as jason while on earth. but he LEARNED. he got better, just like they all did. and by the end of the show, jason doesn’t need to be impulsive anymore. much like eleanor being left “alone,” the show does a masterful job with making him be the first one to go, capturing his old impulsiveness. but he chooses to leave. he takes his time in deliberation, waiting until a feeling of peace, of completion, of well, ‘true happiness’ (sorry cas stans, i’m right there with you) has settled over him.

the ending of his story is one of growth, just like all these characters have been. and the best part? the show makes it comedic in the most poignant and beautiful way, because it’s jason, it had to be funny. we learn that jason has been in the woods for like, eons, just waiting to go through the door because he wants to give janet a necklace. he’s learned to simply wait. to be at peace with… nothing. his torture was being a monk, but in the end, jason embodies those ideals. his arc comes to fruition in an extremely satisfying way. jason goes on his own terms, and it’s beautiful.

castiel

this one is gonna hurt like a bitch. castiel is my comfort character. he’s my role model. he’s me in a lot of ways. i love him. so fucking much. so excuse me if this is slightly incoherent. i’m actually okay with cas’ ending… in a way. because his actual ending as an on-screen character? perfect. self-sacrifice while coming out and professing his love to dean winchester. a little bit bury the gays, but let’s be real, it’s supernatural. and “happiness is in just saying it” has to be the most powerful way to think of coming out. it takes away the fear, it takes away so much of the pain that can follow. because the joy is in just saying the words.

it’s how this was treated on the show that makes cas’ character arc terrible (and we haven’t even gotten to 15.20). YOU CANNOT JUST IGNORE A LOVE CONFESSION. that is god awful writing and i will never change my mind on that. cas deserved his family to care about him. to at least address and be sad about the fact he was gone. jesus fucking christ after everything castiel deserved at least that. and then we go to 15.20. cas is in heaven. cas is serving god. cas is right back where he started. now, i’m coming off a little strong.

if the show had decided to show us cas and jack in heaven makin’ the world a better place… i woulda come around to it. i woulda realized that that’s not REALLY erasing 12 years of character development and cas realizing that his whole identity isn’t just him serving heaven and isn’t just him being an angel and that he’s so much more than all of that and he could still be happy as a human… because really he’s with his son. but they didn’t show us that. they barely even mentioned him. and to me. that counts as a bad character arc. and i’m sorry if you disagree. castiel may have gone on his own terms, but they treated that beautiful sacrifice with disrespect and disdain, plus resolved his arc by putting him back where he started. he deserved better.

tahani

*deep breaths guys this is a long post i’m sorry* anywayyyy tahani!!! we love tahani obviously. let’s talk about her arc, because it always kinda bothered me. throughout the show, we see all the other character’s growing and expanding their knowledge of right and wrong. and, don’t get me wrong. we see tahani grow a lot. but she makes a lot of the same types of comments and shit like that. but it’s how she treats the reactions to those comments. by the end of the show, she laughs at the caricature of herself that the others see. she isn’t looking for vindication in name-dropping, she just does it. she is far less self-absorbed, and is genuinely interested in those around her. she fixes her relationships with her sister and her parents in a way that doesn’t feel forced and actually feels like a beautiful, healthy family reunion.

she has a list and she does everything on it. it’s worth noting, that the things on her list are not at all what they would have been at the beginning of the show. most of them are humble “labor” type tasks, and all of them are in self improvement. tahani’s end on the show is not the same as everyone else’s. she realizes that she doesn’t need to be done. that there doesn’t have to be an end to self-improvement. and she becomes an architect. the writers perfectly embody her transformation from a self-obsessed rich girl who has never done a thing for herself and laughs at the lower-class to a down-to-earth worker that simply doesn’t want the journey to end.

it’s incredible how perfectly the writers were able to close off these character arc’s without it feeling forced, and without ignoring their character development. imagine that. tahani chooses her own way, and it’s beautiful.

jack

jack’s ending may be the only one that i’ve actually somewhat come to terms with. it’s not terrible. it’s not great. but it’s not nearly as bad. because ignoring that awful monologue about every drop of rain and shit, jack really does end up helping people. he ends up doing something that he loves and that makes the world a better place. and he doesn’t lose his personality in it. but. i dunno, that’s still his destiny, right? to create paradise. and this is a show about ripping up the rule book, about choosing free will above all else… so to have every single character just fulfill their destiny is cheap.

still… i’ll try to be unbiased. because really at the beginning of jack’s time on the show, he’s unsure what he wants. and at least, in the end, he’s sure. he has a wisdom that he’s always had but he’s now using. and i’m good with that. but what’s NOT okay about jack’s ending is the lack of on-screen family. jack learns that family is important. sam, cas, dean those are the people he cares about. and you’re telling me he would just NEVER see them again? and be okay with that? i know he rebuilds heaven with cas, but we don’t even get a story about him rescuing cas from the empty. and he seems in 15.19 to not be that concerned about it (after the amazing emotional scene at the beginning). jack should have cared about his family. he did. but they ruined that for him. so jack kline deserved better.

michael

oh man where do i start. michael’s growth is the biggest on the show. i mean. he starts as a literal demon and ends a human. he gets better, he falls in love with humanity (*castiel fan in me sobbing again*) and he chooses over and over to be good instead of bad. his whole arc is a classic redemption arc, and every single beat just gets better. he chooses selfishly to side with humans but in the end it turns out to be the best decision he could have made. because he develops emotions, he develops compassion, he develops a moral compass.

and his end reflects that. because to complete this arc of a demon becoming more human… he literally becomes human!!!! it fits so well. and he’s allowed to make mistakes and be happy and gain all that humanity has to offer. this just shows that human!endgame for cosmic beings that become more human WORKS SO WELL (and it shoulda happened for cas and jack that’s all i’m saying). michael went on his own terms, and it was beautiful.

eileen

oh boy… this one stings. because they brought her back, used her up, and we never saw her again. eileen was one of the best side characters on the show, and they rarely addressed her arc. she comes onto the show as a hunter seeking revenge, and gets that revenge in the same episode. her s15 arc is focused on what’s real and what’s not, with her relationship to sam admittedly being a central part of her character because… it’s supernatural and women can’t exist without that. but still! eileen grows throughout the show and in the end… we don’t even know what happens to her. it’s as if her arc wasn’t important enough to even glance at.

it’s as if the connections the boys make outside of each other mean nothing when in reality they mean everything. they prove that the co-dependency is behind them and that family doesn’t end with blood and that real connections can be formed between people that last a lifetime. eileen was a disabled hunter that was shown to still be one of the best in the business, and they didn’t even give her the courtesy of a goodbye. eileen didn’t go on her own terms, and she deserved better.

janet

this is gonna unbalance my list but goddammit janet’s ending was perfect. she was a not-robot, not-girl that should have been incapable of feelings. but throughout the series we get to watch as she learns first-hand about human emotions and processes them. she cares about the humans in her charge and fights for them on multiple counts.

in the end, we see janet come to terms with both her cosmic being side, and her human side. she never stops being with the “cockroaches.” she sees them all leave, she’s there for them while they’re there, and she also continues to speak her mind and live autonomously. janet was a non-human character done right. she lived on her own terms, and it was beautiful.

some honorable mentions

spn ignored (in the finale) chuck, amara, stevie, charlie, jody, donna, garth, bess, the other angels, claire, kaia, patience, alex, and the list goes ON in favor of focusing on JUST sam and dean. did none of those characters at least deserve a quick goodbye??????

the good place wrapped up multiple arcs i had completely forgotten about in a totally natural and not forced way. mindy, doug forester, (the mushroom guy, i know, it took me a second), pillboy, donkey doug, kamilah, tahani’s parents, eleanor’s mother, eleanor’s friends, chidi’s best friend, vicki, shawn, glenn, simone and so many that i’m forgetting all got satisfying ends that they totally deserved.

they even fucking resolved FROG GUY’S arc and gave him a real frog. that’s right. frog guy (jeff) had a better character arc resolution than dean motherfucking winchester.

heaven and hell

obviously in very different vehicles, both shows explore in depth the realities of the afterlife. and lemme tell ya, at the end of the day, one sits a whole lot better than the other.

the good place finale ends this quest for the perfect afterlife by saying that everyone can improve and that an eternal paradise shouldn’t keep you from eternal rest. they pretty much make me wish that this is what our afterlife looked like. they handle everything with care so it’s balanced precariously in a way that doesn’t give you anxiety looking at it but instead fills you with peace and faith in humanity.

supernatural addresses this series long battle between heaven and hell by creating a heaven where you drive for forty years without seeing the people (cough cough cas and jack not his parents) that matter to you and drink beer that tastes like shit. a place you can’t be happy or find any sense of peace until your brother has died and he’s there too.

and hell… well they barely even address it. there’s a new queen of hell i guess? but so what. it’s still very much heaven and hell in a way that’s the worst and hey plus to them… makes me wanna stay alive thank you very much. oh and purgatory is in shambles and not functioning properly cuz all that eve bullshit.

loose ends

whenever something is ending, you gotta tie up the loose ends. not in a “oh, we must wrap everything up and leave no stone unturned” kinda way but in a “wow, we should probably try to make this unambiguous because this is the last time we will ever see these characters” kinda way.

the good place does that. so fucking masterfully. all these side plots with all these different characters were taken care of all while focusing on the main six characters. we get to see how their intervention has changed everyone else. for example, mindy’s arc is wrapped up perfectly, with eleanor going to save her.

plus different running jokes like “take it sleazy” are wrapped up, we revisit really old callbacks like the original neighborhood, and all of it feels natural and in the moment. it feels like full circle in a way that doesn’t erase growth.

supernatural, on the other hand, left a million loose ends open. what happened to the boys they saved? where the fuck are jody, donna, etc.? did eileen make it back? cuz sam was pretty upset about that. what happened to it “being loud” in the empty? hell, what happened to the empty? what happened to hell? what about chuck? it woulda been nice to see just for a second what became of him. did charlie and stevie make it (i’m very invested in that relationship)? if we’re taking the original ending… why the fuck is jimmy there? did kansas just all,,, die?

i’m not saying they needed to address everything… but god a few wrapped up storylines besides the brothers wouldn’t have hurt

coloring

can i just… real quick… as a giffer lodge a complaint

the good place has beautiful vibrant coloring in the finale

spn has like bland washed out whatever the fuck that is coloring. it’s not even the dark early aesthetic cuz they dropped that it’s just… ew. so. do with that what you will.

conclusion

first… while writing this i realized just HOW MUCH it’s not about destiel… like believe me. i knew i wasn’t just pissed about destiel. but holy shit it’s not destiel at all like did i even mention destiel that much???? this was never about a ship. this was just a trash finale.

in the end. the good place writers knew what they were doing. they knew their fans, they knew their characters, they knew their world, and they knew how to wrap it up in a way that was satisfying and sad and perfectly fit the tone of the whole show. it wasn’t out of character or rushed, basically every loose end was tied up without the audience even realizing that’s what they were doing, and i feel happy and complete having watched it.

the supernatural ending was a betrayal. flat out. to the audience that has stuck by it in a way bigger way than the good place fandom. to the characters that have helped so many people. to the actors that have given so much of their lives. to the other members of the crew, to certain writers… all of it was just a slap in the face.

we deserved better guys. there are better endings possible. so i’m sorry. i really am. but i guess… that’s what fanfic is for, right?

751 notes · View notes

spnficsoutofboredom · 3 years ago

Text

Finally got around to writing more. This part is shorter than the others. It only has 708 words versus the 1000+ the others have. I hope you still enjoy it :)

Also, if you have any recommendations feel free to message me or ask me!

Part 5

Sam, Dean , and Cas all stood there as the door blasted up, revealing 3 angels. They all had angel blades in there hands, ready to fight themselves.

“We don't want to hurt anyone, especially you Castiel.” One of the angels spoke in the doorway, slightly stepping into the hotel room.

“Then what is the purpose of this?” Sam questioned back.

“There are a lot of reasons. For starters, humans and angels can’t be together!” The same angel spoke. “Its-its not natural and always ends badly.”

“Either end the relationship or we will hunt you down until one or both of you are dead!” Another angel spoke.

“Lets fight then, because I’m not running from you anymore” Cas said to them. “I’m happy, can’t you see that. I never admitted how I felt towards Dean because I knew the risk. I knew what would have happened if I did! I don’t care anymore, so if you want me dead” Cas said as he threw his knife on the floor. “If you really want me dead, you can just kill me now, no fight.”

“Cas, don’t be stupid” Dean said to him.

Cas turned around and smiled back at Dean.

The angel, who appeared to be the leader of the group, slowly stepping up to Cas, drawing up his blade, ready to plunge it into his chest. He was interrupted by someone’s voice.

“Hey!” he turned around to find one of his companions with their own blade drawn, stabbed him right in the heart.

“Joseph, what the hell!” the last remaining angel spoke to him. “You can’t just-“

He was cut off by Joseph walking up to him, stabbing him in his abdomen, killing him instantly.

“Uh-so” Dean said bringing his right hand to his head, scratching it, with a confused look on his face. “What just happened?” he finished bringing his hand back down.

“Obviously as you just heard from my fellow brother, I am Joseph.” He spoke.

“Why did you do that, Joseph? You just ruined your life” Cas told him, sounding sympathetic but also confused.

“What you said, it really got to me. You’re right. What the hell does it matter, you’re happy and that's all that should matter.” He said back to all three of them. “Listen, you guys should get out of here before any one else shows up.”

Sam first exited the hotel room, grabbing the keys to the car and making his way out of the hotel. Cas followed Sam to the car and got in the back seat of the Impala. Dean was walking out the door when he paused and turned around.

“Thank you” he said to Joseph.

Joseph responded with a slight nod and smile to show his appreciation.

“So, where to? Back to the bunker?” Cas asked.

“I mean, the bunker is predictable. What about the cabins Bobby had placed around for all the hunters to crash when they need to?” Sam responded back.

Dean tilted his head, slightly agreeing with Sam.

“What state?” Dean said.

“Got it.” Sam shot up, snapping his finger. “Florida. We can make this the vacation we have always wanted.”

“I’m down. Cas, you in?” Dean said, looking into the back seat.

“Absolutely” he replied back, following with a big smile.

“Wait can’t angel track you or something?” Sam said before they headed their way to Florida.

“Pull over” Cas said.

Cas got out of the car which followed Sam and dean to promptly exit as well.

“Cas what are yo-“ Dean was interrupted by Cas placing one hand on his chest and the other on Sam.

“Seriously? That again?” Dean said.

“It’s the only thing we can do. If we put angel warding’s I’ll be blocked out as well, branding you was the only thing I could think of” Cas told Sam and Dean.

“Yeah, didn’t think of that. This way we can be together” Dean replied back.

Dean and Cas stood there staring at each other when they heard Sam clear his throat.

Dean slowly look at Sam, giving him a death stare.

“What? I was uncomfortable” Sam laughed uncontrollably.

Dean rolled his eyes as the all returned back to the car, heading off, not knowing what to expect.

11 notes · View notes

aerialflight · 4 years ago

Text

Fic Recs (cause it's always nice to give a shout out and get people into things I'm into rn)

[The Magnus Archives] (I recently finished the podcast and I fell into a hole for a while so here you go)

Sing a Song of Sixpence by Kaiel

Ship: Jon/Martin

In which Jonathan Sims is a Siren, and he fails to notice any new abilities granted to him by the position of Archivist. Or really anything about the Entities at all.

Takes place in season 1 featuring Jonah Magnus’s slow decent into madness

(The new mythology interwoven with tma's worldbuilding is so freaking good and I love how all the characters change and develop because of these changes. Also, f you Elias)

Along Came a Spider by Dribbledscribbles

Ship: implied Jon/Martin

Sasha James is the Archivist, as expected. Martin Blackwood is menaced by Jane Prentiss, as expected. Elias Bouchard weaves his web, as expected.

All goes as it should.

At least until something calling itself Jonathan Sims steps in.

(Web!Jon in this makes me want to weep, it's so freaking good. A pretty long, very excellent oneshot on what could've happened if Jon got taken by the web when he was a kid. And Sasha as the Archivist is ALWAYS so cool, we love her in this house.)

A Break in the Clouds by Ash_Rabbit

“I’m eight.” the kid sniffs as if eight was any different from four, maybe not an unspeakable horror then, just a regular horror. “And I heard that the Magnus Institute deals with-” his little nose scrunches, cute. “-spooky things.”

“Do you have a-” he cracks a grin, and then rethinks it as small hands tighten against their burden.”-spooky thing to deliver?” gods he hopes not, it’s bad enough when adults walk in and lay out all of their baggage, but for a child-

“There’s a spider in this book.” the kid says solemnly, raising his textbook sized parcel. “It ate Evan Pritchard.” a bloody fucking Leitner. Of course an eight year old would find a murder spider book. “This seemed like the best place to bring it.”

(I never thought about what the Original Elias could've been like AND NOW I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT BECAUSE OF THIS FIC. I LOVE HIM, HE'S COMPLEX AND HE CARES AND JON CARES AND THEY BOTH CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER. THIS IS THE CONTENT I WANT, OMG. Also, Jon being even smaller than usual is adorable, so cute. No wonder Elias wants to hug him, a LOT.)

See the Line where the Sky meets the Sea by The_Floating_World

Ship: Jon/Martin, Jon/Oliver Banks

When Jon is a child he looks into the infinite abyss of space. The Vast looks back into him.

(One of my all time fave fics in this fandom, no questions asked. I have reread this three times and am open to doing it again, god. Vast!Jon, such a concept. It's written so beautifully and the relationships Jon develops, so good. ugh. My heart. Please please read.)

Sweet As Roses by Prim_the_Amazing

Ship: Jon/Martin

“Come in, Martin,” he says, not looking up from his notes.

“Hi, Jon,” he says, and Jon stops writing at the sound of his voice. “We’re out of the green tea, but we’ve got lemon?”

Jon looks at him. Martin smiles at him in his usual tentative way as he sets the mug of tea down on Jon’s desk. Heat spikes so sharply in his gut that he twitches with it.

“Thank you, Martin,” he says, mouth dry, and he stands up.

“Oh,” he says, sounding almost surprised. He smiles again. “No-- no problem-- um, what are you--”

Jon takes Martin by the shoulders, leans up on the tips of his toes, and kisses him.

(You have no idea how much I howled through this fic, my god. *buries face in hands* The number of times I wanted to cry from sheer hilarity and horror reading this good lord.)

Things Could Always Be Worse by theOestofOCs

Ship: Jon/Martin, Georgie/Melanie

Sometimes, the most horrifying thing of all is what might have been.

Somewhere, Jon could swear he heard a crowd laughing.

Or: in which Jonathan Sims is forced to swap places with his alternate self—a tall, chivalrous hero extraordinaire, who knows neither fear nor nuance—and is sent to the aggressively straight alternate universe the Magnus Archives was never meant to be.

“Whatever place this is,” Jon announced, “I just want to be sure it knows I hate it.”

(I will say this once, THIS IS THE MOST CURSED THING IVE EVER READ EVER. Like holy hell. I can't believe this thing exists. please read it oh please please please)

[Supernatural]

heard from your mother (she don't recognize you) by Schmuzz

Ship: Dean/Cas, Jessica/Sam

A man named Cas wakes up in 2003 with no memories, but he's able to piece together a few things:

1. Supernatural creatures exist, and most of them will hurt innocent civilians if he doesn't stop them; 2. He has abilities that no human hunter should have, but he knows enough about human hunters to keep that to himself, and finally; 3. He keeps running into another hunter named Dean Winchester, who seems to be about as lonely as he is if he's willing to put up with those former facts long enough to help Cas unravel the mystery of who (or what) he really is.

For his part, Dean's still (not) dealing with Sam's departure to Stanford, and figures distracting himself with a bit of mystery and intrigue is as harmless as it gets, right? Right.

(THE fic I'm most into right now, been following this from the very start and it's AMAZING. Cas has agency and is making friends and S1 Dean is growing out of John's influence and is becoming a Person and the both of them first being friends then more. The slow burn as their relationship develops, SO GOOD. SO SO DAMN GOOD. *screams* Seriously one of the best spn fics I've read in a long, long time.)

anamnesis by cenotaphy

Ships: Castiel/Dean, Sam/Eileen

Chuck is depowered, Jack is the new god, and the world is free. Dean and Sam get into the Impala and chase down the miles on an endless highway, and their story is finally, finally their own to follow. At least, that's what Dean tells himself. But the diners and motels and painted interstate lines are blurring together and the smallest details keep catching at his brain like tiny fishhooks and he can't quite shake the feeling that not everything is exactly as it should be.

* Fix-it/alternate series finale. Canon-compliant through the end of 15.19.

(THIS IS THE FIC THAT GOT ME THROUGH THE FINALE OKAY. WHY COULDN'T THIS HAVE BEEN CANON. It's Disturbing and honestly plot-wise this makes more sense. Why couldn't we have had this. *screams*)

[Avatar: The Last Airbender]

where the stars do not take sides by WitchofEndor

Ship: Sokka/Zuko

When Azula is nine, she becomes an only child. She hears the Fire Lord call for Zuko's life, and in the morning, her mother and brother are gone. Azula may be young, but she isn't naive. She knows what happened to them.

Which makes it all the more surprising when Azula tracks the Avatar down and fights his group of peasant friends, only to find herself staring into an eerily familiar face.

(The fact one of the tags in this fic is, "Sibling Dynamic: Fucked Up But Wholesome" should give you an idea what this fic is like. Chaotic as HELL and I just love Azula here, she loves Zuko so much in her messed up way and Zuko loves her back in the exact same way lol. It's batshit and I am Here For This.)

[Naruto]

Eclipse by AislingRoisin (JayBird345) for HybrisAnaideia

Ship: Nara Shikaku/OFC

"In life, it's easier to remain stagnant and wallow in your troubles. But life isn't merely about continued existence, nor is it meant to be gone through alone."

(This is a fic that's slept on and I NEED people to read this. A self-insert fic that I find really interesting in its approach and the worldbuilding for the post-third war shinobi world is fantastic. I feel like there's a certain pattern with self-insert fics, not that is a detriment in any way to how much I enjoy them, so this fic feels fresh to me in a way I haven't read in a while. I am waiting eagerly for this to get updated! Please read!)

On Freedom and Other Formalities by iaso

Ship: Kakashi/Genma/OFC

When push comes to shove, Hiwa Inuzuka doesn't go down easy. Reborn into a new, dangerous world? She puts her past life as a spy to work. Thrown into a war? Hiwa does her duty, for Konoha. And when she's forced into an arranged marriage? All there is to do is beat them to the punch and get married first. Thankfully, Genma Shiranui is willing to lend a hand. Literally. SI/OC

(Listen, LISTEN, it's about the slow burn, the longing, the communication (it both has and hasn't and isn't THAT great??), the messy way you fit three very different people together, it's so freaking good! Also, Kakashi is so Chaotic here this is my fave characterization of him, you can't change my mind. And Genma is a Good Boi who is Doing His Best, along with the Self-insert character who I LOVE SO MUCH, SHE'S FANTASTIC FNEIWOPAF. Sped past this fic in the speed of light, I could not stop reading!)(Honestly, read all of the author's fics, they're all really REALLY good!)

Building a Castle by WhisperingDarkness

Without needing anyone to tell her, Sakura knew that talking to someone no-one else could see or hear would make her weird. It would draw the bad kind of attention to her, something people could make fun of her for.

She didn’t like being weird, but she did like the voice. Her inner voice was helpful and it was a part of her that had always been there. The idea of it not being there would have been so much weirder than anything else.

It was during her first year at the Academy that Sakura realised the voice was not in her head at all, but that it came from a cloudy shape floating next to her.

(Basically a short-ish retelling of Hikaru no Go. Only with more Shogi and Nara and Ninja's)

(Sakura can see ghosts (I'm noticing this is a popular trope for her) and it's really cute haha! Her relationship with Tobirama is sweet and I just enjoyed reading this so much.)

[The Magicians]

So Long (And Thanks For All The Books) by IncompleteSentanc (Erava)

Ships: Quentin/Eliot, James/Julia, Quentin/Margo/Eliot

When Quentin is told Julia wasn't admitted to Brakebills, he realizes he has a drastic decision in front of him. If he tells Julia about magic, he'll have his mind wiped as well as hers. But he can't just leave her behind, either. He can't lose his best friend, and he can't let her life a life with her magical potential stolen away from her.

So he makes a third choice.

(Really, and I mean REALLY well-done canon divergent fic, this is the Quentin & Julia friendship fic I have been looking for forever. It explores so much of what could've happened and I just love Quentin here, I really really do. Characterization done so right. I also recommend the author's other works too. Been a follower of them for a long time, they're great.)

[Game of Thrones]

The Road to Victory by writing_as_tracey

Too late in preparing for the Night King and the Long Night, the last stand at Winterfell is close to falling. Bran takes desperate measures to ensure victory, and Jon, Sansa, and Arya pay the price for it in a time unfamiliar to them, on the cusp of another war. [GoT, time-travel fix it]

(I swear, this fic made me laugh so many times, all the Stark are BAMF and fantastic, and Rhaegar gets Wrecked lol. It's crack btw, and the plot goes in directions you'll never guess and it's amazing hahaha!)

[Haikyuu!!] (I am very very late to the fandom but here I am)

Ballare (To Dance) by MidnightSparks

Ship: Iwaizumi Hajime/Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru, and platonic Kageyama & Kentarou (really love their friendship)

Kageyama’s first love is volleyball. His second, however, is ballet.

In one world, Kageyama Tobio is left behind by his parents. In this world, the existence of soulbonds keeps Kageyama’s parents in Miyagi and leaves Kageyama in the care of his grandma and grandpa.

(In which soulmates exist and that changes everything and nothing at the same time.)

(*buries face in hands* I have fallen for this ship so hard and I can't get out fudge me. I understand now. Their DYNAMICS FIEWONPAF)

Kings of Tomorrow by bokubroya (liarielle)

Ship: Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru

On the eve of Tobio’s 16th birthday, he counts down the seconds to midnight, and emerges with Oikawa Tooru’s name on his wrist.

It’s been two years since then, and Tobio thought they had an understanding. A silent, never spoken about understanding that this thing between them is nothing, and they’re going to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Of course, it’s just like Oikawa to change the game and leave Tobio wondering what comes next.

(I am WEAK for soulmate fics between these two, I don't even really like soulmate fics half the times what is WRONG WITH ME-)(Please suffer with me, I'm begging you. Its a good fic, thumbs up.)

[Crossover]

Honey and Magic by JustARatherVerySillyWriter, White_Squirrel for Super Carlin Brothers

Fandoms: Matilda (yeah you read that right), Harry Potter

Everyone knew Matilda was a rather extraordinary child, but even she didn't know she was a witch. Matilda Honey receives her Hogwarts letter in the year of the Triwizard Tournament, and soon, she will leave her unique mark on the magical world.

(Do I even need to explain how amazing it is to have Matilda in the wizarding world? And Matilda is a HUFFLEPUFF AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL THIS FIC IS GREAT PLEASE READ!!!)

An Eye for an Eye by DpsMercy

Fandoms: The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale

In which Jonathan Sims is not from the UK but instead, if you took his origins and turned them sideways twice then flipped them over, he technically would be from the US, the town of Night Vale specifically. Elias can’t do shit about it and gets a headache and slowly creeping madness instead.

(Look, I know probably everyone has read this because if they haven't, what have you been DOING with your lives??? Jon interning at Night Vale is Incredible, nothing phases this man, it's Delightful. I laughed so many times reading this, I'm not even kidding right now. Read or perish.)

The Favour by R_Cookie

Fandoms: Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Ship: Original Percival Graves/Harry Potter

Percival is ten years old when his grandfather tries to tell him that he's ensured the greatness of the Graves legacy for him, that he ought to be eternally grateful - but the explanation is hijacked by a stranger who manages to intimidate Chester Graves with an ease never seen before.

or: Hadrian (Harry) Potter is the Master of Death, who grants Graves a boon. Nobody could have known that the Deathly Hallows didn't turn you so much into the 'Master of Death' as into the anthropomorphic personification of Death. And so, Death becomes Percival's guardian angel, and Percival does not spit out his cereal.

(Look, I don't know how I stumbled back into the FBAWTFT fandom either, it just happened and I'm grateful for that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found this amazing fic. Their relationship is slow and strange and I just love how Percival is characterized here. Also, one of the tag promises that it deviates from canon so I am really, really excited for that! XD)

baby that's what i do by natanije

Fandoms: Naruto, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!

"Are you telling me," Hidan exclaims, incredulous, "that you collect money all this time to give to orphans?!"

Kakuzu pauses. He blinks a few times.

"Huh. I guess I do."

(Tsuna reincarnates as Kakuzu and it's HILARIOUS. HE'S SUCH A MOM HAHAHA)

#Fanfiction #AO3 #Fic Rec #Fic Rec List #Podcasts #The Magnus Archives #Supernatural #Avatar The Last Airbender #Naruto #The Magicians #Game of Thrones #Haikyuu!!#Crossover #Matilda #Welcome to Night Vale #Harry Potter #Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them #Katekyou Hitman Reborn

98 notes · View notes

heller-a-good-time · 4 years ago

Text

I offer a theory about tonight’s episode and the finale and yes it’s a long shot but I’m just writing this to make both myself and all of you feel a little better.......

From the very beginning of this episode, something felt off.

Dean tells Sam and Jack what happens to Cas and everyone has a very underwhelming reaction to it. Not to mention, they gloss over how exactly Cas died.

For the entirety of the episode they don’t seem very effected by Cas’s death.

Next, we’re told that Lucifer was brought back from the empty despite the fact that only a few episodes ago we were told chuck had no way of doing that. We can obviously chalk that up to bad writing and most likely it probably is. But it’s crazy that they seriously created a plot hole for episodes that are so close to one another. This is usually something we see happen between different seasons.

Also, despite everything that Lucifer has done in this show, the brothers are almost too quick to trust him. Granted they do have some doubts at the very beginning but the brothers would usually put up a bit more fight than that considering how much Lucifer has taken from them over the years. Dean has struggled to trust Jack for several seasons because of what he’s done and specifically what happened to Mary. And yet Dean trusts Lucifer in the space of a couple of minutes.

Then, there’s the ending.

When Chuck finally decides to end Dean and Sam, he says he can “Get his hands dirty” despite the fact that in an episode earlier in the season, Sam accuses him of being too afraid to get his hands dirty.

Chuck is defeated almost too quickly for being God. And the way he begs for Sam and Dean to kill him as they drive away also just doesn’t seem like God.

Also, this entire season, we’ve seen Dean absolutely furious over what Chuck has done to him and his family’s lives. He has been so hellbent on killing him that he pointed a gun at his own brother just two episodes ago. Even last episode, he tried to take Death on by himself because he was so motivated to kill Chuck. And then when he’s finally at that moment he’s been waiting for, he barely seems to care. Granted, it could be argued that Cas’s death might’ve made him finally realize how reckless he’s been the entire season. But everytime Dean has ever lost someone he usually has two responses. Getting himself killed or revenge (with the exception of Sam’s deaths where he obviously desperately tries to bring him back but I’ll talk more about that in a second) It’s been a consistent pattern with him throughout the show. And yet all of them are absent here. They’re not even acknowledged.

And also, them sparing Chuck wasn’t them being heroic. Killing him would have been mercy in this instance. Instead, they force him to live as mortal with no family—because he killed the only son who still trusted him, and he has to spend the rest of his life knowing he couldn’t defeat Sam and Dean. This specifically reminds me of that scene when Dean was demon back in season 10 when he spared the man who had traveled all that way and trained his entire life just to kill Dean for what he did to his father. And Dean spares him. Not because it was the good thing to do. Because the man would spend his entire life knowing he missed his one shot and that was ultimately a worse punishment than death. And they do the same thing to Chuck in this episode.

When Jack brings everyone back, the boys don’t even seem to care that now all of their friends and Eileen are alive. Sam doesn’t even mention her despite the fact that two episodes ago when he first heard about everyone “going back to where they belong” his first concern was Eileen. He was also completely gutted last episode knowing she was gone and he doesn’t even mourn her in this episode.

Also, when Jack becomes God, Dean doesn’t even ask him to bring Cas back. Despite the fact that this is once again one of his common responses we’ve seen consistently throughout the show when he loses someone. And especially considering how Cas died, Dean should especially want him back. Even when not interpreting his feelings romantically, Cas has been his best friend for 11 years. And they finally have the peace that Cas helped them fight (and sacrificed his own life) for. Dean would want Cas back. Especially since he knows now from earlier on in this episode that God has the power to do that.

Jack then decided to not go to the bunker with them. Despite the fact that for the three seasons he’s been in, the only thing he’s ever wanted was a family and to be accepted. (Let’s not even mention the fact that the brothers were both just chill with a 3 year old running the universe now. Even if it is Jack. He’s literally three. But whatever.)

The boys head back to the bunker and celebrate their “big win” if you can even call it that. They are completely content with being all alone. They lost Cas. They kind of lost Jack too. And they’re fine with it.

Literally last season, a bunch of hunters from the alternate dimension that they barely knew were all murdered and they were more upset about the bunker being empty after that than they are at the end of this episode.

They do a toast to all of the people they’ve lost along the way in a bit too good of a mood, which is something that these characters would never do. We’ve seen them grieve every person they’ve ever lost prior to this episode and they always believe the blood in on their hands. Yet now they’re suddenly content with the people they’ve lost. Even if it was their own faults.

The entire show has been about family. And yet half of their family is missing in this ending and they’re okay.

The entire show has also been about how the two of them have a crippling codependent relationship and how that always seems to start trouble. Instead of the brothers finally acknowledging this relationship. They now live happily in the bunker. Probably still codependent on each other.

Which means neither of them were forced to learn a damn thing.

My point is this episode feels very off.

And people who have watched 15 seasons of this show more than likely recognize that.

And there’s so many things that seem wrong and ooc that it almost feels as if it’s on purpose.

And that’s why I’m starting to wonder.....

What if it is?

There’s one more episode to go and what if, just maybe, they reveal that the episode that we just watched tonight isn’t what really happened. Maybe it’s the cheesy “it was all a dream” trope. Who knows?

The biggest reason why I believe this (besides the fact that I’m just a salty bitch and I need to find a way to calm myself down) is because this ending aligns almost perfectly with what Becky said about Chuck’s final ending earlier on in the season.

I now provide you the examples:

Just saying.....

I think that this might just be another variation of Chuck’s endings that they were forced to play out. Or something like that.

Because there’s just so many things that don’t fit with the entire rest of the show.

From what I’ve seen online thus far, people are very upset with this episode. Because they’ve watched 15 seasons of this show and they can tell when something just isn’t right.

And in a way, if this episode was purposely made to feel off to then reveal in the finale that none of this was real, it would pay respect to the fans who watched the show for all these years. Because they’re so familiar with the characters and the way plot lines usually play out that when all of a sudden it felt like Opposite Day watching this episode, they picked up on it and they were supposed to.

(Also another thing that I just realized I forgot to add, maybe this is just me, but a lot of the scenes in the montage at the end were very random??? Like a lot of them were insignificant scenes from the show. Ya know? I just think if any of us put together a montage for this show it would probably feature very different scenes. Like way more important ones. Maybe this fits into my theory? Maybe I’m absolutely reaching too damn far with this one. Idk. Please tell me I’m crazy)

Maybe this episode relied on fans having extensive knowledge of this show and it’s past. Maybe this episode wants you to believe something is off about it. Because they’re going to rip the rug right out from under you in the finale.

Hell, maybe this entire season has been a lie. We’ve seen Dean specifically do things he would never do in previous episodes. Point a gun at Sam. Tell Jack he’s not family. Be completely on board with sacrificing a family member. And Sam has been practically wallpaper in this season but maybe let’s not get into that too much. And hell, I’m gonna say it: Destiel went kinda canon when we never in a million years ever thought it would. Maybe all of these things are supposed to tell us all of this season wasn’t real? Maybe. Dunno. I think I’m actually just going insane? Yeah that’s probably it.

I’m really just spit balling here. Mostly because I was very upset by this episode. But maybe some of you feel the same and even if this is nowhere close to where the show is heading in its ending, I just wanted to maybe provide some comfort to those who feel the same as me.

Or maybe I’m completely wrong and this episode was just bad.

197 notes · View notes

rowan-underthehouse · 3 years ago

Text

Backseat Driving

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Ruby/Sam Winchester

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 3547

Warnings: Descriptions of violence, mild sexual content, language

Additional Tags: mostly comedy with a few more serious moments, relationship reveal

Summary:

Sam and Dean Winchester have done a remarkable job of keeping their relationships with things they should probably be hunting a secret from each other. That is, until now.

Read it on Ao3 here

Sam never thought he’d live to say it, but he should probably be more grateful his brother is alive.

In a grander sense, he’s thrilled. He would have given everything for this in a heartbeat. Hell, he tried to give everything for this. All he wishes is that there was a way around the guilt.

It had become white noise when Dean was in the pit, horrible and endless, but it could be drowned out. He could convince himself that Dean would have wanted this if he could have seen the whole picture. Now it comes in waves. One moment he’s fine, the next he can barely keep his head above the water.

Sam is lacing his boots, trying to be as silent as possible when it hits him tonight. Dean willingly went to an eternity of torture for Sam’s sake, and Sam couldn’t even honour his dying wish. It’s harder to justify with his brother sleeping curled on his stomach a few feet away. Harder to ignore.

It’s ridiculous, shoving pillows under his quilt like some teenager sneaking out the back door with a bottle of Jack, but if he can’t keep his promise, at least he can try to keep Dean from worrying.

He quietly drops the impala’s keys into his pocket, and slips out into the night.

…

It’s hellhounds that wake Dean tonight, tearing at his chest and leaving shredded ribbons of flesh. He can’t move. Can’t fight or even look down. He just lays there, feeling the wet warmth of blood soaking into his clothes, catching glimpses of enormous slobbering heads, gasping for the breath that barely makes its way into his lungs.

He bolts upright, only making it halfway to the knife beneath his pillow before his brain lurches into the dark and empty motel room a few seconds after the rest of his body. He goes for fistfuls of his hair instead, tugging until it hurts and digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. His jaw aches, teeth having been clenched for far too long.

It’s another stupid fucking nightmare. That’s all it is. Dean just needs to fight through the relentless exhaustion still weighing him down and get his feet on the floor. Get some water or just stretch and try to reset his brain for any chance at a few hours of good sleep. But there’s a dog howling in the room next door and his eyes are so sticky with tears they almost burn and he can’t make his legs listen to his brain and kick off the covers.

“Shit.”

He doesn’t notice the telltale flutter of feathers, just the sudden steady pressure of Cas’ hand on his shoulder. Dean startles hard, sucking in a breath as he whips around.

“Cas.” A tiny bit of the tension drains from Dean’s body. “Did I,” he clears his throat, reaching for some dignity. “Did I call for you again?”

Cas smiles softly, setting a hand on Dean’s sternum, easing the crushing of his lungs, brushes knuckles against Dean’s jaw and saps out the tension. Maybe it’s a waste of his grace, but Cas always refuses to hear it.

“In a way. I sensed your longing.”

It sounds fucking pathetic, but Dean can’t bring himself to care. He’s too tired for the usual embarrassment that would come with grabbing fistfuls of Cas’s coat with trembling hands, and tugging him lightly toward the bed. Cas doesn’t need convincing.

Cas runs a hand through Dean’s hair and presses a kiss to the top of his head. He pulls back just long enough to drop his overcoat to the floor and kick off his shoes. Dean barely has time to register the loss of contact before Cas is straightening out the sheets, easing him out of his sweat soaked overshirt and jeans. He climbs under the covers and tangles his legs with Dean’s as easily as if it was breathing. Like they’re meant to hold each other this way. He pulls Dean tight to his chest, kneading his fingers into the tension in Dean’s shoulder blades, and Dean melts into him.

The battle against the bone-deep exhaustion dragging Dean back toward sleep is quickly becoming uphill. He presses his face into the fabric of Cas’ shirt.

“It’s alright, Dean. Rest. I have you.”

And Dean gives up the fight.

…

Maybe it’s hard-wired into demons for the sake of all their contracts, or maybe Ruby really wants to see what will happen next, but Sam doubts her constant punctuality is a courtesy.

She’s waiting on the corner of Oak and 19th when Sam pulls up, exactly where she said she’d be, jacket pulled tight across her chest to fend off the night chill.

Sam opens the door and she slides into the passenger seat.

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

Sam keeps his eyes on the dash. “Yeah. Well, I’m here now.”

Ruby catches his arm on its way to the ignition, finally managing to meet his eyes, her tone more gentle.

“You can’t listen to him, Sam. You’re stronger than your brother. He wouldn’t understand. He’d ruin everything we’ve worked for. It’s too important. We can’t let him get in the way.”

Sam sighs deeply. “I know.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Sam. This is the only way.”

“I know.”

Ruby relaxes her grip on Sam, easing back into the passenger seat as if nothing had happened.

“I would kill for some French fries. We can go to that restaurant and try to pick up Lilith’s trail. We’ll have to make sure you’re strong enough for tonight…”

She slips out her pocket knife, casually drawing the flat edge across her bicep, like a fidget instead of the open invitation Sam knows it is.

“…help you unwind.”

Sam steps on the gas.

…

Dean doesn’t sleep for more than an hour, waking up with Cas still relaxed beside him, eyes closed. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d think the angel was asleep. One big hand is splayed over Dean’s hip, thumb dipping just below the waistband of his worn boxers.

It’s driving Dean crazy.

It would be so easy to shift Cas’ hand to where he needs it. He’d just have to roll over. Maybe it would seem too desperate, but, fuck, Dean is desperate. It’s been weeks since they’ve had time for this and he’s passed one too many long drives thinking about Cas’ mouth on him.

Instead, he scoots closer, untucking Cas’s shirt to get to warm skin and toned abs. He presses a kiss into Cas’s collar bone, his neck, the underside of his jaw before finally pulling back to see his face. Cas’ eyes are open, pupils blown wide as he watches Dean. The grip on Dean’s hip tightens.

In one fluid movement, Dean repositions to kiss Cas more solidly, just about blacking out for a second when Cas matches his enthusiasm.

“Want you,” Cas gasps out between kisses.

His voice alone is almost enough for Dean. He closes his eyes again, trying to compose himself. “Yeah. Yeah, alright baby. Hold on.”

Cas frowns when Dean pulls back, obviously confused, until Dean props himself up and rolls to straddle Cas’ hips. It’s a process to get his shirt unbuttoned and off, Dean still kissing him like the world is ending much faster than it is, and Cas no more eager to pull away.

Dean finally sits back into Cas’ lap, taking a moment to catch his breath. He trails a hand down Cas’ chest, making him shiver.

“Fuck, sweetheart, look at you.” Dean loves seeing Cas like this, his face so open and happy. And because of Dean. It’s hard to wrap his head around. Dean traces along the smile forming on Cas’ lips, beaming when Cas presses a kiss into the pad of his thumb. He could get used to this.

Dean is leaning down to kiss him again when he loses his balance. He doesn’t fully understand what’s happening until his back hits the mattress, hands gently pinned above his head. It might be the hottest thing Dean has ever experienced. He barely stifles a moan as Cas shifts his weight on top of him.

At that exact moment, Dean remembers his brother, still tucked under his quilt in the adjacent bed.

“We should take this somewhere else.”

Cas nods, a strand of already disheveled hair falling into his face, and then Dean’s back hits the familiar cold leather of the impala’s back seat.

Arms unpinned, he sets to work on Cas’ belt, finally letting out the soft moan that’s been building at the back of his throat.

“Cas? DEAN!?” Dean doesn’t need to look to recognize Sam’s voice coming from the driver’s seat. “What the hell!”

…

Like so many other cars, the impala has a big, slightly scratchy blanket that lives in the back seat. The only difference is that this one has been replaced a good dozen times when there was too much blood to just wash out. The current car blanket is an almost new, grey number, which is, as it turns out, just big enough to wrap Dean in his relative state of undress like a very angry burrito.

He sits in the backseat, scowling at Sam through the rearview mirror. To Sam’s right, Ruby is looking only slightly less unimpressed.

Sam tries to enjoy the last few seconds of silence.

Ten…nine…eight…

“So it’s not bad enough to work with a demon, now you’re sleeping with her too?”

“Dean…”

“Don’t ‘Dean’ me! What the hell do you think you’re doing, man? How long have you been…been fraternizing with the enemy!”

Sam is living proof that no matter how hard you roll your eyes, they won’t get stuck.

“She’s not ‘the enemy’, and you don’t have much of a leg to stand on here, Dean. Do you really think it’s a good idea to get dicked down by an angel?”

Dean opens his mouth like there’s actually an excuse he could use here. No words come out. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Never say ‘dicked down’ to me again.”

Sam’s gained a bit of ground, and he refuses to lose it now.

He finally adjusts the mirror to get a good look at Castiel. He sits next to Dean, all shirtless and messy haired, but somehow the same stoic warrior Sam has always known save for the way he stares out the window like if he’s still enough they’ll forget he’s there.

It doesn’t take Dean long to deflect. “How long has this been going on behind my back?”

“You were dead, Dean! There wasn’t exactly a back to go behind.”

Ruby, who had apparently decided to let the brothers sort out their own argument, finally whirls around in her seat.

“He’s a big boy. He can make his own decisions.”

“Ruby-“ Sam wonders if it’s too late to launch himself out of the car.

“Apparently he can’t!” Dean half yells. “I’m dead for four months and the guy goes and hooks up with a demon! What if you knock her up Sam, did you ever think about that?”

Sam doesn’t have time to interject.

“And in my car ! Please tell me none of this happened in my car!”

Sam decides it’s best to say nothing at all.

“No.” Dean puts his head in his hands, ever the dramatic. “No! I’m going to have to deep-clean everything in here! No, you’re going to deep-clean everything.” He jabs an accusatory finger in Sam’s direction.

This was bound to come out eventually. Sam had hoped it would be many, many months down the line, over a beer, after he had defeated Lilith and saved the day. A little more congratulating and a little less half-naked Dean in the back seat. Now the best he can hope for is a chance at damage control. He turns to Ruby, who seems to be trying to glare Cas to death before he can do the same to her. That explains why they’ve been so quiet.

“Look, can you give us a minute, guys? It might be better for Dean and I to talk this out alo-“

Cas is gone before Sam can even finish his sentence. It almost feels too easy.

“Ruby?”

She hesitates, looking from Sam, to Dean, and back again.

“Alright, fine.” Her voice is seething with anger. “If your brother doesn’t trust me after everything I’ve sacrificed for you then I’ll just get out of the way. Enjoy your talk.”

Sam pulls over at the nearest gas station, getting one last icey look from Ruby before she opens the door.

“Lilith has been here.” A deep voice from the backseat makes Sam jump.

Cas has returned to his seat, now fully dressed, his brow pinched together.

“A town called High River 60 miles North.”

…

There have been a lot of awkward drives in the years Dean has spent hunting with his brother, but this might be the worst. He actually feels a flood of relief when the car rolls to a stop in a parking lot dimly lit by flickering lights.

The building in front of them appears to be a diner. It must be called Hal’s or Val’s or something, but after one too many seasons of snow, the sign reads A L’S I ER in washed out glowing red. The musty air reaches Dean a good twenty paces away when Sam cracks the door open and peers inside.

Sam signals behind him, and Ruby is slipping in the door before Dean can make a move.

“Just…wait here a minute. We’ve got it covered.”

“And let you go off with the demon chick and do whatever it is the two of you do when you aren’t defiling my car? I don’t think so.”

Dean starts after him, Cas stopping him by the arm. Dean doesn’t pull away. His heart does a tiny little flutter right out of a dimestore novel. It's embarrassing.

He gives Cas a once over, taking in the usual outfit, and then his own faded t-shirt and boxers. “Come on, man. You couldn’t have thought to grab me a pair of jeans?”

Cas’ face goes faintly red in the flickering light. He seriously considers something for a moment.

“I could go now, but it might be best for me to remain here.” He shoots a glance after Sam and Ruby.

“Forget it.” Dean grumbles.

Cas tilts his head to meet Dean’s eyes where he’s turned away. The grip on his arm goes from restraining to affectionate.

“You’re not angry with me. You’re embarrassed. And you’re scared that now this is out in the open something bad will happen.”

Dean scoffs “It’s not out in the-“

Cas moves a hand up to cup his face smiling gently. Reassuring.

Dean says nothing. Just covers Cas’ hand with his own and leans into it, closing his eyes.

…

When Sam peaks back out the diner door, Dean is waiting for him with his arms, and Castiel’s coat crossed across his chest like a disapproving sit-com mother.

“It’s all clear. Just one demon in there. We’ve got him tied up.”

“Wow, gee, great, Sammy. Did you gift wrap him for me too?” Dean calls back, voice dripping with sarcasm.

There goes the damage control. Sam sighs. At least the lying is over, even if it does come with the uniquely uncomfortable knowledge of why Dean’s grocery runs have been taking so long. Well… some of the lying is over. And he’s not lying to Dean about his powers exactly. Just strategically omitting details.

He pushes the door all the way open and leaves Dean to come in when he’s done sulking.

Maybe Dean is going to spend the rest of the night in You-did-something-I-don’t-like-so-now-I’m-going-to-be-as-miserable-as-possible mode, but Sam has to give him credit, he knows how to get a job done. When Dean marches up to the half-rotten chair the demon is tied to, it’s pretty intimidating.

The demon smirks up at Dean, not even struggling against the ropes bound over his grease-stained apron. He must have been the cook.

“Nice coat. Do you always dress like this for a hunt?”

Dean ignores him.

“What’s your name?”

Sam has stayed back behind his brother, half-bathed in shadow, and fixed his glare on the demon. If he’s heard anything from the others he’ll know it’s time to start talking.

“Does it matter?”

Shit. This isn’t going to be as easy as Sam had hoped. Apparently his reputation only precedes him so far.

Dean sets a hand on the back of the demon’s chair and leans in. “Alright. Let’s just cut the small talk then. Why was Lilith here?”

“Looks like you made it out of the pit, that’s a real shame, Winchester.” It’s subtle, but Sam sees Dean tense. Cas takes half a step forward. “Heard you were a real prodigy. Think you can get me to talk?”

Dean leans closer, pulling Ruby’s knife from the pocket of his…well…Cas’ coat. With a start, Sam realizes he had almost forgotten about the thing.

“Actually, I think I can.” He sneers.

At some point, Sam knows he’ll have to step in. He’ll have to bite the bullet and show Dean what he’s capable of. Pray he understands that it’s the only option. But Sam’s prayers have sat unanswered in some heavenly mail box long enough to collect their weight in dust. No. He’s going to make Dean understand.

He ignores Ruby’s warning look, closes his eyes and focuses on his breath, tugs on the dark thing deep inside him until he can feel it all the way to his fingertips, buzzing with power. He raises his hand. The squeezing starts to build inside his skull, like he’s standing on the roof of a plane with an unholy sinus infection. The demon’s voice barely cuts through it.

“Exorcise me if you want but Sebastian here has taken quite a beating. I leave, he dies.”

Sam lets his arm drop to his side, shrugging off the confused look Dean gives him. They’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

“What was Lilith doing here?” Ruby pipes up.

The demon possessing Sebastian chuckles. “That’s above my pay grade, sweetheart. I thought you’d know that.”

It’s Dean’s turn again. “You can lie all you want, but we’re going to find out about it one way or another. Let’s do this the easy way. Give her up now. Working with a demon like that is only going to cause you problems.”

Not-Sebastian looks confused.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Well if he’s lying for her, maybe there’s a good reason, Dean! He knows how you’d react if he told the truth! He’s not some kid you need to protect anymore!”

Dean spins around. “Oh, so this is my fault?”

“You’re doing the exact same thing! You only think you’re better because he’s an angel and you can’t accept that this isn’t as black and white as it seems!”

Not-Sebastian looks incredulously between them. “Am I interrupting something?”

It’s remarkable how fast Dean wipes the embarrassed look off his face and turns back around. “What did Lilith tell you?”

“Nothing. Just doing her annual press tour.”

Castiel chooses that moment to step in. “He’s telling the truth. He does know anything.” Before he can speak, Cas slaps a hand onto Not-Sebastian’s head, not flinching when a blinding light pours out of his eyes. The demon slumps in his chair. “It could be a trap. We aren’t prepared for Lilith to bring the fight to us. We need to leave.”

And just like that it’s over. Sam doesn’t bother trying to talk to Dean again. He avoids Ruby’s glare from the back of the room, glancing between the scorched eyes of Not-Sebastian and Castiel. She brushes past him on her way out the door and down the street. There will definitely be complaints later. For now, she leaves the impala behind her, not wanting to follow Not-Sebastian.

He can barely make out Dean’s voice from inside the diner.

“Think the health inspector must have missed this place. Maybe they barbecued him up Whistlestop Café style.” A long stretch of silence. “It was a joke, man.”

Sam finally breaks the silence halfway through the drive. Why Dean let him drive again is beyond Sam, but it’s good to have his hands on the wheel and his mind on the road. Even with the welcome distraction, he can only last so long. “Can we just talk about this in the morning?”

Dean sighs. He looks exhausted, the bags under his eyes easier to see when he’s not dedicating every moment to hiding them. “Fine. But we’re talking about it.”

“Deal.”

The quiet is softer after that, underscored by faint music from the radio. It doesn’t take Dean long to slump into Cas’ shoulder, asleep faster than Sam has ever seen, maybe because of the protective arm Cas has tucked around his waist. Dean seems gentler like this. Almost happy. It brings a smile to Sam’s face.

Sure things are messy, but they’re the Winchester’s. He expects nothing less. And maybe if things work out for Dean, if he can actually be happy like this, it will be okay for Sam too.

#spn #destiel #supernatural #deancas #samruby #spn fic #supernatural fic #destiel fic #deancas fic #samruby fic #destiel fanfic #deancas fanfic #spn fanfiction #supernatural fanfiction #my writing #fanfic

17 notes · View notes

petrichoravellichor · 4 years ago

Text

Begin and End There

For Day 3 of the Supernatural Deserved Better Creative Challenge (prompt: Castiel has rainbow wings).

This is Chapter 1 of 2; the second chapter will be written for a future prompt in the same challenge and should be up within the week.

Rating: T

Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel/Dean Winchester

Summary: After the Empty takes him, Castiel wakes up in the last place he expected, with a second chance at happiness when he reunites with Dean and the latter finally gets to speak his truth.

(Read on Ao3)

--------------------------------------------------------

THEN

Dean: “Just want to let you know you are saving our asses here. You’re saving the whole world’s ass.”

Amara: “I haven’t saved anything yet.”

Dean: “But when the time comes, we can count on you, right?”

Amara: “Like I told you when we first met: ‘You and I will always help each other.’”

-15x17, “Unity”

********************

NOW

Castiel opened his eyes, blinking against the white light that blurred his vision. Strange, he didn’t remember the Empty being this bright…

“Cas?”

That voice...He knew that voice. Jack. Had the Empty reneged on Its deal and taken them both? He felt a stab of panic at the thought and reached out in blind desperation. “Jack? Jack! Where are you?”

A hand caught his wrist and squeezed gently, and as quickly as the panic had come on, it was gone, banished by a soft pulse of familiar grace. “It’s okay,” he heard Jack say, “it’s okay, I’m here. We’re safe.”

Castiel sighed in relief. Thank goodness. He turned his head toward Jack’s voice and blinked once, twice, three times until his vision cleared and he saw, much to his surprise, that he was lying on the couch in Heaven’s throne room. Next to his head, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was Jack, looking relieved as their gazes met. He stood, finally letting go of Castiel’s hand.

Castiel got up off the couch and immediately pulled Jack into a hug that the latter returned in earnest. “What happened?” Castiel asked as they parted. “How did I get here?”

Jack’s lips quirked in a conspiratorial smile. “I made a deal with the Empty.” Then, eyes widening at Castiel’s look of alarm, he added hastily, “But not like the one you made! I told the Empty that Chuck was gone and that if It gave you back, I’d leave It alone forever. No more interfering, no more bringing anyone else back, just peace and quiet, like It wanted. And It said yes.”

Castiel felt his brow furrow. “Chuck is...dead?” How was that possible? And what had been the cost? Suddenly, every fear crashed down on him at once. He surged forward and seized Jack by the shoulders, frantic. “Dean. Sam. Where are they? Are they hurt? Are they here? Is that why we’re—”

“No.” Jack’s hands came up to wrap around Castiel’s forearms in a reassuring squeeze. “Sam and Dean, they’re both fine. Stevie, Eileen, and the other hunters too. I brought them back. I brought everyone back.”

“‘Everyone?’” Castiel echoed. He frowned. “Jack, what happened?”

Jack’s smile faded, and his grip on Castiel’s arms tightened, as though afraid Castiel would be torn away from him at any moment. “Before, when the Empty...when It took you, Chuck took everyone else away, too, the entire world. The only ones left were me and Sam and Dean, and then we found Michael, and then my...Lucifer, he came back, and he pretended to be you so Dean would let him into the Bunker, and…” Jack chewed his lip, considering, then said, “Here, it’s better if I just show you.”

He raised his hands to Castiel’s temples and pressed lightly.

Castiel saw the inside of the Bunker. He saw Lucifer killing a reaper to make a new Death, then eliminating her permanently once she’d opened Chuck’s book. He saw the fight that had followed, saw Michael kill Lucifer and Jack absorb the latter’s power, saw Jack sit down with Sam and Dean and Michael in the war room to formulate a plan…

As though from far away, Jack’s voice filtered into his thoughts: “And then we all went after Chuck...”

The scene changed. Instead of the Bunker, Castiel saw a large clearing next to a lake. He saw Sam and Dean, armed with angel blades, yell for Chuck to come and face them. He saw Chuck appear, arrogant, condescending, his expression twisting into one of fury when Michael stepped out of the trees to stand next to the brothers, his archangel blade glinting in the sun. Castiel saw Chuck order Michael to kill Sam and Dean, saw Michael flat out refuse. He saw Sam and Dean and Michael rush Chuck together, all of them quickly becoming enmeshed in a brutal hand-to-hand combat that ended abruptly when Chuck sent out a shockwave that brought the others to their knees. He saw Chuck raise his fingers, poised to snap, ready to end it for everyone except himself, when—

“Amara!” Dean yelled. “Now!”

And then Castiel saw Chuck seize, as though restrained by an invisible force. He saw Jack step into the clearing and walk purposefully up to his grandfather, a look of fire in his eyes. He saw Jack place his hands on Chuck’s temples, saw the surge of energy that flowed into Jack as Amara materialized at Jack’s side, unharmed. He saw Chuck fall to the ground with a cry, powerless. Saw him beg first Amara, then Michael, to help him, saw both refuse.

He saw Chuck turn to Sam and Dean, a relishing sort of spite on his face as he asked if this was the part where they killed him, because how perfect, how fitting that would be! And he saw Dean say that no, he wasn’t a killer. Saw Sam throw Chuck’s book to the ground in front of him and tell him to write his own story, because he was done writing theirs. Saw the brothers turn and walk away with Jack and Amara and Michael, the five of them driving off in the Impala as Chuck stumbled after them, begging, pathetic, defeated, as he was left alone in the dust…

The scene faded, and Castiel was back in Heaven’s throne room, gazing at Jack in wonder as the former lowered his hands. “Jack, you...You’re the new God.”

Jack gave him a sheepish shrug. “I’m still me,” he said, “just...more. I can do everything I used to, and then some. Chuck’s power, it’s mine now, and I’m going to use it to fix things.” He gestured around at the throne room. “Like Heaven. The way Chuck made it, with everyone locked in their own memories...He put them behind walls so he could control them. I’m going to tear down the walls and remake Heaven the way it should have been from the start, so that people can decide where to go and what to do and who to do it with. No more control, no more constraints, just...choice. Free will.” Jack smiled. “Just like you and Sam and Dean taught me. It’s what we fought for.”

Castiel felt himself smile in return. “Yes, it is.” Then, a doubt: “What about Amara?”

Jack beamed. “Oh, she’s going to help! We’re going to do it together, and once we’re done, she’s going to stay and look after things up here while I go back to Earth and help people down there. That way, I can stay with you and Sam and Dean. Speaking of which,” Jack gave him a nod, “you should go. Dean is waiting.”

Castiel felt himself suddenly still. “He’s...waiting?”

Jack nodded. “For you. I told him I’d try to get you out of the Empty and that if I could, I’d send you back to him.”

Castiel swallowed; he felt as though his entire being was holding its breath. “I...see.”

“He said he had something he needed to tell you.”

“Did he...say what it was?”

“No, just that it was important.”

“Ah.” Castiel looked away, mind racing. What if he’d made Dean uncomfortable by confessing his love? What if Dean just wanted to see him to tell him that he didn’t feel the same way? Would he still let Castiel stay, as a friend? Castiel wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as he used to be. Chuck had said it himself, and so had countless others before him: Castiel was defective, broken, had come off the line with a crack in his chassis. He hadn’t even been able to help in the final fight, because he’d been dead. What was left of his grace began to prickle anxiously. Now that Heaven was finally safe, what use did the Winchesters even have for him anymore?

Or worse, what if Dean blamed himself for Castiel’s death? Dean had been through so much, had overcome so many burdens that should never have been his to bear. If there was any part of him that harbored guilt over what had happened, then Castiel would fix that. Dean deserved to be happy, and Castiel would make sure that he was. Even if Dean’s happiness didn't involve him.

“Cas?”

Castiel looked up and, seeing Jack’s concerned expression, forced a smile. He nodded. “Yes. I heard you. Thank you, Jack; I’ll go see him.”

Jack beamed. “Good. Oh! But before you do, here.” He placed a hand over Castiel’s heart. “I have something for you.”

A current of grace flowed from Jack’s palm into Castiel’s chest. He felt a prickling sensation on his back and glanced over his shoulder, gasping at the set of magnificent black wings that materialized even as he watched. They were exactly as he remembered, healthy and strong, shimmering like an oil slick in the sun and making rainbows of refracted light.

“There,” said Jack, stepping back with a grin. “I thought you might want them back.”

Hesitantly, Castiel reached out to run a finger over the velvety feathers, shivering at the familiar-yet-long-forgotten sensation. His wings. He’d thought he’d lost them forever, had even mourned them, and yet here they were, returned to him at last. “I...” he managed, at which point Jack pulled him into a hug that Castiel returned fiercely. “Thank you, Jack.”

“No,” said Jack, his voice somewhat muffled by Castiel’s shoulder, “thank you. I chose you as my father before I was even born because you risked everything to make sure that I would be. From the very beginning, you knew what I was, knew who I was, and even then, you never stopped believing in me, never stopped fighting for me, not even when I lost my soul. You saw the good in me, and you taught me to see the good in others. I am who I am because of you, Cas; we won because of you. You’re my family, and I love you. And I want you to be happy.”

Castiel swallowed the lump in his throat. He didn’t know what to say, was too overwhelmed to even begin to respond, so instead, he just hugged tighter, wrapping his wings protectively around Jack and pressing a kiss to the top of Jack's head, hoping that he understood.

When they finally separated, Jack smiled at Cas and raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. “Go,” he said. “Talk to Dean, and tell him and Sam that I’ll be home soon.”

Castiel nodded. “I’ll see to it that we have Krunch Cookie Crunch cereal on hand for your return.” Then, with a wave and a flutter of wings, he was gone.

#castiel #jack kline #destiel #deancas #spndbcc #cas & jack #spn #spn fix-it fic #spn 15x18 #spn 15x19 #spn 15x20 #fanfiction #begin and end there #my writing

79 notes · View notes

milfjensenackles · 4 years ago

Text

nothing safe is worth the drive

2.8k words | read it on ao3

found family road trip :) I decided team free will 2.0 needed a vacation

“Let’s go on a vacation.”

Dean walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from Sam. Sam looked up from his newspaper, incredulous at the suggestion. “A vacation? Since when do you, of all people, want to take a break from hunting?”

Dean smirked. “We’ve been working hard for years, Sammy. I think we all deserve a break. You, me, Cas, and Jack. We could… go on a road trip! There’s plenty of stuff you and I haven’t seen yet. We could drive to California and see the ocean, maybe stop by those tourist traps like the ‘Biggest Ball of Twine’ or whatever.”

Sam shook his head and laughed at his older brother. Dean’s eyes were lit up with excitement, though, and who was he to ruin that? “Sure, Dean. Sounds good.”

Dean clapped his hands together before running down the hall to share the news with Cas and Jack. Sam smiled to himself. This would be interesting.

Cas and Dean had started dating only a few months ago, so things were still relatively new and exciting between them. Dean still struggled with not only giving Cas the love he deserved, but accepting that Cas loved him, of all people. It was difficult, coming to terms with the fact that loving Cas meant that he liked dudes in general. Dean still wasn’t comfortable labelling himself, and Cas was okay with that.

Dean’s thoughts wandered back to the day he and Cas finally got their shit together. Dean, after a grueling five days in The Empty, finally brought his angel home. After a tearful homecoming, Sam and Jack retired to their bedrooms, leaving Dean alone with Castiel for the first time since they said goodbye. Dean suggested a movie they’d already seen plenty of times, and Cas agreed easily as usual. As they settled into the couch together, Dean couldn’t help but focus his gaze on Cas’ lips. Cas couldn’t help but notice. Dean remembers Cas looking nervous, before slowly asking: “What’s going on here, Dean?” As soon as the question was out of his mouth, Dean’s hands were on his face and his lips were pressed against Castiel’s.

Dean finished the walk to his bedroom. Their bedroom. Cas moved in only last week. Another new thing Dean wasn’t used to yet, but he loved it all the same. Cas didn’t have many belongings, so the transition ended up being easier than Dean anticipated. Dean purchased another nightstand for Cas, which Cas covered with a small lamp and some framed photos of his family. One of Cas and Dean, with Cas holding the camera and Dean pressing a kiss to his cheek. Another of the four of them, sitting around the table and eating pizza. The final one shows a smiling Jack, arms around both of his dads.

Hearing Dean move into the room, Cas looked up from his book to smile softly. Dean grinned back, leaning over their bed to ruffle his boyfriend’s hair. Cas gave Dean his best disgruntled face before softening again, holding his arms out for Dean to join him. Dean kicked off his shoes, immediately kicking his leg over to straddle Cas. Cas stretched up to meet Dean, wrapping his arms around Dean’s neck and pressing their lips together. Even after all this time, Dean felt his heart drop into his stomach every time Cas kissed him. They stayed there for a moment, wrapped up in one another, trading lazy kisses back and forth. Cas swiped his tongue across Dean’s bottom lip and his hands started wandering lower on Dean’s waist. Dean regretfully pulled back, placing his hands on either side of Cas’ face. “Before you completely distract me”, he kissed the tip of Cas’ nose quickly, “I came in here to ask you something.”

Cas pecked at the bolt of Dean’s jaw one more time before quirking an eyebrow at him. “Okay. What did you want to ask me?”

“So… I was talking to Sam. What do you think about all of us going on a trip?”

“A vacation?” Cas smiled. “I’d like that very much, Dean.”

Satisfied with that answer, Dean returned to their previous activities. Cas definitely didn’t mind.

***

“You guys finish packing yet?”

“Yes, Dean. Almost done.” Even though Dean couldn’t see his face from the hallway, he knew Cas was rolling his eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to care, focusing instead on his own luggage.

Dean had mapped out their entire trip. As fate would have it, they happened to be passing by the twine ball Dean had mentioned on their way to the Grand Canyon, seeing as it was only thirty minutes from the bunker. Cas suggested a stop at a honeybee farm that gave tours in Utah, and Dean couldn’t say no to that. Once Jack became privy to the information that Dean was taking requests, he made an extensively researched list of the places he’d like to visit. When Dean saw it, he gave Cas a look, but Cas merely shrugged and smiled softly at Jack. In that moment, Dean knew he was absolutely whipped by the man in front of him. He’d do anything to make Cas and their son happy.

They packed the Impala to the brim, including camping supplies for when they reached their destination. Dean hadn’t been this excited in… well. He had never been this excited before. He never had a chance to do the normal stuff, like a real family vacation. He and Sam had never really even had a family to go on a vacation with.

Dean rolled his shoulders back to shake the thought from his head as he reached up to close the trunk of the Impala. Cas and Jack strolled up to the car a moment later, arms full of suitcases and backpacks.

“Did you pack the whole bunker?” Dean asked with a chuckle.

Cas looked confused. “No, Dean. We only packed items that we thought might be useful on the trip. How would we fit the entire bunker into these bags?”

Dean threw his head back and barked out a laugh before unceremoniously pressing a kiss to Cas’ lips. He reveled in the feeling of Cas’ mouth against his, not caring if anyone could see them. “Where’s Sam?”

“He told me to tell you that he was almost ready and would be out in a minute!” Jack was already in the backseat, very proud of himself for passing along Sam’s message.

Eventually, Sam finally appeared, ignoring the mumbles from Dean about his tardiness. Dean started driving.

***

The World’s Largest Ball of Twine was… less than impressive, in Dean’s opinion. Cas and Jack found it fascinating though, so it ended up being worth the trip. Cas managed to purchase a t-shirt, without Dean noticing, that said in big block letters: Check Out My Balls. In the center of the shirt sat two circles of twine. Sam burst out laughing when he saw Cas walk up to the Impala wearing it, but Dean thought it was adorable. Jack was holding his souvenir, a small twine ball keychain. He insisted that he was going to use it to break the previously held record for largest twine ball once they arrived home to the bunker.

Once they got back on the road, Jack immediately requested to stop for McDonald’s. Dean groaned but knew Sam would have to stop to use the bathroom soon anyway. Dean pulled into the parking lot, and as expected, Sam rushed out of the car immediately. Cas handed Jack some cash to get food for everyone, and then it was just Cas and Dean waiting. Dean looked over at Cas. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was sometimes. Cas had the most beautiful blue eyes Dean had ever seen, and they were even more impressive with the evening sun reflecting on them. Cas realized Dean was staring and reached out to run his thumb along Dean’s hand. “I hope you’re having fun.”

Cas’ voice always made him weak, especially when he was worried about Dean. “I always have fun when I’m with you.”

Cas smiled, content to sit in the front seat of the Impala, palm pressed to the back of Dean’s hand, for the rest of the evening. They were soon interrupted by their son though, hands full of burgers and fries with a huge grin on his face. Sam followed soon after with a salad and a water bottle. Dean rolled his eyes at him before shoving a handful of fries into his mouth.

***

By the time they were close to Jack’s first location request, Cas was starting to get a little grumpy from the lack of sleep. It was day three of their trip now. Some days, Dean would stop at a motel for them to stay in, but yesterday he chose to drive through the night. Cas stayed up with him, fighting against Dean’s argument that at least one of them should get some shut eye. “Dean, if I don’t stay awake, you’ll fall asleep behind the wheel. You can’t get by on four hours anymore.”

Dean snorted. “You callin’ me an old man?”

Cas smirked and Dean pushed at his shoulder softly, grinning to himself.

Sam groaned from the backseat. “You guys are such an old married couple.”

Quirking an eyebrow at Sam in the rearview mirror, Dean pulled to a stop at a red light before reaching over to give Cas an obnoxious kiss, releasing his lips with a loud pop. “Jealous much, Sammy?”

Sam mimed a gagging motion at the display, while Jack looked on with glee. “I didn’t know you and Dad were married!”

Dean choked at that, coughing for a good minute before stuttering out, “I- we’re not- Jack- “

“Dean and I are in an intimate relationship, but we are not married. Although, I would like to marry him someday.” Cas cut Dean off, speaking with certainty.

Dean gaped at that. They hadn’t even said they love each other yet, and Cas was thinking about marriage? “You want to marry me?”

“Of course, Dean. Why wouldn’t I?” Cas was smiling at Dean now. Dean couldn’t help but smile back, lacing their fingers together.

“Alright, enough of this gross couple stuff. We get it, you’re in love and it’s disgustingly sweet. Let’s stop for dinner.” Sam said, a hand running through his hair, obviously frustrated with himself for being the one to start this conversation.

***

Today marked their fifth day on the road, and they were finally going to the honeybee sanctuary Cas was desperate to visit. Dean was actually pretty excited too. Anything was better than Sam’s pick, which had been a weird museum back in Colorado. Dean couldn’t remember what the museum was actually for, he couldn’t focus on all of the old relics and ancient artifacts when Cas was right there. Cas was Dean’s favorite ancient relic, which he decided to share with Cas, only to be greeted with the bitchface Cas saves only for Dean.

Dean pulled into the parking lot of the farm, which was made up of an assortment of small buildings along with green fields that extended for miles. Jack tumbled out of the backseat, dragging Cas by the elbow to the front door. Sam and Dean followed closely behind, watching as Cas and Jack pointed out various new sightings to one another. By the time Sam and Dean met up with them, Cas had already signed them up for a tour of the farm and a session explaining how honey is harvested and sold.

Their tour guide started speaking as he walked backwards, explaining the purpose of the farm, “This honeybee sanctuary is a place that supports the health and positive transformation of the honeybees that come to stay with us. Honeybees are an endangered species, so we do everything we can to protect them and maintain their species. Up ahead, you’ll see one of our beekeepers working with a hive to prepare for honey harvesting.”

They continued forward, Cas with the biggest smile on his face Dean had ever seen. If this is what it took to make Cas look like that, he’d drive them to Utah every weekend. Dean had to admit, honeybees were pretty cool. He could appreciate their loyalty to the hive, always working to support one another unconditionally.

By the end of the tour, Cas was waxing poetic to Sam about the efficiency of hexagonal honeycombs and Sam was attempting to keep up with the conversation. With Cas distracted, Dean snuck off to the gift shop to make a purchase. He came back with a pair of socks with cartoon bumblebees on them, which Castiel was so delighted to receive that he kissed Dean in front of Sam, Jack, and their tour guide. Dean didn’t mind.

***

It took them much longer than anticipated to reach California, but Dean didn’t mind. It just meant he had more time to hold Cas’ hand across the front bench of the Impala. Soon enough, they finally reached the ocean. Dean drove onto the beach, the tires leaving indentations in the sand behind them. The sun was setting quickly, so they needed to move quickly to set up camp. Having realized this, Dean moved quickly to remove their items from the back of the car. Before he could, though, Cas grabbed his hand and pulled Dean toward him, their chests resting together. “Come with me.”

Dean nodded, and Cas pulled him toward the water. Cas pulled his shoes and socks off, and Dean followed suit, pressing their toes into the sand. Dean reached for Cas’ hand again, and Cas complied, interlocking their fingers. They stood there for what felt like an eternity, watching as the water ebbed and flowed and crashed. Cas broke the silence after some time, murmuring, “Are you happy, Dean?”

Dean paused for a moment to look over at Cas, who was still staring out at the sea. Releasing Cas’ hand, Dean gripped his elbow to turn the angel’s body to face his own. Dean’s other hand reached up to softly brush some of Cas’ hair off of his forehead. Eventually settling on Cas’ jaw, Dean pulled Cas’ gaze from the water to finally look at him. “I know I’m not great at showing you how much I care, but I do. Care, I mean. I have never been this happy before. You. Me. Sam and Jack. That’s all I need. I’ll spend every day trying to prove it to you if that’s what it takes. I love you, Cas.”

Cas pulled back like he had been shocked. Oh, shit. They’ve never said that before.

“You love me?” Cas was looking at Dean like he hung the damn moon. Dean opened and shut his jaw a few times, trying and failing to make words come out of his mouth

Both of Cas’ thumbs softly caressed Cas’ face and Cas brought their lips together. The kiss wasn’t what Dean would describe as aggressive, like it usually was with them; it was slower and sweeter. Like they loved each other. Cas pulled back an inch, his lips still ghosting on Dean’s. “I love you, too.”

Dean reached up to his own face to place his hands over Cas’ and rested their foreheads together. They both started giggling uncontrollably. “You love me,” Dean said, looking into those beautiful blue eyes.

“I do. So much more than I could ever put into words.”

A loud noise pulled Dean out of his Cas-induced reverie, and he looked up the beach to see Jack struggling to finish putting together a tent.

“We should get back and help,” Cas said, hiding a smile. Dean rolled his eyes but pulled Cas by his hands toward Sam and Jack’s makeshift campsite.

“While you two were having a moment, Jack and I finished getting the tents set up, so you both are responsible for cooking dinner.”

Dean groaned, but was secretly happy to take care of dinner, as long as he got to do it with Cas. While Cas started unpacking their food, Dean reached for the cooler. He grabbed four beers and started handing them out.

Cas immediately saw the fourth beer and said, “You can’t give Jack a beer, Dean. He’s three years old.”

“Hey! I’m three and a half,” Jack said, indignant.

“See? He’s three and a half. It’s fine.”

Cas shook his head, but Dean could tell he was trying not to laugh. “No, Dean.”

Dean held up his hands in surrender but leaned over Jack anyway to sneak the bottle into his hand. If Cas noticed, he chose not to say anything.

Dean looked around for a second, trying to take it all in. Sam and Jack were in the middle of a heated discussion debating the best part of their trip, Sam gesticulating wildly in defense of his museum. Cas was preparing a fire to cook their burgers, the dimming sunlight golden on his concentrated face. Dean could hear the waves crashing on the shore behind them, a sound he never thought he would get to hear and actually appreciate. As he moved to start helping Cas, Dean realized that maybe now they can be happy. They can be at peace. And he couldn’t wait to find out what came next for himself and his little family.

#destiel #destiel fic #destiel ficlet #deancas #deancas fic #deancas ficlet #first kiss #love confessions #lauren writes #i have had writers block for a month so this took forever but enjoy

29 notes · View notes

fitzs-trained-monkey · 3 years ago

Text

Chapter Thirty: The Puppeteer

Rated: PG-13 (Themes of insanity, graphic imagery, and violent thoughts. This is sort of an age gap relationship but keep in mind that the physical ages of both parties differs from their cognitive age. Martina is cognitively 20 and Jack is cognitively 18.)

(Author's note: Remember that Martina manipulates emotions...)

Masterlist

~I counted the stars tonight Oh, how they shine so bright I gather them all, so we perfectly align

While we gaze from far away And separately watch the day Come rising across the horizon in our minds

But now I know my heart is strong Where you belong is by my side So will you hold? 'Cause time is cold But in your soul, I'm standing by~

"It's okay, Jack. It's a crooked kind of perfect. I think I like it better now."

Then she turned and left the shed and Jack buried his head in his hands. Guilt was a crushing thing and now it was crushing him.

Why hadn't he gotten there sooner? If he had, then she wouldn't have gotten hurt. Max had led them to four wrong sheds before they finally found this one. But that wasn't on her. Max had just been trying to help. It was his fault. Jack had been the one to rush off and leave her all alone. He had promised that he would never leave her but he'd broken his promise! Would Marty hate him now?

Jack thought about the way she had looked when the fight was over.

Marty had looked like she had the day they had found her. She looked absent, detached, vacant, alive but not awake. Like the lights were on but no one was home. It wasn't the same as when she had purposefully demonstrated that emotionless act like she had earlier; like there wasn't even a person inside. This was a different kind of emptiness. It was more like Marty was hiding because she didn't want to face what had happened, and then she was lost because she couldn't find herself again. He had seen that emptiness before, on a hunt.

Sam had called it shock.

Marty hadn't even flinched when she picked up that vampire's head. There hadn't been much emotion in her when she had talked about the former owner of that head. Nor when she had talked to the head like it was some sick sort of ventriloquist dummy. But Jack had seen her eyes, and in them, he'd seen hate among the emptiness.

Just thinking of what Marty had said about the vampire she'd called Boyd made Jack's blood boil beneath his skin. The thought of that thing - that monster - touching her, made him angry. That thought made him so angry he didn't even have the words to express it.

The anger - the rage - the sheer undiluted hate that Jack felt coursing through his veins couldn't be described. He had never felt hate so strongly before, not even for the monsters or the angels in the apocalypse world. This kind of hate was new. It made him want to do something horrible. This hate burned him. This hate made Jack want to hurt the monster that had hurt Marty. Not just hurt it - no, no - that wouldn't be enough for him. This hate pushed him to do more than just hurt or kill. This hate was more than a want or an urge - this hate inside him was a craving. The kind of pain that Jack craved to inflict upon that monster was downright unfathomable, unthinkable, vile to the absolute purest definition of the word. Jack craved to make that monster pay.

He sat on the floor of the shed with his fists clenched as tight as his jaw, staring steadfastly at the corpse of the vampire that had hurt his friend and contemplating the reattaching of that vampire's head and subsequent resurrection of the thing just so he could watch as he slowly burnt it alive and twisted its horrid limbs into knots. How dare that thing lay one rotten finger on her. Jack desperately wished he could kill it again.

Because Marty was his. She was his sister and even if she couldn't be anything more, he felt the need to protect her like she was. Jack decided that no one else should ever get to touch her. Ever. From now on, that was how it was going to be. That was the new rule. Nobody gets to touch Marty except for him.

Jack wanted to go find her now. The thought of that vampire touching her made Jack want to touch her and make that thing's touch go away. Jack needed to go find her and make sure she was okay. But his family was talking about her so he decided to stay a little longer to listen.

"This is wrong," Dean muttered as he looked over the mess of scattered corpses Marty had left behind, "No way one kid does all this. No way."

"Did you see Martina's eyes?" Cas asked, shaking his head at the thought. "When she picked that vampire's head up and talked to it like it was a puppet, did you see her eyes?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah." If Jack didn't know better, he would have thought Dean sounded scared.

"They looked like a demon's," Cas added. This time, Dean shook his head.

"No, not like a demon's - not evil like a demon's, not necessarily. No, just... empty. Just empty, like Sam's when he lost his soul..." Dean trailed off, shaking his head while Sam just sort of stood there, looking uncomfortable.

"A soulless empath?" Cas questioned, "Is that even possible?"

Dean shrugged.

"I dunno, man! I dunno," He said with a huff, "All I do know is that there somethin' very dark inside that kid." He shuddered.

"D-dark? What-what do you mean?" Sam cut in.

"For her to do this -" Dean gestured to the carnage "- all by herself... Sammy, I don't know if she's souless or not, but there sure as Hell is something broken in there. This ain't self defense. This was rage. I don't know what's goin' on with that girl, but Marty ain't right in the head."

"But we can't let her go now." Sam's voice might have been quiet but its tone was made of iron.

"I dunno, Sammy..."

"We made her a promise, Dean! We can't break it!" Sam argued, "So what if she's a little broken? We all are! But there is good in her just like there's good in all of us."

"Look around you, Sam!" Dean gestured to the corpses. "I'm not talking about depression or a hero complex here. We're talkin' bonafied nuts! Full-on Loony-Tunes!"

"Based off of Martina's behavioral patterns, we could very well be dealing with a sociopath," Cas spoke up calmly.

"Even if that's the case, she's still just a kid! " Sam said, pleading. "A-and, you know what? So what? We've dealt with worse threats than a sociopatic-empath-kid! And since we found her, Marty's been getting better. Every day she get's better - I've seen it! Jack makes her better. He brings her out of things like this. Maybe he can fix her. I think he should talk to her, you know, s-see if she's okay."

"No." Cas shook his head, firmly.

"W-why not?"

"Because I said no," Cas repeated.

"Cas, you've seen how she responds to him. If one of us goes out there, we might just make it worse," Sam reasoned.

Jack stood and left the shed then. Marty needed him and he wasn't going to waste any more time listening to them argue.

"Jack wait!" Cas called out.

"No."

"I said wait!" The angel's tone was a command, not a request.

Jack did not stop. "And I said no!"

Cas reached out and snagged Jack's arm, yanking him back. "We don't know what Martina is truly capable of! This may be just the beginning."

"I don't care! Marty's my friend," Jack ripped his arm free from Cas's grip. "And if I can help her, the rest doesn't matter."

Jack left his family standing in the shed with the vampire corpses, bewildered that Jack had just disobeyed.

"Did he just hit his terrible two's or is this the rebellious teenage years?" Dean asked the others after Jack had left.

Jack found Marty rather easily. She was sitting in the snow curled up with her chin on her knees and her back pressed against the shed's metal siding. She stared at the rose that she twirled between her fingers.

"Hello," Jack said, raising his hand. Marty didn't reply, she just stared at her rose. "Are you alright?" He tried again.

Marty sighed, yet still, she didn't move. She just considered the bloody rose like it meant something greater than it did like it held the answers.

"Do you think I'm crazy, Jack?" She asked him, her voice soft and childish. Jack hesitated.

"Well, do you?" He returned, carefully. Marty's lost yet tranquil expression crumpled into a frown.

"I don't know," She whispered, laying the rose lightly on the snow, "I didn't used to think so but..." She trailed off, gazing into the middle distance with an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

"But what?" Jack sat down beside her and noticed the frosty trail of a tear on her pale skin. He brushed it away.

The simple action was enough to send a shiver down the angel boy's spine. Although the rosy hue tinting the tip of Marty's nose and cheeks was a testament to the frosty temperature; the shiver that ran down Jack's spine, leaving residual sparks lingering in his fingertips, had nothing to do with the cold. Jack studied Marty's winter-nipped rosy complexion. She looked very pretty and something about it made Jack's chest warm.

"But I don't know anymore." Marty seemed to come out of her trance, eying him warily. "Is that bad?"

Jack shook his head. "I wouldn't know."

"They think I'm crazy." Her voice broke and so did Jack's heart. "Cas and Dean - I heard them say I'm broken."

"No! You're not broken, you're amazing!" Jack grabbed her hands but she shook her head, averting her gaze.

"I killed them," She mumbled.

"You had to; they were monsters."

"So, I'm not broken?" Marty asked. Jack shook his head, offering her a reassuring smile.

"I don't think so. At least, no more than anybody else is," He replied, "No more than I am."

She nodded and was silent. Acting completely on impulse, Jack reached out, wrapping his arms around her torso, he pulled her into his lap. Marty didn't complain.

"Jack?" She spoke up a while later.

"Yes?"

"What's wrong with me?"

Jack sighed. Was this what talking to him was like?

"Nothing is wrong with you, Marty. You're perfect." He stated it like it was a fact and to him, it was.

"So, why don't I feel guilty?" She shook her head. "I killed them and that should earn me some measure of guilt, right? But instead of feeling bad, I don't feel anything. I should feel scared or shocked or angry but I don't. I don't feel anything."

Jack frowned. "Sam says that numbness can be part of shock."

She shook her head again, her eyebrows pulling together.

"No, this isn't numbness. It's not that I feel empty, I just feel indifferent." Marty's breath caught and panic rose into her voice. "It's like I'm back in Copper Harbor again. I couldn't feel anything there either! I want to feel something but I can't and there's just nothing! I wanna feel something but I can't feel anything!"

"Whoa, whoa! Hey! You're okay!" Jack tried to calm her but his efforts were futile. She shot up from his lap, stumbling forward in a discombobulated state of panic. Marty gasped for breath, her chest heaving as she raked her hands through her jet-black hair and tugged at the roots as if trying to tear it out.

"I didn't feel anything till I met you guys and I don't wanna go back to nothing! Why did I never feel anything? There has to be something wrong with me!" Marty twisted to face him. Her grey eyes were dark and turbulent clouds just before a great tempest. Not angry, but powerful and natural, beautiful in a way that commanded respect. Yet she was still vulnerable, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Jack, what's wrong with me?! "

She gazed at him with wild desperation in her eyes and Jack felt his heart sinking in his chest. He had no words for her and he felt useless. Jack couldn't give her the answer. So, he just shook his head and pulled her close again, guiding her face into the crook of his neck and holding the sweet girl in his arms like she was made of glass. Feeling Marty's body flush against his ignited those sparks inside of him but he tried his best to ignore them.

"You're okay, just focus on me!" He said, rubbing circles on her back like Castiel sometimes did for him. Marty's breathing seemed to even out a little.

"Jack, I'm scared," She whimpered against his neck. He could feel her lips brushing against his skin and he felt this tugging sensation in his stomach. It felt good, Jack realized. The sparks exploded inside of him. He wanted more. But he pushed it down. Marty needed him and he had to focus. It took quite a bit of effort to ignore it.

"Why are you scared?" He asked, trying to keep his voice even.

"I think I'm going insane."

Jack wasn't sure about that, but Marty's lips moving against his neck was definitely driving him insane. It felt so good, so unbelievably right! Ugh! Why couldn't he just focus on the moment at hand? He caught a strand of her hair and started twirling it around his finger in an attempt to both calm her and distract himself from this blissful feeling. It didn't work. Marty made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob, her warm breath fanning against his neck. Jack's hands acted on their own accord, gripping her waist tighter. He simply couldn't stop himself and he found that, honestly, he didn't want to. Jack liked touching Marty this way. This new feeling that was sprouting inside him felt amazing. But it was hard. Keeping his breathing under control nearly caused him physical pain.

"W-why would y- um- you think that? O-other than Dean and- a-and Cas?" It was too difficult for him to focus. He had to put some distance between their bodies, but that was hard when distance was absolutely the last thing he wanted. With all the willpower he had, Jack tried to gently push Marty away, just enough to look at her. But Marty didn't want to move, she clung to his shirt like it was a lifeline and Jack simply didn't have the strength to try to push her away again.

"I'm forgetting things, Jack," She choked out.

Jack's heart kept on breaking for her but these sparks inside him were making him ecstatic. He couldn't help it. He felt so bad and so good at the same time. It was so frustrating! Would it really be so wrong to indulge this feeling? Maybe if he gave the sparks what they wanted, then they would calm down?

Jack tangled his fingers in the hair at the base for her neck, tugging a little because it felt right and he wanted to. He turned his face towards her hair and took a deep breath. He had taken the blood away when he'd healed her and her hair smelled perfect. It made him smile.

"What are you forgetting?" He asked softly, speaking into her ear.

"I remember being kidnapped but then - nothing. There's nothing after that! It was like I woke up out here and then I heard them say that I'm broken and I think I really am!" She was panicking again, her breaths quickening against his neck. It was maddening. His grip on her waist tightened again.

"No, no! Shh! It's okay, you're okay!" He tried to calm her. Jack did have to admit that what she'd said didn't sound good. Memory gaps are never a good thing, at least in his experience.

"No, I'm not! I'm not okay! Jack, I can't remember what I did!" Marty clutched onto him even tighter, anguish filling her voice. "I know I killed them, I just can't remember doing it! That's why I can't feel anything! And this isn't the first time this has happened!"

Marty pulled away from him then, and Jack's breath caught in his throat.

'When did you get so beautiful?' He thought. Even with tears streaming down her face, Jack couldn't remember seeing a more beautiful girl. She was perfect. How had he not noticed this before?

Jack let his eyes roam over her face, drinking it all in.

She was so wonderful and she didn't even know it. How little she saw of her own beauty. All Marty could see were her flaws but Jack thought they made her even more beautiful. If only she could see it.

Marty opened her mouth to speak but Jack pressed a finger to her lips. He tried his best not to think about how soft they felt under his finger and focus instead on what Marty needed from him.

"Don't talk," He said, "It's okay to be scared, Marty. But you are an amazing person, and you're so pretty and I wish you could see that. So, if you're broken, then you're the most beautiful broken thing I've ever seen. Whatever is happening to you, we're gonna find a way to fix it. I promise."

Marty shook her head, closing her eyes like she couldn't even look at him. "I think I'm losing my mind."

The response tumbled from Jack's lips before he'd even thought about it.

"Then I'll help you find it again."

Marty looked up at him then, furrowing her brow like she couldn't believe anyone would say that to her, let alone mean it. She was like a porcelain doll, her perfection was a delicate illusion. Jack could see the fractured glass of Marty's soul through her eyes. Broken pieces like shattered glass just waiting for someone to mend them; Jack felt like that sometimes.

"What if you can't? What if you can't fix me? Jack, I don't think this is something you can fix," She sniffed, wrapping her arms around herself like she was holding herself together. Jack smiled gently at her.

"Well, I suppose if you cannot look on the bright side, then I will sit beside you in the dark," He said, quoting what she had said to him the night before. Their talk by the lake house seemed so long ago now.

"Ironic," She huffed, laughing just the slightest bit.

"What is?"

"That quote," She answered, shrugging, "The Mad-Hatter says it. He's crazy."

"Oh." Jack knew who the Mad-Hatter was; he had seen Alice in Wonderland, the Disney cartoon at least. He guessed that probably wasn't the best thing for him to have said.

"I like him though. He's my favorite book character." She frowned again. "Guess I know why now; I'm just like him."

"No, you're not." Jack shook his head. "You don't wear a top-hat!"

Marty rolled her eyes and shook her head, cracking a wry smile. "Yeah, okay."

Jack felt the sparks shooting through him as he pulled her close again. Unfurling his massive, powerful, metaphysical wings, he wrapped them around Marty's tiny, fragile body, encasing her in their warmth and softness. It felt right. This was where she was supposed to be. He wanted to keep her there forever.

Jack wanted to keep her forever.

"Even if you do go crazy, I'm not going to leave you," He breathed, petting her hair, "I'm gonna be here every step of the way."

'I'm never gonna leave you again.' He silently vowed.

The sun sank lower until it dipped below the white Kansas horizon as Sam, Dean, and Castiel worked to remove the vampire corpses from the property of whoever owned the shed. Jack made sure to block the bodies from Marty's view, instead directing her gaze upward.

"Marty!" He nudged her gently and she glanced up at him, "The stars are out."

Marty angled her head towards the night sky and Jack grinned as he watched that wonder-filled expression bloom across the girl's face, just as it always did whenever she looked out into the cosmos. Her eyes reflected the starlight from above and so did her soul. Jack could see the soft, pure light, twinkling and pulsing within and around her, just like a star. Marty's soul could have been made of starlight.

"They're beautiful here," She said, her voice soft.

"What do they remind you of tonight?" Jack asked. Marty's face scrunched up as she thought and Jack waited, patient and eager, to hear whatever thought's her beautiful mind would give him.

"You," She sighed after a while, "Tonight they remind me of you."

Jack's brows pulled together, expressing his confusion. "Me? Why me?"

"Because you're ninety-three percent stardust," She replied. Marty shared a secret smile with the sky, tilting her head a little and keeping her eyes on the stars above. "

"Oh," Jack said, his tone laced with surprise and a bit of confusion. "Thank you."

Marty shook her head. "No, Jack. Thank you. "

"For what?"

"For saying that you'll stay with me, no matter what," She sighed, "And coming to rescue me. And for telling me I'm okay." Jack shrugged.

"Anyone would have done that."

Marty shook her head.

"No, not anyone. That vampire who claimed to be my friend - she never rescued me. All of her promises were empty."

Jack didn't know what to say, so he opted for a silent nod.

"Ik hou van je, zoet wezen," Marty whispered, her voice so quiet he almost didn't catch it.

"What does that mean?"

"It's Dutch."

"Okay." He nodded like that was an acceptable answer. "But what does it mean?"

"Not telling!" She smirked up at him. He shrugged and nodded before tilting his head down to whisper in her ear.

"Ego autem semper defendat vos, stella-puella."

He promised because he meant it.

Marty twisted around to face him, a playful frown pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"Okay, what was that?" She asked. Jack shrugged innocently and hoped the dim starlight would hide the fierce blush spreading across his face.

"Latin."

"What?"

"You're not the only one who can speak another language!" He defended. Marty didn't look amused.

"Latin's a dead language," She claimed.

"No, it's not."

"Yeah, it is."

"No, it's not."

"It totally is."

"Well, I speak it and I'm not dead." Jack grinned at the glare she was giving him.

"So what's it mean then, oh wise half-angel one?"

"Not telling!" He chirped. He should have known better.

Marty huffed and rolled her eyes before turning away again. Then she jabbed her elbow straight back into Jack's stomach.

Jack groaned, rubbing his side.

Marty had very boney elbows. It was very painful.

"Moron," She chuckled under her breath.

"Pipsqueak."

"I can hit you again."

"Please don't."

~I counted the stars tonight Oh, how they shine so bright I gather them all, so we perfectly align

While we gaze from far away And separately watch the day Come rising across the horizon in our minds

And now we know, our hearts are strong Where we belong is side by side And so we'll hold each other close And in our souls, we're standing by~

Lyrics from: Standing By by Pentatonix

Translations:

Ik hou van je, zoet wezen = I love you, sweet creature

Ego autem semper defendat vos, stella-puella = I will always protect you, star-girl

9 notes · View notes

wormstacheangel · 3 years ago

Text

part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 all of these are short so enjoy <3

Dean wasn’t sure where he stood with Cas, and he hated every fucking second of it.

He looked at his watch again, it’s only been a little less than an hour since Cas and Sam left on their stupid double date, but he already felt like he was crawling up the walls. He was pacing the room, trying to figure out what he could have said to stop Cas from going and wondering why Cas accepted the damn date in the first place.

Was he not enough?

It hasn’t even been three days since Dean finally said the big L word to him. Did Cas not hear him? Did he think he was fucking joking? Was the tongue down his throat not enough proof that Dean was over the fucking moon to finally have Cas. Have him in a way he never thought was going to be possible for them.

Why? Why did he go?

Maybe he was a lousy kisser? No. No, he’s an awesome kisser! But what if-

Dean jumps at the sound of his ringtone and answers it without looking at who it is.

“Dean.” He heard the familiar annoyed voice call his name in a low growl. “Stop.”

It took a second for Dean to understand what was going on. “Cas? Dude, why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be entertaining your stu-your date?”

“I can’t. You are being insufferable.”

Dean was taken back by the words. Did he actually send all those texts he thought about sending?

“I know you tend to forget, Dean, but I can feel your longing, and it is distracting.” Oh! Oh. Shit. “What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What the fuck do you think is wrong? That’s what Dean should have said but instead, “Nothing.” He is a coward, first and foremost. At least, when it comes to Cas, he was.

“You are giving me too much of a headache for it to be nothing.” Cas sighed, and Dean noticed the background noise quiets down on Cas’s end. “Are you okay? Should I come home?”

Yes! “No!” Dean quickly waves him off as if Cas could see him. “Stay. Have a fun time with your um, with your date.”

Cas doesn’t say anything for a long 20 seconds--Dean had to check if he hung up--before he sighs. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Goodbye.”

No. Not, goodbye. “I’ll see you later, okay? I’ll wait up for you so we can...talk. About you finally having your first date. Look at you, back from the dead and in the game. Good on you, Cas.”

“I would like that.” Silence again. Dean was about to hang up when he heard, “It’s not my first date.”

“What?”

“You said this is my first date, but it’s not.” Dean was about to tease him. To remind him that the date with the reaper or the one with him as a babysitter didn’t count but Cas beat him to the next words. “I like my dates with you more.”

Dean’s heart skips, and he thinks he misheard him, but before he can ask Cas to repeat it. The line goes dead, and Dean is left pacing the floor again. Wondering if the heat on his cheeks was ever going to go away.

“Am I--Is Cas...Am I being played?” Dean fell into his bed with a groan. Still left confused on where he stood with Cas.

--(More under the tag)

Cas is doing it again.

He’s acting as if he didn’t just come back from a date with this...Lucy person and pretending that everything is so damn peachy. He was sitting on the other side of Dean’s bed, once again head resting on Dean’s shoulder as if it had now become a nice habit of his. He welcomed the weight, the warmth of Cas pressed beside him, of course. He is just so damn confused.

“You know,” Cas looked up at him, his nose pressed to Dean’s jaw. “You’re the one that asked how my night went. So I sort of expected you to, you know, listen.”

He was listening. Listening to every damn word Cas spoke because, of course, he didn’t miss a single detail. He talked about the food, bland he described it, and Eileen picked off his plate. He talked about how Lucy laughed when he didn’t say anything funny, and Sam insisted that it meant she liked him. He talked about how he wasn’t sure if he liked these fancy places; he was used to the noise of diners and kind waitresses refiling his coffee when he didn’t need to ask.

But just now, he was just rambling on about how smart, kind, and great Lucy was. Did he use any of those words? No, but he might as well be kissing the floor she walked on by the way he talked about her.

“Dean?” Cas reached over, the palm of his hand laying flat on the side of Dean’s face. “You okay?”

Yes. “No.”

Wait. He was supposed to say the opposite.

Cas sat up to look at him better, and Dean missed the weight of him already. Wanting to reach over and pull him back in, he also might as well say what he thought so they can move on from this because he was so fucking tired of this.

They are so close, and shit will not happen if Dean keeps rambling in his head instead of talking out loud. Like Sam says--or better yet, what he is trying to drill in his head--communication is the key to a healthy relationship. Right now, he just wants a fucking relationship.

Dean looks at Cas; sad sky eyes stare back at him. Filled with questions that maybe he was also afraid to ask, but it’s Dean’s turn to make a move this time. At least he thinks so. He wasn’t sure when they started taking turns, but fuck, he missed Cas tonight and hates that someone else got to have a romantic night with him.

Without another thought, Dean pulled at the stupid bowtie and dragged Cas forward until their lips met for another long-awaited kiss. The tug may have choked an actual person, but luckily, Cas didn’t seem to find a problem with it as he moved closer to deepen the kiss.

Tell me you didn’t kiss her. Tell me you don’t want to see her ever again. Tell me you want me. Only me. Tell me...tell me you love me.

“I love you.” Dean hears himself say. It was desperate as his grip on Cas tightened; he could feel his fingers dig into Cas’s waist as he pulled him forward until his whole weight was on top of him. Cas starts to pull away, probably wanting to look at him again, but Dean keeps his eyes closed as he cranes his neck up to catch Cas’s lips. Wanting to feel, to pretend, that Cas only was his.

Cas kisses back for a second or two, longer, but it didn’t take much strength for him to pull back to look at Dean. Eyes filled with concern as he let Dean roll him into his back.

“Say it back, damn it.” Dean starts undoing the bowtie and fumbles with Cas’s buttoned shirt as he noses the stubble on the angel’s jaw. “Cas, say it.”

“I love you.” Cas takes Dean’s face between his large hands and forces him to look at his sad eyes again. “I love you, Dean. So tell me, what’s wrong?”

Dean didn’t try to pull away; instead, he fell against Cas’s body. Laying all his weight on him, knowing damn well Cas could take it, he probably weighed nothing to him. Like a feather.

Dean’s face tucked into Cas’s neck as he felt those fingers in his hair, soothing them before he rubbed his back. Probably trying to figure out which one was more comforting, but for Dean, any soft touch from him will do.

This is stupid. Desperate. Pathetic. But he needs to ask.

“Am not enough for you?”

“What?”

Dean doesn’t move from his hiding spot. Not wanting Cas to see his face as he talks. “Why’d you say to a date with someone else? I thought we were...I know I’m not good at all this, but I thought we were--at least, I was trying.” Dean shoved his face closer into his throat until he could feel Cas’s heartbeat against his nose. “I was trying, Cas!”

“I know!” Cas’s hands tighten on his Dean’s shoulders as if he was going to push him away, but then he stopped himself. “I only said yes because I figured it was what you wanted.”

“What?” Dean mumbled into Cas’s skin before he pushed himself up just enough to stare down at him. Repeating himself. “What?”

“The day after we kissed, you ignored everyone, including me. I thought you were...ashamed. Maybe you wanted to keep things private. So to keep Sam from suspecting us-”

“You said yes to a date.” Dean finished for him while Cas slowly nodded. Looking at him as if fighting with himself to not read Dean’s thoughts. Probably best he didn’t. He’ll just hear screaming. Dean sighed in relief as he fell into Cas again, relaxing as Cas’s arms wrapped around him. “Dumbass.”

“I didn’t mean to make you doubt my feelings for you. But to be fair, how can you possibly doubt my feelings for you? I died so that I can say them.”

“Actually, I thought you changed your mind cause I sucked at kissing.”

“You do not suck.”

“Thanks.” Dean chuckled, kissing Cas’s bare chest. His cheeks were warming up as his mind just caught up with his action. “Sorry.”

“I should be the one-”

“No, Cas. Me. I made you think I wanted to hide us.” Dean lifted his head again, looking down at Cas, who gave him a soft, warm smile. “I don’t. Maybe I was a little nervous, but that’s cause you kept acting like me holding your dumb hand was like...normal or whatever.”

“I thought if I make a big deal of it, then you’ll freak out.” Damn. Got him there. And yet, he still freaked out. “But I see now that we should have...talked about it?”

“Yeah.” Dean chuckled as he realized how stupid they both had been. “Yeah, that probably would have helped.”

Cas surprised him by reaching up to give him a hesitant kiss. His eyes were bright as they sparkled when Dean met the familiar gaze.

“We can um,” Dean clears his throat nervously as he keeps his eyes on Cas. “We can talk later.”

“Later. Later is good.”

“Good.”

Cas reaches to kiss him again, bringing him down until they are lost in each other.

The next morning Dean woke up with a spring in his step, and Sam noticed right away.

“What’s up with you?” He raised his eyebrows at him, teasing him with a smile. “Had a fun night with Scooby?”

“Watched Animaniacs, for your information.” Dean poured two cups of coffee. “And no. I had the most perfect company last night.”

Sam opened his mouth before squinting at him. “Did you-? Wait, did you bring a girl over to the bunker?”

“No!” Dean said just as Cas walked in, wrapped in nothing but Dean’s robe. “There you are. Thought you were gonna follow me.”

Dean walked over to hand Cas his coffee, kissing his cheek before walking back to get his own cup.

“I was. You neglected to tell me I wasn’t wearing clothes. So I had to go find something to cover up.” Cas sat in front of Sam who stared at them with wide eyes. “Morning, Sam.”

It took Sam a few seconds before he muttered. “I hate you guys. I mean, congratulations, but fuck you. Didn’t need that image in my head so early in the morning.”

Dean sat beside Cas, shoulders bumping, before he looked at Sam over the rim of his cup. “Now you can stop trying to set Cas up on dumb dates.”

“I had a fun time last night, Sam. Thank you.” Cas quickly said before looking back at Dean. “But I think I will just continue dating your brother instead.”

“Okay,” Sam got up, giving them both a tight smile and a thumbs up. “Congrats again. Next time wear underwear, Cas.”

“Stop looking at my boyfriend!” “I couldn’t find it.” Dean and Cas say at the same time.

Dean finally knows what Cas is to him.

“We should hurry if we want to beat the kids to the diner.” Cas gets up, kissing the top of Dean’s head as he goes. “I like this.”

“Me too.” Dean reaches for his hand, tangling their fingers together as he pulls Cas down for a kiss.

Best friend. Boyfriend. The light at the end of the tunnel.

“Love you.” Dean whispers against his lips, making Cas smile into the kiss.

“Love you, too.”

Everything. He’s everything.

#i kept thinking of chandler saying 'i scared you! im lonely and awkward and desperate for love!'#and we got this monstrocity #prob not what you guys wanted but I thought it went well lol #deancas #destiel #wormstachewrites #fic #thanks :)

168 notes · View notes

holyhellpod · 4 years ago

Photo

Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving.

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold.

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show.

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit.

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins.

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art.

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural, he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag.

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living.

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism.

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to.

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it.

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light.

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line.

Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence.

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade.

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome. I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else.

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half.

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves.

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome.

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight.

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer.

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it.

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace.

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar.

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says:

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean.

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to.

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas. Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna.

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life.

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs.

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.”

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it.

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do.

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another.

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it.

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours.

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay?

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas.

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure.

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.”

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

#transcripts #supernatural #supernatural podcast #<60mins #this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins

12 notes · View notes

amarienne · 4 years ago

Text

It’s been two days. My blood still boils when I think of all the lost potential. (ramblings regarding how out of character the finale was)

Never before has an episode of any show, or a chapter of any book, or a scene of any movie has made me so upset. There is rage inside of me and the question of ‘how can a writer betray his own characters like this’.

(huge post following.)

I was not a hardcore destiel shipper. When I first started watching SPN a few years ago I knew of the ship but I thought that there was no chance in Hell a show like this would make it canon. And if we had never gotten 15x18 and some parts of 15x20 maybe I would be a tiny bit happier with how the finale went.

But the biggest mistake they did was give us the confession scene and not only that but echo it in Dean's actions in 15x19.

'That's not who I am'

This line keeps coming back to me because literally two episodes ago we saw Dean willing to sacrifice himself, Jack and even Sam so Chuck would disappear. He was red with rage and he didn't care for anything else apart winning. Let's not forget the thing that made him stop for a minute was Cas questioning Sam on why they should not go ahead with the plan. [Oh, there are plenty to be said for the only angel in all the universes that didn't just 'follow orders' after 'gripping him tight and raising him from perdition' but I won't go into that here.]

And sure, all that was Chuck's writing, but wasn't everything?

So what I am trying to say is that in three consecutive episodes we see:

-Dean full of anger and rage and ready to do anything to win -Dean giving up, losing hope after being cornered -Dean and TFW (minus Cas) finally overpower Chuck and walk away peacefully

So what changed? What made Dean walk away redifining himself as something different than the 'ultimate killer'?

Castiel. Of course, Castiel. The confession was so precious not only because Cas professed his love for Dean. No. It was vital to the plot of the next episode. And that was because before Cas utterred 'I love you' he spoke of how he sees Dean. How the way he sees himself is not the way Cas and the rest of the world sees him. How everything he has ever done, good and bad, was for love. Only for love. Not winning, not gaining power or wealth or recognition. But for love. At that moment Dean sees himself as Cas sees him, and it leaves him struck, speechless. Dean, who always had a snarky line ready is in awe trying to understand the words he is hearing.

And then, after everything is done and dusted we see Dean say 'That's not who I am' mirroring Cas' final words. The words he spent I don't know how much time sitting on the floor against the wall thinking about and crying. Noone else had gotten across to Dean like that, not even Sam. And we see that he started adopting Cas' image of him, believing it to be true. Or starting to.

Dean Winchester overpowered the ultimate villain and chose to stay true to Cas' image of him instead of taking revenge for Chuck screwing him over all his life.

This is poetic and heartbreaking, especially knowing Cas is gone. Not having Dean talk about the confession in 15x19 makes sense. We see glimpses of him numb at the loss, mourning Cas, wanting him back. We see the hope in his face when he thinks he is back. All these things make sense for 15x19, and even though we were sad we had to wait for the next episode hoping to see something tangible (aka the week we all clowned) I was content. The battle was done, the main plot was wrapped up. All was left was to see where all this last minute huge (especially for Dean) character progression and self acceptance would end up.

And then fucking 15x20 happens. It is like the writers threw in a cardboard box all the above points and details and threw it in the ocean. Nothing, absolutely nothing after the first 5 minutes makes sense in this fucking episode!

The montage at the beginning filled me with warmth and happiness. Dean (and Sam) are having a normal morning. Dean looks happy, he is eating, not depicted as overly drinking and most of all he has Miracle. He is focusing his love and affection on another living being. Sweet and warm. He plans to spend the afternoon eating pie with his brother. Goofy and light. The man deserves it for a bit.

But then we get the mention of Cas from Sam and we see how Dean reacts. How can Dean, who was sobbing on the floor and was demanding Cas to be brought back basically an episode ago keep an emotionless face and brush it off. We get the line 'If we don't keep living all that sacrifice was for nothing'. So we are meant to believe that right now Dean is not particularly bothered with Cas' death because it was a sacrifice to save the world. At this point a dread is starting to fill me.

Um, if it was the first time Cas was dying I would understand this. We have seen Dean broken over Cas' death before multiple times under more peaceful circumstances. Dean wouldn't leave Purgatory without Cas and you are trying to convince me after gaining true free will and finally writing his own story Dean would not break every cosmic rule to bring Cas back? Even if he did not reciprocate romantic feelings? This is the textbook definition of out of character in my eyes. Screw the romantic aspect because we ship it. Strip all the glances, touches and sexy lines we enjoy to gif and think back to feed the good ship Destiel, forget about it.

Keep the core of their relationship- the '3rd Winchester brother' who has stuck through thin and thick with them for the past 12 years. You mean to tell me Dean would be happy leaving Cas in the Empty and continue living his life? How is that possible? How is that Dean? How is it possible that we would not see Dean at least trying?

And then 20 minutes later comes the complete opposite of the line Dean wants to stick by. 'If we don't keep living all that sacrifice was for nothing'

But Dean does not keep living, does he? He doesn't grow happy or old. He doesn't start a family or open a bar or learn to dance. He doesn't honour Cas' sacrifice. He dies in the most unimaginitive way. And it is cruel. So cruel.

Dean went from having the strong belief that he would die young on a hunt fighting a monster, saving someone, machete and gun in his hand to starting to accept there is more to him than killing things.

And this fucking episode did a full backtrack and what did it give us?

Dean dying young on a hunt fighting a monster, saving two kids, machete and gun in his hand.

We got Dean dying in a way that gave us a 10 minute speech on how much he loves Sam. We got Dean dying in pain, scared and terrified. We got Dean getting a hunter's funeral with only Sam attending. We saw at Mary's funeral how a hunter's goodbye should look like. Room full of friends, mementos and alcohol. And Dean doesn't get any of that to honour his life.

How can he deserve that? How is it possible?

Even with Heaven 2.0 now being this trully idyllic place how can this be what Dean deserves?

And Sam... Sam gets to grow old in pain and regret. One foot on Earth with his family, one foot ready to follow Dean. Did anyone think Sam looked happy in that montage? Leaving the only home he shared with Dean? Presumably giving up his hunter friends, not even playing a 'Bobby' kind of role? Keeping the Impala in a dusty garage?

Jack... Jack who said he would be hands off, but how am I supposed to believe this would include his family? And even if he didn't heal/save Dean you mean to tell me he wouldn't be there for Sam? I am thinking of Jack appearing after Dean dies, supporting Sam's weight as he collapses, explaining why he can't bring him back. Standing next to Sam as Dean's body is burning.

And Cas... Cas who finally told Dean his truth and then sacrificed himself, content. Cas was saved from the Empty. No longer in eternal sleep sufferring. Working with Jack to rebuild Heaven. And... what? Cas who made Earth his true home, who was talking through tears how he loved the whole world through loving Dean, chose to stay in Heaven? Not stepping in Earth? Not getting in contact with the brothers? Waiting for them to die to talk to them again? And even when Dean dies he is not there to welcome him along with Jack? How is that possible?

We had gotten to know these characters so well over the past 15 seasons. How can the writers give us such a finale, so OOC for all three of them?

How can we not get a scene with Dean and Cas after the last two episodes?

Why have the confession, why have this be Cas' true moment of happines?

Why have the prayer in Purgatory a few episodes back?

Why have Dean break down in a way he has never broken down before?

What is the point of all this if there will be no climax? Even if it is the tiniest nudge, a couple words and a hug.

It makes absolutely no fucking sense. Up until now it felt like all roads, all plot points were converging to one- happiness, peace, love and family.

But no. We got a finale that would make sense 15 years ago. 15 seasons worth of character development and relationship building (not just Destiel, but Sam + Eileen, Jody, Donna and the girls, Charlie and so many others) and we got a finale that basically had Dean die so Sam could have a family.

As others have said here in tumblr Dean and Sam's lives on Earth would end up being exactly the same they ended up being if Dean did not go to get Sam that night.

How can a writer choose this fate for their characters? Why explore everything we watched on our screens, if on the last episode you decide to press delete on 15 seasons and basically deliver episode 1 if something had gone wrong and Dean died?

It makes no sense! It makes no sense regressing your characters 15 years and taking out of them all the experiences, especially those of the past few episodes.

You strip them into their season 1 selves. You strip them from all the layers of friendships, relationships, pain, experience and wisdom they went through and you strip them down to just two broken brothers, sticking together hunting things and saving people til the end. Which yes, they were.

But that was not all they were. Supernatural was a show about the family you make, not the family you get dealt with. Sam and Dean MADE the choice of sticking together. Yes they were brothers, but we know how easy it would have been to lead very different lives which would resulted in never seeing each other. They chose to stick together and they chose to build a family based on love, not blood.

And we got nothing of that legacy.

Is is unfair and it betrays not us, the fans, but the characters.

And that's what's hurting most.

#i am sorry for the long rant #supernatural #spn #dean #sam #castiel #destiel #15x20 #15x19 #15x18 #supernatural finale #carry on #mine

37 notes · View notes

thisbisexualbrainrot · 4 years ago

Text

15x20: Soft Epilogue

Here I go writing fix it fic again. It’s almost 2am and I couldnt sleep until I posted it. I hope its enjoyable. Definitely fluff and a little angst thrown in as well. The soft epilogue with happy endings that Sam and Dean deserved. I didnt get a good place to mention this in the fic, but I believe Sam and Eileen would have rebuilt the American Men of Letters together. :) _________________

Sunlight glinted against the black impala as she flew down the back country road. It was midday and the air was warm. Turns out when you are fighting for your life, you forget to pay attention to the seasons change. Sam was grateful they could pay attention to that now.

He checked his phone again. No response yet. Where is she?

“Hey um... Eileen hasn't called me yet and she's not answering. Do you think she didn't come back?” Sam asked, glancing over at Dean who was tapping his hand on the wheel.

“Jack wouldn't do that, he would bring her back with everyone else. It's okay Sammy. She'll be there.” Dean assured him, he gave Sam a smirk and looked back at the road. “She probably just doesn't have a phone remember?”

“Yeah, you're right.” Sam sighed, running his hand through his hair. She has to be there. Dean noticed Sam fidgeting and stepped on the gas.

In the backseat, Miracle barked in approval.

Before Dean even had the car in park, Sam opened the passenger door and ran up to Eileen's door. Dean chuckled as he watched Sam bound up and the front door opened quickly. Eileen ran out to meet him and the two crashed into each other. Smiles, kisses, laughter. Good Dean thought Sammys happy. For the first time, Dean isn't worried about his little brother anymore. They changed the world, for good, and now Sam has a real chance for a real relationship. Eileen is good for him.

Eventually Dean got out of the car, Eileen gave him a hug and signed while saying “Thank you.”

Dean looked at Sam, who hadn’t stopped grinning ear to ear, and smirked “Yeah well, now he's your problem.” “Yeah okay” Sam laughed. “I’ll call you later”. Eileen wrapped her arm around Sam’s waist and Dean was confident he wouldn’t be hearing from his brother for a while.

“Yeah yeah” Dean smiled, “You kids have fun.”

“I'm 37, Dean.”

Dean gave them a shit eating grin and slid into the impala “I'm gonna go check on Jody and the girls. Apparently Claire is really pissed she got zapped and missed everything. She keeps texting me.”

Dean put the car in reverse and he noticed Eileen jump into Sam's arms and kiss him as the car pulled away. Deans phone was laying on the passenger seat and it vibrated with another text from Claire:

How is Cas? Is he with you?

---

The lights flickered on in the bunker as Dean walked in with Miracle at his heels and he shut the heavy door behind them. The emptiness of it felt especially loud as he had spent the last few days sleeping on Jody’s couch in a house full of teenagers.

He sighed as he remembered telling them about Cas. He couldn't meet Jody’s eye the entire time. He kept it simple, just told them what he had told Sam and Jack:

Cas summoned the empty.

Cas saved him.

Cas was gone.

Claire especially didn't take it well and the first night she fell asleep leaning on Dean's shoulder in front of the TV. Kaia came downstairs and Dean woke Claire up long enough for her to let Kaia lead her up to their room.

Poor kid he thought as he picked up the decanter and filled his glass. He had gotten a text from Sam:

Going on a trip with Eileen actually. We thought some time away might help us find normal again, if that's even possible. Call you later?

Dean sent a short response telling Sam that was fine and tossed his phone on the library table.

What to do now?

The whole world was open, skys the limit. For the first time he had no one to protect, no world to save, no monsters to hunt...just his own thoughts in an empty bunker. Well, except for his dog curled up next to his feet. It was terrifying and Dean found himself pounding down whiskey a lot faster than he intended.

A few glasses in and he started praying.

“Cas…” he whispered to the silence “Cas..I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” Dean felt his eyes fill with tears. “Cas...why didn't you tell me before...”

“Dean”

Dean's head shot up. He must have really drank way too much because there was absolutely no way this was real. But there Jack was, standing in front of him with the same white jacket, same innocent smile on his face.

“Hello” he said, raising his hand. “I'm here for your advice.”

He said it so sincerely, Dean couldn't help but let out a sad, drunk laugh. His body relaxed a little and he looked up at him. “Man you can't just pop in- I mean you can it's just….Jack, I'm not in the place to be givin’ you advice anymore alright? Besides, I thought you were going to be all hands off?”

“I am, mostly. I think. I don't really know, I'm still figuring it out. Amara is helping me.” Jack waited patiently while Dean’s intoxicated mind took in this information.

“Alright” Dean stood up and leaned against the table, his arms crossed. Strangely, talking to Jack as whatever he was, was easier than he thought. He missed this. “What’s going on kid?”

Jack nodded at Dean’s approval to ask. “I want to take Cas out of the empty but Amara said I should ask you.”

Dean froze. His mouth went dry. Cas. “So you- you can get him out?”

“Yes, it seems quite possible. Chuck showed me how in his memories. He was able to pull Lucifer out and Amara told me it should work for Cas as well.”

Dean's head was spinning. “I..um well, why are you asking me then?”

“You are very important to him Dean.” Jack said with such firm resolve, “If you think this is a bad idea, I will respect that. Amara said it should be up to you.”

Dean's heart leaped at the thought of seeing Cas again. Panic mixed with pure elation. He was terrified but of course the answer was obvious. “Yeah..” Dean whispered. “Yeah” he repeated louder, clearing his throat “Yeah, Bring him back.” Dean swallowed and looked at the floor. His mind desperately trying to understand that this was happening, this was real. Cas.

Jack smiled “That's what I told her you would say. Thank you Dean. Give me a moment.” and disappeared. The silence was deafening and then Dean heard his phone vibrate. He spun around and almost fell over a chair getting to where it laid abandoned on the table. “...Cas?”

“No, Dean it's Sam. Are you okay?” “Sammy I um....” Dean couldn't find the words “Jack, he was here.”

“What? Dean what's going on?”

“He-...” And then Miracle started barking and Dean let his phone drop to the floor.

“Hello Dean”

He was standing a few feet away, this couldnt be real. “...Cas I..” Dean started but he lost the ability to speak. He was really there. Rumpled trench coat, crooked tie, tousled hair and bright blue eyes. Dean tried to speak again. Why couldn't he say anything else? Too drunk, too stunned and too afraid to move. Damn it. “Cas...you’re here.”

“Yes” Cas smiled “I'm here.” Dean sensed a nervous caution in his voice. “It's good to see you Dean.” “Cas, what the hell were you thinking?” Dean’s voice was low and Cas furrowed his brow.

“I was protecting you.”

Dean shook his head like he didn't want to hear it. Like he wouldn't accept that as a reason.

“Dean, BIllie would have killed us. You know that. The world needed you alive Dean. I needed you alive.” Cas paused and met Deans’ gaze again. “It was more important to make sure you were safe.”

Dean pursed his lips and closed his eyes in frustration. “Im sorry, more important?” Dean looked at Cas again, “No. You don't get to dip out. You should have told me about that deal! I could have helped you! I could have-... Damn it Cas!” Dean slammed the chair next to him and heard it clatter on the floor.

“Dean I did what I needed to do. And I don’t regret any of it.” Cas let his voice raise a little in responsive anger but he chose his next words carefully, “I don't regret what I said and I don't regret saving your life.” Despite Dean's outward display of anger, Cas knew Dean was reacting out of love. This anger was misplaced guilt. “You owe me nothing Dean. None of this was your fault.”

Dean was just drunk enough that he faltered, his voice breaking as he said “Cas, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry Cas..I didn't stop you...I couldn't tell you...”

Cas moved toward him then, reaching a hand to wipe away the tears Dean didn't realize were falling down his face. Dean could feel his heart aching against his ribs. How did he tell him that images of that moment came back to him every night, swallowed up in black? Cas crying, Dean reaching, Cas disappearing. Over and over they haunted him.

Cas lifted his hand away but felt Deans rough fingers stop him, holding his hand in place. “Cas….Tell me again. What you said..please..”

“Dean...”

“No I..” Dean breathed out “I need to hear it Cas. Please tell me again.”

Cas brought his head closer to rest on Dean’s forehead, closing his eyes. Dean lowered their hands, still grasping on in desperation. Cas could feel Dean shaking as he moved closer to him. Dean let his eyes flutter closed when he felt Cas rest against him. After a moment of silence, Cas said in a quiet voice “I love you Dean.”

Dean wasn't sure if it was the whiskey or the feeling of Cas’s skin, warm and real against his face.Maybe it was just the pure joy that Cas was here or the relief that he would never leave him again. But he needed more, he needed to feel Cas. He needed to touch him. He moved in slowly, brushing their noses together. Cas’s breath staggered as he let Dean make the decision. Dean grazed his lips along the angels mouth and everything felt warm. The kiss was soft and cautious. Dean moved his mouth slowly, carefully and Cas leaned in slightly, letting Dean set the pace. And then, realization.

Oh. Oh.

The energy changed and Cas felt Dean’s kiss deepen, his hand reaching up to wind fingers into Cas’s hair. And it was then that Cas allowed himself to grab onto Dean, pulling him in by his flannel. He breathed in Dean's scent, pine mixed with bourbon and aftershave and Dean let his other hand up to rest on Cas’s neck. He could feel the angel’s pulse racing as he pulled back to look at him. “This is...okay right?”

“Yes” Cas breathed, and immediately pulled Dean in again.

---

When Sam walked into the bunker he noticed the lights were on and a chair was toppled over in the library. Deans phone on the floor. But he didn't see anyone. “Dean?”

Eileen followed after him, calling out for Dean. Sam ran to Dean’s room and when Eileen followed, Sam stopped her before she called out for Dean again. He gestured into the room. “Look” he signed to her.

Dean was sleeping, his head resting on Castiel’s chest. Miracle was curled up at the bottom of the bed, her head resting on Dean's leg. Sam noticed Cas, in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt, calmly placing his fingers on Dean's temple. A pale blue glow kept Dean’s dreams peaceful and Cas ran his fingers through short hair as his hunter slept soundly.

“Cas?” Sam whispered, in disbelief that the angel was alive. Cas gently slid out from under Dean and moved to the door, shutting it carefully behind him.

Sam smiled “It's so good to see you Cas.” He pulled the angel into a hug. “I thought you were in the empty. How are you here?”

“Jack,” Cas smiled “He brought me back” Cas looked back toward the bedroom.”Dean and I have been...catching up.”

Sam smiled and let out a short laugh “Yeah I can see that.”

“I love him Sam”

“I know you do. I never wanted to push him but I knew.” Sam let out a breathy laugh and ran his hands through his hair. “Wow I cant believe Dean finally figured it out. I can't believe this is really happening. What are you going to do now?”

“Whatever makes Dean happy.” Cas said, so matter of factly that Sam shook his head in pure amazement and laughed again.

---

It was a small outdoor ceremony, but Sam and Eileen couldn't have been happier. Dean beamed with pride standing next to Sam, his tux pressed and black shoes shined. They held the reception in Jody's backyard, string lights and cheap alcohol. It was perfect.

Cas walked into the kitchen, slightly intoxicated and saw Claire sitting on the counter rubbing her feet “I hate heels.”

“They do look very uncomfortable,” Cas replied. “These suits are restricting as well. My neck is very itchy.”

Claire beckoned Cas over and loosened his bowtie. “You don't really need it all the way on anymore. Ceremony is over.” She smiled, “Your boyfriend took his off hours ago I bet.”

Cas never will be used to hearing Dean referred to in that way. “Where is he?”

“I think he’s out front on the porch.” She said, jumping off the counter barefoot and walking back out into the yard to find Kaia for a dance. She popped her head back inside “Oh hey, tell him I can work that Sunday shift he asked about okay?” Cas nodded and Claire spun around and headed to the dance floor.

Cas walked out onto the porch to find Dean. The night air was cool and crickets chirped loudly in the fields. As Claire had suspected, Dean’s tie was long gone. His dress shirt was unbuttoned enough to reveal the t-shirt underneath, and to see the necklace filled with Castiel’s grace glowing on his chest. He took another drink from his beer and looked up. “Heya Cas.”

“Hello Dean.” He paused and then remembered “Claire said she can work the Sunday shift.”

“Ah, good. That kid is killing me. That's what I get for owning a bar, I guess. I’m a freakin boss now.” He laughed to himself, “It still feels weird to say it. Like I'm gonna mess it up.”

“You’ve earned it, and you certainly are not messing it up.” Cas sat down next to him and smiled as Dean wrapped his arm around him, “How are you Dean?”

“Eh, I'm fine.” Dean looked down, picking at the label of his beer. “Sammy seems happy, huh?”

“Yes, he does.” Cas reached out and pulled Dean’s hand away from his nervous movement, entwining their fingers together. “He's going to be fine.”

“I know.” Dean says, squeezing Cas’s hand. “I just hate that he doesn't need me anymore.”

“That's not true, he’ll always need you.” Cas reassured him. Dean leaned over and kissed Cas, gazing at him for a moment before saying “I love you, you know that right?”

“I know,” Cas replied, “I love you too.” It didn't matter that they had been together for over a year, 6 months since Cas had made the choice to be human, it still made Cas shiver to hear Dean tell him he loved him.

“You sure you don’t regret giving me this?” He holds up the glowing grace pendant. Cas shakes his head “No, not once.” and Dean pulls him in for another kiss.

Jack watches from afar, a smile on his face.

The sounds of the party last long into the night.

#supernatural #supernatural 15x20 #fix it fic #destiel fix it fic #destiel fanfic #destiel fanfiction #deancas fix it #deancas fix it fic #deancas fanfiction #spn 15x20 #dean winchester #castiel #sam winchester #samxeileen #sam x eileen #saileen #destiel #deancas

34 notes · View notes

innermoonlight-bhe · 4 years ago

Text

Me, again, on Destiel. Please read.

I’ve been having problems all this month. And while I was self-exploring the reasons of my uneasiness, I tracked it back to 15x18. When I first watched the episode I had lots of unresolved feelings. I felt happy and at the same time really distressed. After waiting for two week for the end of Supernatural I thought those feelings would disappear but they just kept on getting stronger. I began feeling stressed and, this last two weeks, feelings just empty. I had no desire to do anythings, like I was lost. Yesterday I realized why and got me sad and mad at the same time. I don’t want to take a lot of time writing this but there are too many emotions and rational thoughts that don’t let me sleep at night.

This is why I want to divide this text into two parts:The first one being the queerbating debate on internet. This includes the normalization of heterosexual relationships, audiences, plots and writing, marketing and advertising, and other things that have to do with t.v. industry. In specific, the rare case of CW and its treatment of the whole Supernatural family. In the second part I would like to focus on my personal experience, which I’m sure is same to most people who were left all alone in this Destiel world of disappointment. This last one you can decide to ignore or share with me. The one that i’m most interested is that you read the first part, even though it can seem a little out of context, since I’ll be referring to another tv shows of the CW.

FIRST PART THEN OF THE DESTIEL OPINION:When I was left so sad after the queerbaiting I began watching a famous soup opera aka telenovela, called Yo soy Betty, la fea. It’s famous worldwide and I felt it like a comfort home after all the Destiel drama. It made me happy because the story plot is only one: the heterosexual couple that falls in love. Of course I’m reducing this too much, but the point is that yesterday, after I finished watching it, I realized that even though the main couple had problems at the end the audience knew they would’ve ended together. It did happen, in the anti-last episode, same as in supernatural and the Cas confession. The two further episodes centered on the happy conclusion on the story. There are clear points to establish:

Point 1: Supernatural was born as a serious mainly centered on two heterosexual man traveling all along a country hunting monsters while looking for a father. Meanwhile a classic telenovela centers on a love couple who fight against everythings to be together; in this case it’s establish since the beginning and no one will except anything else.

Point 2: Meanwhile telenovela’s audiences are destined to be woman, wanting to follow the classic love story; Supernatural was being male focused actually did excepted woman but also men watchers. Supernatural had a largest specter of viewers.

Point 3: Telenovelas are not willing to change the story for the audiences desires. They work with practical and classic formulas that rarely will fail. There’s no necessity to receive a feedback to complete. Supernatural and tv series, on the other hand, actually need the feedback from the viewers because on it depends their permanency on the screen.

Supernatural needed to keep their viewers high so the show could continue. I’m gonna leave the classic telenovela out for a moment. It’s important settling this differences to approximate myself to the basic point of my madness: how unethical is the queerbaiting.The public opinion changes, and The CW having clear this is very know to keep in touch with fans wishes and needs. In the case of Jane the Virgin, a barely combination of the telenovela classic plot but in a tv series way, had a big “change” with one of their main characters: Petra. Her connection with the main character, Jane, was noted and wanted by many of the viewers. But the show’s creator knew that main plot (point 1)was a girl who accidentally gets pregnant and eventually falls in love with the love of her life, Rafael. So the show writers wouldn’t just change this main plot in order to make a couple happen, so instead they gave the public what they wanted by making Petra bisexual and introducing a perfect girl for her, also called Jane, to deliver the wish of fans. This relationship worked purely and on its on. The reactions with Petra bisexuality were low, and they took care of it as if it was something normal and not anything that needed satanizing. No one could be expected to freak, not even Petra’s twins. Even though the first seasons Petra only had male relationships. This is a good thing that The CW did, but they didn’t do this out of the goodness of their heart: they did it for views and for the audience (point 2). Jane the virgin was also planned to have female audiences and to treat serious social issues respecting sexuality and love. This is why it didn’t came as a surprise.

Then why did Destiel couldn’t happen? Because the CV is homophobic? Probably there’s some of this in it, but the reality it’s they weren’t giving up on the part of the audience that is actually homophobic, or that at least won’t feel comfortable watching a heterosexual character discover himself as bi. The thing of the audiences is important because the “ambiguity” in which Cas’ confession was treated worked perfectly for them: it gave exactly the sufficient enough to keep us happy, meaning while keeping the perfect amount of “friendship”. So anyone can take whatever they want for the story. By this part I understand why they wanted to deal with this confession in an ambiguous way: to please everybody. But why did they wanted to please everybody? It wasn’t out of kindness of their heart, it was for views.The whole queerbaiting debate has being on the tables for a long time but we also ignore the unethical implications on it. It has been used by many contemporary media, to hint at something that the producers are not expecting to happen any time. And even though, they keep on teasing us. This is highly unethical because the reason behind them is the accumulation of money. Supernatural survived because of Destiel. I resisted myself to say this because I had respect for the series until I stopped watching around season 10. The story and plots were doom, repetitive and boring at times. We keep watching for the emotions caused by the supernatural family. Not only Destiel but Sam and all of the characters. The original plot explained in the point 1 was lost and blurred, we were far away from that premise and that was why the finale episode feel just bad.

The show had chances to grow without losing the origina plot but also confronting change and accept that sometimes, things must pass and you have to move. Destiel was an important support of the show, the views and year after year renovation of the series. Pointing at the queerbaiting has lost its meaning if we forgot why they do it, why they keep on doing this even though it makes us feel bad. This affects the shows work in perspective because it changes the plot and natural progression of the story. For the queerbaiting, they have scenes that are forgotten next episodes like they never happened. I’m a literature student and the first thing they say to us is that a scene, even a word, should be taken so seriously that it actually work on the long road of the story. In Destiel we have beautiful, all heart breaking scenes of Cas and Dean being romantic, closed, just in love. The Dean’s confession were he admitted to the priest he wanted to experience new things, the Castiel’s love confession, and others are an example of how this scenes have a space in the show but are still isolated from the original story. They don’t play a part in the bigger image. That’s why we don’t see Dean talk to Sam about Cas, this is why they are so many Destiel plots left unsolved. I have a small memory of an old lady assuring Dean that he’s in love, even though we haven’t seen in a long time a female in Dean’s life (Dean, who the first four seasons flirted with e v e r y woman he met. Because producers and writers can let this scenes happen as long as it doesn’t change the main characters. Even, they are willing to let us think that Cas could be bi but Dean isn’t, by not having him say anything after Cas says I love you. And to be honest, we didn’t except much.

We knew that we were clowning and it’s not like we excepted a love making scene from those two. We raised our expectations after 15x18 and not after. A lot of us were waiting on the finale to bring joy even though we never actually imagined it would go canon. 15x18 lifted expectations very few had and that lots, myself for instance, returned to watch after hearing Destiel was semi-canon. It brought back feelings, I got to rewatch supernatural to enter the atmosphere once again... So it was perfect for the CW. On one hand, the biggest queerbaiting on history gave them back for 15x19 and 15x20 all the fandom they had lost for the previous queerbaiting and tiredness of waiting. And also, they keep the antis and the homophobe watching. It was perfectly staged and nothing else was expecting. Something similar happen with Jane the virgin. With the death of Michael (I rather shipped more Jane with Michael) a lot of fans stopped watching. This was planned since the beginning and they actually gave us a fake death and then the real one. I actually stopped watching one season of Jane the virgin after his death because I was devastated, even though since the beginning everything pointed at Jane ending up with Rafael. Her connection with Michael was lovely and pure love. But after killing him off they wrote the relationship of Jafael so perfectly, not rushed or anything: it developed in a way that her relationship with Michael was intact but finished by death. It was a hard punch but at the end we ended up to accept her relationship with Rafael because of the clear progression between the characters. But, at the end of the series, at the last season they decided it was good idea to bring Michael back from the death and have her chose Rafael, after all of the progress It took for her to forget Michael. The changed her and all of the perspective of love changed for the show. It made thing that soul mates don’t exist, that all the love Jane felt for Michael disappear after having a whole season of her suffering for her lost, after she wrote her first book for him. It would’ve been so much better for the story if Michael stayed death.

So the things is it’s not only queerbaiting on homosexual couples, but the whole idea that they need to have a huge audiences watching their last seasons. I returned to watch Jane the virgin excepting for Michael. This awful thing they do. Just for views and gain of capital bothers me and its what makes me angry. In the case of Supernatural it’s also a topic of homophobia and the fear that the homophobia of a few will ruin the views of series finales. An as I considere the unethical implications is why I would love to have them apologize to us. It’s like a person promising the stars and stopping you to move on, while they know nothing will happen. They use us as numbers to gain money and attention. The decision that I and a lot of people took to unfollow all of The CW accounts is no radical. It’s a little if we take into account all of the money they made from the unethical queerbaiting. It causes me a lot of anger and actually feel like a I need an apology because I felt used and dirty. This is the fault of the industry and the CW has a fame of doing so.

PART 2:

This will be little in comparison. Now I want to get to the sad sentimental part. I felt all empty because four years ago that I stopped watching I also stopped talking to the love of my life. Hearing about Destiel had me going back to moments. I even desired to talk to him again to tell him that I wasn’t all wrong. Destiel wasn’t platonic or an illusion. it has clearly staged to makes us think it could happen. It’s not the story of an angel who falls for a human, that gives everything up for him, that loves him. After his confession is the story of unrequited love. Dean never says it back and it’s a feeling that a lot of people have suffered. To love someone and not having them saying them back, of the relationship that never ends but at the end it’s one of the most important. This one I talked about I never dated, I never kissed, but he’s the man i’ve loved the most in my life. Having Castiel saying I love you and never receiving anything back, giving his life and no one saving him, it’s just heartbreaking for all of us who have constantly giving everything without expecting anything in return. At the same time it’s the story of a a couple that never happens but that should have. The same reflexion as always: if it were heterosexual it would’ve happen long time ago. But it also happens in real life, that if time alined, if things were in other way relationships would’ve happen with people in our lives.I had a lot of more feelings for Destiel, but that would be for another time. Right now I just realized why made me, personally, feed angry and sad. I realized I was a Cas to someone else. I realized I was used by a network. The queerbaiting actually has psychology repercussion on us, and it’s something they fail to understand. Accepting that I was affected by a tv show took me a hard time. I didn’t know how to explain to others why this had me absence for week, I thought I was ridiculous and week. I felt bad but know I realized I’m not wrong. It’s not my fault but it’s years of messing with out feelings on purpose. Some day i’ll write an essay on this. I have to much to say but I end it with this:

The media manipulates our emotions and doesn’t take any responsibility whatsoever.

Don’t trust the media.

(Sorry for the bad english, I’m mexican. But at least Destiel is canon in my language).

#destiel #queerbaiting #the cw #jane the virgin #jafael #petra #supernatural #deancas #15x18 #supernaturalfinale #betty la fea #destielcanon #curdueva #Petramos #supernaturalending #theysilencedthem #they silenced us

31 notes · View notes

laora-inn · 4 years ago

Text

Supernatural - Some speculations about the last 7 episodes of 15th season

Well, after 2 trailers, episodes descriptions on IMDB and some unfinished plot-lines of SPN story I’d like to share my own speculations. Some of them are definitely wrong.

Destiel positive, happy end positive, don’t like - don’t read.

Season 15 | Episode 14. Last Holiday

A filler - that’s how we anime fans call episodes which have no deal with the main plotline, though can contain some interesting moments and nuances. In “Supernatural” these episodes usually have no Cas in them. Sometimes they are very good... but mostly not. They are “just for fun”, and fans enjoy them, because they can be really funny. No angst.

Like this one - no angst, no Cas, a wood nymph who looks like Mary Poppins to me (or Mrs. Marple whatever). Some British origin of the character.

That’s the episode which shots with Dean in purple nightgown are from (trailer short version).

I suppose the shot with Dean, Sam and Jack flying in the air could also be here from. But maybe not.

I don’t know where Cas may be. His absence should be explained to us in some way. In episode 10th he was missing because of talking to the angels. What’s now? Some preparations for the next Jack's trial?

In this episode Dean should come closer to Jack’s forgiving.

Season 15 | Episode 15. Gimme Shelter

I have NO IDEA what this episode is about. Maybe the next trial for Jack? Or not?

I think the shot from the last trailer with Cas protecting Jack on the truck bed is from this episode. Also, some tortured person on the bed with the “lust” written above could be from it.

And what about Sam and Dean? Where are they?

I think they may have their own journey here, separate from Cas and Jack. Possibly the epic shots with them entering some building are this episode from. Possibly not.

Season 15 | Episode 16. Drag Me Away (From You)

I don’t like this episode title. It looks like Destiel mocking to me - maybe, I just don’t have enough faith. I want to trust SPN writers but can’t. Somebody help me to believe, we all need that now! :)

THE ONLY episode in ALL THE SHOW except this one that had brackets in the title was 12x12, Stuck in the Middle (With You). Yahoo.

Obviously, 12x12 was a parody to the Reservoir Dogs, a movie by Quentin Tarantino. Parody in a good sense of this word, but still. The plotline, the scenes (oh, this lunch scene from different points of view!), the scenes’ order, the roles, though changed - all of them. In case you didn’t watch Reservoir Dogs, just go and watch it, and then re-watch 12x12. You will understand.

"Stuck in the Middle with You" is Stealers Wheel song which was in the OST of this Tarantino’s movie. This allusion should deal with boys’ and Mary relationship - because it’s her who betrayed them involuntarily, and now they are stuck in the middle with her.

But somehow this episode title also deals with Destiel relationship. Maybe ‘cause that’s Cas who is dying, not Mary. Maybe ‘cause even on his deathbed he doesn’t confess something important - not about his betrayal, there was no one, but about his feelings. He says "I love you”, but then adds “I love all of you”, and Dean is literally stuck in the middle with Cas here.

Back to the brackets in the episodes titles. Because of them I suppose that 12x12 and 15x16 could be connected. But how exactly?! That’s the question. I want them badly to be connected in Destiel way, but know too little.

Back then I supposed that Dean could be dying in this episode and it would be his turn to confess something to Cas. But now I don’t know if there will be Cas in this episode at all, I just don’t have enough information.

I hope he will.

Btw, the words “Drag Me Away (From You)” are in Toto’s song “Africa”. And in case you didn’t know, in 2018 this song was used for half-an-hour Destiel video made by fan here. It covers ALL the Destiel moments then far. Link for this video is in Supernatural wiki, in the Destiel article. Half an hour, 10 repeats of the song, author’s comment:

Along the way it stopped being funny and started getting insulting because this has been a literal decade (as of 2018 the vid features seasons 4-13) and the show has explored ALL of the tropes and yet and yet and yet...

I mean the fangirl shipper part of me also loves it. And then I get mad because I love it. I have a very complicated relationship with Supernatural but that's okay.

Have you heard the good news about Tragic Widow Dean?

TLDR: Have a supercut of all the DeanCas stuff set to Toto's Africa.

We can speculate a bit about this fact, but the truth is we know only about young Sam and Dean, who certainly will be in this episode.

I think shots with Billie talking to Dean from the last trailer also belong to this episode, as well as shots with young Dean with Samulet, who is a ghost now. But these assumptions could be totally wrong.

What circumstances will take us to the young Sam and Dean? Time travelling? Flashbacks? The parallel world?

Personally I think it will be the third option. Because how the hell young Dean can be a ghost in “our” universe? Unless it’s not Dean, though I doubt it. But if it’s not Dean, it can be a flashback, you know, with the young boys. Yep?

We’ll wait and see.

I don’t think that Sam’s appreciative words to Dean refer to this episode.

Also I don’t think Sam is going to sacrifice himself AGAIN (I’ve heard such an opinion). But maybe it’s my hope that makes me think in a wrong way.

Season 15 | Episode 17. Unity

I think some of Chuck’s shots are from this episode. Maybe the red lights in the bunker too. Maybe not.

There also should be Amara and some angels. I saw Uriel in the cast! Maybe there also be some light lit on the all situation in Heaven now, when Jack made new angels.

Some interaction between all of them + Sam, Dean, Cas and Jack should take place. Here the shot with sigil could be taken from.

What side the angels will take? How it happened that Uriel is alive? Was he resurrected by Chuck or Amara? What plans does Amara have, how is she planning to deal with Chuck?

And what’s for Naomi? Will she come back or not? I think she won’t, not in this episode for sure, and I’m already disappointed ‘cause you know, she should be alive. Dumah said she is. For me Naomi is an important figure considering Destiel, and I think she’d be the best Heaven runner.

All in all, in this episode should happen something that will make Cas happy. I suppose by the end of 15x17 or in the beginning of 15x18 they all will be sure that they have won the game, and Dean will forgive Jack for Mary.

The episode title may refer to angels’, Winchesters’ and Amara unity.

Season 15 | Episode 18. Despair

Well, in Supernatural wiki I also saw “The Truth” title for this episode.

Most of us are convinced that in this episode Cas will tell Dean about his deal with the Empty and will be taken by it. I believe the same.

I think shot with Billie knocking with her hand rotten belongs to this episode.

I have some doubts, but also think a shot with Dean leaning on Cas is from here.

I’m sure that “You fought for this whole world” and Dean’s crying scene belong to this episode. ‘Cause you know. Despair. And the truth - about Cas’s deal and possibly about their fake win.

Billie’s with her scythe and bunker intrusion symbols could also be from here (or from one the previous episodes ends, especially for Billie - as a cliffhanger). And it should be the case for Sam and Jack, I suppose. Because there is no other way for Dean and Cas to face Cas’s deal with just two of them.

Destiel confession will be here, in more explicit form that it could be in 15x16, because there will be A TALK, but I don’t think we’ll see something real explicit.

Maybe, Dean’ll say he loves Cas. Maybe not. I’m sure only about the fact that we’ll cry by the end of this episode. And that will be AN UGLY CRYING, just as Jensen said.

Well, maybe there will be a hint that Cas can be brought back, but I think it won’t. So prepare yourselves, my friends.

Season 15 | Episode 19. Inherit the Earth

Here I think Sam’s appreciative words to Dean are taken from. They are definitely comforting. ‘Cause you know, Cas is dead, Chuck is alive. Possibly Cas was in his way and Chuck erased him by making him believe in their win.

I also think Dean’s crying words “this whole mission, saving the world” belong to this episode and will be in conversation with Sam.

They still need to fight Chuck, and Jack is still alive. Here Michael will appear and helps. And there is one moment Sergey mentioned in 15x07, about the key to the Death’s library. He even described what it looks like! Cas heard that as well as Eileen. Well, if Cas is taken, then Eileen should return to the Winchesters, maybe with Sam and Jack, or just tell them about this key.

I don’t know what they are going to do after. Open this library? How? Find how to kill God? Or not? Will they try to save Cas?

I think they will not talk about Cas’s saving. And he will be dead in this episode for sure.

Also I think they’ll deal with God in this episode, one way or another.

Season 15 | Episode 20. Carry On

This is a land of unlimited speculation!

I hope Dean’ll have Cas back by the end of episode. I think Cas’ll save himself from the Empty, ‘cause, you know, he has a big goal there. The Empty tortures all the dead angels and demons, as far as we know. It should be fixed - Cas’s already made a promise to Ruby. And we know that Cas has no problem with ruining something and messing it up - he is basically THE GREAT TRICKSTER of this show.

Rebelling against Heaven and ruining angels’ plans? Check. Stopping Apocalypse? Check. Opening Purgatory? Check. Becoming a new God? Check. Bringing the Leviathans? Check. Casting all the angels out of Heaven and burning their wings? Check. Becoming human? Check. Becoming an angel by devouring other angels’ grace? Check. Getting an army of angels? Check. Giving up this army for one human? Check. Kidnapping angels’ prisoner? Check. Letting Lucifer in? Check. Helping “an abomination”, Devil’s son, to be born? Check. Annoying Empty so much that it brought him back to life? Check. Making a deal with the Empty? Check.

It’s very dangerous to mess with Cas, you just don’t know what he could do for the greater good, and yep, in some way Dean was right when he said that Cas is “something that’s always going wrong”. So I think the Empty is in trouble here, not vice versa.

Also, there is one more thing that bothers me. When Nick in 14th season was praying to Lucifer, he woke him up in the Empty. Theoretically, Lucifer can be awake by now. It could be a dead end, but still. Lucifer’s “true face” is similar to the Empty’s, sooo...

I don’t know what to think about it and the fact that Nick could reach Lucifer and return him from the Empty, so let’s move on.

I hope for the happy end for Sam (maybe with Eileen) and for all the hunters we know. They are family.

NO MCD here! If someone’ll die - they shouldn’t be Sam, Dean or Cas. I don’t want to see Eileen’s death either. I don’t know what about Jack. I don’t want him to die, but he is 100% supernatural being, and I am not sure what it means for him to die.

Monsters should stay, hunters should hunt them. We’ll see that the “family business” thrives.

There should be an order on the all levels - in Heaven, Hell and on Earth. There should be the new Death - of they should return Billie. Rowena running the Hell would be perfect. Wonder if Naomi could run Heaven. Maybe it will be Chuck? If he will be redeemed. Or Michael.

I don’t know what’s for the Empty and Amara.

I don’t know what the end for Jack will be. I’d like he will be alive, but I just don’t know. He can’t be a human. That will be right thing for Cas, but not for Jack.

I hope for Destiel endgame, as well as for Sam/Eileen. Cas should become a human, maybe, with some supernatural skills left.

I doubt that we have proper scenes of these ships together or Cas’ humanity. Just hints. But they can be very obvious - especially if we’ll see Dean’s reaction to Cas’s returning.

So, I hope to see them.

But, as I said, it's a land of unlimited speculation. We’ll wait and see.

What else should be resolved:

- Kevin can’t stay a ghost! It’s my main point here. He also can’t go to Hell. What will happen with him and in which episode? I don’t know. I just hope they won’t forget about him.

- There is the shot with Bobby from? 15x20? He should be somewhere.

- Also, there should be Charlie in this season unless something’s changed. Where is she?

- What are they going to do with alternative!Winchesters from 15x13? They will rest? They will make another HunterCorp? They will be gone?! Come on, something needs to be done with them! Of course, they are not so important here, so the writers can forget about them, but still, I’m interested.

What am I going to do:

I'm going to watch all the last episodes of the season. AND THEN, if there will be no happy end for the Winchester boys and Cas won’t be with them, I'm going to rebel. :) In every possible way - petitions, letters, actions etc. We are grown-up people here. We can fight for our rights, and it's my crucial right - to be happy about my favorite show ending. :)

__________________

Feel free to ask me anything or to comment. My ask is working!

#destiel #supernatural #spn #castiel #lucifer #dean winchester #deancas #eileen leahy #supernatural final season #supernatural 15 #kevin tran #charlie bradbury #bobby singer #rowena macleod #casdean #billie the reaper #destiel meta #destiel-meta

71 notes · View notes