#what alternative is there except to ship them to purgatory and back

[teafiend]

Apology: These edits are not done by me. I am not sure who made them but all credit to the original poster(s)/maker(s).

[destieltropecollection]

Destiel Trope Collection 2020 Day 5: Case Fic

Fearful | @deansrightfulangerissue

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1430 Main Tags/Warnings: Canon Universe, IT Crossover, Angst Summary: It comes for children, it feeds on their fears. Dean and Cas arrive to end its reign of terror.

He Wanted More (WIP) | @becky-srs

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1621 Main Tags/Warnings: #HeWantedMore #Destiel Summary: After years of self-denying and depressing Dean realized he's in love with Cas. Cas loves him too but this two morons won't see it, until Sam takes of with Eileen to a romantic vacation and put Dean and Cas on a case with a monster who kills gay couples what takes them to be an undercover couple... may the cover fall and revel their true feelings?

Curse me | @notfunnydean

Rating: General Word Count: 3099 Main Tags/Warnings: Dean loves balett!! Summary: Dean had always loved ballet, even though he never told anyone about that. When he and Sam find cursed ballet shoes, Dean can’t resist and tries them on anyway. He gets surprised in more than just one way.

Lost and Found | @unforth & @deansrightfulangerissue

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 4885 Main Tags/Warnings: Horror, Ambiguous Ending, Memory Alteration Summary: Dean and Sam's hunt in a haunted forest was bullshit from the moment the fog rolled in. And then the ghost silenced the world.

On This Night | @mittensmorgul

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 5688 Main Tags/Warnings: case fic, djinn, fluff, dean knows his tropes Summary: Something goes terribly wrong while hunting a djinn. Newly-human Cas had never considered what the effects of djinn poison could be for a human, and struggles to remember why everything seems just so slightly off when he wakes up back at the cabin he and Dean had been staying in during the hunt. The cabin has been transformed with holiday decorations, and Cas wonders just how long he'd been unconscious. Only when he tries to get answers from Dean, reality comes crashing back in on them both, in the best of all possible ways.

Heavenly Flavor | @songbird211

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 7190 Main Tags/Warnings: First Time/Fluff/lust monster/Sam Ships It/Anal/Blowjobs/Nipple Play/Top Dean/Top Cas/Bottom Dean/Bottom Cas/Voyeurism/Wing Kink/Love Confession Summary: During a case involving college men going missing Dean and Cas are taken by the creature responsible. This creature loves having sex with humans, hence the kidnappings, but this time she wants to fulfill her fantasy of watching two men have sex and she thinks Dean and Cas will do nicely.

The Unexpected Consequences of Amnesia | @pray4jensen

Rating: Mature Word Count: 10539 Main Tags/Warnings: Casefic, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Jealousy, Secret Relationship, Miscommunication, Dubious Consent Summary: When a spell backfires and results in Sam losing a year’s worth of memories, Sam’s really not that worried. After all, Dean reassures him that he hasn’t missed much and for the first time in a long time, the supernatural world’s at peace. Except then Dean and Cas exchange a look. Except then Sam keeps seeing them sneak around at night, into each other’s bedrooms, or whispering stealthily into each other’s ears whenever they think that he’s not looking. So naturally, Sam just has to investigate. Or the one where Sam obliviously and almost single-handedly brings about the collapse of Dean and Cas’ marriage in the span of one week.

Angeleech | @noiproksa

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 14457 Main Tags/Warnings: Canon Compliant, Team Free Will, Hugs, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Castiel, Banter, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, Case Fic Summary: It was supposed to be an easy hunt, but then everything goes sideways. Dean and Sam have to take care of an injured Cas and find out what is going on with the angel before it is too late. (Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)

Ten Inch Hero | @banshee1013

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 16689 Main Tags/Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Canon Compliant, Case Fic, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Sam Winchester Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, Hurt Dean Winchester, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Witch Curses, Castiel/Dean Winchester in the Men of Letters Bunker, Researching Sam Winchester, No Archive Warnings Summary: After returning from Purgatory the second time, Castiel and Dean were just beginning to explore the new direction of their relationship, when on a case involving missing hunters, Dean is struck by a witch's curse and turned into a ten-inch plastic figurine. Can Sam find a way to revert the effects of the curse and return Dean to himself before the tiny spark of life Cas detects in him fades away? Or will Cas lose Dean just as their relationship has begun?

Trouble in Paradise | @its-funnier-in-klingon

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 1746 Main Tags/Warnings: canon divergence, human!Cas, post 14x09, Hawaii, case fic, bed-sharing, ghosts, mutual pining Summary: Sam finds a case where gay couples are being tormented by a ghost in a resort in Kauai, Hawaii. Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack embark to the resort where Dean and Cas must go undercover to take down the ghost, all while trying to sort through all their own personal issues.

Unthought Known | @noiproksa

Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 18337 Main Tags/Warnings: Temporary Amnesia, Profound Bond, Team Free Will, Banter, Canon Compliant, Hugs, Case Fic, Soul Bond Summary: Dean wakes up in an abandoned mental institution with no memories and two strange guys, ‘Sam’ and ‘Castiel.’ They have to work together if they want to find out who they are and what happened to them. And what the hell is this profound bond he seems to share with Castiel? * Dean woke up with a pounding headache on the floor of a bright white, windowless room and no recollection of how he got there. What the hell was he doing in what looked like some sort of psych ward? Before he could get his bearings, he heard moaning coming from behind him and got to his feet, swiveling around, ready to fight whoever was in the room with him. ‘Whoever’ turned out to be two someones. One man with abnormally long hair and one guy in a trench coat who had a ‘tax accountant’ vibe to him. Who were these clowns? (Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)

Suck It, Judy Garland | @midrashic

Rating: Mature Word Count: 20116 Main Tags/Warnings: N/A Summary: It had to be St. Louis. Or, the one where Sam and Cas get fake married for a case, and Dean loses his mind.

Making it Up as We Go | @Foxymoley

Rating: Mature Word Count: 24439 Main Tags/Warnings: Case fic, ghost, Angel!Cas, choose your own adventure Summary: A choose your own adventure story! The Winchester's catch a case—an ordinary salt and burn—but Dean's decisions along the way are up to you!

The Memory Remains | FriendofCarlotta (AO3)

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 28408 Main Tags/Warnings: Case fic, post-canon, POV Dean Winchester Summary: With Chuck defeated, Dean's trying hard to get his head back in the game. What he needs is a bit of peace and quiet, and maybe a nice, straightforward hunt. What he most definitely doesn't need is this thing about monsters trying to summon some kind of hermaphroditic goat person. Or dealing with Cas, whose powers are still failing and who is acting more human in increasingly disconcerting ways.

Human Error | @jemariel

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 33435 Main Tags/Warnings: Alternate season 9, case fic, wendigos, human Castiel, Cas in the bunker, miscommunication, drunk sex, top!Dean, bottom!Cas, 69 (sex position), bedsharing Summary: Cas is human now, and things aren't going to plan. (Not that Dean had a plan. Nope. No plans of any kind.) Anyway, what's a Winchester to do when everything he tries seems to blow up in his face? Go hunting. Obviously.

Fade to Hell | @alisuwink **Also in English**

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 37549 Main Tags/Warnings: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel, Sam Winchester,Alastair (Supernatural), Bobby Singer, Slow Burn, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Universe, Season/Series 05, Fanart, Action/Adventure, Violence, Dark, Humor, Hell, Tortured Dean Winchester, Madness, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester Summary: It didn’t seem to be enough with Lucifer wandering free and the Apocalypse up our asses. Of course not! Now, Sammy’s soul has ended in fucking Hell, and I have no choice but to go down to that fucking hole with Castiel. When we rescue Sam, he is going to be buying me beers for the rest of his damn life. *Note: the fic is finished in Spanish, I'll have it in English by June.

Highway 9 | @ellis-park

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 38909 Main Tags/Warnings: Angst with a happy ending, mutual pining, suicide attempt Summary: Dean Winchester is a private investigator working what should be an open-and-shut vandalism case on an isolated stretch of rural highway. Except it’s not an open-and-shut case, because whatever is happening on Highway 9 isn’t vandalism — it’s something far more sinister and unnatural. And if Dean is going to get to the bottom of this case, he’s going to have to rely on the one person he’s learned he can’t rely on for anything — his ex-best friend, Cas Novak.

Someone Who’s Feeling for Me | @ellis-park

Rating: Mature Word Count: 45876 Main Tags/Warnings: Mutual pining, case fic, canon universe Summary: Dean sees her for the first time in nearly six years in some no-name town in Idaho, and it's panic at first sight. Lisa Braeden, the one woman Dean ever actually had a shot at a real life with, back from where he buried her in his mind. And her hand is on Cas's arm like it's no big deal, like it belongs there. Cas, Dean's dorky, sweet, badass, angelic best friend, and he's just standing there next to Lisa and not moving her hand away. Dean feels the jealousy rising, and it's not directed where he expected it to be. Because it takes this exact moment for Dean to realize he's in love with his best friend. He's in love with his best friend, and Lisa is looking at Cas like he's the best thing since automatic rifles, and Dean is utterly fucked.

Silver and Cold | @pomegranatedaffodil

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 64851 Main Tags/Warnings: Case Fic, Hunter Castiel, Small Town Setting, Religious Themes, Canon-Typical Violence, Minor Injuries, Minor Character Death,Tragic Backstory, Nightmares, Angst with a Happy Ending, Switching Summary: The death of a young man in an apparent animal attack brings hunter Cas Novak to the small town of Sydnam, Maine. It doesn’t take long for him to realize he’s tracking a werewolf, but discovering the killer’s identity is no easy task. All signs point towards Dean Winchester, a lonely recluse who lives in the middle of the woods and whose antagonistic behaviour does little to lessen Cas’ suspicions. As the investigation drags on, their mutual distrust gives way to a wary alliance. Cas’ instincts warn him that Dean is hiding something, but as he uncovers the man beneath the mystery, his professional interest becomes far more personal. Praying his faith in Dean isn’t misplaced, Cas races to catch the killer before the next full moon rises and another life is abruptly cut short.

[timeisacephalopod]

My favorite things about Supernatural upon rewatch:

-Human!Castiel is The Saddest Sack

-Have y’all seen that post about fearing the fandom making a character liking a food their whole personality (a la Thor)? Well, the Supernatural writers beat the fans to it by making burgers (and meat more widely speaking) and pie personality traits for Dean.

-Dean is clearly bisexual. Like its shocking how weirdly accurate they were with writing a bisexual character and it was almost all because he acted Like That about the vaguely homophobic gay jokes the show is littered with. Anyway, they shouldn’t have been shocked the fans wrote him as bi when it was so fuckin’ obvious.

-Sam Winchester in any form where he isn’t really Sam: Soulless!Sam, Ezekiel-But-Turned-Out-To-Be-Gadreel!Sam, any Sam that isn’t Sam is my favorite Sam.

-On another note all The Flavors of Castiel that we get to enjoy. Endverse!Cas, Human!Cas, God!Cas, RegularAngel!Cas. I love a show that explores what characters would look like and be like in other universes, essentially.

-The world building is actually kind of cool once they get past their weird bible fanfiction phase. The Men of Letters thing in particular is a cool idea and I would have loved to see more of that world explored rather than the overwhelming Christianity.

-The toooooooooxic view of family this show has lmfao its such a running theme and its wild that the show seems to have a lasting Thesis of Family Is the Best And One Must Do Anything For Them Including Selling Your Soul And Bringing Them Back To Life Once A Season At Least. No joke, pals, this is legit.

-This show is fucking batshit wild with its plot and concepts and it does so shamelessly. This is actually my favorite thing about the show and something I think all television should adopt because its kind of a great blend of ridiculous and gritty.

-really plots from the show include: Sam having to reenact a commercial for genital warts because an angel trapped him and Dean in his crazy alternate universe where they also played roles a Japanese game show. Dean went to Christian hell where he tortured souls and while that sounds Not Good the concept is so fucking ridiculous that its laughable. The Wizard of Oz is part of the Supernatural universe. A character in the show writes a series called Supernatural and is confronted about it by Sam and Dean. Dean is vaguely a dog in one episode and he can also talk to animals. He checks out a fucking poodle. There is copious amounts of time travel. So much time travel.

-Hunters: witches are bad and we kill them! Also hunters: use spells and magic on a regular basis to do all kinds of shit without a hint of the irony.

-I’m sure you’ve all guessed I didn’t so much enjoy the Christianity in my Cheerios this morning but I will be damned if I don’t like Lucifer. Its actually kind of a Thing- if someone has The Devil or The Devil But Only In Metaphor in their work I like that character, its just Needed. I have yet to find a piece of media this isn’t true for and Lucifer from Supernatural is no exception.

-Sam fucking left his brother in purgatory, didn’t even look for him lmao. Anyway, I kept trying to pinpoint when I decided I thought Sam was a selfish pompous dick and it was then, but I only remembered that when I rewatched that part of the show.

-I didn’t actually really like Charlie that much the first couple times I watched the show, but I actually enjoyed her more this time around because I got past the overly flowery presentation of fandom in her life that always struck me as pandering to the audience. Charlie, beyond that pandering, is still a cool character that I like.

-”They ate my tailor!”

-Sam Winchester’s dick really is Cursed but no one ever mentioned that Dean is also Cursed, but in the opposite direction where he’s actually kind of good with a person and it could be a genuinely good match but then The Hunting Thing catches up with him and they all end up Fucked Over Severely in some way or another. Victims include Cassie, Lisa, Ben, and Benny to list a few.

-And finally, the fact that this show used to make gay jokes almost every episode about Sam and Dean, and it still remained a running joke throughout the series, and yet they seemed surprised both in the show and out that fans shipped wincest.

[bermuda-base]

NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS. FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE.

EVENT 001 (REWIND): FLIGHT 927 CRASH LANDING OOC TIMEFRAME: 8/23/21 - 8/30/21 IC TIMEFRAME: 24 HOURS

The sun’s light has blanketed down on the villages yet again. Everyone still has all fingers and toes, and they live to see another day. A small line of parched people has congregated for a sip from the water reserves. Rubbing the grogginess from their eyes, the different civilizations assemble at their respective watering holes. Down on the shore, the SUITCASE OF TOILETRIES is propped open for anyone wishing to bathe. If you squint, you can see that up on the mountain Excelsior’s Civilization is already bathing in the lake, much to the dismay of the elder healers, who have been urging everyone to stay out of those waters. Somehow something as private and personal as getting clean has turned into a community activity, as all things do in Bermuda. The little RESOURCES you do have aren’t enough to go around, so prioritizing and sharing is key to keeping survival.

It seems to be a good morning. A usual morning, really. How good can things really get while you’re castaway with a bunch of strangers? A hand’s scoop of saltwater lifts to wash away suds on skin under the warm moonlight of a budding day. In the moment between the water leaving your hand and it hitting your skin, the deep indigo sky splits open and purges a full bodied airplane, at top speed, straight into a sea stack mounted in the ocean. It dismembers on impact, sending scraps of metal and stone scattering.

Everyone jumps back with a gasp, some people tripping and falling over the offset wave into the tide. Others drop what they’re holding, and a few simply keep bathing in the following seconds.

See—while startling in the moment, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence for Bermuda. Every so often another aircraft or ship will come plummeting down from the sky and crash into their world. The ones on a lucky trajectory will plummet straight into the ocean, and the water will take the brunt of the crash. Other times, as in this case, the passengers aren’t so lucky. The vessel will collide with something stagnant in their world, disjoint on impact, and send debris and scraps of metal everywhere. Now, the tide pulls what’s left of the mammoth of aviation up onto the shore, in shambles but all passengers miraculously survive.

Unbeknownst to everyone here, they are now living in an alternate universe within the multiverse. And the massive hole that just opened up in the sky? A portal vortex bridging various universes into this one, through a wormhole in the spacetime continuum.

If you’re one of the bewildered ones to have just survived a plane crash, you’ll step out of the passenger door trembling, possibly injured, and step into BERMUDA. A group of people will stare back at you, and a few minutes later, someone will take your suitcase and loot it for resources. When you finally do get greeted, they don’t even seem phased. “Welcome. Enjoy your flight?”

TASK: Write at least one starter, open or closed, with someone of the opposite tenure as your character. This means, if you are playing a Survivor, you should write at least one starter with a Settler. And vice versa.

SELF-PARA CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS (OPTIONAL)

Is your character one of the Survivors of the flight, a long term Settler, or one of the Exiled?

If a Survivor—was your character one of the ones who had to swim back to shore? Or one of the ones coming out of the passenger door?

How is your character coping with the crash?

What does your muse think Bermuda is? A simulation? Purgatory? A break in spacetime? Write their theories, if any.

What was your character heading to Brazil for?

What will they miss most from their normal life?

How does your character feel about being forced to give up all of their personal belongings as resources for the community?

What prognosis does your character have about getting out of Bermuda? Are they hopeful, skeptical, pessimistic or indifferent?

Will your character help clean up wreck pieces? Remember, wreck cleanup is voluntary for everyone except the strongest of the impacted village—in this case, all those who live on THE SHORE and have higher than 85% Strength Stat, are required to do wreck cleanup. 

What’s the first thing your character does after the wreck cleanup?

Does your character have any pets or children with them?

What are/were your character’s first impressions of the island?

ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED

+SIGNIFICANT COMMUNITY SURVIVAL GAIN +SHELTER GAINED IN THE TUNDRA FOR THE EXILED -PERSONAL ITEMS LOSS (ALL SURVIVORS) -ENERGY DEPLETION FROM WRECK CLEANUP (ALL WRECK CLEANUP PARTICIPANTS)

INVENTORY UNLOCKED

+SIGNIFICANT COMMUNITY SURVIVAL GAIN  -PERSONAL ITEMS LOSS (ALL SURVIVORS) x12 TOILETRIES, 3.4 FL OZ EACH x10 EMERGENCY BLANKETS x9.5 BOTTLED WATER x7 PEANUT PACKAGES x6 AIRCRAFT SEATS,SALVAGED x5 CANNED FOOD x4 PRE-PACKAGED MEALS, WATERLOGGED x4 BABY FOOD x2 AIRCRAFT DOORS x2 BOTTLES OF WINE, SALVAGED x1 MED KIT x1 HANDHELD MIRROR, SHATTERED x1 GLUCOMETER x1 TOILET PAPER x1 EPI-PEN x1 FOOTBALL, DEFLATED x1 LOAF OF BREAD, WATERLOGGED x1 GUITAR (BROKEN) x1 AIR MATTRESS (BROKEN) x1 MANUAL AIR PUMP (BROKEN)

CRASH DIAGRAM

All areas outlined in BLACK have retained structure through the crash. 

All areas outlined in RED have been partially destroyed, with the walls of the body now separated from the row of seats.

All other seats and carry-on items have been stranded in the ocean. 

[hawkland]

Dear Hurt Comfort Exchange creator

My Letter for the 2021 Hurt Comfort Exchange

My AO3 profile: sidewinder

Thank you for writing for me! I know I’ll be thrilled with whatever you come up with for any of my requests. (And if I babble on or have more prompts for one request than another, don’t take that as any kind of preference. I’d love receiving any of these equally; some are just newer ships for me so I may have a lot of unfulfilled ideas.)

Please consider the requested tags all the “prompt�� you need if so inspired, if none of my suggested scenarios and ideas inspire you. Also, of course, feel free to combine them or use only one as you see fit!

Overall/General Do Not Wants:

A/B/O dynamics, mating heats

animal abuse/death

anything related to pregnancy/childbirth/kidfic

formalized BDSM relationships

non-canon gender identities and/or sexual orientations except gay/bi/pan for requested ships/characters 

scat/watersports

unrequested alternative-universe scenarios such as high school/mundane/genderswap/coffee shop/etc (however, canon-divergent AUs completely fine!)

Supernatural

I'm a fairly new SPN fan so I am still in the phase of discovering all the joy (and pain and angst) this ship/fandom can bring me. So I have a LOT of requests, varying based on who is hurt & who needs comforting.

As far as general fandom/universe likes, I'm also a big fan of Bobby, Charlie, Sam, Gabriel and Balthazar - so feel free to include them in any form or fashion that might fit. I can go with either human or still-angel Cas as endgame if it applies. Similarly, either feel free to ignore the finale (everything 15.18-15.20) or give me plenty of angst "fixing" it/expanding on it so that it's not...such...ugh.

My only fandom-specific DNW is any suggestion/inclusion of Wincest.

Castiel/Dean Winchester (hurt Castiel)

Wingfic - injured wings 

Wingfic - Grooming Wings to Comfort Winged Character

I have a serious fixation on Cas's wings and any scenario where Dean can actually see/feel them. Dean tending to Cas's weakened/broken wings after the Angels' fall (or, earlier in canon if somehow injured). Maybe post-finale/rescue/etc his wings start to heal but he needs Dean to help groom them during the healing/regrowth process.

Sharing a bed with hurt character while mutually pining 

Being bathed while mutually pining 

Comforter drapes their coat over hurt character's shoulders 

Character A gently bathes hurt B (turns sexual) 

Guilt over past actions 

Cathartic Crying

Character A has been crying and tries to hide it but Character B still notices it

Character doesn't realize how badly they're hurt until they collapse

Character feels comforted by wearing loved one's clothes

Keeping Sick Characters Warm

Falling Asleep As A Sign Of Trust

I'd love human!Cas for these (Season 9, AU where Cas stays at the bunker? Or post-canon if coming back from The Empty meant giving up his grace.) He's struggling with adapting to his human condition/getting hurt, maybe just overwhelmed by human emotions and sensations? Dean is there to help, of course, and Things Happen. (With a side note that I love stories that don't forget that Cas is/was a bad-ass captain, leader and fighter among angels - so he's not and never should be a total woobie. But maybe that makes it harder for him to accept when he DOES need help and comforting because it's not something he's ever been used to needing - or receiving - in the past.)

Aftermath of Resurrection 

attempted self-sacrifice is thwarted by people who do not agree character is expendable 

Big Damn Rescue (with comfort)

A rescues B from the underworld or afterlife 

Fix-it - Character survives canonical death 

Recovering from traumatic resurrection 

Touch-Starved 

Touch-Starved Character gets their hair stroked & gets other kind gentle touches & cuddles

Character doesn't believe they deserve to be saved at such a cost; loved one disagrees 

Dreamworld featuring worst memories/fears

Resurrection - came back wrong

Rescue

These are all suggestions for any kind of fix-it to 15x18 and getting Cas back from The Empty. Just...go wild with the angst and h/c here. Maybe it's taken some time to get Cas back and he's not sure how to deal with being back. It's been so long that he's been isolated in his dreams/regrets/nightmares that he's starved for (Dean's) touch, but it's almost overwhelming to be near him again (or he's having a hard time telling reality from just another dream.) Or, for "Resurrection - came back wrong" - Cas is back but Dean senses something isn't right about him or the entire situation. What can he do to fix it, if anything?

Character overuses powers/magic/etc to protect a loved one 

Forced to watch other character's trauma 

Torture - Tortured While Loved Ones Were Forced To Watch

Pretty much what the tags say, nothing really to add but bring on the angst and comfort after the hurt!

Castiel/Dean Winchester (hurt Dean)

Character A hurts Character B accidentally during sex 

Losing Control Over Magic/Powers 

Character A doesn't know their own strength and hurts B by mistake

What it says on the tin, basically. Cas gets overwhelmed when having sex with Dean (or when triggered by something else, a perceived threat/danger) and accidentally injures him? Healing may take some time due to the severity (or limited powers in the aftermath), or Cas just feels extreme guilt over having hurt the one he loves so badly.

Pining character reveals their feelings while not quite lucid (hurt/drunk/etc.) 

Character(s) ashamed of their sexual desires 

Character A takes Character B on a road trip to avoid dealing with current bad situation

Boys being stupid with their feelings and not talking to each other, but a h/c scenario forces the truth to come out.

Aftermath of Resurrection 

Aftermath of torture that broke character 

Aftermath of Torture 

Past Torture

I need more angst/actual dealing with what it did to Dean to spend 40 years in Hell. This feels like it was so glossed over in canon compared to the fact that, truly, it means he spent more time in Hell than alive on Earth literally up until almost the time of his (finale) death. (I mean I get this is SPN and they all went through stuff, but, SERIOUSLY! Why did it seem like a year in Purgatory affected him more than so much time in Hell?) So any story with Cas (or Cas and other characters), trying to help him with that. Comforting him through nightmares or panic attack, getting him to finally talk about it (could even be post-finale canon-compliant, residual anger that his life was cut so short after all the torture he went through in Hell?)

Character A gets angry at Character B's tendency to self-sacrifice 

attempted self-sacrifice is thwarted by people who do not agree character is expendable 

attempted self-sacrifice 

Bedside Vigils 

Fix-it - Character survives canonical death 

Character resigned to their death survives; doesn't know how to cope 

Waking from coma or deep sleep and realizing the beloved caretaker is near

Any kind of fix-it to Dean's death by rebar; I can't get enough of them. Maybe Dean doesn't die in the finale, but he is severely wounded/in a coma. He's trapped in his (dream) visions of Heaven; can Cas help him come back? I could really use Cas (and other friends/family) trying to convince Dean he can actually have happiness for himself, too, that he doesn't have to keep laying down his life for everyone else.

Gentle acts of caretaking 

Gently coaxing out-of-it sick/hurt character back to bed

Character ordered to rest tries to work anyway 

Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Caring for hurt character by cooking for them or getting them their favourite food

Character cooks for sick/injured character(s)

Sick/hurt character falls asleep on comforter

Back rubs/hair stroking to help a character sleep

Sleepy Cuddles

Awkward Comforter

Watching Hurt Character Sleep

Wingfic - Using Wings to Hug Another Character

Just...any kind of sweet comfort fic where Cas gives Dean what he needs after an exhausting hunt or when not feeling well. Maybe when/if Cas is human so he no longer has his angelic healing powers to fall back on, so he tries to do whatever else he can to make Dean feel better? Even if it's bad cooking, awkward cuddles, misguided attempts at human “comfort” he doesn’t quite understand.

Crossover Fandom

Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone) & Castiel (SPN) (hurt Castiel) Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone) & Dean Winchester (SPN) (hurt Dean) Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone) & Dean Winchester (SPN) (hurt Ezekiel)

Aftermath of Torture 

Aftermath of Violence 

Character is beaten up and left for dead 

Talking about their traumas 

characters help each other cope with grief 

Character with high pain tolerance is in too much pain to hide it having to hide while injured 

poisoned wound 

Trapped Together During Gunfire/Fighting 

Character's been pulled to alternate dimension where everything's weird and they need an ally 

Character A comforts Character B about their shared misfortune 

Magical Ailment/Disease 

trapped in an isolated place together 

Road Trip - To Undo the Apocalypse 

Both Captured - Forced to Work Together to Escape 

A used to mistreatment from others unsure if B will help them

I'm fascinated by the idea of crossing over these two canons. Even if there's some conflict in their approach to Hell/Lucifer/demons, there's still a lot in common. Dean & Ezekiel having both put in their time in Hell and being demon Hunters, for instance, and their complicated relationships with (fallen) angels. I'd love to see them bonding over their experiences (Maybe they even meet in Hell? Time DOES work differently there...) Maybe somehow after Ezekiel completed his mission for the Devil, he did get his second chance at "life on Earth"...but the devil's trick is that it's not HIS Earth, it's in a different dimension (Supernatural's). I'm also curious how Ezekiel might respond to Castiel as an angel--perhaps he mistakes Cas for a demon at first, with his powers, but then they realize they are in fact hunting the same demon? Cas is stuck in an alternative dimension and recognizes Ezekiel as a similar soul to Dean's, and seeks out his help?

Basically I'd love some kind of casefic/demon hunt here, with the characters bonding over their shared/similar past traumas, taking care of each other when/if injured on a hunt, and/or perhaps helping them sort out their complicated feelings for another (ie, background Cas/Dean and/or Zeke/the Devil are TOTALLY welcome here, as I ship both of those ships.)

Law & Order: SVU

John Munch/Odafin "Fin" Tutuola (hurt Fin) John Munch/Odafin "Fin" Tutuola (hurt John)

Gentle acts of caretaking 

Comfort Food 

making comfort food for emotionally distressed character 

Caring for hurt character by cooking for them or getting them their favourite food 

Aftermath of Violence 

Emotional Hurt/Comfort 

Bedside Vigils 

Overworking Character ordered to rest tries to work anyway 

Character is Exhausted From Overwork 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD 

Fights with family member - Helps them feel better in some shape or form 

Worrying over the safety of family members 

Trapped Together During Gunfire/Fighting 

trapped in an isolated place together 

Character A holds Character B as they fall asleep after bad day

Characters live together while one recovers from hurt 

Watching TV Together After a Stressful Mission/Quest

Caring for pet as self-care

Hangover

A presumed dead; B refuses to believe A died 

Presumed Dead

Munch/Fin is a forever OTP for me. I love any story that features some kind of gentle caretaking between them, small gestures of affection, love, and concern that say so much without the words that they may (still) struggle to speak. So my prompts for them are mostly of the soft and emotional kind of hurt/comfort revolving around their jobs and what they have to process involving that. Making sure a character gets enough rest/eats when pushing too hard to solve a case. Providing a shoulder to cry on/being someone to vent at when a case doesn't go their way/they can't save every victim. Not slowing down enough when injured/needing to recuperate because a case matters too much to them. Munch perhaps musing/worried about getting older and not being physically strong enough, any longer, to be able to protect Fin in the field (is that why he finally goes for the sergeant promotion, and/or eventually retires?)

Worrying about/dealing with a family member who might be in danger is another thing I'd love to see — Fin worried over Ken, Alejandro and their baby. Or perhaps Munch gets a call from his brother and there’s some kind of trouble with his family in Baltimore?

Anything along those lines (whether an episode expansion/missing scene or a completely original casefic) would leave me extremely happy. I'd also LOVE to read an angsty presumed dead fic, which has been so hard to find for this ship.

The Orville

Ed Mercer/Gordon Malloy (both hurt)

On the Run - Together 

Fight to Survive - Post-Apocalyptic 

trapped in an isolated place together 

Permanently Stranded on Another World/Planet 

stranded in hostile environment with injury 

stranded in space 

Trapped In Liminal Space 

Apocalypse - Survivors find comfort with each other 

Trapped with someone in need of medical care 

characters help each other cope with grief 

aftermath of near death experience 

desperate love confession after near-death experience

Casual/Unromantic Sex Leads to Unwanted Feelings 

Character Tries to Convince Themselves They're Fine With Casual Sex; They're Not

This very silly show still manages to give me a lot of deep feels, and I really love Ed and Gordon's friendship, the history that's clearly there between them. This is definitely a friends-to-lovers ship for me, or maybe a casual sex-relationship turned-more-serious.

I'd love a story set in the alternative universe/timeline we glimpsed in the second season finale, "The Road Not Taken"—where the Kaylons have destroyed life on earth and the remaining Orville crew members are trying to survive in a loose resistance. In that we saw Ed and Gordon on the run together, so that's what I would love to see more of. Their day-to-day survival, grief over what was lost, hiding out or trapped somewhere together knowing no one is out there who can rescue them.

Otherwise, any kind of mission gone wrong where they end up stranded in space/stuck on an alien world together with no way to get back to the ship/crew. How would they cope with losing everything they once had and knew?

Homicide: Life on the Street

Kay Howard/John Munch (hurt Kay) Kay Howard/John Munch (hurt John) Kay Howard/John Munch (both hurt)

Kay/John is another one of my longtime comfort OTPs; I just love them both so much and the fun contrast they present. Honestly H:LOTS is one of my all-time favorite television series, period, and I'm always happy to see more fic for it!

I don't have any specific fandom DNWs here, go wild, include any other/all characters from the canon universe who might fit. I basically love them all.

Trapped with someone in need of medical care 

Trapped Together During Gunfire/Fighting 

trapped in an isolated place together 

Love confession to/from sick/hurt character who is out of it 

Character A Confesses Feelings Because They Think Character B is Unconscious 

Humor as way of dealing with pain/trauma 

Driving with a mildly sick/injured character in the passenger seat 

Driving with a severely sick/injured character in the passenger seat

For these I'd love any kind of case-fic/action-type scenario where one or both of them is injured or in danger. The stress of the situation leads to a confession of or acting on feelings.

Emotional Hurt/Comfort 

characters help each other cope with grief 

Dealing w the loss of loved ones/friends/acquaintances/familiar faces as time marches on

aftermath of near death experience 

Aftermath of Violence 

Character who is clearly not fine insists they are fine

Survivor Guilt

I'm thinking of these as episode codas or episode-related scenarios. Mourning Al's death after the events in the HLOTS movie, perhaps. Or the aftermath of the events in Season 3 with the Gordon Pratt incident—Kay, Bolander and Felton all being gravely injured and John being the only one who was left standing. I'm always keen on exploring his feelings of helplessness and guilt there, with nearly losing Kay and the others. Also how Kay recovered and felt after coming so close to death.

Gentle acts of caretaking

Comfort Food

Caring for hurt character by cooking for them or getting them their favourite food 

Character cooks for sick/injured character(s) 

Hangover

Again, I love characters cooking for each other as a way of showing love and comfort. I tend to see Munch as someone who has a secret knack for being a good cook, so maybe he makes something special for Kay when she's sick/recovering from something and it reveals a side of John she never knew or saw before.

[schrijverr]

What could have been and what can be

Not every universe had a God rooting for them and not every universe is kind enough to return a fallen angel to the person, who loves him most. Our Team Free Will sees this firsthand when alternate Dean meets their Castiel.

15x13 Destiny’s Child CODA

On AO3.

Ships: Destiel

Warning: Alternate Cas is dead

~~~~~~~~~~

Their alternate selfs were not at all like they expected themselves to be. They were rich, they didn’t like beer, they didn’t have an Impala and they loved John, a John who was still alive. You could say they were the opposite of them. They also never mentioned any of their other friends, no alternate Bobby, no Charlie, no Kevin, no Jody, no Garth and no Cas. It might be naive with the other alternate dimensions they had seen, but they just assumed that these Sam and Dean weren’t as well befriended or just didn’t know the alternate versions of their friends, if they existed at all.

This line of reasoning made alternate Deans reaction to Cas so surprising.

They had just explained their situation to their counterparts when Castiel came into the room to inform them that Jack was packing the last of their stuff and they would be able to leave soon. The moment he rounded the corner, Deans eyes got wide and he shot up and when Castiel had reached the top of the stairs alternate Dean was right in front of him. He cupped Castiels cheeks with his hands and breathed: “Is it really you, Castiel?”

Castiel frowned as he cocked his head to the side and answered: “Yes, it is me, Dean.”

The moment he spoke, alternate Dean started crying and pulled him close to his chest as he sobbed. Sam and Dean shot alternate Sam a questioning look, but he only gave them a sorrowful smile back that didn’t answer much, but told them so much.

Meanwhile, Castiel had no clue how to reach to this Dean. His Dean wasn’t one for showing emotions and if he did it usually was nothing more then a few tears or an angry outburst. Castiel had no experience in comforting his friend in such a manner, but he did know how to hug and he was also familiar with Dean clinging to him. It reminded him of Purgatory. So, he hugged back awkwardly and looked at his own Dean with distress in the hope he would come and save him from this situation.

Luckily, Dean could read him very well, so he rushed forward and started to gently pull other Dean off Cas while he said: “That’s enough, buddy. Lets sit down for a second, okay? We’re going to sit and you’re going to tell us what got you so upset all of a sudden.”

They got alternate Dean settled on the table and Dean was about to back off and let himself be. (Wow, that was a weird thought). When the other Dean clung to him and said: “You may be poor, but know how much luckier you are than I.”

Dean pried his fingers out of his shirt and said: “Yeah, lets start with that. Why are you all weeping over Cas?”

Alternate Dean looked down and sniffled again. He looked up to meet Deans eyes and said: “I wasn’t lucky enough to see my Castiel live. He died and there was no God, who answered my prayers and no one willing to make a deal, no matter the price I offered. The love of my life died and stayed dead.”

Dean chocked on his spit and sputtered out: “Love of your life?”

For a second it was silent. The sound of nothing deafening the room.

It was Sam, who broke it and asked his alternate self: “Your Dean and Cas were together?”

Sam gave him a look and replied: “Yours weren’t? With the way they looked at each other on their wedding day, you think they’d be destined to be together no matter the situation. Or in this case, universe.”

Dean seemed to get back online as he spluttered: “Wedding day?”

Alternate Dean got a dreamy look on his face and he said: “Yes, it was magical. Cas was dressed in pure white and he was just, so, so beautiful. We got married in the small church in Lawrence Kansas and everyone was there. We had pie instead of a wedding cake. It honestly was the best day of my life.”

He sounded so wistful and heartbroken that everyone in the room needed a second to work around the lump in their throat. Sam carefully asked: “How did he die?”

“It was stupid.” Dean sighed, “And my fault too. I wanted to go on a solo hunt, for old time sake. Just us two, but it was a trap. Word got out, someone it the Corps told on us, we never figured out who. Instead of a vampire nest it were rogue angels, who had it out for us. We almost had it handled, but I was careless, I didn’t see one of them coming.” tears welled up in his eyes again and he went on with a tight voice, “He, he took the blade for me. He died, he died while giving me one last smile.”

The whole room was shocked, it seemed like even alternate Sam had never heard the story. Castiel quietly sat down next to alternate Dean and let him cry into his chest, while Cas shared a helpless look with his own Dean. Dean was trying to imagine how that must have felt like for his counterpart, to loose the one he loved most. It might even be worse than loosing Sam, but he soon found that he didn’t have to imagine loosing Sam to try and relate to alternate Deans pain, just thinking of Cas was enough. He remembered all the times he lost him and how awful that had been and how scared and alone he had felt. To have that be permanent was a terrible idea. He finally said: “I’m sorry that happened to you. That must have been terrible, I almost can’t even imagine that pain. We have some picture books of all of us, you can look through those, while we’re out and we’ll be back before you know it.”

Alternate Deans head shot up and he clung tighter to Cas as he exclaimed: “No, you can’t go. You can’t leave me again.”

“We have to. There are lives on the line and I mean a lot of lives, so you’re gonna have to push your feelings aside for a moment and man up while we’re gone.” Dean said.

Sam sighed to himself. Dean had always been good at pushing his own needs and emotions aside for other peoples and it seemed like alternate him was no exception. He normally would push Dean to open up and especially about Castiel. (He had eyes, thank you very much, he could see how those two idiots had looked at each other for years). But Dean was right, there were bigger forces at play here and they couldn’t afford to let this opportunity slip. If he wanted to get on with the plan, however, he would have to interfere. So he said: “Why don’t you two stay here for a second and we’ll talk about it over there for a moment, okay.”

They could agree to that at least and soon they were out of earshot whispering to each other. Dean said: “I feel for the guy, really I do, but we have lives to save. Don’t tell me you’re picking his side, Sammy.”

“I’m not, Dean.” Sam told him, “But we need to find a way to make sure he sticks to the plan and right now, he isn’t in the head space to do so.”

“Well, what do you suggest then?” Dean shot back.

Before Sam could answer, Castiel said: “I could make them both forget me. We can go on with the plan and he looses his pain.”

Dean thought about for a second, pursing his lips, then he nodded and said: “Sounds good to me, lets go.”

Then he turned around and walked away. Castiel shot Sam a glance and when he gave him a resigned nod the angel trailed after Dean back to the other pair of brothers to erase their memory. Sam let his shoulders sag, he knew there was a lot Dean would rather forget and he probably saw this as a mercy, but he knew that good memories were worth the pain. Thinking of Jess hurt even after all these years, but her smile still turned up in his best dreams. He hated that he had to make these kind of decisions for the greater good, but for now there was nothing he could do, they had an Occultum to find, whatever or wherever that might be.

The car ride was strained and Dean and Cas barely dared to look at one another. Sam had expected this, but he felt bad for Jack, who had no clue what had happened between the two. Sam tried to signal with his eyes that he should let it be and he was grateful when the kid seemed to get the hint. There had been a lot of teasing and references to the relationship between Dean and Cas throughout the years, but none so unavoidable as this one. They would have to talk to get over this, something they had never been good at.

They parked the car Sam ushered Jack along to the back, leaving the two with a second for themselves. There were a couple of awkward seconds, before Castiel said: “You are not the alternate version of you, Dean. If what he told you bothers you then you do not have to listen. His universe isn’t this one and you are not the same person as he is.”

Dean nodded a bit to himself and swallowed as he tried to gather the courage to tell Cas something that had always been there, but couldn’t be avoided now. He asked softly: “What if we are the same? What if we are, but I can’t? Not now.”

The look of confusion Castiel gave him immersed him in familiarity and safety. Castiel asked him, a hint of hope present in his voice: “What do you mean with that, Dean?”

He was already going and he didn’t see the point in backing out now, so Dean said: “What if I feel the same about you as my alternate self does, but I can’t allow myself to have this new thing, a wonderful thing, because it will be a distraction we cannot use right now?”

He finally met Castiels eyes and the warmth that was in them calmed his heart so much he wondered why it had ever been racing. Castiel answered: “Well, then I’ll say that it was okay and that I would love to hear more and explore us when this whole mess with God is behind us.”

Dean gave him a shy smile back and gave him a quick hug, before clambering out the car as to not rouse suspicion with Sam and Jack. Castiel followed suit to the doors of the church, in the distance the Empty rumbled, angry that it could not take Cas yet, not while he was still so important. But that was far away and for now, they had work to do and a promise to live for.

[nemetonisevilpassiton]

Where we’re going we won’t need Eyes to see - a teen wolf meta

With Teen Wolf meta we have this tendency to name check Event Horizon (1997) and run off without explaining it - especially in regards to the episode “Ghosted” where they were in Canaan which uses a lot of the same techniques and tropes. But before I explain how Teen Wolf got there we have to explain Event Horizon.

A friend of mine once called Event Horizon the greatest horror movie almost made, and that sums it up nicely.

Following the success of Mortal Kombat [1995 starring Linden Ashby] the studio gave give the director Paul WS Anderson [the Resident Evil guy] a budget of 60 million dollars, the large soundstage at Pinewood and Carte Blanche to deliver an R rated horror. The film he delivered was 121 minutes long and X-rated. It was externally editted down to 91 minutes or 96 minutes depending on region and legend has it that most of the narrative exposition went out of the airlock. As gory as it is - and it IS - it was much much worse and it’s entirely possible that this studio inflicted hatchet job is the reason Event Horizon has the cult following that it does.

Anderson did not waste a dollar of the money he was given, everyone in the film is a noted character actor and most of the dialogue makes them feel real [with the exception of one distinct line which is just hilariously bad]. The ship was a set [there is minimal cg and it’s bad as you’d expect for 1997 but it’s things like a floating water bottle] based on actual gothic architecture specifically notre dame. The crew of the Lewis and Clark [the rescue ship] is seven people because they were meant to represent the seven sins - maybe in the longer version they did. The “stranger” in their midst is Doctor Weir, who following the suicide of his wife whilst he built the Event Horizon, became obsessed with the ship is the one who wants to bring it “home”. The shot of the rotating space station where Weir is based was a miniature. As most of the effects were practical, as opposed to CG, they stand up to modern scrutiny.

The film was a critical and commercial bust, but over the years since it’s release it’s been insanely influential on the field of Sci Fi being responsible for IPs such as Warhammer 40k, Deadspace and even the Alien franchise [which Anderson dipped his toe in with Alien vs Predator] and is considered one of the greatest Lovecraftian horrors ever made.

Event Horizon is not a great movie, it’s…. I’m one of the people who adore it, as scary movies go it never fails to make my skin crawl but let’s get into the plot.

The Event Horizon was an attempt at FTL travel, instead of going really fast it punched a hole through the universe creating a worm hole that would allow the ship to exit somewhere else with a device called “the gravity drive”. On its test flight it vanished. Seven years later it reappears where it should have with no crew and only a mild distress signal. Weir (Sam Neill), the original creator takes the crew of the Lewis and Clark, a rescue ship captained by Miller (Lawrence Fishburne), to bring it back.

On finding the ship the youngest member of the crew, Mr Justin (Jack Noseworthy), goes into the drive room in full EVA and is dragged into the black liquid at its heart. He is rescued by Cooper (Richard Jones), but when they confront Weir he denies it’s possible despite that they could not have known what to describe. Justin is comatose. They find a recording of screams which has a latin phrase which DJ (Jason Isaacs) translates as save me. The med tech Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) starts to see visions of her son covered in sores. Weir starts to see his dead wife as she was when he found her but with empty eye sockets. The ship starts to pull at their sanity damaging the Lewis and Clark, Smith (Sean Pertwee) refuses to leave the Lewis and Clark and in the middle of that Justin gets up and puts himself in the airlock, setting it to open.

All of the characters are shown to have a dark history but because of the editting we often don’t know what that is. We know Peters has left her terminally ill son because of her visions. Miller tells us about a crew member he had to leave to die in a burning ship. Weir has his guilt over his wife, but the rest was cut.

They find the ruins of the old crew with a tape showing them dismembering themselves and each other and it turns out the translation wasn’t save me but save yourself from hell. Fans have actually translated it more accurately as save yourself from the fire.

Miller comes to the conclusion the best thing to do is go home and blow the ship from orbit but Weir refuses to go. He takes one of the explosives from the nave hallway and blows up the Lewis and Clark and Smith, this sends Cooper into space [where he has the worst line in cinema, seriously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUozFOlxVnM] and Miller and Starck [Joely Richardson] confront Weir on the bridge where he has ripped out his own eyes. DJ is found disembowelled over the medicine table. Distracted by Cooper’s return Weir fires a rivet gun at the ship’s window causing the decompression to suck him into space. Miller tries to use the explosives along the nave corridor to separate the ship from the gravity drive which he considers the source of his evil but he is separated from his crew by a burning man who turns into Weir. They fight, the corridor explodes and Miller is sucked into the black hole.

There is a gotcha ending where Starck sees one of their rescuers as Weir but wakes up screaming before the very ominous door closing.

So what happens? what is the one sentence synopsis?

See that’s where Event Horizon sort of wins. On its surface the ship went to hell and became alive and is now luring people in and trying to drag them into Hell. Except even within the movie that explanation doesn’t make sense. The characters talk about the lack of good air, that they are running out of air and it turns them on each other to an extent so did anoxia cause the hallucinations combined with the very gothic imagery to create a mass hysteria? Is it a pseudo Catholic vision of Hell where the characters unable to deal with their own guilt at ultimately tortured? Maybe? Was it all of the above? I don’t know. Other people have amazing explanations of what happened and here’s the reason why Event Horizon freaks some people out and others are meh, it’s not that easy.

It has holes and contradictions and huge chunks obviously missing. It has a narrow focus and it never lies to the audience, it misleads them by assumption but it’s consistent. Weir is the hook character we expect to be the hero, he is the outsider amidst the crew of the Lewis and Clark, he is the one with the answers and the refusal to see alternative answers. He has the most fleshed out back story but he turns into the human manifestation of whatever is going on with the ship yet he is the one who becomes the face of the villain. The ghost apparitions are genuinely disturbing. The quality of the acting could carry a much weaker script. The effects are excellent and the gore is astounding, and best shown briefly [although production stills are available if it was too quick for you]. The Lovecraftian questions are presented and NOT answered. They are isolated in a place where they are in constant danger and the hallucinations mean even their thoughts are unsafe.

Did the ship go to hell? Or was it an explanation Weir made up when he broke? Or is this a purgatorial nightmare where Weir is sent out to fetch more victims for the ship? Is he repeating this ad infinitum with this crew or is it a new crew every time? Is the she Weir speaks of the ship or the manifestation of his wife, Clare?

The film doesn’t answer any of these questions. They are all valid ways to see the movie. And based on Anderson’s filmography the reason that these all DO work is because the film was butchered like one of the ship’s crew.

Recently they found a copy of the uncut film in a salt mine in Transylvania so maybe we’ll see it.

But people who take it on surface value that the ship went to hell and is now evil wooo, generally just dismiss it as poor. It is clearly a mishmash of things Anderson thought was cool instead of deep, sets are so Alien inspired that the xenomorph could pop out of any of the lockers and no one would be surprised. The ship’s set is so gothic Dracula could be drinking tea in the med bay and it would make perfect sense. Yet it somehow, probably despite itself, works.

So back to Teen Wolf.

Event Horizon clearly had its shadows over the production and it’s in the ambiguity more than the cinematography [which owes its debts to Silent Hill]. What Event Horizon managed by accident [Anderson couldn’t have pulled it off deliberately] Teen Wolf tries.

Every character in Teen Wolf, no matter how minor, has a backstory but it is not one we are necessarily given. They have their own stories which intersect with the story we are being told. If we look at the chimera, for example, we saw Tracy’s complicated relationship with her father, we saw Lucas and his boyfriend, Corey, and Corey before we knew he was a chimera told us about Lucas. Caitlyn’s girlfriend Emily was taken by the Darach but she was nervous about her first time having sex so Caitlyn tried to make it special for her. This makes the characterisation rich and this one of the complaints about the show. We learn as much about someone who gets murdered five minutes later as we do about the show’s mains. Beacon Hills feels real because the people in it feel real.

Teen Wolf offers a surface answer which does not hold up to scrutiny - at all -ever and which is often ridiculous. @Sublimeglass refers to this as the show vs tell, Teen Wolf tells us one story and shows us quite another. Solutions to problems are often best guesses with the information that they have and are often contradicted seasons later as characters learn more.

The main character is presumed to be the hero but by the end is very clearly the agent of whatever it is that is going on that wants conflict - however defining that very clear presence in Teen Wolf is like getting rid of glitter, you know it’s there but you’re never going to get it out of the carpet.There is clearly an evil presence, and it is clearly in the water, specifically the lake beside Lydia’s lake house [which Lorraine set up a mountain ash barrier to protect her from] but the character’s don’t know it’s there. I am not saying that Scott is evil or villainous in this - that’s a very different meta - but instead that he is continuing the war that existed before him. He is recruiting a character like him to carry on the story. He is repeating the cycle like Weir sacrificing another crew to the ship.

One of the arguments with EH is that the ship is freeing them from “the fire” which is light and energy, which is complicated, basically that our universe with its physical reactions is Hell, and that by removing the flesh [I did mention Hellraiser was a huge influence, right, and the video game Doom 3] you could be “free”, and there is a similar idea in Teen Wolf where characters try to escape the detriments of flesh - Gerard looking for a cure for his cancer, the dread doctors extending their life, the attempts to build a better beast for their own immortality, the leonmensch trying to capture the Wild Hunt.

Yet if you reduce Event Horizon to “the ship went to hell and is now evil” the two do not match but both are phantasmagorical.

Phantasmagoria is where one or more reality might not be real but is instead a dream/hallucination that is indistinguishable from reality, and thus brings the “reality” in question.

In Event Horizon this is several dream sequences, Weir and Starck both have nightmares whilst in stasis. This means when Clare starts appearing to Weir and the child appears to Peters we are primed to know they are not real and this knowledge means we’re primed for a scare even when the subject is not scary, such as Peter’s visions of her sick son.

In Teen Wolf we have several sequences that are not “real”: Scott’s visions of the school bus attack; Stiles’ visions of the bandaged figure; Scott’s dreams of killing Liam with the mute. Then we have sequences where reality is much more loosely defined in Motel California - where the characters hallucinate - and Ghosted which is the most obvious point for the Event Horizon characters.

We also have flashbacks which are subject to the “Rashomon effect” where several variations of the same narrative are shown and the whole is unreliable [the Fox and the Wolf, Blitzkreig and Visionary] What we are shown in Teen Wolf is only slightly more reliable than what we are told, and the telling is from Scott’s point of view - although it is unclear if it is only the last episode, the last season half or the whole show which is narrated. Personally I think it’s the whole. Either way Scott is an unreliable narrator. We cannot trust the narrative as it is presented even if it didn’t openly contradict itself.

The Lovecraftian parallels have to be mentioned even if when it comes to writing Teen Wolf meta I find him popping up like a particularly obnoxious infestation. Combined with that is the heavy influence of Hellraiser [3 metas later I am quite confident that Hellraiser was involved] and the whole is unsettling if not disturbing or scary.

The visual language of Event Horizon is medieval gothic, with columns, long empty corridors, flourishes and twists and the ship itself is a cross based on Notre Dame. In Teen Wolf colours have meaning, characters have symbolic associations [although unlike the intent for Event Horizon they do not represent anything as overt as the seven sins. They reveal the characters but not general themes.] Each of the first five seasons has a symbol which is represented by Godai, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void [if six has one I haven’t cracked it yet but it is probably the ethereal or the other] and the cinematography is certainly as deliberate.

I can’t just end this meta because it’s one of those as soon as you see the movie you can see the parallels because they’re pretty much laid out on a plate but the two are so different that unless you sit down and think about it you’d never consider it.

I can’t say that Beacon Hills is a phantasmagorical town that exists outside space and is poisoned by its proximity to Hell - but I can’t say it’s not either because of the ambiguity and contradiction. I can’t say Weir is a victim driven mad by his own guilt or the ship possessed him because of the same contradictions.

Event Horizon managed what it did despite itself. Teen Wolf might have done the same.

[franklins-leg]

Been thinking about that proposed Terror sequel involving search expeditions, ghosts, and Victorian spiritualism.... so now, have the Tam Lin AU that’s been bumping around my brain for a while!

Let’s say we’re mostly canon up to about Terror Camp Clear. Except for where Tuunbaq consumes souls, let’s say those souls get sucked into some alternate purgatory type world. Let’s also say that James’s rocket plan doesn’t work, and Tuunbaq succeeds in claiming all of the remaining men. Sans Crozier, that is. Crozier is now the last person from the Expedition left in our world, as he is the Earthly Knight and is forced to guard King William Land from interlopers. Others expeditions come after Erebus and Terror to try to learn their fate, but weird things keep happening to them too (five ships go with the Belcher Expedition in 1850 but are pretty much stuck just the same as Terror, except there’s more of them and they’re a bit better organized with a base camp at Beechey Island). Also, the purgatory world in which everyone is trapped tends to weirdly intersect with our world, so the search parties do encounter Ghost Terror Crew during their years frozen in.  I’m all for keeping the Spiritualism aspect in this version, along with some vague ghostly warnings: Oh I forbid you Englishmen who seek a Passage rare To come or go by King William Land for Franklin’s men are there None of the explorers who come after Franklin find any sign of them. Until Rae learns of abandoned ships and recovers some artifacts 1854. At that point the lost expedition is nearing the end of their seven years bound to the other realm. And you know what happens at the end of seven years, gentlefolk? That’s right - they pay a tithe to Hell. More Ghost Terror Crew, the Belcher Expedition fails, Assistance, Pioneer, Intrepid and Resolute are abandoned, the search parties all return to England. It’s all looking pretty bleak.  This of course when James Clark Ross - who incidentally doesn’t believe in any of this Spiritualism talk that’s been going on in England, and will come and go by King William Land as he damn well pleases - gets sent back to the Arctic by Lady Franklin, and has to deal with Tuunbaq 2.0 to get Crozier and the rest of the crew back.   And they who would their true love win, at... Victory Point they must bide? (Unsure what happens at this point, but bonus points if Resolute getting spit out into the Davis Straits in autumn 1855 is somehow part of the underworld’s ploy to hold onto souls by turning them into inanimate objects. They’ll turn me in the sea, Sir James, into the Resolute?) 

[the-trashy-phoenix]

Supernatural season 8 review (part 1)

Link to part 2:

The first episode of the eighth season resumes from Dean coming back from purgatory and doing a weird spell to bring back also a friend he’s made in there, Benny. This starting in medias res was a bit puzzling, because we expect to see what’s happened in purgatory and we’ll learn only later on that those events will be recalled by flashbacks. It is also quite strange to introduce a new character without any presentation in the first episode, especially because Benny raises some questions in the viewer. As a matter of fact, he’s a vampire who’s helped Dean in the last year proving himself trustworthy, so that he’ll come back through the season, for example having the entire episode 5 devoted to him and his story, to help the brothers. This character is another step forward in Dean’s personal growth as a hunter: as I pointed out in the previous review, in the first seasons he would’ve never become friends with a vampire, but now, thanks to his wide experience, he’s able to distinguish real good creatures from evil monsters. This attitude, which could seem more Sam-like, brings about a sort of role reversal between the brothers, as for some time Sam will be skeptical about Benny’s trustworthiness, maybe just as a reaction to Dean’s lack of trust towards his friend Amy, who establishes a kind of parallel with Benny.

As if Benny’s appearance wasn’t confusing enough, we’re led to question at least on other two points. First of all, where’s Castiel? He was sent to purgatory together with Dean, but he didn’t come back with him. We’ll get the answer thanks to the many flashbacks Dean recalls about his rough year in purgatory: Dean refuses to talk explicitly about what’s happened to Cas assuming he’ll never come back and behaving as usual when he suffers for someone’s loss (we’ve seen an identical attitude about Bobby’s death).

Secondly, where’s Sam and what has he been doing during Dean’s absence? We find out together with Dean that he’s been living a normal life with a girl, Amelia, and his dog. So purgatory and Sam’s life are the alternative objects of flashbacks through the entire season, whose consequential plot is often complicated by continuous switches in time, marking once for all the big difference from the first linear seasons. Sam was the first to maintain the promise not to look for the brother while he was dead, and he thought it was the way Dean wanted him to live. I found it quite strange of eighth-season Sam, as he should be completely aware he can’t quit his hunter life and have a normal one as he hoped when he was younger. Also Dean is comprehensively mad at him, but it is as if Sam lived a kind of illusion he was too tired to let go. As always, both of them have a good point, but this time Dean seems to be more right, because they find out Crowley kidnapped Kevin, who asked for Sam’s help several times, so of course the brothers immediately start looking for him. Throughout the entire season Sam will keep on affirming that will be his last mission after which he will definitely quit hunting, even though deep inside I think he knows, as he knew for the whole year Dean was in purgatory, that’s the ultimate impossible illusion.

At this point we’re introduced to the main plot of the season: the Winchesters are willing to close the gates of hell and get rid of all demons once for all, but in order to know how to do that they have to find both the demon tablet and Kevin, the only one able to read it being a prophet, and making him translate it. When the Winchesters manage to do so, they try to keep him safe inside an abandoned ship surveilled by Garth, not the best idea if you ask me, as he’s proven himself a bit clumsy and naive, but I get that he’s the brothers’ best option being, without Castiel, their only friend and helper.

Speaking of the angel, as I said Dean is no help in understanding what’s happened to Cas, so we slowly learn it from flashbacks. At first he just appears on earth without knowing who saved him from purgatory, but he soon finds out that he was rescued by an angel called Naomi, a kind of a boss up in heaven whose aim is to use him. I’m really starting to hate angels more than demons (I never thought I would’ve said such a thing in my life), angels being so manipulative and subtle, while most of the time demons are simply mean as they’re supposed to. By the way, Naomi uses Cas without his consent to spy the Winchesters and to find the angel tablet. As a consequence, Cas begins to have weird behaviour and to take distances from the brothers, who have more and more doubts about him, especially when he kills Samandriel, an angel who has been tortured by Crowley to get information about the angel tablet (at this point all characters are looking for it in separate ways, the Winchesters, Crowley and Castiel/Naomi). The apotheosis of controlled-Cas is the moment when both the Winchesters and Cas find the angel tablet, which is also one of the highest moments of the season, as Cas manages to break free from heaven control. This is the second time he disobeys orders through an act of free will to follow what he thinks is the right side, which of course corresponds to what the brothers, or maybe just Dean, are doing: this time we feel all the heaven pressure Castiel has on his shoulder, and it makes it even more remarkable that he succeeded in escaping from such a powerful master as Naomi. Undoubtedly Dean’s intense speech about needing him and loving him played its part in Cas’ rebellion, and paradoxically disobeying to angels is one of the acts which contribute in making us think of him as the closest to an ideal angel. Having the angel tablet, Castiel just vanishes on his own in order to keep it safe from angels. As it was predictable, Naomi is so powerful she’s able to find him quite easily, demonstrating one more time that Cas’ idea of solving problems without the Winchesters’ help will never end up well (but apparently he’s too stubborn to realise that). So even when Castiel is alive and on earth, we’re not shown many TFW moments, as they often go separate ways and meet up only by chance or because one of them is in desperate need of help (some fans would say that if they were too close there would be too many undeniable Destiel scenes…).

We have to mention that Sam and Dean are finally able to find out where the angel tablet is thanks to Meg. As she’s in middle between good and evil she gets captured and tortured by Crowley and his demons, but at the end she makes her final choice deciding to help the Winchesters, just as Cas will do, breaking free from what they’re supposed to be and do, and that makes them honourably part of team free will. I honestly didn’t expect Meg to die, and above all I didn’t expect her to die fighting demons, her kind, to protect the brothers’ escape. I appreciated so much the deep evolution of her character, from an evil monster to a victim of evil, and I think one last act of love was a good way to conclude her life, even though of course I was sad with her death.

In this season the authors developed the character of Kevin much more, adding his mother to the storyline. They are a rare positive example of parental relationship in Supernatural: Kevin’s mum is a strong woman whose only purpose is to protect her son, a very difficult task considering how dangerous being a prophet is. I really liked her, also because I didn’t expect a secondary character to have this deep participation in the show. As it was clear from Kevin’s very first appearance, he embodies all the unfairness of supernatural world, as he’s just a victim of events, always in need of hiding from opposite forces who want to possess his power, living in the Sam-like illusion he can come back to his normal life when the Winchesters will manage to close the gates of hell. We are led to deeply sympathise with him and his fight against the evidence that his life will never be normal anymore, which is something all Supernatural good characters quite seem to have interiorised at this point.

Just a little mention to a character that’s becoming more stable, Charlie. She comes back in two episodes: one involves a role play, which fully demonstrates her nerd attitude, while the other one is more about her personal story. She’s now one of the few friends Sam and Dean can count on, both humanly and professionally, as she’s become a skilled hunter, and I hope we’ll see more of her going on with the show.

Before moving back to the main plot, I’m analysing once more the relationship between Sam and Amelia. As you remember, he left her only to follow his brother in his last mission, to close the gates of hell, after which he planned to go back to her and his family life. In addition, the situation is complicated by the fact that Amelia finds out her husband, who she believed was dead, is still alive, so she has to choose between the two men she’s in love with. After some time she decides to go back to Sam, but he’s not there waiting for her: I think he knows that she’ll have a good, maybe even better, life without him, while Dean would be completely destroyed by losing his brother, even though he often suggests him to go and live the normal life he’s always wanted from when he was a child. Of course they haven’t closed hell yet, so technically Sam comes back to Dean because the job is not accomplished, but as a matter of fact this is the confirm their brotherly love is stronger than anything else, and they have nothing else to count on except from each other, even if they sometimes seem to forget it. One example is in an episode about Benny, where he’s unjustly accused of having killed people and Sam wants to kill him despite Dean’s attempts to defend him. Benny’s one of the main problems between the Winchesters in this season and Dean does something really bad to save him, which is just partly excusable as Benny was truly innocent. He pretends Amelia is in danger and makes Sam go directly to her instead of hunting Benny. We already know that Dean isn’t able to be rational when he’s mad and desperate, but I think it was a real cheap shot on Sam, Amelia being his current weak point (and love), and Dean could’ve realised that with a little more empathy for his brother.

In the second part of the season a new storyline including a new member of the Winchester family is introduced. During a leap in the past we get to know Henry Winchester, John’s father, who’s part of a sort of secret congregation of educated hunters called Men of Letters. He’s catapulted, together with Abbadon, a very powerful demon, to the present day, where he meets his grandchildren: at first they’re shocked, but then they help him fighting Abbadon, one of the first demons created called knights of hell. They manage to momentarily stop her by cutting her in pieces, but Henry dies in that moment, leaving his son John alone in the past. The arrival of Henry clarifies to the brothers that their father wasn’t abandoned and that their granddad was a very good hunter, father and person, leaving to John the title of worst member of the family. Moreover, finding out all about Men of Letters, who were completely erased by Abbadon, leads them to the bunker, a marvellous and luxury house full of all the books and weapons a hunter could ask for. They will soon begin to call it their home, and I think it was high time they had a safe place where they could both work and relax, also because I, and surely Sam and Dean too, was sick of all those dirty and messy motel rooms.

As always, the most important turning points are in the last episodes, as Kevin is finally able to decipher the demon tablet: in order to close hell, Sam or Dean have to overcome three terrible trials. Of course they have to decide who will do that and, guess what, they fight about it because they both want to sacrifice and think the other brother has suffered more through the years. I have to admit it’s difficult to decide which one endured more pain, so their decision is Dean just because he imposes it to Sam: they can’t imagine destiny will choose for them, as the first trial, killing a hellhound and bathing in his blood, is accomplished by Sam partly by chance. So Sammy, as his second task, has to save a soul from hell and bring it to heaven: they choose Bobby, who was unfairly put in hell, but Sam and him remain stuck in purgatory due to Crowley’s intrusion. Despite that, this is a very positive moment, first of all because of the unexpected presence and salvation of Bobby, secondly because it allows a final conciliation between Sam and Benny (and as a consequence an improvement in Sam and Dean’s relationship), who goes to purgatory to bring back Dean’s family and in return stays there. It is as if in Supernatural nothing good can be obtained without sacrifice, but this time Benny was willing to remain in purgatory, as his life on earth wasn’t bearable anymore. He seems to be Meg’s double, a monster unable to change his physical condition but willing to redeem and help the good guys: we’ve learnt that staying in the middle is not tolerated, and everyone trying to change his written destiny is necessarily devoted to failure, in a quite pessimistic and deterministic view.

The final trial is curing a demon and making him human again. To do so, they choose their favourite demon, Crowley, and after having him captured Sam starts the cure the brothers’ have learnt from the Men of Letters, despite being abruptly stopped by Dean who’s found out that Sam will die if he completes the trials. I was quite disappointed they hadn’t thought of such a possibility: I mean, I know they didn’t want to die for it, but they have so much experience in the supernatural field that I found it naive of them not to think enough about consequences, also because some characters, Castiel first of all, had tried to warn them.

While the brothers face the trials and their final uselessness, Cass is plotting another closure with a new character, Metatron. He’s the angel who wrote the Word of God on the tablets and who’s been living far from heaven for centuries, but from when Sam and Dean find him, he becomes close with Castiel and together they plan, in parallel with the Winchesters, to close the gates of heaven, in order to erase all problems deriving from both demons and angels on earth. Castiel has to complete some trials, like Sam, as a last rebellion to the place he no longer identifies himself with. However, in the last episode, with a big plot twist, it becomes clear that Metatron’s intentions are mean and he just played Cass (by the way, it seems like he’s always too naive to do something right without Sam and Dean’s help…): he steals his grace, the last trial to definitely close heaven and make all angels fall to earth. At this moment the two parallel plots reunite, with a beautiful but terrifying vision of angels falling like bright stars from the Winchesters’ point of view, at the end of the attempt to Sam’s last trial. So this long and full-of-events season ends with demons and angels on earth, with the gates of hell open and those of heaven closed, good succumbing to evil’s success.

- Irene 💕

[words-writ-in-starlight]

So your rant on Supernatural? Also I fell in love with the story you're talking about and basically want to know more. Sorry.

My buddy, you have made An Error, but let’s do this shit.  To any SPN fans who have wound up herethrough Ye Olde Search Function, I encourage you to stop reading now.

I watched up to about halfway through Season Five before Idecided that I could Do It Better (I think this is the novel you’re talkingabout, anon, unless it’s Earth is where the trouble comes from), and draggedmyself up to about halfway through Season Seven before I packed it in and gaveup, resigned that the parts of the show I loved were about four to five seasonsdead.  So like that’s the information I’mworking on here.

So, obviously, lots of people have lots of legitimatecomplaints about Supernatural,including treatment of queer characters, characters of color, and women, aswell as their fairly rampant history of queerbaiting.  And lots of people have covered this in morecompetent detail than I could ever manage, so like google “sexism in Supernatural” or something and you cando your own reading there.  Hell, if youwant to do it the lazy way, you can knock out two of the above with this onearticle in friendly, easy-to-read Buzzfeed format.  To the nominal credit of the people involved,I will add that the cast seems acutely aware of these problems and finds itdistasteful, HOWEVER the problems persist and therefore that credit is minimal.  Anyway. These things are covered much more thoroughly by many other people whoare far more cogent than I could hope to be, so I’m going to leave those alone.

Instead, my rant is mostly summed up as “YOU CALL THIS SHITSTORYTELLING.”

So there are four basic parts to this rant, or rather fourbasic flaws that form the fundamentally weak foundation of Supernatural as a narrative.

Failure to commit to a single cohesive narrativearc, also known as “SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OFTHOSE” syndrome

The persistent and erroneous belief thatcharacter death = character development and narrative progression

Inability to commit to a major change ofparadigm, also known as out and out narrative cowardice, which I personallycall “flinching during Plot Roulette���

Total incapacity to put their characterizationwhere their script is regarding the Winchester brothers and the other major players

*cracks knuckles*

POINT THE FIRST

Right, so first it’s the story of Sam having strange powersand their dad being MIA, which segues pretty naturally into the story of Sampotentially being the Antichrist, and then there’s Dean’s sacrifice of his soul,which at very least holds up even ifit sort of acts like the previous plotline about their dad’s soul didn’t happen.  Upuntil this point, I was pretty comfy.  Ihad some complaints covered below, but I was copacetic.  Season Three is largely about getting rid ofthe contract on Dean’s soul.  Okay, seemslegit, you have a tangible problem with potentially serious consequences.  Now, having had not one but TWO seasons whichwere easily summed up with ‘so Sam is mebbe the Antichrist or at very leastAntichrist-adjacent,’ I made what I thought was a logical leap and went “well,gee, if I was mebbe at the very leastAntichrist-adjacent, I would leverage the fuck out of that to do somethingabout my apparently beloved brother’s soul.” Even when they didn’t go withthat (news flash: I wrote that novel mydamn self and amazingly it worked out 100x better, narratively speaking,because it’s fucking logical), I wasstill kind of like “gosh sure is a good thing they remembered that they spenttwo entire seasons building up to Sam mebbe being Antichrist-adjacent.”  And there’s the whole drama with Ruby which Ijust…am very uncomfortable with for a lot of reasons, not least of which isthat it’s a very thinly veiled endeavor to rehash the same ‘Sam being afraid oflosing touch with humanity’ plotline as Seasons One and Two but without havingto worry about really altering the paradigm, see Point The Third, and alsobecause it’s really intensely literal about the concept of having a femalecharacter exclusively as a prop for consumption.  And Castiel shows up and a thousand ships arelaunched, blah blah blah, and then after the end of Season Four…we never hearfrom Sam’s powers again for more than a couple lines.  

As of about Season Four, the focus of the show abandons Samand shifts tangibly onto Dean, who is now The Interesting Character because hehas Been Through Hell (literally). Furthermore, we are now given Dean’s POV on any quandry between him andSam, which is a personal complaint because I honestly just think it’ssloppy.  Season Four is mostly dealingwith angels being assholes, which is really not as original as SPN likes tothink (Good Omens did it first and Good Omens did it better, get out of myface), plus Dean being the Righteous Man and the question of the oncomingApocalypse (sure is interesting how we spent two seasons building up to Sambeing Antichrist-adjacent).  The Apocalypseis less oncoming and implied to be more ongoing by the end of Season Four.  So Lucifer escapes and Season Five is prettymuch About That, involving the fairly unhelpful description that Dean isMichael’s ‘sword’ and they’re the true vessels of Michael and Lucifer,culminating in Sam being locked in the Cage because presumably someone realizedthat, hey, we have two maincharacters and we must make them both Interesting Characters.  Season Six is 50% about finding Sam’s souland figuring out how he got out of the Cage (sure would be helpful if we’dspent two seasons building up to Sam having inhuman powers and beingAntichrist-adjacent) and 50% a wickedinexplicable plot about the Mother-of-All and some kind of fucking jigsawmonsters and…Alpha monsters?  But thatnever really gets explained in a pertinent way except that they needed to anteup because they beat the Devil at theend of Season Five.  Oh, and a bonus 50% of some bullshit withCastiel and Crowley and ~Scheming~.  Andthen Castiel gets possessed by Leviathans (?) from Purgatory, which he openedwith Crowley (??) who he then betrayed (???), and Castiel decides He’s God Nowand also dies (????), and somehow these metaphysical more-powerful-than-angelsbadder-than-Lucifer things are sensitive to fuckingBorax.  

And it was at this point that I stopped the show in themiddle of a fight scene like 1/3 through Season Seven and actually said outloud “Gosh it’s almost like you needsomeone who’s Antichrist-adjacent to help you out here” before turning off the TV. And then I stopped watching and got better taste in TV and blew throughwriting a 250K novel in 18 months of being a full-time student because I waspowered by pure bitter spite.

Now, here are the two major things that matter about thiswhole deal.  First of all, the firstplotline is the most reliably coherent, although some degree of cogence lastedup until about Season Five—we understand why Lucifer wants out of Hell, weunderstand to some extent why Dean and Sam matter on the cosmic scale, we getpretty bored of watching Castiel do heel-face and face-heel turns like he’s ona Lazy Susan but like logistically it all makes a reasonable degree of sense.  That being said, the whole plotline ofSeasons Four onward would make a lot moresense, would it not, if they remembered that they’d spent a good solid twoseasons and change (Season Three, intermittent, Season Four, major) designingan Antichrist-like character who is now the last survivor of that batch ofexperiments.  Then, instead of having Samand Dean just be Inexplicably Special, you have Dean (who can still be theRighteous Man!) acting as the foil for Sam being forced into increasingly darkchoices, and Sam who’s a viable candidate for Lucifer-puppet because he’s partdemon.  Or, alternatively, Sam whomaintains his stance as the gentler of the two despite his demon blood, which would add a lot more depth to Supernatural’s fanatical hardon for theAngelic Asshole trope.  Honestly Irewrote the entirety of this show one time, predicated on the assumption thatthey actually went with the idea of Sam as the Boy King, and I think it wouldbe much less haphazard.  (Basically: hey,what if Sam actually used his status to strong-arm Dean’s deal into beingdissolved, as it’s implied that he’s totally capable of doing that and totallywilling to sacrifice his own humanity for his brother, and then Heaven sentCastiel to kill Sam, which would add a fuckton of legitimacy to Castiel’s LazySusan and Dean’s antagonism.  But no. Instead there’s monsters whose only vulnerability is fucking Borax.)

Second, and far more critical, is the total failure tocommit to a single plotline.  Okay, Sam’sstatus as the possible Boy King is a major plot point for two seasons, not somuch for the third season (he literally…a demon straight up tells Sam that he could have an army if he took up hisposition and it never occurs to himthat he could use that to help Dean), more so in the fourth season, and then itnever comes up again.  Even when it is unarguably pertinent to thesituation—Lucifer!  Fucking Luciferpossesses Sam and drags him to Hell and he comes back soulless and yet none of the writers ever, not once, went “Gosh, maybe we should remember those seasonswe spent developing Sam into sort of the Antichrist?  Maybe including at least a minor nod to thator somehow wrapping up the plotline would help cohere our current trainwreck ofa plotline?”  Nope, it’s just left as aloose thread, flapping in the breeze with all the subtlety of a limp dick.  It’s like Supernaturalis actually a Frankenshow of two shows with the same characters but totallyunrelated plotlines—maybe when Lucifer escapes he shunts them all sideways intoan alternate universe and there’s another show somewhere with a Dean whosebrother has never been even a little bit demonic and died through normal huntershenanigans suddenly having to deal with Sam the possible Antichrist, andthat’s the show that an alternate me is still watching.

And this is an ongoing problem.  Sam’s powers are just the major point that Ialways latch onto, because, first, I always think the phenomenon of “well fuckme sideways I might be obligated to end the world and ain’t that a messy thing”is pretty great (I really, reallylike Hellboy), and second, IT’S FOURSEASONS OF WORK YOU CAN’T JUST ABANDON IT.  But seriously.  Just. Throw a dart, you’ll hit a loose end. Because Supernatural is theequivalent of that one fucker we all hate in sitcoms—you know, the guy who’sdating a great girl he totally doesn’t deserve, but he can’t ~commit~ sothere’s all this ongoing Drama™.  Exceptthat in Supernatural, not only canthey not commit, they accidentally defeated their biggest gun—the literal Devil—less than halfwaythrough their series!  Whoops!  Quick, someone call up Satan’s cousin twiceremoved who’s even worse and more evil than he is!  And sensitive to Borax!  

No, no, I’m kidding. We all know that Satan’s cousin twice removed, who’s even worse and moreevil than he is, is actually named Metatron.

Fuckin’ Supernatural.

POINT THE SECOND

I know this is going to come as a shock, but rampantcharacter death does not actuallyqualify as a legitimate way to progress your narrative or develop yourcharacters.  In order, the major players(nominally on the Winchesters’ side) who die or seem to die in the first fiveseasons are Sam’s girlfriend, John Winchester, Ash, Sam, Bela, Dean, (Deanseveral times in Mystery Spot), Ruby,Castiel, Jo, Ellen, Sam, Anna, Sam, Dean, Gabriel, Castiel, Bobby, and sort of Sam with the whole Cagething.  And those are just the peoplewith arcs that extend over more than a season (except for Sam’sgirlfriend).  It’s entirely possible,even probable, that I missed some.  Thatdoes not include the one- ortwo-episode characters whose deaths we’re supposed to observe as emotionallywringing, nor does it include the frankly vast numbers of civiliancasualties.  So, for the ease of reading,we’re going to divide ‘character death’ into ‘reversible character death,’which is largely the prerogative of the primary trio, and ‘permanent characterdeath,’ and we’re going to talk about why there are real problems with the way Supernatural treats both of them.

First of all, the problems with reversible character deathare obvious—there are no fucking stakes! Like, arguably the stakes are ‘the whole world,’ but obviously not (seePoint The Third), so practically speaking the stakes should be life or death, because the show tells you that the stakes are life or death.  Now, sometimes resurrection is an importantplot point, I get that, in my spite novel there is, in fact, aresurrection.  But here’s the thing.  Either you have to straight up establish arevolving door policy and change your stakes (example: the show Forever, where the point is that the MCis immortal and would very much like to not be immortal anymore), or you can only use that resurrection once.  You use it once, and you still get theemotional gut punch of “Oh God, they’re dead”and the flood of relief when it proves that they’re not dead after all.  You use it more than that, and the audiencebecomes complacent that, well, you won’t reallykill them.  By the time you’re on a levelwith Supernatural, it just…doesn’tmatter?  A major character dies, but youraudience has already hit compassion fatigue because of the death rate, whichI’m about to cover, so there’s not really any oomph to it.

The problems with permanent character death aresignificantly different.  Now, I myselfam a Happy Ending person (like…the world sucks …let me have my happy fiction),but even I recognize that a certain percentage of the characters in a story orshow like this one are basically just cannon fodder (it would be great if itwasn’t so consistently the women, POC, orLGBT folks, but whatever).  Theproblem is that it’s constant.  And not just “well that person’s a corpsebecause that’s what vampires do to people” or “some kid pissed off the localspirit and now they’re six feet under,” it would be totally fine and reasonableif that situation was an every episode thing (it…kind of is, that’s kind of thepoint).  But every few episodes, we’reexpected to get attached to a one-off character and then be deeply affectedwhen they die.  Take, say, Season Three:you have the hunters Isaac and Tamara in the first episode, Casey and FatherGil in the fourth episode (some flexibility as they’re demons, but we’resupposed to be shocked and horrified that Sam kills them both), Callie in thefifth episode, Gordon in the seventh episode (again, we’re supposed to behorrorstricken that Sam kills him, even though it’s clearly self-defense), all the civilians in the twelfthepisode, Corbett in the thirteenth episode, and finally Bela, who admittedlyhas had some nominal presence for a while. This does not include any Winchester trauma, which you’re always supposed to be deeply affectedby.  I’m sorry, but after a season or twoof being expected to work up that kind of emotional upset between five and tentimes over the course of thirteen to twenty episodes, your audience is going toburn out and start to lose emotional engagement.  

So, basic summary: the Anyone Can Die trope does not playwell with main characters who are on a Revolving Door of Death, because itmeans that minor characters don’t matter because Anyone Can Die, while majordamage or trauma to the main characters doesn’t matter either because they’reon a Revolving Door.  You can’t kill yourmain characters once (or more!) a season and expect people to still…worry aboutthem.

On a more strictly structural note, using character death asthe primary way to drive character development is just fucking lazy.  It’s just an indicator that the writers don’tactually know how to progress their character development in any other way,which is a major problem because, since they only develop the charactersthrough the deaths of others, they have to hit the Personality Reset buttonfairly regularly to make it look like things are actually happening to thepeople who are supposed to be developing. Which, in case you were curious, is why you feel that overwhelming senseof déjà vu when the Winchesters getinto a huge blowout fight about ‘don’t sacrifice yourself’ in about thethird-to-last episode, followed by one of them sneaking out to sacrificethemselves, followed by the other onebeing angry about it.  It’s the samegoddamn script, it’s just that Sam’s hair is probably longer and Dean isprobably scruffier.  Furthermore, thefixation on developing characters with the deaths of others means thatbasically every character is fair game but NO ONE’S DEATH HOLDS MEANING,because of the above, which means that SPN’s ‘character development’ turns intothis recursive self-congratulating circlejerk of killing someone, developingSam and Dean accordingly, and then somehow regressing them so that the writerscan do it over again and be proud of themselves for Such Dynamic Characters,Much Develop, So Change, Wow.

And I feel like the reasons that character death =/=narrative progression should be pretty clear from the rest of this rant, butbasically if you’re killing someone to progress your plot, it needs to be asolveable death (emotional payoff is what makes walking away from a booksatisfying, such as catching a murderer) or a terrible tragedy that drives thecharacters to great acts or both.  Supernatural is basically a horror/fantasymurder mystery, so it would be fine if they stuck with that model, but theykeep trying to sell the deaths of any number of major players and many many minor players as this greatand terrible tragedy that’s pushing the Winchesters forward.  And like, I’m sorry, but if you commit withinthe first episode to a dead mother anda dead girlfriend and a missingpotentially dead father, you’ve already pretty well maxed out your terribletragedies.  Find a different motivator,or else it looks like your characters just leave huge amounts of collateraldamage and refuse to take responsibility. Or, alternatively, it looks like the individual deaths don’t matter toyour main characters, which is NOT going to help with making your audience giveeven a single fractional fuck.

TL;DR: Character death is a powerful tool that rapidly losesits weight and import if you overuse it, and can make your audiencedisinterested and emotionally detached if they’re expected to care every time.  Slow your motherfucking roll, stick to aMAXIMUM of one resurrection per character unless their immortality is anexplicitly discussed plot point (at which point their deaths need to not mattermuch anymore), and remember that you can progress your plot in literally anyother way before you go for a shock-value death.

POINT THE THIRD

Don’t be a little bitch in your writing.  Honestly it’s that simple.  I’m gonna get into it some more, but that’sthe gist of it.  If you already know whatI mean, great, skip to the next point, because the TL;DR is “don’t be aninfant.”

This is something that plenty of shows are guilty of(Merlin, anyone?), but SPN is terrifiedof actually changing the paradigm.  Theshow must always include a certainlist of things:

The Winchesters in the Impala, which, sure, I’llgrant you that

A home base, also totally reasonable

Monsters to fight, fair enough

A masquerade (meaning ‘civilians do not knowabout magic’), which should honestly have broken down after, like, Season Twowhen they accidentally release massive numbers of demons into the world

A world to have the show happening in, which isa problem since they started theApocalypse in Season Four

Now…listen.

It’s fine, even necessary, to have some fixed points in anarrative.  It offers a way to anchoryour characters against the ongoing changes that the plot demands.  That, however, is very different from beingtoo much of a coward to alter the paradigm of your story when the major driving force is a change ofparadigm.

The first major change of paradigm they cop out on is Sam’spowers.  If Sam was the Boy King, thishypothetically Antichrist-esque position in the cosmic dichotomy, that would radically alter the dynamic.  Sam would automatically be the most powerfulbeing in any given room unless he was in a room with a respectably high-rankedangel or demon, and he would certainly be able to go toe-to-toe with most oftheir targets on their own terms. Telekinesis is an exceptionally goodpower, guys, like, as powers go—even disregarding his position in thehierarchy, Sam would be pretty strong in his own right.  Which, I’d like to point out, can be a reallythrilling change to a narrative, because it means that you have this additionallayer of ‘well, how do we deal with the fact that Sam doesn’t like being this strong, how do we dealwith the way demons and monsters have started to view him as more us than them’ and would give a much more legitimate basis for the questionof humanity that they shoehorn in later with the Ruby plotline.  Buffyhas its flaws, but at least it frequently brings up ‘hey, Buffy might be ostensiblyhuman, but she operates on the level of her enemies more than on the level ofher allies’ as an issue that she thinks about. But they don’t do that in Supernatural,they bail completely on the Sam plotline because they panic about theimplications of having such a powerful character.  And then they bring in fucking Castiel likethat’s not exactly the same problemcloaked in ‘well, noninterference.’  Like, please, that ship has fucking sailed,choke down your anxiety and figure out how the rules of your powerful characterwork, and then let them be powerful. It’s gonna be okay.  Deepbreaths.  If you make an OP character,that’s fine, you just have toactually deal with it rather than having their powers be an asspull every timethe main characters are in Real Trouble (*angry sigh* Merlin).

The second one they balk at is the unveiling of thesupernatural world and oh my God it is constant.  But let’s deal with the biggest and mostimprobable of these here: Season GoddamnTwo, where they bust open the doors of Hell and unleash some thousands ofdemons into the world.  Like, is that asmany demons as it could be, in comparison to your six to seven billionhumans?  No.  But it’s still a huge population and is implied to be accompanied by a huge uptickin various other supernatural happenings and is furthermore really visible.  The Devil’s Trap is suggested to pass throughat least a couple towns and it’s a big flashy event, so like…sure, maybe peoplewrite it off as swamp gas or what have you, but sooner or later people who havehad demons exorcised or seen some vampire/werewolf/etc shenanigans and lived totell about it are going to start running into each other.  They start hearing people say “it’s likeshe’s a totally different person” and they take that seriously rather thanwriting it off.  They were maybe saved bya hunter who confirmed that the supernatural exists and they maybe tell thatperson that, hey, something like that happened to them, maybe they could cometake a look around.  Maybe they couldcall the person who helped them out.  Andyou end up with this fucking Ponzi scheme of The Great Truth, where each personwho’s in the know finds one or two more people who’ve seen evidence and brings them into the loop, and then they find one or two more people who’veseen evidence.  And for every personwho’s determined to call it bullshit or think they’re insane, you’re going toget one who saw that person turn intoa hairy monster and murder someone, or who waspossessed by a demon, or who witnessedblack smoke merge with their spouse and turn them into a killer.  So you get this whole rickety network ofamateurs who’ve…kind of learned the thing. And like any Ponzi scheme, sooner or later it collapses.

Basically the point is: there is a limit to the parts permillion of The Great Truth that can be present before that shit becomes commonknowledge.  Look at any availablegovernment conspiracy for confirmation. The more people you tell, the looser the rules of ‘secret’ become, so ifyou have a big flashy visible disaster that involves drastically increasing the number of uninitiated civilians who areaware of The Great Truth…you’d better be ready to deal with that.  What I’m saying here is that by Season Seven,you’ve not only had this whole demon situation for a while, and increased those numbers several times with variousdisasters, but you’ve also had at least one big flashy disaster in a city.  So the Winchesters should pretty much be ableto walk into a given town and wander into the church or the bar or somethingand go “So, I heard there’ve been some weird murders” and have at least oneperson come up to them later and be like “Yeah it’s a ghost here’s all theinformation but I have no idea how to get rid of them.”  And when the Winchesters go *gasp* “How do you know The Thing” theperson should look at them like a fucking moron and go “It literally rainedblood last year, everyone in this time zone knows The Thing and also it’sevident that the end is pretty seriously nigh, so get on that.”  Commit to your big flashy disasters, youcowards, or at least have the decency to make it an ongoing Sunnydale joke.

Far more crucial is the fact that they bail on the end ofthe world…let’s see.  End of Season Fouris when the Apocalypse properly gets underway, so they balk at the end ofSeason Five (Lucifer and the Cage), end of Season Six (Mother of All andPurgatory), and like minimum once bythe middle of Season Seven (Godstiel) as well as at the end of Season Seven (Leviathans, I am now past where I kept watching),end of Season Eight (Metatron, angel tablets, falling angels), presumably endof Season Nine from what I understand of the summaries online (some…war onHeaven nonsense), and based on the trend I’m guessing that Seasons Ten throughThirteen keep to the model, do youunderstand my point here.  Thesearen’t even all the near-Apocalypses that they avert.  Off the cuff, I can think of the Croatoanvirus (…twice?  Three times?), as well asthree out of four Horsemen within episodes of each other.  They’re probably averting the Very Seriousand Catastrophic End of Days two or three times a season by Season Five, and that number only goes up.  This is very similar to the character deaththing: quite simply, if the audience is expected to get that worked up multipletimes a season, and brace for thatkind of disaster multiple times a season,you are inevitably going to bore them.  Yourplot has to be intensely recursive sothat you can ‘reset’ and avoid a new Apocalypse the next season, which getsboring, because it feels like you’ve been there before, similar to how usingcharacter death to advance character development demands that you hit thePersonality Reset button on the regular.

Furthermore, repeating the same level of disaster over and over and OVER again means that it starts to lack emotional weight, and yourcharacters start to seem really, really stupid if they don’t start to treatthings accordingly.  One of the things Ithought of constantly during thelast, say, season and a half that I watched of Supernatural was a quote from Buffy,specifically from Riley who I usually very much dislike but who NAILED thisparticular thing.  “When I saw you stopthe world from, you know, ending, I just assumed that was a big week for you.It turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural ofapocalypse.”  And that’s the running jokein Buffy!  That they literallydeal with an Apocalypse every few episodes, and they lampshade it, and thecharacters respond accordingly—Buffy and the Scooby gang start to act cavalier,almost unimpressed, about each new disaster. Like “well, we saved the world, I say we party.”  That’s a direct quote from Buffy (IN SEASON ONE NO LESS), and Supernatural could stand to take a pageout of their book with that one.  BySeason Seven, the Winchesters seem like they have somehow missed out on thelast decade of their own lives because they always act so shocked and horrifiedthat somehow someone could try to endthe world.  Like!  Yes, yes they could and yes they would,welcome to the party boys!  Please try toget in touch with your own history on this subject!

So the highlights here are: don’t be a fucking baby aboutyour writing.  If you’re writing toward abig paradigm shift, you need to recognize that you’re playing Plot RussianRoulette, and you have to pull the trigger. Change the paradigm of your narrative and deal with the fallout like afucking adult, you tepid fools, you limp-necked cowards, you ink-stainedwalnuts.

POINT THE FOURTH

Listen very carefully. Do you hear that?  It’s the soundof the Winchesters promising eternal brotherly devotion and saying things like“you’re my brother, man” and vowing to always have each other’s backs.  

Now wait a moment longer, and listen very carefully.  Do you hear that?  It’s the inevitablesound of the Winchesters stabbing each other in the back and/or throwing eachother to the wolves because they’re feeling pissy, and then getting a whole(static! See Point The Second!) “character arc” about how distraught they are.

All right, y’all, I don’t have siblings so maybe I’m wrong, but I do write a lot and I think I’m right, and you should probably put yourcharacterization where your script is. If your primary relationship that you expect people to care about isfraternal devotion, you should maybe nothave those people cheerfully feed each other into metaphoricalwoodchippers.  Like.  Okay, maybe you get ONE chance to have adramatic falling out.  ONE.  And then when they repair the relationship,they need to actually sort their shit out and not keep having the exact same dramatic falling out because thatshit gets boring and is a sign of lazy writing and—shocker!—lack of character development.  Next time they fight, it has to be aboutsomething demonstrably different, notjust the same issue with a new set of tits (c’mon y’all, this is Supernatural, it’s always a set oftits).

Let’s do a real fast recap. There’s a one episode plot in Season One about the two of them fallingout over the question of whether they should follow their father’s orders.  Dean spends a good percentage of Season Twotaking his guilt over their dad’s death out on Sam, but we’ll give a passbecause they explicitly acknowledge it and take steps to resolve theproblem.  A major plotline develops inSeason Two that hunters have started trying to kill Sam, and Dean reliably,consistently has his back.  Props.  Season Three is kind of a mess (if you have a big visible semi-Apocalypseyou should probably deal with it, see Point The Third), but whatever.  Pertinently, Dean’s big ongoing concern isthat Sam isn’t acting like himself, because he’s being much more ruthless(something Dean has consistently told him to do), while Sam’s ongoing concernis that Dean is being reckless (justified, he has a death sentence onhim).  Season Four is when things startto break down.  Castiel shows up and Deanresponds with aggression, Sam gets his rehashed ‘humanity’ plotline with Ruby,there are a lot of really incredibly poor decisions made and a lot of lies toldwith minimal regard for the trouble that’s gotten them into before (@Sam).  There’s a fight that includes Dean callingSam a monster, which has been canonically identified as the thing Sam is mostafraid of, and acting like this whole demon blood thing is a terribletremendous shock, despite the fact that Dean…knew and totally failed to reactin any way except to penalize Sam (for trying to save him!  Much like Dean sold his soul for Sam!  And got pissy about Sam being pissed offabout!).  Cue Lucifer.  Apocalypse, possession, Horsemen, etc, etc,more Lazy Susan Castiel, infighting about who should say yes to what in orderto save whom, whatever.  

And then Sam apparently dies in the Cage and Dean…goes offto get a nice white picket fence? Um…this is not consistent with the characterization of a dude who soldhis soul to resurrect Sam literally just three years ago.  Their falling out has never been intenseenough nor consistent enough to justify this. Even if you say that Dean’s honoring his brother’s final wishes by nottrying to resurrect Sam or anything, Dean should be drinking himself to deathor something similarly dramatic, because allthe drama in this show comes from the relationship between the Winchesterbrothers.  

Basically, here’s the problem: the show spends a lot of time and effort on telling youthat the Winchesters would die for each other. And while they do use that trope a lot (John dies for Dean, who dies forSam, who sacrifices his humanity for Dean, who risks his life for Sam, whojumps into the Cage for Dean…), they seem to have forgotten that, generally,you’re only willing to die for people who you actually like.  Like, peopleto whom you are genuinely emotionally attached,not just people who are your family because Blood Is Thicker or whateverbullshit you’re trying to pull there. And by Season Five, I’m just…not convinced the Winchester brothersactually like each other anymore.  Andthat never gets dealt with, they just expect you to believe that the Winchsterslove each other because the show says so,and listen, I hate the saying of ‘show, don’t tell’ as much as the nextperson who’s suffered through a college writing class, but honestly.  Supernaturalneeds to stop telling its viewers that Sam and Dean care about each other andactually…demonstrate that shit on a regular basis.  

Example: there’s the incident at some point where someoneplants a phone call on (I think) Sam’s phone, apparently from Dean, telling himthat he’s a monster and he should go do an incredibly stupid and dangerousthing because the world and Dean would be better off if he was dead.  Which Sam then believes and listens to.  This seems totally justified based on therelationship they’ve had for the past season. Pro tip, kids.  If your majordynamic includes two people who readily and easily believe that the other isliterally calling them an inhuman abomination and telling them they should justdie, that…that is not a Loving Affectionate and Devoted Familial Relationship.  And if you’re pitching it as one, A, you needsome therapy, probably urgently, and, B, your audience is only going to stickit out for so long before they give it up as a lost cause.

The point of this whole thing is that you better be ready toput your money where your fucking mouth is, and keep your characterizationsconsistent with what you’re telling the audience.

ANYWAY.  

The ultimate TL;DR here is that Supernatural’s storytelling is approximately as competent as thenovel I wrote when I was eleven, which I have hidden in a deep dark hole neverto be seen or discussed ever again.  Less competent, even, because at least Icommitted to a single individual plotline and dealt with the fallout of majorchanges to the universe.  And it’sfucking tragic, because this was a show with some real potential buried underall the chaos.  If you ever want my fullrewrite, please do ask and I will tell you, but this is now over 6K words andon its tenth page, so I’m going to stop now.

Long story short?  Supernatural: What The Fuck.

[televinita]

Zoo, 3.03 (super late)

Once upon a time I posted one short Feeling Explosion in the middle of this episode, then forced myself to stop and deal with a work-nado, and before I could claw my way back I heard "Welcome to the O.C., bitch," and that's the last thing I remember before waking up from my coma 6 weeks later. That's my story and I’m sticking to it. Claims that I may have woken up briefly to comment on bits of episodes 4 and 8 are unsubstantiated because officially, until last night I had not yet finished episode 3. (and that is the actual truth. I technically got to the end and a bit beyond, but only because I tore both apart for Mitch/Jamie content just like I feared I would and left the rest to spoil. Guilt may have played a part in my inability to come out of the coma.)

As I am Very Stubborn about not watching the next episode of anything until I have thoroughly spun the last one around in my head, dissected my feelings about it and processed them into text product, and I struggled with what to say, I got stuck in Zoo purgatory. But after an hour of freewriting, I think I have enough babble to feel content. This is mostly for me, but perhaps you’ll enjoy following my journey.

Originally Planned Opening Statement: Hey, remember when this show was was about weird mutant animals and not bizarre government conspiracies to abduct and experiment on children? Because I do. This is not the show I signed up for and it makes my soul feel gross.

(more evidence for the “why I had trouble moving forward” file, I think) Television Parents Council So we're three episodes in and I am really feeling like dramatic anguish is not Alyssa Diaz's strong suit in the acting department. It all feels kind of strained and forced? But hang on, I gotta go be way more outraged about her character's choices, as seen in this live reaction note: "WHAT IN THE FRICKITING FRACK DARIELA WTF. Is this* why you got divorced last time, 'cause I'm gonna have to assume it is seeing's as we literally never got any other reasoning for that random-ass info drop last year and I keep waiting for an explanation." *cheating on her husband

(and oh man, for the first time I am so glad it's these two who got the kid and not Mitch and Jamie, because can you imagine if I had to hear Jamie had cheated on Mitch with Logan and wrecked their relationship that bad? I would perform brain surgery on everyone with a power drill.) (nobody talk at me about the almost as distasteful thing that happened with them)

To be fair to Dariela, she and Abe mostly bonded over having a kid right after they met; I can't really say it feels like she betrayed an epic soulmate bond. I can muster up some sympathy for her feeling lonely and abandoned.)

Except that's not even her last horrible reveal of the episode*. What are you trying to do, run this character I miraculously chose to accept into the ground??

*possibly selling out Clementine to rescue her own kid from a sketchy situation. I will make a lot of allowances for putting yourself and your family's comfort and safety over the needs of strangers, but this does not fall under that header.

But, um, other than that, Papa Lion Abe is intense and amazing and I thought the whole desperate chase-after-the-military-convoy aspect was really well done.

----

Television Parents Council Pt. II Live Reaction Note: "Mitch is a testy bitch in this episode and I love him." (I remember this being debated, but part of the reason I love his Testy Bitch self is what you see at the end of the episode. If he doesn't wrap himself in defensive anger, cling to it like a buoy, the pain of confronting everything he lost and missed will win.) I really love Mitch's two seconds of happiness when he thinks Jamie raised Clem in her fancy penthouse and they ended up thick as thieves. I am less fond of the reality that Max took her away when she turned 14, so the only solace I can take away, before I spiral into that "who TF invited Logan to this party" post we started with is "SWEET HALLELUJAH AT LEAST JAMIE GOT OVER THREE YEARS TO BOND WITH HER." Also, Jamie is so the adult who gives the kids beer to supervise them. I still think it's hilarious that Mitch assumed any adult gave her a beer at 14, because don't most teenagers just have friends who come up with it? I mean, I couldn't even find alcohol on my college campus so I am not the authority on this by any means, but that is the impression I get from books. My point being, I like to think that even in the happy world where 2x12 is the series finale and they had a life together after, this would still have happened and he and Jamie would have had more than one clash regarding her blurring the line between parental authority and friend, and it would have sounded exactly like this, so...thanks Zoo, for accidentally fulfilling my Domestic AU interests in the weirdest possible way! Awww @ Mitch's impatient little "hey" when Clem casts doubt on Jamie's ability to perform brain surgery with a power drill, and then uses that particular tone of voice to tell her it's going to be fine. Awww @ Clem sticking up for Jamie's parenting skills. You know what, just assume that I loved any and everything else that happened when these three were on screen. And I maintain that Jamie, while willing to stop him if he gets too far out of line, also remembers very well what it's like to wake up with missing time where everything's changed and gone wrong, and that means he gets the time and space he needs, within reason, to lash out and come to terms with it while she waits for the worst of the storm to pass. She does point out when Clem's upset, and she checks him with "she turned out okay," but never once do I get the sense that she takes any criticism he lobs at her personally.

(I might have said this before. I tagged wrong and can’t find it.)

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

JKras and Emily Blunt's Alt Reality Doppelgangers (shhh just go with it)

Guess what I started shipping exactly two seconds before we went with the "slapping men across the face isn't domestic violence" trope on top of the "this one piece of information that is not about how you assaulted or killed someone in cold blood invalidates absolutely everything I love about you" trope. It's a two-fer of ship torpedoing. (How do you say no to that face! Look how tragic and sad it is on top of its normal rugged handsomeness and love for helping people! Also, guess who is probably gonna quit shippin' it and throw the lady right back out the door if/when she returns and eliminates Jackson's need to talk to the people I care about. That's just how I unfairly do. The Chloe-shaped hole in my heart won't heal, it's weird.) --------------- I LOVE YOU, MAN

And then this episode ends with Jackson's face lighting up at the sight of Alive!Mitch and glomping on him in a bear hug, and everything is right with the world now that my two faves are together again. ---------------

Yet More Thoughts

-Live reaction note: “I am glad to see that Mitch has shaved the beard and subsequently restored his powers of snark to full glory. They must have been suffocating under that thing.” -I loved Clem's montage of practicing how to tell her dad she's pregnant. These are useful sound bites for alternate takes.

-”Everything went wrong. The world went wrong.” This is somehow the most poetic thing I have ever heard on Zoo? Between the writing and her specific cadence, it sounds like something you'd hear in an award-winning speech, dressed up in voiceovers for trailers; IDK, I just really love it.

-Who even are you Abigail; your name and your hair make me want to get to know you but everything else (including my fandom girl-bros reacting to you with all the love they had for Logan last year and essentially forming a rousing chorus of "Don't need another You Part 2"), very much makes me want to not. -LOOK AT THESE GIANT UGLY WORM TUNNELING DINO-VULTURES, I LOVE THEM. -Mitch's JAMIE WHAT THE FUCK reaction to her stabbing her prisoner through the hand was pretty amazing. -In case you were wondering how appropriate for polite company my reaction to Jackson hotly threatening "I am gonna find you, and I am gonna stop you" is, the answer is "not very." -Quick question: how did Mitch's sacrifice save the world, exactly? I'm fuzzy on this. I wasn't tracking plot very well after Mitch "died" last year, but I thought it was a very personal sacrifice meant to save Clem alone.

-Well. That ending sounds like a fun little sophie's choice of "death vs. memory loss." Looking forward to seeing what episode 12 or 13 does with that. (If you kill him again, all the protection of "reality" in the world won't save you from the worm dino vulture pack I will summon to come after you.)