#when i got into spn after it had ended i initially thought i'd never get to experience any drama firsthand

[justaslime]

spn's official stance on destiel in 2021:

spn's official stance on destiel in 2025:

[mittensmorgul]

Hey! First off, love your blog... normally I just read everyone's meta but I've decided to join the party! Haven't seen much chatting yet about the ghost being a little boy, and trapped in a knife to boot. It seems like a pretty direct metaphor for Dean being trapped in a violent life and never really getting to be a kid, and that got set free a bit by living out a childhood dream with his heroes. For a sec I even thought the kid was a magical projection of Dean! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Hey hi there! *pours cookies and plates up some tea for you*

*rereads*

*sorry for the mess, it’s early and I need more coffee*

I haven’t even looked at my dash since last night yet, so I don’t know if there’ve been multiple posts about this or not, but yes. Dean was weaponized (like the little boy’s ghost being trapped in that knife) from the time he was small. Like so many of the things that Dean is emotionally attached to-- Scooby Doo, his music that he grew up listening to in the car with his family, the things he clung to that WEREN’T hunting, and WEREN’T about just taking care of Sam-- those things were untainted by the horrors of hunting.

During the course of the series, a lot of the flashbacks we saw to his childhood involved those “moments of childhood happiness” being destroyed for him. Christmas (3.09) became a horrible memory of Sam learning about the supernatural and the truth about John. High school romance (4.13, 9.07) ended in pain and heartbreak. Even taking a break and doing something as simple and childlike as playing a video game for a few minutes nearly cost Sam his life and he was blamed for it by John (1.18). Scooby Doo, the fact it was always on wherever they ended up and the fact that the monsters they hunted always turned out to be (borderline incompetent) greedy humans in rubber masks... I mean for young Dean who lived in constant fear of REAL monsters, this was an oasis of escape like no other. He could pretend that it was all fake, that cheerful Fred’s terrible plans always ended up working out but in the most unexpected way, that he could swoop in and be the hero and save Daphne, that Velma was always right that it wasn’t a real ghost, that he could celebrate the win eating an impossible sandwich with Scooby and Shaggy...

But then the episode would end, everyone would live, the bad guys were in jail, and the Scooby gang drove away... and Dean would be the knife again.

This was what I wrote to Dori last night in the chat, but I think it (in a roundabout sort of way) goes to show this:

mittensmorgulI just want to write long meta on Dean's cursing, that goes from refusing to even say "ass" in the vicinity of the scooby gang, to blurting out sonofabitch when their innocence seems to be shattering, to telling Fred "Fucking right you can" that gets bleeped after the gang learns the truthand then Dean bothers to rebuild all their initial beliefs about their own reality that ghosts aren't real, and THEY BUY INTO IT DESPITE ALL OF THIS.

obsessionisaperfumeHe's able to recapture some of his childhood innocence.

mittensmorgulIt's like.. all the humans in the SPN universe who don't remember the weird stuff, like the apocalypse or anything, because they just... convince themselves it's not real and go back to their lives

obsessionisaperfumeYeah.

mittensmorgulthis episode is brilliantAnd self-aware Shaggy... the fact he broke his arm was what broke his suspension of disbelief

mittensmorgulFred's terrible trap that doesn't work, because they never work,

obsessionisaperfumeI want to look at Dean and Daphne, because that wasn't grown-up Dean, it was 14-yo Dean's idea of charming and shit.

mittensmorgulThis whole episode is fantastic

Because Dean DID try so hard to “play along” with the Scoobyverse rules. He was THRILLED to play along, even when Sam was initially tugging him back toward reality, pointing out there were no words in the newspaper, and immediately suggesting they try to find a way back to the real world. And I mean, Sam wasn’t wrong here, and he was pointing out legitimate clues that eventually DID help them figure out the truth of what was happening, but Dean just wanted to play along with the story as he’d known it.

He even recognized the episode they were in, knew the whole plot, knew what he thought SHOULD be happening, and did his best to play along. I mean, that had worked for them the last time they’d been trapped in a tv, right?

But unbeknownst to Sam and Dean, something of THEIR reality had been brought into the Scoobyverse with them. A real supernatural threat, in the form of a child’s ghost haunting a pocket knife.

(or... almost like the parts of Dean’s childhood he tried to leave behind every time he settled in to watch a half hour of Scooby Doo... this reality he’d always dreamed as a kid he could just escape into and leave his reality behind for a while, when he finally got a chance to do just that, he couldn’t escape entirely)

It’s as if no matter how hard he tried to keep the Scooby gang “pure and innocent” by keeping the truth from them, the truth arrived to smack everyone in the face anyway.

It’s fascinating to watch the Scoobys go from dancing at a malt shop with perfect hair, to slowly becoming more and more frazzled and “tainted” by Dean’s reality. It peaks at the Scoobys’ existential crisis moment, where TFW has to step in and literally equip them to handle this new twist in their reality. Dean STILL lets Fred enact his plan even though he knows (by the typical script of a scooby episode) will fail, but TFW have a backup plan to trap the real ghost-- away from the Scoobys.

And that’s where we first see the ghost’s real face. It’s not a huge, terrifying phantom, or even a bad guy in a rubber mask and tattered robe. The ghost is a small, green-eyed boy who’s scared and angry, who doesn’t want to be used as a weapon anymore.

Yeah... sounds an awful lot like Dean.

They promise to help the little boy’s ghost, but their last act in Scoobyland is to “put everything to rights.” The Scoobys are still terrified, frazzled, and broken by what they’ve learned and experienced. TFW, with the help of the little boy’s ghost, convince the Scoobys that they’d been right all along, it was just what they’d initially expected it to be, and there was no such thing as the supernatural.

They even visually represent this with the Scoobys “reassembling” themselves, Fred smoothing out his perfect hair and going right back to his cheerful positivity and Daphne going right back to chasing after Fred. Almost like as soon as they walked away from the Winchesters even the memory of their entire ordeal just ~faded away~.

Dean might be an adult now, who carries this knowledge of reality with him all the time, but he can now use knife as his own, how he chooses to, instead of being manipulated by outside forces for their own ends. He’s not trapped by it anymore the way the little boy is. Dean can use that knowledge to protect others, to keep others “innocent,” and to preserve this one small piece of his own childhood escapism just the way he remembered it.

But back in the real world, Dean can also help that little boy find peace. He might not be able to reunite him with his father, but he can free him from the evil guy who’d used him so horribly, and then with Sam and Cas’s help made sure the guy would be punished-- if not for the abuse of the little boy’s ghost, then at least for some of his more mundane crimes.

But DEAN will always be able to take the memory of their encounter with him. He had the experience of a lifetime, and the Scooby Gang might not ever realize it, but wow.

Sam incinerated the knife, freed the little ghost boy, and then Cas carried the burnt remnant of the boy’s suffering in his pocket. And Dean put on Fred’s ascot and got to act out that bit... 

(and then Cas reminded Dean he’s not a talking dog...)

Oh my god this episode has everything.

[crimsondomingo]

Do you think that Savitar was a weak villain? Personally I think that the writers did a mistake by not giving away his identity sooner. If we got it sooner, we could have more answers in general. They left many plotholes about him just like they did with RF & Zoom. I'm starting to lose my hope on the show but anyway, I'd like to know your thoughts about the finale & season 3.

Yes. 

And the real shame of that is how he SHOULD and COULD have been the most amazing villain yet, but I feel they wasted him. 

With Reverse Flash, they had to start with him, right, it was great with Wellsobard and all that, and I adored the first season despite all the plotholes (don’t start with me on anything time related with the CW). 

With Zoom, I was disappointed by the Jay reveal initially, because it was just like...oh, the red herring actually wasn’t a red herring. Okay. But he ended up being such an interesting villain once Jay became Hunter and I actually loved it. I really loved the ending for that season too, the surprise of Barry going back and changing the past despite everything that had happened. 

And then season 3 started...with a whimper and bad writing. Months into Flashpoint and Barry never checked on Caitlin or Cisco despite watching out for Joe and trying to get the guts to talk to Iris? No, that isn’t Barry, WTH? 

After that, at least I enjoyed most of the season and how they handled things - Julian is a treasure - but everything with Caitlin made no sense. Powers don’t make you someone new. My theory is Killer Frost was a split personality because of a combo of Flashpoint, what Caitlin knew of Earth-2 concerning her powers, AND her trauma with Jay that was NEVER addressed. So she put all that into a side personality that let her be cold and bad and removed from everything like part of her needed. 

What they should have done was put her in the Pipeline once a day to remove her limiter so they could TALK to Killer Frost and get at the real issues so she could balance her trauma and two sides. In a way, that’s what we’re getting here at the end, a balance, a combo of the two sides where she still has powers, but what a waste of potential along the way. 

But you asked about Savitar, and man, what a waste there, because I’ve been waiting for this, for evil Barry. You’re right, if they had admitted his identity sooner, especially since we all KNEW, we could have gotten so much more about him. 

Deep down, I wanted him to be something OTHER than a time remnant, like an offshoot that was erased because of Flashpoint, or simply normal Barry from a unique future, whatever, but going off of what they did with that...how did he get his scars? It has to be from the Speed Force prison to leave lasting damage in my mind, but what’s the truth? How long was he traveling through time and dimensions preparing for this fight? What did the gang actually do to him, because his impression might have been their hatred and pushing him away and thinking of him as expendable, but did they really, or was it just implied because he felt out of place?

I also kind of wanted redemption for him, but if they weren’t going to go there, fine, then I wanted a payoff for that too, which to me would have been how our Barry is just as selfish and fragile, even when he’s at his best he can falter again, so when the Speed Force came to take away the future he’d worked so hard to build, knowing it would have broken him to lose Iris, he should have been upset, not so willing to accept his fate. I wanted conflict! I wanted fury and fire, especially after he was the bigger man and got out of the Savitar suit, refusing to fall to Savitar’s level. I wanted him to break a little because it was all for nothing. That ending was boring and didn’t move me to feel anything but meh. 

So yeah, Savitar was weak and wasted and this season is the first time I lost faith and it was proven correct from beginning to end with odd choices and bad writing, even with many things I liked mixed in. 

But I’m still loyal for now. We’ll see what happens next year. Supernatural only had two perfect seasons, but 3-5 were still good, I just won’t stick with Flash as long as I did SPN if it starts to really go downhill. 

Hope that gets across my season 3 feels, anon! Thank you for asking!