#yellow eyes have been a thing in my webcomic since way before i got into lalin's curse

[bloo-jae]

teeny tiny lil eisla doodle ;-;

since my webcomic takes place over the course of 8 years i wanted to draw how eisla changes as she grows up

so this is how she looks before her whole life goes to shit :^)

(the story starts when she’s 15 and ends when she’s 23)

[luxshine]

The Great Supernatural Rewatch Project - Salvation

I started writting this in the middle of season 13 but RL and work and some mental health issues made me take a step back from fandom in general and well, I was also fearing this would be an unending job since the series JUST.KEPT. GOING.

However, now that the series is done (And omg, what a clusterfuck that was. My tallies are going to go insane if I get there) and thus there’s an ending in sight, I will do my best to finish season 1, and try and get the rest of the seasons in a more timely manner. Say, before they do the inevitable reunion and ignore the last episode completely.

(I’m going to be honest, part of the problem was that Supernatural used to be SO good back then, and when I see the new episodes I weep a bit inside. I can’t believe they were so much better at creating story arcs when they weren’t TRYING to create story arcs)

Of course, now we all know that Dean’s plots in general will not have a happy ending no matter what, and that makes that particular tally bittersweet. But there are STILL people who claim that nope, Dean was never mistreated by the writers and well, Jack damn it, I am not going to let that claim go without bringing numbers to the table. Hopefully, it won’t take me 15 years to finish (Because by then, I would be the only one caring I guess)

In any case, last lap for Season 1 and we begin with Salvation.

General stuff

A specific reason for me having rage quitted this episode in particular for so long: For some stupid copyright thing with Netflix, they don’t have Carry On My Wayward Son as the song for the final recap –at least in Netflix Latam. And Supernatural without Carry On My Wayward Son is no Supernatural. So I had to hunt my DVDs. Then my computer DVD player died. Then I decided to make 5 webcomics at the same time. THEN I decided to start doing illustration works, and three other projects and let’s just say I am a bit of a workaholic and leave it like that as the rest is not SPN-related.

Ahem.

Funny thing about the Road so Far –you know, besides being a LOT shorter than the ones we’re getting now- is that it focuses a lot more on DEAN at the beginning, while if you watch the show, well, we know most of those Dean scenes come from MoW episodes and not the actual mytharc. Another interesting thing is that if one believes those things to be chronological, it makes it as if the Colt had been with the brothers for a lot longer than half an episode, and that Sam’s issue with the visions is not that recent. Edition Magic everyone! Also, omg, they were babies when the series started, and how WEIRD is to see John looking at them with pride and smiling at Dean at some points.

Anyway, the recap and the epicness that is Carry On my Wayward Son ends and we start the actual plot.

Hello Pastor Jim. Goodbye Pastor Jim. And here Supernatural begins the long, long tradition of killing characters who could’ve been useful later on, and more importantly, that could’ve been the boys’s support system later on. While here it’s understandable since we need to show how dangerous and vicious Meg is –ah, irony that in about 8 seasons people will be rooting for her Redemption- it also makes the Hunters kind of useless. I mean, he has all that weaponry and only uses a knife? Sigh. Really, a waste. Pastor Jim as a concept was really intriguing –and I don’t think we’ve heard of any other hunter who was also a priest. Funny, when we have so many demons free now. There’s also the fact that when Pastor Jim claims that she can’t be in the church because it’s hallowed ground, she replies that “That might work with the minor leagues, but not with her” and I wonder… did we ever got a demon that couldn’t enter a church? Because right now out of the top of my head I can’t remember, and yet Pastor Jim was surprised but later no one seems to think it weird there were signs of demonic activity around his body. Another sign that, as engaging as the series was, once we start digging the world building, things fall apart very quickly.

Actually, if I may digress for a bit, here we have the very first look at Supernatural´s second biggest problem: killing support characters that may have been useful lately. Here it is because Kirkpe had this weird idea that Hunting would never be glamorized by the show/fandom and it would be a completely miserable and lonely existence. He also didn’t think that the series would survive past season 2. So, ok, killing the guy we only knew by throw away lines didn’t seem so bad. By season 13 every single recurring character had died at least once –and there were petitions to bring back I think every one of those who haven’t come back- it’s a big problem.

As I restarted writing, I also realized that the mere existence of Pastor Jim and his room of awesome research and weapons creates a problem in the future about the Men of Letters because… ok, so ONE member of the clerigy knew enough about demons and stuff to be a hunter and have THE Hunter as his main contact (John Winchester was sort of a legend back then. And he had also fell out of contact with many others so the fact that he and Pastor Jim were still friendly? Kind of interesting), but what about the rest? Did the Vatican have any contact with the British men of Letters or the American ones? And if so, what the hell did they think when suddenly ALL the Men of Letters disappeared? Ok, so that’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t matter right now as it won’t actually exist until much, much, MUCH latter, but see what I mean when I say that they didn’t plan anything and the lack of a series bible hurts the show more than it helped it thrive? I am realizing right now I could write a whole treaty on the Men of Letters and their non-relationship with hunters ONLY using this cold beginning and the Henry Winchester episode.

But this is not the time for that, so we get our title card and a very, VERY young Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

We move to John who is explaining off camera everything he knows about Yellow Eye´s plan. We can tell it´s not much as he thinks it came out of hibernation and that the whole attacking families is part of a cycle, but back then it was impressive how much he had managed to find out about this demon. We also know that it attacks exactly when the baby in the house is six months old, which brings us to this little jewel:

JOHN It starts in Arizona, then New Jersey, California. Houses burned down to the ground. It's going after families, just like it went after us.

SAM Families with infants?

JOHN Yeah. The night of the kid's six-month birthday. 

SAM I was six months old that night?

JOHN Exactly six months.

SAM So basically, this demon is going after these kids for some reason. The same way it came for me? So Mom's death...Jessica. It's all because of me?

DEAN We don't know that Sam.

SAM Oh really? Cause I'd say we're pretty damn sure Dean.

DEAN For the last time, what happened to them was not your fault. 

SAM Right. It's not my fault but it's my problem.

DEAN No it's not your problem it's our problem!

 Now, in the following seasons we will know that yes, it was ALL about Sam. But right now, the characters and the viewers don´t know that. We know that a lot of families were killed by the demon (That at this point was still “The demon” and wouldn´t become Azazael until later), and that he doesn´t take the children. So… how did Sam leap from “this demon attacks families with 6 month old children” to “It´s all about ME!”? He even ignores that Dean and John lost Mary for his last line, when he decides it´s his problem and not their problem. Also, and this is important for the “Dean is the most awful person to Sam” crowd… Dean immediately tells Sam that no, it´s not his fault. While he could harbor some ill feelings against Sam –and demon Dean, 8 seasons later, will voice them- at this point he is 100% on Sam´s side. There’s also a sideway glance from John to DEAN when Sam claims that everything is about him, and then I wonder exactly why, if John knew all about the fact that the demon chased six month old children specifically, he never resented Sam over it. One would think that given John’s love for Mary and deep desire to revenge, Sam would really be the outcast and the one only treated like a soldier (as he claims he was, but not really as we’ve seen), instead of Dean who was completely blameless in the whole thing.

(Also, this is the first time we see that Azazael´s plan didn´t make much sense IF we believed that Kirkpe had everything planned. But that´s a discussion for another time)

Anyway, John interrupts the argument to explain that while he has no idea what the demon is after (Another thing that later would be contradicted as he knew Sam had powers), but that he has managed to figure out his pattern of attack to the point that it even repeated it for Jessica’s killing (Even if much, much later, we’ll learn that it wasn’t Azazael the one who killed her, and Demons would completely forego the signs when attacking. Have I mentioned I miss the times when the myths made sense?) and the three of them pack up for their first real hunt together as they decide they will save the next baby on the demon’s list, in a town named Salvation.

Important thing to note: when John recites the demon signs, Dean immediately replies “that happened in Lawerence”. He remembers, quite clearly, what happened a week before his mother died even if logistically, at his age? He wouldn’t care nor notice. Sure, he remembers his mom’s death because that was traumatic. But random cow deaths before that? Weird show.

If Sam noticed or not the signs before Jessica died, we don’t know. John is the one who points out they happened.

After two gorgeous road shots where we see John’s truck being followed by Baby (yet another thing we lost, John’s truck. I know we needed to have the guys together all the time, but man, if Sam had inherited it, they would’ve been able to cover more terrain at times, have double the arsenal and maybe not being identified by everyone and their leviathan in season 7, but I digress), and just entering Salvation John stops, obviously spooked by something. As Dean stops behind him, they find out that Pastor Jim is dead, and John got a call from another hunter named Caleb to tell him. They assume it may be the demon they’re chasing, or maybe another demon that was looking for Pastor Jim specifically but that last theory is not very probable.

Here I have to pause to applaud Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s acting, as you can practically FEEL John’s despair at knowing an old friend of him died, and that HE was probably the cause for that death. A Winchester trait, of course, blaming themselves for everything bad that happens in their world, but unlike Sam’s early outburst, here it seems far more desperate. Of course, JDM had a lot more experience than Jared at that point, but I really wanted to make a note of it because we lost a LOT of that characterization for John, where he actually WORRIED about people and not just the hunt. Even as he decides the plan for finding out what baby the demon will take in a week, we can see him broken and confused. So much that while Sam calls him “sir” when receiving orders, Dean continues the conversation by calling him “Dad”.

John then declares that this ends now, obviously feeling responsible for what happened to his friend. A long shot from the flanderized man we’d hear about in future seasons who was infamous for letting his hunting partners die without so much as a second glance.

Also, and not to be mean to the writers, but in their endless accidentally making Sam unsympathetic, they made him say that there were too many children in the county that could be a victim and that it would take forever to check all of them. While I KNOW the intent was to make clear that they had a deadline of one week, it comes out weirdly as “I don’t want to do the footwork.” Seriously, writers should be careful with that.

Actually, let’s dissect that. Because I just thought of two ways they could’ve fixed it AND give us more info.

JOHN Now we act like every second counts. There's two hospitals and a health centre in this county. We split up, cover more ground. I want records. I want a list of every infant that's going to be six months old in the next week.

SAM Dad that could be dozens of kids. How do we know which one's the right one?

JOHN We check em all that's how. You got any better ideas?

SAM No sir.

So, first way to make Sam not look that bad: Give the line to Dean. I wouldn’t like it specially, but hey, he’s the sidekick, not the hero, and so far he has only wanted to bail on ONE hunt because he wasn’t sure it was a supernatural hunt so he’d be better standing than Sam in that regard.

Second way: Make Sam say that YES, he has a better idea. Because the brothers ALREADY faced Max, so he could say they could look for a baby that was a bit “strange”, like, with poltergeist stuff going around. John could not believe him, but at least Sam would be being proactive.

In any case, they separate as John planned and we see each of them get into the hospital records. We get a glimpse of John’s collection of fake IDs, that include one for a Morgue forensic doctor, then Sam getting a homely nurse giving him files and him taking notes, and Dean… getting flirty with a very hot nurse.

And I make a point of the “Oh, look, Dean is an irresponsible womanizer” trope because once again the writers shoot themselves in the foot by showing the opposite of what they were telling (And no, this time I can’t blame it on Jensen’s acting and refusal to look at his female co-stars without respect).

WOMAN Hi. Is there anything I can do for you?

DEAN (smiling) Oh God yes.

She smiles and looks down.

DEAN (Holding up his ID) Only I'm uh....working right now, so...

The writers here make us remember that a) Dean is AMAZINGLY charismatic, as the woman IS flattered and seems interested, and b) That he will NOT dump his work for a quickie. We don’t even get a “maybe later” that could make him look as if he was really into her. It’s just that he flirts naturally, or at least, this is what we can infer now, as so far he hasn’t had any one night stand fling. The one time we saw him have a sexual encounter in the middle of a hunt was with an ex-girlfriend.

And again I have to wonder what was Sera Gamble’s intention with those scenes as yes, this was written by the same team as Faith, another episode where Sam’s good intentions tend to have a darker side, and gave Dean some amazingly cool scenes.

We don’t know what Dean says to the woman, as we cut back to Sam, coming out of the hospital just in time to have a very convenient vision of a woman, a nursery and a fire. Thankfully, the vision also comes with the useful audio hint of a train passing by, so Sam gets out his map and starts checking where that could be, which leads him to the house in his vision.

And by this point, we know we’re in the right track and this is an important Myth Arc episode, because Sam only has multiple visions in Myth Arc episodes, and he has one the moment he steps in front of the house in said vision. The gods of convenience smile upon him as right then and there a woman pushing a pram comes by, and he manages to talk to her, all friendly like by pretending to having just moved. Then Sam learns the woman’s name is Monica, her baby is Rosie, and Rosie is just six months old, exactly to the day.

Also, that she’s a very quiet baby and that it sometimes seems as if she was reading your mind. Oh, and that Monica really is blind to suspicious men asking her about her family with a face that reads “Oh shit, this is bad”.

Now, HERE is where the whole “five year myth arc” story falls completely. I mean, we already knew it was pretty unlikely it was real, given Kirkpe’s original interviews, but the mere existence of Rosie contradicts every single future story beat. Because if SHE has powers before Azazael goes into her house, then it means that the babies he was hunting didn’t get powers because of him, just that his blood either connected them (hence Sam’s very specific visions), made said powers far more powerful (quite likely), or made them a little bit more prone to violence/prideful behavior. All of those possibilities match with the plan of “raising” a new King or Queen of Hell, that would be faithful to Azazael, but are a bit iffy on the “finding Lucifer’s vessel” thing. Especially since we later learn that the Angels were also helping, and all Hell knew that Lucifer’s vessel HAD to come from the Winchester/Campbell bloodline due to Cain and Abel being the roots of said bloodline, and later pretty much everyone knew Sam was Lucifer’s vessel so the whole targeting a ton of kids, in particular after Mary’s death, is kinda weird.

Oh, Lux, you will say, it is because he wanted to hide his true intentions! No one knew that Sam had been feed demon blood!

Except that the important parties, namely Heaven and Hell, did. Michael had Heaven convinced of his orders, so even if a rogue angel found out that they were speed running the Apocalypse, said angel could be killed. And any demon who was against getting Lucifer back on top would be smart enough to keep quiet so, why the secrecy?

And again, ok, I buy the original demon blood kids being important to “hide” Lucifer’s vessel but… Rosie? What good would it do to Azazael’s plan to have a psychic 4 year old when Lucifer rose? Was “little four year old girl” a good match against a grown up hunter? What was Azazel thinking, if that was the plan all the time?

Now, I want to make clear this doesn’t make THIS episode or the Season-myth arc bad. This original “Boy King of Hell” storyline WAS good. It had a lot of potential, made sense for Sam and since it was before the days of the eternal “What is wrong with Sam?” seasons, there was no boredom of a repeat. It also set a very good question of what made a monster a monster, which would be explored a bit more in Season 2. And it was long before we realized Dean having a myth arc was a pipe dream, so there was no issue there either. It made sense.

But the fact that the writers kind of forgot about everything I just pointed out with Rosie’s scene to try and weld this to the “Heaven vs. Hell” storyline in season 4, and then just promptly forgot because Sam’s powers were then firmly connected to Azazael’s blood so they never came up again and even worse, we never find another psychic kid that could’ve been feed blood by Azazael THIS year that John was chasing him? (Since we know there were no other survivors from Sam’s generation, and later we have a scene that proves that there were no previous generations to Sam’s), it's kind of weird. Personally, I dunno about you, but maybe a return to this storyline in season 6 would’ve been a lot better than we got. Maybe.

By the way, I am not counting the Boy King of Hell story arc as a dropped plot for Sam yet, as we’re going to keep with this at least until season 3. Yes, now we know it didn’t go anywhere, but at the time, and for these episodes in particular, it was THE myth arc of Supernatural. So it can’t be counted as dropped plot yet.

In any case, Sam goes and tells John and Dean about his vision and… oh, boy do we have to move John’s reaction to Emotional Violence.

It’s not good.

But before he can do more damage to Dean’s psyche, Sam gets a call from our favorite demon, Meg. Even if he doesn’t recognize her voice immediately which is weird because a) he did throw her off a window and one would think that makes a girl memorable, and b) it’s not as he knows that many girls who would call him, despite Dean’s best efforts to get him a new girl.

Meg dismisses Sam and asks for John. She makes clear that she is not playing, that she knows he has the Colt and that he will kill every single person who has ever helped John unless he gives it to her that same day at midnight. And to the brothers’ surprise, John accepts those terms (Unfortunately not before we loss Caleb too. I have a lot less interest in Caleb as a character given that he has exactly half a line in the whole show, but it’s still it’s sad to see a guy so defiant even in the face of death go so soon).

Meg also points out that John having the Colt is a “declaration of war” which is interesting as it sort of implies that if he hadn’t gotten it, then the demons would leave him and the brothers alone. And I find that incredibly funny since… no they won’t. And Azazael would’ve been ok if Sam kept the gun anyway, given why they really wanted and once again I am putting holes on the idea that this was planned from the start, aren’t I?

In any case, John declares that Meg is a demon “or is possessed by one” which… ok? First and only time we get the possibility of a demon not using a meat suit. I don’t think this is a mistake, because after all, this is back before the guys faced demons in a normal basis so they could believe that they had their own bodies besides the ones they possessed (And, more importantly, before there was a retcon that made the brothers face and know about demons since pretty much ever). To be completely fair, as much as I love Jimmy and the whole Lucifer arc once it started to make sense… I would’ve been ok if vessels weren’t needed. It added a lot of complications and ended up making the brothers actual serial killers.

Ahem.

After that little gem of wisdom that will be ignored forever, John declares that he will be taking the gun to Meg to avoid more killing and we get another questionable line for Sam. And I am curious as to how to tally it as it’s the opposite of him wanting to leave the hunt, but it’s not that nice either:

DEAN What do we do?

JOHN I'm going to Lincoln. DEAN What? JOHN It doesn't look lilke we have a choice. If I don't go, a lot of people die, our friends die.

SAM Dad, the demon is coming tonight. For Monica and her family. That gun is all we got, you can't just hand it over.

I mean, yes, it is true that the demon is coming for Monica (Well, actually, he’s coming for Rosie, the baby, but I will let that slip pass. Sam is not interested in married ladies), and that with the gun they can kill the demon but it’s not all they’ve got. By this time, Sam has already had his big hero moment when he exorcised a plane in free fall so they could do that, then chase the demon again and then kill it.

But what is jarring is how he hears “a lot of people die, OUR FRIENDS die” and he goes “yeah, whatever, we have a mission to fulfill”.

Which is precisely what later episodes will tell us John used to do, and was the reason why John was not exactly liked by the general hunter population. And at the same time, it’s an eerie reminder of Wendigo, where Sam is willing to let innocents die (his family friends, in this particular case, just as he heard Caleb choke on his own blood) in order to get his way (revenge on the demon that killed Jess. NOT revenge on the demon that killed his mom, since at this point, Sam is still on the “I never knew that woman” train of thought).

Sure, his mind is in the hunt, and that’s commendable because yes, in the long run, killing Azazael would save more innocents (And probably stop the Apocalypse, not that Sam or the writers at that time know it), but it is still strange to see our nominal hero simply not care for his friends’ lives. I mean, at this point WE don’t know about Bobby, so the closest to a parental figure that is not John that Sam had was Pastor Jim and he just DIED.

Worst part is, this could be solved really easy: Just have DEAN be the one who voices the complaint, and have “empathic” Sam mumble that there has to be a way to save everyone (Which, of course, John will mention in a second). It would make Dean look bad, sure, but we’ve been told once and again that Dean never, EVER goes against John plans. Which… not true, ut we will talk about that later. The scene continues, and John declares that he will go to Meg alone, with a fake Colt and while Dean thinks that that won’t work, Sam has a different complaint:

DEAN Yeah but for how long? What happens when she figures it out?

JOHN I just...I just need to buy a few hours, that's all.

SAM You mean for Dean and me. You want us to stay here, and kill this demon by ourselves?

JOHN No Sam. I want to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school, I want Dean to have a home. I want....I want Mary alive. It's just....I just want this to be over.

And oh, boy. Do this four lines again hold so much weight.

First, once again, Dean seems to be worried for John (logically, he’s their dad), while Sam is making the weirdest line in the universe sort of work because he’s complaining that John is trusting them to kill the demon, something HE wants to do and not four seconds ago was saying they had to do, as if it was John shifting HIS job to Sam. Seriously, I don’t want to think the worst of Sam but when you take out Jared’s acting, the text doesn’t do the younger Winchester’s any favors.

And finally… John’s lines that encompass pretty much Dean’s philosophy in the following seasons. “I want to stop losing people we love” is pretty telling, but what comes next? He actually WANTS Sam to go back to college and not worry about the Supernatural. He actively agrees that Dean doesn’t have a home, and WANTS Dean to have one. It’s as close as love as we’ll see from John to Dean in Season 1, and it hurts. It hurts because we can tell he knows he won’t be there to see it… and now, in hindsight with the finale having aired, we also know Dean didn’t get that. (And to be fair, this is the John who did deserve Heaven. Not the flanderized version we’d get in the future)

Although, ironically, Mary got to be alive again, so… One out of three?

(No, seriously, it’s obvious the writers didn’t even remember this speech when Season 12 hit, much less Season 15)

Ahem.

Dean is sent to get a fake Colt, while Sam and John wait for him. If they talked about anything, we don’t know, but when they exchange guns, Dean voices what we all know is true:

DEAN You know this is a trap don't you. That's why Meg wants you to come alone?

JOHN I can handle her. I got a whole arsenal loaded. Holy water, Mandaic, amulets...

DEAN Dad... JOHN What? DEAN Promise me something. JOHN What's that. DEAN This thing goes south just...get the hell out. Don't get yourself killed all right, you're no good to us dead. JOHN Same goes for you. (There is a long pause) All right listen to me. They made the bullets special for this colt. There's only four of them left. Without them this gun is useless. You make every shot count.

SAM Yes sir.

JOHN Been waiting a long time for this fight. Now it's here I'm not gonna be in it. It's up to you boys now. It's your fight, you finish this. You finish what I started. Understand?

 Again, I wish they remembered all they had to get rid of demons before, you know, killing everyone willy-nilly. I mean, I don’t even think I know what Mandalac IS but hey, John says it works, it works. And once more, Dean gets a line that makes clear he is the empathic, loving brother, when it wouldn’t have hurt Sam to say it. In fact, it would make clear that no matter what, he doesn’t hate John. But nope, Sam only acts like the soldier we’re TOLD Dean is, while Dean makes clear that for him, family is more important than revenge (And boy will that come to bite him in the ass later, not in the series, but in this same episode).

Also, I have to admit. When I started this rewatch, John’s final line was just a good moment for John to start letting go of his anger. Now? After that horrid finale? It hurts so, so much. But it hurts more because I KNOW that there’s no way it was intentional. Obviously, Kirkpe didn’t know the series would last 15 years, and I highly doubt Dabb remembered this scene when writing 15x20. But even so, it ends up being Dean’s epitaph. OUCH.

In any case, the Winchester separate again, and we go into act three. Get ready for the feels.

John Winchester hunting alone is a thing of beauty. Seeing him scope the place, check the water tank and immediately think of a plan? Makes me wish Jeffrey Dean Morgan had stayed longer on the show. Sure, John became an asshole, but in this episode he’s still not that bad, we still have no episodes that make clear he didn’t care for Dean, and wasn’t textually abusive. And I am willing to bet that if JDM had stayed, John would’ve evolved more to be a Bobby-like character. But well, What ifs is not why you came to this meta for.

As John is hunting, the brothers are staking out the house were they know Azazael will attack. And while they talk and decide that they have no way to get the family out (In a nice callback to how none of their excuses ever work) we get to this little gem of an exchange:

SAM I wonder how Dad's doing.

DEAN I'd feel a lot better if we were there backing him up.

SAM I'd feel a lot better if he were here backing us up.

Where once again we see where the brother’s priorities lie, and I wonder why the hell the writers ever thought they were writing Sam as an empathic character.

Because yes, Dean is wishing he could be out there helping his Dad, proving that for him, it has always been about the family. Not the hunting, but the protecting. But Sam doesn’t want to protect John. He wants John protecting Them. And helping them in the revenge hunt, not trying to save others.

Sure, we know the brothers are there to save an innocent mother, but John is also saving a ton of hunters and people who, in the past, were nice and open to the family. And it would’ve been so much easier to make Sam look better if he instead had said “I’d feel a lot better if we hadn’t had to separate” or something like that, that proved he saw BOTH missions were important.

Seriously, I do wonder why the writers made these choices, and I wish someone had asked this at cons.

We go back to John, who, really, Is an amazing hunter even if he is a horrible father. Also, I wonder if he got ordained at a web church, in order to be able to sanctify water. That would be such a John Winchester thing to do, and I do wonder why the boys never did it too. ANYWAY, he hands the gun to Meg, and to her ally that came so that we could have a scene to prove the Colt is fake as the ally shoots Meg.

As John says, Meg was lucky the gun was fake. And once again, I do wonder what the plan was if it WAS the Colt. I mean, Meg was Azazael’s second in command. Why would nameless demon risk killing her? Or did he kinow the gun was fake?

In any case, this makes the moment where we can be 100% sure that Meg’s meat suit 1.0 was dead. I mean, she could’ve survived the fall in Shadow, but a bullet to the chest? No way.

We go back to the brothers, and Sam breaks every single law of a procedural show by giving this great speech about how thankful he is to Dean for everything, and how he needs to say that “in case” something happened.

Dean is definitely not impressed and reminds him that the only one dying today is Azazael.

As we see John temporarily escape from Meg and her muscle boy, we go back to the brothers who see the demon omens start up so they get ready for the final fight.

The brothers manage to save Monica and her baby, despite the very understandable interference from Hubbard, the husband (I mean, you would not react nicely to two strangers intruding in your house and yelling to your wife to not go into the nursery room), however, before Sam can shoot Azazel, he disappears into smoke (A really interesting question here is, WHY did Sam wait to shoot and then wasted a bullet, but I digress).

Going completely against M.O, Azazael makes the CRIB burst into flames, but fortunately Dean has already gotten Rosie out of it so the brothers escape the flaming house. While Monica cries her thanks, Sam notices that Azazael is still inside, and tries to go after him, but Dean stops him because he is not going to lose his brother to the fire. By the way, I am not counting “Dean stopping Sam from going into a burning building” as “Dean forcing Sam to do something” since, uh, he was saving Sam’s life and it’s something anyone in Dean’s place would’ve done.

At the same time, we see John getting captured by Meg and her muscle boy because he didn’t think about getting a third escape route (But honestly? That was pretty much a plot necessity. John was HEAVILY prepared for that fight)

Back in the hotel, Dean is worried that John is not answering his calls, while Sam is furious that Dean didn’t let him kill himself by running into a burning house. They have a nasty fight that mirrors the one they had back in the pilot, but since it IS a fight between the brothers, you know the drill. We’re examining it under Violence.

Once Sam calms down, he tells Dean to try calling John again. Unfortunately, it’s Meg who answers and she tells Dean that they’re never seeing their dad again.

And we get the first “To be continued” for the series (Which to be honest, despite all the little continuity mistakes I mentioned here? Is still pretty epic)

Violence

Well, we had to run out of episodes where the brothers don’t fight each other at some point, didn’t we?

This fight, over Sam wanting to kill himself in his search for revenge, is a very neat parallel to the fight they had back in the Pilot, over Sam NOT wanting to even involve himself in the family’s search for revenge. Which I know it’s supposed to be ironic and a show of character growth since now Dean is the one saying that revenge is not worth their lives but… it falls a little bit flat because the reason why Sam is so gung-ho in killing Azazael is, once again, a very selfish one and the way in he expresses it makes it quite clear. (Again, I do wonder if the writers stopped to think about the implications of Sam only getting really into hunting when it was about him or his losses?)

But let’s start at the beginning:

SAM If you had just let me go in there, I coulda ended all this.

DEAN Sam, the only thing you would have ended was your life.

SAM You don't know that.

DEAN So what, you're just willing to sacrifice yourself, is that it?

SAM Yeah. Yeah you're damn right I am.

DEAN Well that's not going to happen, not as long as I'm around.

This right here? Is a nice summary of the relationship of the brothers for the whole series. Sam wants to do something stupid, like, say, running into a burning building, Dean is there to stop him before he hurts himself.

Also, let’s make clear the use of first person by Sam. It’s not “We coulda ended this”, as in the family ending the hunt, but “I coulda ended this”. Again, at this point, not something that is a problem, but considering hindsight, we can see how the writers are completely invested in SAM as a sole main character, and write him as such, while Dean is more of the sidekick.

In any case, the argument continues, still not escalating to violence.

SAM What the hell are you talking about Dean, we've been searching for this demon our whole lives. It's the only thing we've ever cared about.

DEAN Sam I wanna waste it. I do. Okay? But it's not worth dying over.

SAM What?

DEAN I mean it. If hunting this demon means getting yourself killed then I hope we never find the damn thing.

Important thing how Sam apparently forgot he left for four (two) years and wanted out of the family business, now that he is angry and into the revenge thing. It’s not “You’ve been searching for this demon your whole life”, which would’ve been correct AND a logical counterargument against Dean. Before this episode, Sam was supposedly the brother who understood that revenge was a way of living, while Dean is the one who was Daddy’s little soldier. But here, when it actually would matter to the narrative, it is as if Sam’s wishes for a normal life are completely forgotten and it’s Dean the one who understands that there’s more to living than revenge (Which, btw, is consistent through the season despite everyone claiming that Dean needs Sam to keep hunting. All season, Dean has been giving Sam outs, telling him it’s ok to quit)

And of course, Dean here proves that Sam is more important to him than revenge for his mother, as he is willing to never get to kill the demon as long as his family, his brother in particular, survives.

Poor Dean.

SAM That thing killed Jess. That thing killed Mom.

DEAN You said yourself once, that no matter what we do, they're gone, and they're never coming back.

SAM Don't you say that, not you! Not after all this don't you say that.

DEAN Sam look. The three of us...that's all we have...and it's all I have. Sometimes I feel like I'm barely holding it together man...and without you or Dad....

Unfortunately, script doesn’t quiet convey the scene as there’s a LONG pause between “That thing killed Jess” and “That thing killed Mom”. Enough so that we can believe that Sam is using that second phrase not because he cares (in the Pilot he made clear he didn’t), but to make Dean get on board with the whole “I can kill myself if it means getting revenge” plan. In other words, once again, Sam is weaponizing Mary against Dean, and that is a really nasty habit the younger Winchester never quite shakes out of. Instead, Dean shows how he LISTENED to Sam back in the Pilot and repeats Sam’s words to him on the bridge.

Which is when Sam loses it and pushes Dean against a wall, Dean not defending himself at all, and yells that Dean has no right to say what Sam told Dean the very first hunt they had together after years of separation.

And of course, once Dean mentions their father, Sam starts calming down. NOT when Dean says that he’s barely holding it together, or that he only has them.   Just when he mentions their father who is, in Sam’s mind, the one who can help him get revenge.

The fight ends, but Sam never once apologizes for what he said to Dean, nor for the fight. Which, by the way, contradicts his claim that Dean “always has his back”.

Emotional Violence

Whenever we have John on an episode, we’re going to have to talk about emotional violence and I kind of hate that because on one hand, I get how John could’ve been a very tragic figure that loved his sons but still wanted to avenge his wife, and not being the abusive bastard we know and don’t love that much.

When Sam and Dean explain about Sam’s visions, and how they started as nightmares but have grown in intensity, his reaction is quite subdued, but clear. He is not happy, but the problem isn’t the visions –for a man obsessed with the supernatural, his outward reaction to his younger son being a psychic is quite calm- but that they didn’t inform him of what was going on:

JOHN All right. When were you going to tell me about this?

DEAN We didn't know what it meant.

JOHN All right, something like this starts happening to your brother, you pick up the phone and you call me.

DEAN dumps the coffee jug and cup back on the counter and strides toward JOHN.

DEAN Call you? Are you kidding me? Dad I called you from Lawrence all right? Sam called you when I was dying. I mean, getting you on the phone? I got a better chance of winning the lottery.

JOHN You're right. Although I'm not too crazy about this new tone of yours, you're right. I'm sorry.

And let’s be clear, John’s anger is not directed at Sam, it’s directed at Dean. “Something like this starts happening to your brother” is not “Something like this starts happening to either of you”. Which is also a show of how good an actor JOHN is in universe because WE know that he knew. Missouri TOLD him point blank that Sam was powerful and that he could have known that John was around during the Home episode. But here, he acts as if this was news to him when he could ALSO have told them what to expect if that happened. (Mind you, I am assuming that Sera Gamble knew or remembered about Home’s script when writing this and didn’t just forget or was unaware that John was supposed to know)

Now, all season, Sam has been complaining and yelling about how John doesn’t answer their calls, doesn’t seem to care what’s going on with them. So it’d be logical and in character for Sam to say something here. But instead is DEAN, Dad’s little soldier, the one we’ve SEEN obeying John without question finally have enough and talk back to his father with some truths. And it’s VERY interesting that his first complain is not that John didn’t care that Dean almost died, but that he didn’t reply when Dean called from Lawrence. One could almost infer that Dean expected John not to care if Dean died, but was honestly hurt that he didn’t care about a case that could’ve involved MARY.

John, surprisingly, sort of agrees. He does say “I’m sorry”, which makes him the Winchester who is quicker to say those words… but he still manages to make a threat against Dean “I am not too crazy about this NEW tone of yours”.

Making it clear that before? Dean never talked back. And John doesn’t like it when his soldiers talk back.

It makes it hard to believe John ever thought of Dean as his son and makes it very clear why Dean never understood Sam’s confidence that Dean was the favored one.

Speeches and Apologies

I considered not including this particular speech, but then I remembered that Supernatural is ALSO famous for their big emotional speeches, and this is Sam’s first, and also, Dean’s first time listening to someone he cares about give him the “I am saying goodbye because I am going kamikaze” speech and after all the drama in season 15, I guess it’s necessary to do some dissection.

It is important that despite all the things that Sam has done to Dean, the words “I’m sorry” are never uttered here.

SAM Dean...ah...I wanna thank you. DEAN For what? SAM For everything. You've always had my back you know? Even when I couldn't count on anyone I could always count on you. And ah...I don't know I just wanted to let you know, Just in case DEAN Whoa whoa whoa, are you kidding me? SAM What? DEAN Don't say just in case something happens to you. I don't wanna hear that freaking speech man. Nobody's dying tonight. Not us, not that family, nobody. Except that demon. That evil son of a bitch ain't getting any older than tonight, you understand me?

 This is not a bad “freaking speech”. I understand why Dean didn’t want to hear it, because it is like jinxing the mission (And, let’s be honest, it did), but it’s not a bad speech.

Except that, reading it again, it lacks one important part. Sure, Sam thanks Dean for always being there (Forgetting that, at least three times this season alone, he has accused Dean of not having his back and being unreliable. Which will ALSO be a constant theme in the series’s long run), but he never mentions the times HE did things that would be hard to back up. Which, again, I am not counting as a bad thing against him in this precise moment in time, since he is young, in his roaring roadtrip of revenge, and we’ve only know the brothers for a year, but it is the beginning of a series’ long crutch to make us forgive all of Sam’s sins without him actually doing the work to be forgiven.

On the other hand, it all goes to waste a bit later when Sam starts hitting Dean for the horrible sin of not letting him run into a burning building and kill himself so… it’s not really a “thank you for having my back” speech but a “You better remember, you never fight me and my choices are the best” speech in hindsight. Which… not good on Sam, no.

Double narrative standards

This episode is kind of balanced, except for that little moment where we’re supposed to think Dean is wrong for telling Sam that revenge is not worth their lives. So there’s not much to write in this particular segment.

Final Tally

Ok, back in the saddle. And after all that, I decided not to tally Sam’s little slip about not caring if their loved ones die as long as he gets to kill Azazael. Let me know if you disagree.

The count is still not good on Sam’s side, but as always, you are free to disagree with me, and dm me if you think I missed a tally or I should change one. If your argument is solid and canon based, I will listen to it and may change the numbers.

Numbers (or the TL;DR summary)

(Episode/Total so far)

Times Dean has lied to Sam or to a loved one: 0 / 0

Times Sam has lied to Dean or to a loved one: 0 / 3

Times Dean has been caught in a lie: 0 / 0

Times Sam has been caught in a lie: 0 / 1

Times Dean has hit Sam in anger: 0 / 1

Times Sam has hit Dean in anger: 1 / 4

Times Dean's lies or secrets have caused someone's death: 0 / 0

Times Sam's lies or secrets have caused someone's death: 0 / 1

Times Dean has abandoned (Or wanted to abandon) a hunt in the middle for his own needs: 0 / 0

Times Sam has abandoned (Or wanted to abandon) a hunt in the middle for his own needs: 0 / 7

Times Dean forced Sam to do something: 0 / 0

Times Sam forced Dean to do something: 0 / 7

Secrets kept by Dean: 0 / 1

Secrets kept by Sam: 0 / 2

Times Dean has blamed Sam for something: 0 / 0

Times Sam has blamed Dean for something: 1 / 4

Times Dean has apologized with words to Sam: 0 / 3

Times Sam has apologized with words to Dean: 0 / 2

Times Dean has respected Sam's boundaries and/or rules: 0 / 7

Times Sam has respected Dean's boundaries and/or rules: 0 / 0

Times Dean hasn't respected Sam's boundaries and/or rules: 0 / 0

Times Sam hasn't respected Dean's boundaries and / or rules: 0 / 13

Times Dean has made fun of something Sam does or has: 0 / 6

Times Sam has made fun of something Dean does or has: 0 / 31

Times we focus on Dean's needs: 0 / 1

Times we focus on Sam's needs: 1 / 6

Arc episodes dedicated to Sam: 1 / 7

Filler episodes dedicated to Sam: 0 / 6

Arc episodes dedicated to Dean: 0 / 0

Filler episodes dedicated to Dean: 0 / 4

Arc episodes dedicated to both brothers (or to none): 0 / 2

Filler episodes dedicated to both brothers (or to none): 0 / 2

Dean's Dropped Plotlines: 0 / 1

Sam's Dropped Plotlines: 0 / 2

[quilloftheclouds]

21 Question Tag Game

Rules: Answer 21 Questions (they do not have to be the same questions) and tag 21 people some people (I don’t know that many people yet!)

Tagged By: @bookish-actor

I’ve already done this tag game before, so I’m gonna switch up a lot of the questions!

1. Height

I am an average-kinda-tall alie--I mean human, at somewhere between 5′6 to 5′8. Probably.

2. Eye color

I thought it was brown but apparently in certain lightings it appears amber because once a friend of mine was really freaked out by the fact that my eyes looked “yellow”.

3. Hair color

Medium brown and turquoise. The lower half of my hair is dyed turquoise, but it’s starting to fade out to green. It has been dubbed mermaid hair multiple times and you wonder whether I made the decision to dye my hair because of the magic hair in my wip or if I made magic hair a thing in my wip because I had a subconscious desire to dye my hair. Hm.

4. Favorite Christian singer

I’m not Christian myself but there is some really good, especially positive music created from some of these singers! But I mean... Owl City is one of my all time favourite singers, not just a Christian one.

5. Favorite ice cream

I’d be surprised if you’ve heard of it but; moon mist! My absolute favourite is getting two scoops with salted caramel as the second flavour, since the salty and sweet balance out!

6. Favorite color

Deep, forest green or a dark, stormy sea blue-green.

7. Favorite composer

Marcus Warner is really amazing! He has some super uplifting, atmospheric music that has a lot of layers to it!

8. Following

I answered this question already but, as I predicted, it’s multiplied: 105

9. Favorite way to procrastinate from writing (other than Tumblr)

Drawing. And when not doing that, making writing memes.

10. Favorite way to get inspiration for writing

I like being outside somewhere nice and quiet! When that isn’t much of an option, I really like reading other people’s writing or scientific journals (which I know is weird but too bad I’m a science nerd).

11. Favorite live action movie

I haven’t watched many movies recently, but one that comes to mind is Matilda. The movie was so sweet and the book was so wonderful.

12. Favorite non-Disney cartoon

... can I answer Steven Universe here? If we want to go back to my childhood, I was a real nerd for Storm Hawks. Oof. That there ended badly.

13. Favorite Disney cartoon

As in movie? Hmmm... Moana, Mulan and Coco were all pretty cute. I’ve never watched Treasure Planet but I’m getting a lot of good recs for it so I’m likely going to go watch it at some point.

14. Favorite book character

I refused to answer on the last one so does that make me obligated to answer now?

... Sigh. I dunno about favourites, but Hiccup from How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell is pretty fun.

15. Favorite (web)comic character

Because although I haven’t read much in way of fanfiction, I have in webcomics. So! Favourites are always hard, but: Yoshi from White Noise! It’s an indie webcomic made by @thephooka (sorry for the tag!) and it is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend going to check it out if you like LGBTQ+ rep, awesome worldbuilding, fantastical creatures, and just wonderful characters overall!

16. First original story

Oof. I definitely have some from before this, but the first one I’ve ever found (because it was my first attempt at typing up a story) is Dragon Fountain from when I was 10, a terrible, stereotypically cliche book about an orphan who finds out he’s the King’s long lost son with a prophecy to kill the dragon secretly terrorizing the kingdom by shapeshifting into the King’s advisor. I think I got through 8 chapters, but each chapter was perhaps two pages of 18 size font. I did not know how to write back then, gah.

17. Favorite book

Gonna copy over the description from the other one I answered because I am lazy:

Magyk by Angie Sage <-- I adore this book. Also, another amazing series from my childhood: The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

18. Favorite genre

Fantasy is darn cool and is the one I’m currently writing in, but I definitely have a great love for sci-fi, too!

19. Favorite trope

Okay but I love me some good antiheroes.

20. 5 Skills/Interests you have other than writing

SCIENCE

Hiking

Playing the violin

Cooking

Drawing

21. Top 5 mythological creatures (in no particular order) (I already did this one so I’m gonna add 5 more different ones!)

Peryton

Phoenix

Kataw (Some siren traits in OSS were inspired by this creature!)

Pooka

Kraken (There may be a kraken in OSS. Maybe.)

Tagging time! Let’s go for @capricious-writes @action-science-fantasy and @i-rove-rock-n-roll

My apologies if you’ve already been tagged for this!

[krakenator]

CHAPTER 2 aka “The Stab-Lands”

Moving right along, this story's pacing absolutely does not fuck around

This is about the webcomic The Property of Hate and SPOILERS are sprinkled around extremely liberally. Masterpost here

I had to look up what Rushes are in writing/editing speak- it’s a term for raw, unedited footage. Bet it’s also kinda a reference maybe to how TPoH jumps from “here’s our set-up!” to “now Die” within 30 pages

Ey, you can actually see that RGB is super not down with water like 10 pages BEFORE he’s being dragged screaming into it! Fun times

It seems like he’s actually kinda more pissed about the marker-face prank than I thought him as on my first read. Red’s his most prominent drip (tho, there’s some green in there too. Plus, part of the anger is probably “this made me have to come within 2 inches of water, so you can understand the kind of stress I’m under”

As a side note I’m generally not counting RGB’s yellow drip in anything because it’s, uh, preeeetty consistent. Like, the more you pay attention to the drooling the more you realize RGB’s default background radiation of emotional Molotov cocktail is Scared and :(

RGB is an anxious mess. Massive mood

Yikes, not liking that Doubts are already just following Hero around like that. perhaps not too surprised since she just had her talk with the Butterfly...

“You’re not dead already? Damn. Wishful thinking I suppose...”

RGB, the very next day: “i fucked up i fucked up i fucked up she’s dead i fucked up i fucked-”

Considering Hero has said nothing so far today that would be a lie, this one must have come from the Butterfly. Now, which part of that conversation was the fib...? “You are a wise hero?” “I must go now?”

alternatively, it spawned just by sheer presense of RGB being Here, Existing, and Shady

… it’s a LITTLE WHITE LIE

Makes me wonder what the visual difference is between a little fib and a big honking stinker of a fiction

We also haven’t seen another one throughout the comics current run... are they only able to manifest in areas favorable to it? Or more impressively, does RGB manage to never directly lie?

That’s a skill, I’ll give him props

RGB gets Big Sad as he cautions Hero against Doubts, stating that they can swallow you whole. Who wants to bet he’s seen that happen? Who wants to bet it was a Hero?

WAIT A MINUTE (hits rewind button) TAKE IT BACK NOW Y’ALL

I thought this was RGB adjusting his sleeve, but remember that later he pulls a whole magician’s string of handkerchiefs out of his sleeve, and Hero empties, like, a surprising amount of magicians stuff out of his jacket even later- that handkerchief he uses to wipe his screen actually came from his sleeve! And that’s why he tosses it away on page 24- he’s got tons more where it came from

You can become frozen with fear har har har

Are y’all ready, we’re gonna start a “RGB gets FUCKING WRECKED” counter. I fully anticipate double digits before we reach the comics current end. 

Counter currently = 1

“We split” has been pointed out to be a reference to the opening of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ when the ship capsizes. RGB is also confirmed to be unaware of a Certain Somebody, and the final ‘we split’ is dripping upward like that partiular Dark Boi… 

RGB confirmed for insufferable theatre nerd

Meanwhile, a Doubt and the Lie literally just chill and live their life while RGB almost gets baptized less than 5 feet away

Hero has a scar here for the rest of the comic, which is a nice touch. Glass’ll do that t’ya, for sure

Bruh he straight up checks for her pulse on page 35. Good to know the implication that she CAN straight up Die in a Normal Way this world. For every hero that’s been, uuuuuuh, transformed and now just Live in this world, how many do you think have straight up died?

That is, assuming that all Hero’s are/were human

Ah, the tree’s are starting to sprout leaves again- I wonder if that means it’s getting late in the day and they’re gearing up to Dream again

Not that it’s come up in-comic at all, but you’d have to think that the other thing that fucks RGB up as badly as water has to be magnets

The Lie (probably the same one) continues to follow them for a bit, which reinforces my thought that Lies are just kinda attracted to RGB on account of being himself.

Oop- I was right, Hero DID draw the House of Paint back at her house!

Fun times! Check out the next chapter for some worldbuilding and to watch RGB sell his blood for goods and services

[friskheart000]

I’ll Try to Be Good: Solving the Alpha Enigma

Hello Internet! Welcome to Webcomic Theory (Is that too much of a ripoff? Probably), where we sift through the dark depths of Tumblr to over-analyze fan-made and original content alike. Today’s topic? Ask Frisk and Flowey, also known as I’ll Try to be Good (@illtrytobegood) by Lovely Lady Artist. It’s a fancomic that takes place after the True Pacifist ending of a video game called Undertale, and though it started off as a simple fluff ask blog, it’s now been revealed that there’s something more to this story than its apperant plot of Flowey adjusting to life on the Surface. If you haven’t read AFAF yet I highly recommend doing so, both because we’ll be covering some MAJOR spoilery topics, and just because it’s a great series. With that out of the way, grab your echo flowers and open up the ask box, because today we aim to get to the bottom of I’ll Try to Be Good.

The focus of today’s theory is figuring out what we can about the Alpha Timeline, specifically what we see in LLA’s alternate blog, @unknown-20xx. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this strange side comic, Unknown 20xx follows a group of askers left in the remnants of the Alpha Timeline, from which AFAF’s Sans and Flowey originate from. They were separated from it and brought into the AFAF timeline, which we’ll call the Beta timeline, after Flowey blew up the Core and performed a Reset. Due to the magic of an asker, they are currently (at the time of me writing this) back in the Alpha timeline again, in a time before everything went downhill, as we see in Unknown 20xx. That blog shows the timeline in a state of ruin, with only 13 of over a thousand monsters still alive. Time seems to be frozen for everything but the survivors, and magic cannot be regenerated. The entire latter half of the Underground is more or less destroyed. 

So what happened? What point in time are we seeing through this side blog? My theory is that it occurs after Sans and Flowey make it back to the Beta timeline, whenever their time in Alpha ends. This would make sense with Papyrus saying that everything started going downhill right after the two left, and we know it couldn’t be after they first wind up in the Beta timeline because in that same conversation, Papyrus shows familiarity with the askers, beings he was clearly unaware of when this event began, and mentions that Flowey talked with them, with us, frequently. Flowey only started communicating with the askers a few weeks after he came to the Surface, when Frisk invited us. There would be no way for him to communicate with us beforehand, securing this place in the timeline to be after Sans and Flowey leave and things start going bad. 

“But FriskHeart!” I hear you say. “Unknown said that they had just gotten back from terrorizing Flowey in his nightmares while they were walking through an empty Snowdin! And Papyrus’ letter got delivered to Sans before they even arrived there!” The answer is simpler than you give it credit for. It’s just time travel. The Unknown went into the past, which was the present for us askers, to torment Flowey, and we sent a letter into the past, which, again, was our present. We’re seeing two different timelines at two different periods of time. This fact is going to be extremely helpful for figuring out what’s going to happen in AFAF, but first we need to understand things here, so let’s move on.

Okay, so we know this blog’s basic place in the timeline. It occurs after this event ends and our heroes (?) return to Beta. This would explain in part why Unknown said that what we were seeing was the consequences of our actions. We had nothing to do with the Alpha Timeline until now, when we pulled this stunt to bring Sans and Flowey back. Let’s move on to the next major enigma: the messages in the Echo Flowers.

While walking through Waterfall with Unknown we hear a string of messages in the Echo Flowers as we go. The earlier messages say things like “Chara, where are you? Chara?” and “I know. You’d never hurt me Chara... I trust you.” As the askers walked farther, the messages grew more unsettling. “Where are we going?” “Chara, I’m scared... I don’t know if it’s a good idea to-” The voices end with “Chara, what are you doing...?” “Chara, s-stop!” “Chara, p-please, don’t you re-” “It’s me, As-” before being cut off with a scream. There’s only one message left, from a different speaker, who seems to be crying. “Asriel, why won’t you try to defend yourself from me?”

Okay, that’s a lot to take in. The first speaker is clearly Asriel, who’s being led off by the final speaker, Chara, who seems to kill him for some reason? Oooookay then. That��s...odd. So what exactly is going on here? Well, there’s not much we can go off of right now, but we do have some clues that could point us in the right direction. First, it’s important to mention that this is NOT a recounting of when Chara and Asriel first died. Flowey has confirmed that in the Alpha Timeline things basically went he same way as before up to a point, meaning that the buttercup incident still happened, and Asriel died in the throne room, not in Waterfall. Also, the chances of the Echo Flowers retaining those voices for so long seems pretty unlikely. But if it’s not that first time when they died, when is it? The only place in the timeline that would make sense would be some time while Sans and Flowey are in Alpha, but that couldn’t be possible...right? And yet, there’s nowhere else for it to fit. If it had taken place before, then Flowey wouldn’t have been waiting for Chara to wake up, because they already would have, and it couldn’t take place after because he wouldn’t be there. He’d be back in Beta. So...it would seem like it has to take place some time before Sans and Flowey return to the Beta timeline.

So what does that mean for the story? A LOT. If this is true, that means that Chara would have to return in some form (most likely in a ghost form or something similar, as we see that their grave is undisturbed) and be made to try and kill their brother, even though they don’t seem to want to. This would also mean that Flowey would likely...become Asriel again?! There’s no way! Right? And yet, that would be the only thing to make sense. The Echo Flowers clearly repeat Asriel’s voice, not Flowey’s, and while Flowey can change his voice and has before, he doesn’t seem to find the need to to so in front of Chara. In the M!A event “Another Omegaful Life”, one of the askers brings back Chara and Flowey retains his typical yellow text for the most part. He’s actually used his Asriel voice with SANS more than he has Chara. How exactly he would turn back is hard to say, as he’s only been able to do so one time during the M!A “A Soul For Flowey”, when an asker gave him their soul. This is not a great source for what it would take to help him become Asriel again as we have no idea how powerful an asker soul is compared to a monster or human soul, and the event was mainly powered by the strength of M!A anyway. However, if the Echo Flowers are at all reliable, him turning back via sciencey stuff, M!A, or something else seems to be the most logical option. And all of this may very well occur when he and Sans are in the Alpha Timeline, as they are right now.

It’s also important to try and answer the question of whether or not Asriel actually died. The final page with his voice in the Echo Flowers is tagged as “death mention”, yet Chara says “Why DON’T you try to defend yourself from me?” The use of the word don’t instead of didn’t, as well as the the fact that Sans and Flowey will make it back to Beta alive (hopefully), suggests that Chara didn’t kill Asriel. “But what about Unknown saying that Asriel was ‘sleeping’?” I hear you protest. Yes, that could mean that he died, but it could also have to do with Flowey currently sleeping at the time, over in the Beta timeline, and be purposefully meant to mislead us. It does have a darker implication to it, but that isn’t necessarily enough to be considered proof.

After Sans and Flowey return to Beta, things get pretty self-explanatory. The Core, along with Hotland and New Home, get destroyed and all but about 13 monsters die. Thanks to the time-space shenanigans going on, the entire world save for the survivors remains frozen in time. Plants don’t grow and lost magic can’t be regenerated. Since the Echo Flowers are now frozen in time, they repeat the same messages over and over throughout the Underground. Papyrus becomes a scavenger for the survivors, Alphys tries to use her science knowledge to help in any way that she can, and Toriel nears falling down. The askers manage to heal her before taken out by two figures, who seem to be...Sans and Flowey? Okay, what’s going on there?

First off, we can confirm that these two are NOT the Sans and Flowey we’ve come to know and tolerate. This Sans has an eye injury and a different outfit, and the Flowey has red eyes. The Flowey we know (who I’ll refer to as Alpha Flowey) has never had those bright red eyes, especially when paired with the smiling expression. This alternate Flowey bears a much closer resemblance to the smiling red-eyed flower Alpha Flowey saw when he was having a panic attack while having tea with Toriel and Papyrus. The have the same smile and red eyes. Beyond that, the two are tagged at the bottom of the post as Beta Sans and Beta Flowey.

It’s hard to say exactly who these two are, but my best guess is that they’re the Sans and Flowey from the Beta timeline, the ones replaced by Alpha Sans and Flowey. The Alpha pair seems to believe that the Beta pair just ceased to exist and they took their place, but they’ve been wrong before. And with the name similarities, it would definitely fit.

Now we only have one major question remaining, one I’m not sure of myself. Who is Unknown? Are they the personification of “the anomaly”? Or are they something else entirely? I’m eager to hear any fellow theorists’ thoughts on the subject as we figure out what to do next. 

In the meantime, remember, that’s just a theory! A Webcomic Theory! And I really need to change this thing’s name!

[yaoimila]

Dark Prince Yaoi Webcomic

The Dark Prince Yaoi webcomic come to http://yaoimila.com for navigation buttons.

Aliens’ Bribe: Sci-Fi Menage Romance

Alexdrine Sending me to return the light stone we stole from the aliens is the cruelest thing the elders could do.  I already had a run-in with the two blue demi-god-looking invaders years ago.   Just because they didn’t kill me before doesn’t mean I’ll survive this time.  My conniving husband is trying to get rid of me and the elders are helping him.  I’m going to throw myself at the aliens’ feet and beg for mercy.  I’m determined to survive, no matter what I have to do. Harolzine My under-officer Rextin still believes our mother ship will come back for us, but we’ve been on this decimated world for eighty years with no word for them.  I refuse to continue hiding in our skyscraper doing nothing while we wait.  It’s time we claimed a human bride. Rextin It’s perfect we’ve captured Alexdrine right when we decided to take a bride.  This woman enticed us enough to spare her life the last time she broke into our home.  Of course she should be the one for Harolzine and me to share.  She’s strong enough to handle what we have planned for her. A sweet, sensual, stand-alone, sci-fi, menage, romance novel with chapters in the perspectives of the three different main characters.   MFM ménage (no m/m) with a happily-ever-after!

A new sci-fi Menage Romance by Yaoimila!  

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EXCERPT ~

“Me?” I cried with my eyes as wide as saucers.  “Why me? Are you insane?”

My husband, who I shared with a first wife and probably seven mistresses, sneered and spat through his rotten teeth to the floor.  (I never kissed him in all the four years we were married because of this disgusting mouth.) “Because you’ll slow them down," he said.  "You’ll give us a chance to escape.”

I turned toward the three elders beside us with my face wide with shock.  “How can anyone slow them down?  If anything, they’ll see me and become so furious they’ll throw blasts to kill us all.”

“Not once I’ve got the light stone.”  Ardie said this.  He was the son of my husband’s first wife, the same age as me, and the fastest runner in our zone.  “They won’t throw blasts and risk shattering it.”

“Exactly."  I jutted my palm at him.  "So why should I go?  I can’t keep up with you.”

Mertha, a female elder with skin so black it had bluish undertones, placed her lean hand on my shoulder.  “It has to be Danel, Ardie, and you.  Danel to disconnect the stone from their systems without damaging it.”  She tipped her nose toward my husband.  “Ardie to run with it as fast as he can.  And you to catch their eye, give them pause, and grant Danel and Ardie a chance to escape.”

My heart raced.  “What about my escape?”

“What are you worried about?” my husband Danel said, still sneering.  “They won’t kill you.”

“Yes, they will!”

“They didn’t last time,” Ardie said.

I darted my face toward him. “They swore if they ever saw me again I’d be dead!  They hate me!”

Danel scoffed.

“Enough,” the elder named Raffe (who was the father of my husband) said.  “We rule the zone, and we order you to go Alexdrine.  Our word is final.”

I hadn't realize until my father-in-law said it—but Danel was trying to get rid of me.  That merciless bastard!  I’d done so much to get into Manhattan Zone—I was the one who returned the light stone to the aliens the last time we ‘borrowed it.’  That bought me my place here.  I was tattooed by the elders with the Manhattan Zone mark.  Danel couldn’t send me back to Haven Zone, so now he was going to sacrifice me!  

“This is wrong,” I said to Mertha with tears in my eyes.  

She responded by pulling me into her arms.  “Go and be safe, child.  They won't kill you while we have the light stone, and it will be returned as soon as our generators are recharged. It must be you.”  She pulled back and scooped some of auburn hair from my forehead.  “You’re the only one who’s met them and lived.”

I shook my head, still aghast, still in tears.  

So what if I’d met them before?  I had no choice.  They’d sent a psychic message we all heard in our heads:  ‘Bring back the stone or Manhattan Zone will be erased.’  Then we all dropped to the ground screaming because they gave us mind-zap headaches that were so horrible it felt like our brains were exploding in our skulls.  I knew I would be volunteered to return the stone whether I wanted to or not because I was the only adult without a zone tattoo.  So I went, humble, pitiful, and hoping to leave with all my limbs attached.  Two blue aliens, the last of the invasion force on planet Earth, met me with their perfectly chiseled faces filled with anger.  I held out the stone and begged them not to kill me.  I didn’t dare lift my head to look at them, but the one on the right asked why he shouldn’t make an example for my zone.  

That’s when I started blathering.  I told them my whole pathetic life story.  Growing up in Haven Zone where the crater was still irradiated and making us sick, eating grass and garbage just to stay alive, watching my mother become deaf and mute and then finally having her eyes turn black before she died, on and on I went about how miserable it was in Haven and how desperate I was to get the tattoo to stay in Manhattan Zone.  

I asked for their mercy and apparently got it.  One of the god-like blue aliens took the stone, threatened me, and ordered me to leave. I sprinted the whole way back to the tenements.  I was alive, I’d earned my tattoo, and I’d never have to see those horrifying aliens again.

Or so I thought.

My son of a bitch husband grabbed my arm.  “Let’s go. We have a three mile trek and it will be dawn in five hours.”

I scowled at my father-in-law, making sure he knew I was aware of his plan, and let Danel pull me along. We went down the stairs of the Zone meeting hall onto the crumbling sidewalks and grass-infiltrated roads. The sky was too full of haze to see the stars, but a blurry yellow moon broke through giving us enough light to make our way toward the Empire State Building, where the aliens lived.  All the street lamps were dark, as they had been since our generator ran out of ‘alien light’ from the last time we’d stolen the light stone. Apparently we hadn’t fully recharged our systems back then due to the headache threat.  Four years later and Manhattan Zone was without power once again. I was back where I started in this zone—risking my life for the sake of their comfort.

“If you didn’t want me as your wife anymore you could have given me a divorce,” I said to Danel, with venom in my voice.

The bastard didn’t even try to deny it.  “And then what?  What do I say to the Elders when they ask me where you’re going to live?  No other man would have you.  Who wants a cold woman who won’t kiss and hardly ever opens her legs?”

I cringed with disgust and then regrouped.  “I would have been fine.  I survived on the streets of Haven.  You don’t think I could make it here?”

“We’re not Haven.  No one lives on the streets.  I did you a favor to take you as my second wife and you’ve been nothing but ungrateful.”

Ungrateful?  I wanted to swing on him and knock out a few of his black teeth.  When I first came to Manhattan Zone, I was grateful.  A tattooed man was willing to have me as his wife—who cares if he was twice my age and ugly.  I didn’t find out about his first wife until after he’d already taken my virginity. And then I realized I was being presented to this wife as a slave.  

Even that I was grateful for.

I’d take anything over Haven’s death sentence, but I was put in a war zone against my will.  Esther said I was just a slave, not a wife, but Danel wanted to keep fucking me.  The pig decided I was preferable to his loyal wife of 25 years just because I was younger than her.  Never mind that she actually loved him and I was just there for the Manhattan Zone tattoo. I was on her side, but she was on her husband’s side.  She claimed that his infidelity (if you can call it that with a second wife) was because I was seducing him.  So she attacked me, and Danel instigated by insisting I still sleep with him, entangling me into a mess I never signed up for.  I hadn’t had one day of peace in that house—not one.  Of course I resented him for it.  If you want to fuck me then just admit to your wife that I’m a second wife and stop being a coward!  

Most of the time I resisted him because his anger was far easier to deal with than the heartache of his true wife.

And now this.  He’d forced me into a mission that would probably get me killed.  I had to fight back tears as climbed over the debris beside him and his son.  I didn’t even have good shoes.  How was I going to run when it was time?

Damn it.  I should just turn around and go back. That was defying the elders which meant fifty lashes in the public square and then getting cayenne pepper rubbed into my wounds.  Wasn’t that better than dying though?  

I shuddered.  Barely.

We reached the Empire State Building and climbed on top of the remains of a fallen skyscraper beside it.  Lights on every floor were on, giving us no indication of where the aliens were. They had no guards, so the heist should have been easy.  We knew from the last theft they knew when the light stone was removed from its cradle. There would be half a minute, maybe less, for us to escape the building.  The aliens never went outside, we didn’t know why, but it was a fact we could count on.  

Danel scanned the bottom floor with binoculars.  “There’s a glowing grid over the hole we made in the wall last time.”

I squinted.  Something red and pulsing was over the hole, but I couldn’t see it well enough to determine it was a grid.

“So we cut a new hole beside it?” Ardie said.  He wore high shorts on his lanky legs to keep himself free for running.

Danel put down the binoculars.  “Nah. They’ll expect it.  Let’s go straight in through the front, that’s the fastest way to the stone.  Might as well make a quick dash, in and out.”

We climbed down the back of the mountain and skirted the edge of the debris until we reached the path that led to the front doors.  My heart was beating a mile a minute now.  What if they were on the bottom floor?  The risk was insane.

I heard Danel take a deep breath beside me.  He pulled the strap of his kit tight over his shoulder.

“We ready?”

“No we’re not ready,” I said, feeling frantic.  “What’s the plan?”

He had the nerve to glower at me.  Wasn’t it a fair question?  

“The plan is to go to the wasp’s nest, disconnect the stone, give it to Ardy, and run like hell.”

“Shouldn’t one of us scout first?”  My heart felt like it was beating in my throat now.  “We should make sure they’re not—”

Danel barreled forward from our cover and jerked me along with him.  Ardy followed behind, ducking his head and nudging my shoulder to keep me at a run.  We halted inside a revolving door.  I didn’t dare look inside.  When I heard Danel cutting the glass, I finally opened my eyes.  There was no sign of the aliens.  Danel crawled through the hole he made and Ardy pushed me through after him.

Now I was afraid to breathe. We were in alien’s domain.  They could be floors away or steps away.  I darted my gaze from one end of the foyer to the other, praying not to see any blue skin.  Danel was focused on the wasps nest in front of us.

The aliens had built a giant nest of coils, wires, and brown molding that hung from the first floor ceiling like a wasps nest and pulsed with golden energy.  At the base, connected by dozens of wires, was the light stone which charged it.  

“It’s clear,” Danel whispered.  “Let’s run.”

Ardy grabbed my arm to force me up.  The three of us sprinted to the stone.  My boots made echoing clops that made me tear up with horror.  How could the alien’s not hear that?  I should have been given sneakers, but everything happened so fast I couldn’t think to ask for any.  

Danel hissed at me to be quiet when we reached the stone.  Anger put a pause on my fear.  How the hell were the horrible shoes my fault?  If he’d let me work outside his tenement, I could have bought tar-heeled shoes from the cobbler.  

He was too busy fixing dead-clips on the wires to pay anymore attention to me.  I continued searching the floor with my ears perked.  There was no sign of the aliens.  

“Get ready to run,” Danel said.  

We looked to see he was using his pliers to work the final coiled loop off the stone.  

A few things suddenly occurred to me.  These were like the flashes of memories you get before you die, but these were realizations.  

Why was it so easy to steal the light stone?  I hadn’t been with them the last time they did it four years ago, but I expected it to be harder than a minute of tightening clips on wires.

Next, since Manhattan Zone had stolen the stone before, why wasn’t it secured better now?  They patched the hole that was made through the wall from last time, but that was it.  

Finally, the aliens had to know we’d lost power again.  They could see the whole island from their top floor.  Our zone went dark two days ago.  

Why weren’t they expecting us?

“There!”

The oblong stone popped from its cradle into Danel’s hand.  He gave it to Ardy, who bolted toward the door.  I was ready to make a sprint right after him when Danel’s fist smashed into my chest making me crash back against the cradle.  He was twenty feet in front of me before I could get my bearings.  That fucking son of a--  I didn’t have time for anger.  I ran for the door with all the strength I had left in me.

The floor shook. No—more like the floor had turned into water and a giant wave crested through the suddenly malleable tiles.  We tumbled off our feet, but Ardy was already through the hole in the rotating door.  I saw him stumble but catch himself and continue his flight.  Danel hit harder than his son.  He had to use the handle on the door to pull himself up. He glanced back, and I saw his face go white with horror.

I looked behind me. The two blue aliens stood barely a foot behind me.  My life is over—and for what?  

I saw Danel get through the hole and escape.  

As for me…I didn’t even try to get up now.  I’d served my dismal purpose.  The aliens could incinerate me with one of their energy bolts, or just use their mind powers to make my brain explode.  What would it be?  How long would they make me suffer waiting?

“We told you not to come back.”

I blinked.  The aliens had voices similar to men, but with a rasping undertone, like a deep wind wood instrument was inside their throats.

“I didn’t want to,” I said softly, and that’s all I said.  I wasn’t sure if they were giving me a chance to plead for my life.

“She’s a bribe,” the other alien said.  

I peeked up.  He had circled to come around me.  Both aliens had dusky blue skin and dark blue-black hair. The one in front of me had a deeper voice than the first, and looked older, more filled out.  That’s not to say they weren’t both muscular.  They had the bodies of Earth athletes I’d seen in old magazines with bulging pecs and chiseled abs.  However, one was about my age, 24, and the other apparede somewhat older, perhaps 30.  The one who looked younger had a star tattoo on his cheek.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” the older alien said.  His eyes were dark auburn with pale pink whites.

“That I’m a bribe?”  I cleared the lump in my throat.  “I think I’m more collateral.”

“You think?”  His deep voice edged toward a threat.

“I don’t know, okay?” I found myself blathering again—just like the last time.  (But it worked, right?)  “I was supposed to be a distraction, but they lied.  My husband shoved me right when we needed to run and—”

“Which was your husband?” the alien behind me said.  

“The older one with the satchel.”

“He prevented you from escaping?”

I felt rude not to look at him while I answered so I slid my body around on the shiny tiles.  The more they let me talk the more I fell into a comfort zone of sorts.  They wouldn’t kill me if they were waiting for me to answer something.

“Yes.  He was trying to get rid of me.  I knew he was.  I shouldn’t have gone along with him.  I’m sorry.”

“So your life has not improved since you left Haven Zone?”  This was the older one again.  I slid back to face him with my throat getting knotted.  They remembered everything I told them last time?  

“It improved.  It would be impossible not to, but I married a scumbag. He already had a wife, and she wasn’t happy with him taking a second one.  It didn’t work out.”

The two aliens exchanged looks over me.  Actually, it seemed like they were talking with eye movements.  Their eyeballs shifted around while their eyelids flickered with half-blinks and winks.  The exchange went on long enough for me to be sure they were communicating.  I knew they were telepathic, so an additional eye language wasn’t that far of a stretch.

“We will accept you as a bribe in exchange for lending the light stone to your people,” the older one said.

My mouth parted and my lower lip quivered.  “What? I—I told you, I’m more like collateral.”

“You told us your husband threw you away,” the younger one said.

I swallowed.

“Your people are thieves,” the older one said.  “Why should we allow them the use of our light stone without payment?”

Payment?  I’d suffered such a whirlwind of emotion I didn’t know what to feel.

“Why did you let them take it?” I said, too frazzled to guard my words.  “You didn’t secure it from the last time they stole it.  You didn’t even lock the door.”

The older one crouched in front of me.  His face had the same chiseled perfection as his body.  Up close, he made me want to avert my eyes with embarrassment.  I’d felt a flush of attraction I knew was idiotic.

On Kindle and Kindle Unlimited! Read on your computers or devices!

Click your country to grab it now!  Kindle USA, Kindle UK, Kindle Germany, Kindle Australia, Kindle Canada, Kindle France, Kindle Italy, Kindle Spain, Kindle Brazil, Kindle Mexico, Kindle Netherlands, Kindle Japan, or Kindle India!