#Sam wanted boundaries with Dean their entire lives and Dean refused | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bi-lullaby · 5 years

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I loved your last rankings so much that I'm sending you another fun (?!) challenge! How would you rate all these male GA characters from your favorite to least favorite, no ties allowed? :) Alex, Derek, Richard, Mark, Owen, Jackson, Burke, George, Andrew, Linc and Ben? Good luck, and as always, feel free to include your reasons why because I love your answers!

Ohhh boy you give me life with those asks! Here we go:

1 - As no surprise to anyone: Alex. My baby had the best character development I’ve ever seen, really, brcaus ewhile it was huge, it was also paced and believable and stabilished and non-linear. He was a huge asshole with a concealed heart of gold in season one. In season 15, he’s a golden boy with a concealed asshole side, and the growth/diminishment of those sides weren’t always inversely proportionate, but adjusted to what each characteristic was brought out more by his surroundings/worked more on by himself. Also, he’s the person that has stuck with mer for the longest and through the most, which would put him in a high place in this list even if he wasn’t my favorite on his own. I also adore how, thematically, he’s so moved by the women in his life (bot just the romantic i terests while we are at it) for the betterment of himself and hsi ways. It’s not like Owen’s “I’ll need her to take care of me emptionally and shape herself to my desires so I can be in a good place, it’s recognizing those positive influences in his life and trying to emulate them/work with them/learn from them. Also about his theme, itms less the worn-out “guy is validated in being an asshole bc he had a tough life” and more “guy learns that his tough life doesn’t mean he gotta act like an asshole”. I love this character so much, ugh.

2 - Ben. A freaking Disney prince would be a sleeazy douche in comparison. I was so weirded out when Shobda decided to give so much focus to this random-ass character, then I was really turned off by his storyline with the cutting people open and all that (not necessarily because I thought he was wrong, I just felt the storyline was handled awkwardly and made him sound pelutant and irresponsible instead of a promissing, if stubborn, future surgeon. I’ve yet to watch Station 19, but this angel with a scalpel and a fire hose for wings deserves his own goddamn spin-off, for sure.

3 - My baby Andrew. Yeah, he is not that developed, has been inconsistent, his change from “freaking out over Maggie being his boss” to “marvellung at Meredith’s every movie even though she’s kinda even more his boss because she owns the hospital” was... A B R U P T. But I really enjoy this new Andrew - as a side note: I could not care less for him during the whole Sam storyline, he seemed like a toned down Jonhy Bravo - He’s smart and sweet and funny and worships Mer like the Wonder Woman she is. His relationships with Arizona, Amelia, Jo, Carina and now Alex need more screentime because they’re great (or have the potential to be so). He’s competent and brilliant and selfless (dropping the charges on Alex even if he was completely in the right, taking the blame for mer now) and so tender (his absolute gentleness in peds, taking care of Amy after the operation, being a moody, emotive boy because he lost his love instead of a macho men...). The future holds great things for him, and I’m excited to watch them unfold!

4 - Not on your list but I love: Tom. Boy is he nice. As I was figuring out this order, I realized he reminds me a lot of my favorite character (Dean Winchester) - or at least what I think Dean would be if he was older, richer and lived without the Supernatural World and so many traumas. His talk to April was so moving and I felt it really helped. He doesn’t stand on a moral high horse: He does what he thinks is right and damned be judgment. He’s empathetic, he’s romantic, he treats Teddy RIGHT. He deserves to have his own storyline and be more developed and show us kore of his awesomeness.

5 - Jackson. As I said in my ships rating answer, I’ve only started to care for him recently, but I really do care. He’s not a character I’d, like, write fic about, or long rants and meta, but I love his sibling-esque relationship with Mer and his relationship with Maggie and the way he connects with his mom and how this spoiled, immature transfer with something to prove became a respected, innovative surgeon and father who’s secure of himself and ready to explore different paths and ways and worldviews. I just wish him, and the Grey’s fandom, would be less defensive about the callout of his privileged life. Like. I’ve seen people write paragraphs upon paragraphs about how Maggie was a bitch for calling him privileged. And he is (for his hoards upon hoards of money growing up). That’s not too hard a concept to grasp. Plus, it’d be nice if he could treat Maggie as less of a consolation prize/second chance. Just because faith (or lack thereof) was a source of tension in his previous marriage, and he feels like changing that would have made everything better, doesn’t mean the same applies to his current relationship, or that Maggie is the one who should change -he learned, learned, and is back in square one seeing only his side of it - I really hope this season treats him more kindly and gives him happiness and peace!

6 - Richard. I love him for his parental-and-ish relationships, specially to Maggie, Mer and Jackson, but to Bailey and Callie too. That’s my favorite aspect of him, watching those gives me a nice, warm feeling in my tummy and puts a smile on my face. There’s some aspects of him I find either boring or unpleasant, and I think it’s kinda annoying how him retiring has been a theme/conflict since, like, season one, and fast-foward ten years and he’s basically an entity at the hospital. Like? What? Was the point? You’ve waisted my time? For nothing? But he’s a solid, reliable character you can’t really hate and who brings more good than bad to the show by far. As a side note: one day I will yell at him for his treatment of Maggie after she talked about HER OWN HISTORY and he basically called her a mistake (although he apologized pretty soon and she forgave him so so will I).

7 - Mark. He was great and all that, but never sparked that love some characters did. I was sad when he died, I loved his scenes and relationships, I just am not invested in him. Plus the immaturity in his relationship with Lexie pisses me off a bit, as does his “man whore” personality.

8 - Link. Genuinely love him, he’s been nothing but sweet and kind and fun and helpful this entire time! I cheered for Merlink sooooo much imat first, and I really wish their friendship will be developed! Him and Jo are everything I never knew I needed. He has no arguable flaws besides being so sculped it freaks me out a little bit, but he isn’t higher up in my rank because there isn’t much material for that yet, but expect a climb as he becomes more and more regular.

9 - Burke. He was kinda sweet and did a good thing for Cristina (the hospital). He was also manipulative and arrogant and voundary-crossing in their relationship. I might like him better if it was bot for Burktina, but we will never know.

10 - Owen. Toxic as fuck, annoying, controlling, disgusting. Those are all things that very much apply to Owen in a lot of situations. Screaming at Cristina for “murdering their baby”? YIKES. Big no no. He was not suited for romantic relationships at all and I wish the show would realize that and allow him that space and breathing time without being stuck in a complicated relationship with loads of baggage or a love triangle. Because that’s my whole thing about him: I believe he has room for growth. His relationship with April is pretty amazing, he was always so considerate and gentle with her, all the time, and I want to see more of that bond. He loves kids and can be really good with them, he has a lot of things to work out with the traumas of his father’s death + war + his sister’s story. Why not focus on that? Why not show him growing and processing and bettering himself and living up to the potential he has? I feel like they gave the all the wrong romantic storylines to the character who’s otherwise really good and that’s such a shame because I really enjoyed him at first. Lets see what happens from now on, and if he gets a dose of tv’s “heterosexual love and a nuclear biological family solve everything!” medicine or if this is a turning point for him.

11 - Derek. He never really had any appeal to me. Not his face, not his personality, not his storylines or plot points pr the actor. That’s reason enough for him to rank low, but I also think he had some really bad traits. He was arrogant and condescending and had a God complex and was sexist and pushy and just not great for the people around him. Exploiting Amy’s addiction being outed to steal surgeries? Refusing to give Mer credit on their clinic trial? Putting ultimatums on his girlfriend that she either has to be ready for a full, committed relationship or end things, then call her a slut when she sleeps with other guys after they broke up? Cheating on Addison after deciding to work things out? Stringing mer and addie along? Not saying he was married in the first place? Pushing Mer’s boundaries after she was clearly uncomfortable with having slept with her boss? Refusing to have an inch of empathy for Mer’s action regarding the trial despite her complicated history with the people she was trying to help (who were her friends, actually?)? Telling his depressed girlfriend that she should be concerned the happiest part of his day was flirting with another girl from the bar? Ratting out on Richard to the board because he wanted the spot? Not acknowledging Mer’s trauma after the shooting? Kissing nurse Rose while building the dream house? Kissing his student while being married in NY? Pushing his wife to move and saying his career was more important than his after he had compromised on letting her shine? All things that, isolated, can even be understood on context and “everyone makes mistakes”, but that when put together, make it pretty clear it’s a pattern of someone with very little regard to the people around him. Was he a good surgeon? Yeah. Great father as well. He also had some interesting relationships and iconic scenes, truly, I can recognize that. I hurt for the people he loved and left behind (and I genuinely think he loved them and meant well), but he himself I don’t miss at all.

12 - I think George is the clearest contrast between how old greys handled matters of sexism and gender and sexuality and how it does now. He was such a sleazy nice guy at times, it is unbearable to me. And he ranks lower than Derek because A) His relationships also bored me while Derek’s could pique my interest at times, B) There’s no talk about his mistakes. Remember when he (in his own words) took advantage of Meredith being on a terrible, delicate, vulnerable place (still hiding her mother’s Alzheimer’s and seeing a person be blown to pieces and being dumped by who she thought was the one and being rejected by her father for the second time after seeing him for the first time in tweenty years) and, knowing that she was not interested in him, pursued her, then after she started crying because of the literal pile of shit she was having to carry around (and still trying to preserve his feelings), got mad at her and everyone sided with him? It baffled younger me to bits that what Mer had “done” was so terrible, it has not stoped bafflinn me in the years that have passed since. Can you imagine any of the girls crying during sex because they’re so overwhelmed and feel like that’s a mistake, and the guy freaks out on them and they’re instantly ostracized by the narrative and characters? That’s essentially criticizing her for the right of saying no, of stopping when she doesn’t want to continue, of not giving away her time and feels just because a goofy guy who is her friend feels entitled to them. That’s the word: entitled. He literally says he “saw her first”. How’s that not Nice Guy 101? I would understand his ego being bruised, but the guilt tripping and the bitching and the fact none of that is treated as a fucking creepy thing? Yikes. Also how he treated Callie, who deserved so, so much better. And even Olivia who was perfectly lovely and did nothing wrong besides having sex with more than one guy without breaking either of their trusts because she wasn’t in a relationship with any of them. Did he do some good things? Sure did! Joey’s surgery costs being cut, helping Bailey give birth, some of his interactions with patients were really sweet, and he died giving his life for someone else. It’s just that consequence-less sexism and entitlement that never gets adressed and gets treated as not only valid, but right, that makes him go rom unappealing to downright hated for me. Better left in the past where people can misplacedly idolize him!

Thank you so much for asking, I love those thought-inspiring asks! <3

#thank you so much #theofficestan #greys anatomy #greys #grey’s anatomy #me #answered #asks #rank

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years

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Poor Dean. He was abused on all fronts last episode. First, we see that he is absolutely terrified of being locked in the box under the ocean, so much so that he has horrific nightmares. This is coupled with Michael constantly being destructive in his head. Then we have Sam, who continually berates and guilt trips him, and even ends up getting physical. And then Cas, who also berates him, calls him suicidal and essentially, a coward. Of course Dean gave in at the end. The boy is exhausted. :(

Exactly. It’s been a series of violations ever since the beginning of Michael’s possession. Michael tricked him over the terms of their deal and took control of him, them tricked him into thinking he was free and in fact had access to his mind all this time, spying on him, until he eventually took over again. Michael then shoved him inside his own mind, with a mental trick to keep him complacent.

And then, as soon as he took back control, he knew that it was a temporary solution because the door isn’t strong enough, he isn’t strong enough to keep Michael at bay. Which is heartbreaking because a human overpowering a full-power archangel like that for so long is already unheard of... but it doesn’t really matter if it’s not enough.

All he wants is for Michael not to destroy the world, for anyone not to be harmed for what he essentially consider his own mistake, saying yes to Michael (nevermind that Lucifer was going to destroy the world, too). All he wants is for people to be safe. And for this, he’s willing to sacrifice more than his life--spend eternity (or as long as the planet? the universe? last) trapped in an enclosed space with his tormentor.

And all he wants is to be in peace with that decision, as much as he can be. He plans to see Donna and Mary before getting the box done. He knows he can’t tell Sam, because Sam will make him change his mind, because Dean already anticipated how Sam would react and how Sam would act. So he makes Sam give his word that he won’t try to stop him, and Sam breaks that promise. He obviously also asks Sam not to tell Cas, and Sam breaks that too. (After already telling about Dean’s latest possession to their friends without asking Dean if it was okay or telling him at all.)

He had tried to set some boundaries, do this utterly terrifying and devastating thing on his own terms at least, and Sam steps on those terms.

I’m not even sure how well Cas even understands the situation--not in the sense that he’s stupid, but in the sense that all the information he got about Dean’s plan and Dean’s mental state at the moment came from Sam--again, I understand why Sam told Cas, but it’s still a violation of a boundary Dean had tried to place, and it obviously sides Cas with Sam because Cas sees the situation from Sam’s lens. But anyway, Cas isn’t really equipped with the emotional capability to deal with this kind of situation.

Sam’s speech at the end of the episode is terrifying. Ironically, I agree with that post from a W-ncest shipper that keeps appearing on my dash today - he acts like a child. But he’s not. He will always be Dean’s child, true. But he is a fully grown adult. He’s traumatized to hell and back, figuratively and literally, but that’s an explanation, not an excuse. He has wanted Dean to treat him like an adult for years, remember? They had fights over that. If you want to be treated like an adult, you need to act like one. An adult doesn’t get to abuse their parent figure like that, no matter what their history with trauma is.

What Dean doesn’t need to is to add more gaslighting to all the gaslighting and abuse he’s received all his life. Sam basically - regardless of whether he’s remotely aware of what he’s doing - is pushing his own perception of Dean’s feelings and intentions over Dean.

“How sorry are you? Sorry that [...] when it comes to you, you just throw in the towel? Or are you sorry that, after all these years, our entire lives, a-after I’ve looked up to you, after I’ve learned from you, I-I-I’ve copied you, I followed you to hell and back, are you sorry that all of that--it-it-it means nothing now?”“Who’s saying that?”“You are, when you tell me I have to kill you. When you’re telling me that I have to just throw away everything we stand for, throw away faith, throw away family. We’re the guys who save the world. We don’t just check out of it!”

Dean is not saying that. Dean is not checking out of the world, he is trying to save it. The only reason he is doing this is because Death told him that it was the only way to prevent the destruction of the world.

Nothing about Dean’s decision is about Sam. There is no link between Dean’s decision and his relationship with Sam. There is no link between what Dean’s role in Sam’s life “means” and what Dean is planning on doing.

Sam is trying to make Dean feel guilty by installing a link between Dean’s actions and Dean’s parental feelings over Sam. He’s saying that if Dean does this, then all he’s done before - everything he has done for Sam, for family, for everything - is meaningless.

He’s saying that if Dean does this, Dean is spitting over family, over their relationship, over their faith in each other. That Dean is spitting over all they have always fought for, over all Dean has always fought for.

Then he tells Dean that what he is doing is quitting, is giving up, which is a terrible thing to say to a person who has always refused to quit, and who is facing something that is terrifying him and is making himself go through with it because it’s the right thing to do.

And then he says Dean “I believe in us, Dean. I believe in us”, which is an accusation that Dean doesn’t believe in them. But the two of them aren’t omnipotent. Dean is just acknowledging - which makes sense giving their situation - that they have arrived to the one thing they can’t solve otherwise. He is trusting an authority he respects, Death’s. He just wants to keep people safe.

He doesn’t consider himself, or his small entourage, more important than everyone else. He just isn’t willing to condemn the entire world to destruction because he was picky about his solutions.

Meanwhile, an evil archangel is screaming in his mind, trying to subjugate his entire being.

All he wanted was a little peace before something horrific that terrifies him.

#my spn thoughts #spn meta #spn 14x12 #dean and sam #abuse #gaslighting #dean and michael #spn #anon

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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14x06 watching notes

Bugs 2.0

this is more like a sleepy note to self from last night (hi future me in the morning, you better have coffee) but I can't believe Yockey is sending Jack, who is consumptive, caught in a crisis of personal identity, and sworn to kill his AUncle who is blurred dangerously with one of his fathers, WITH said father on a hunt, while Dean is so messed up about Michael and guilt and all he's coming at the angsty nonsense from the complete other side... And that's still like half the story because also Sam and AUCharlie and a giant fly monster or something...

Anyway last time a Yockey episode showed up I wrote 100k words of watching notes, broke down crying over the elevated Shakespearean drama, and astral projected into watching the final five-ten minutes in the Globe Theatre.

What we know so far about this episode has me legitimately terrified to the point I'm writing preemptive episode notes the night before so maybe I will fall asleep and dream in such a way I sort this all out and can come to it with Secret Dream Knowledge.

Mittens had the audacity to remind me that Speight directed as soon as I rolled out of bed as well

Oh no the recap is awful in moments. Please leave Jack alone. He is small and young and doesn't deserve anything bad that has ever happened to him.

The ticking and chiming of this all coming due is a great way to raise blood pressure, and as I was saying last night, we get both Dean blurring with Jack in his issues as well as Dean blurring with Michael

I remain eternally optimistic that seeing Christian Keyes in the recap means he might get smuggled back into the show.

I WILL say this every time it happens and refuse to back down on that :P

Anyway, tying the two main points of plot stress together - what is wrong with Jack, and what is wrong with Dean. We KNOW what is wrong with Dean - he said yes to Michael, and got taken for a ride and sorely used. Don’t know if there’s a ticking time bomb about Dean and something Michael did to him. We can guess a few avenues of where the awful comes from for Jack, but I suspect it's going to be at least another full episode of Rowena poking him next time to figure it out, if not an ongoing mystery so his consumptiveness can be dragged out as a point of tension.

His is so obvious that equating Dean's tick tock clock with it is considerably more alarming on Dean's behalf, since we have a much better visual of what's up with Jack, and just "djinn didn't like the inside of Dean's head despite dealing in nightmares" to wonder about Dean.

We get the recap that Jack's being given his hunter go ahead, but then Dean's dismal "it's all on me, it's my fault" over a dark screen and even the "Now" which is a very over dramatic way to press home the sense of ongoing trauma and how that line is going to be affecting him.

Not that we haven't seen him very visibly affected already, behaviourally, but this seems like a clock reaches the end of its countdown episode now >.>

ANYWAY HAVE SOME UPBEAT MUSIC AND THE KOOKY STATUE GUY

Ooh dear, here's bandanna girl from the promo pics, but wearing......... would you fukkin believe it............................................. a long tan coat with large dark buttons up the front. Hilariously, I nearly mentioned when chatting about ascots yesterday morning, that ties made of ribbons were a modern equivalent you see in the same professions so maybe she is just visually connected to these sort of neck ties. Her floofy shirt and that ribbon tie has both shades of people's fem!Cas cosplay and also the sort of faux puritan modern witch look from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, so. I'm gonna assume whether they know it or not she's a witch.

Aww she is the librarian :')

I love her already because she said good morning to the old person sitting by the statue, but also because she did that and therefore is emotionally completely at odds with the show and her personal theme music means she's in for it and I already feel protective that her jaunty tune is going to get interrupted.

Why do I feel like at least 4 of the library rules are going to be broken

Aww the floofy frills go all around her shoulders. She's so upbeat! Shelving books like it is the most thrilling and wonderful thing to be doing on this sunny morning after rain :')

She looks so much like Bela when she talks... good grief... I wonder if she's related. Anyway first jump scare is her library boyfriend because she was just so caught up in shelving.

Listen I get names wrong or ignore them constantly but for some reason I do not understand them at all so it sounded like Ambraubry to me and probably isn't Amber or Aubrey and also how comes I understand all the other dialogue but not this??? To the point that in multiple past episodes despite my slow and steady approach to understanding an episode, I've completely and utterly mangled understanding or missed entirely the name introductions D:

I really am going to try and do better this episode, because it's so awkward.

"Harper, are you okay?"

Adsjfhdkjsfhskjfds

She's an angel. Wings, trenchcoat, tie, harp -

Anyway she appears to have the affections of at least two dudes, one of whom will defend her with a stapler, and we're lucky the detective pikachu trailer came out like 2 days ago because the kid in that does it but it's too late to be an homage.

Obviously Harper's knight in dark plaid is brooding, gingery, and armed with a projectile weapon. *fires staples at sweater nice!guy*

"Put the stapler down"

*Dean Winchester's it back into the safety setting*

"That guy's always been creepy" See that was hilarious but now I like sweater guy better.

"He's just overreacting because nothing ever happens here" Is this Cas defending Dean to the bitter end, even when it might literally involve watching him murder the world for his own personal angst?

Harper is very clearly setting boundaries while being a total sweetie about being sad no one goes to libraries or reading time. She's almost too frighteningly well put together. No one is this well-adjusted :P

Aaand sweater!guy loses points for nice!guying his way into assuming he has a date

dear lord the music

RIP Sweater Guy.

We hardly knew ye.

Dear lord I love Yockey characters

And Speight directing

this is truly as unholy fun as I was fearing D:

Also re: something from 14x04... nice guy characters again being portrayed in this way where the old school "geek" coding (or at least, beta male who is small and wearing a sweater and such in this very old-school way which honestly I think is fashionable again or was recently... It's a coding which comes with not just the appearance but also the attitude, and if he'd been cool and charismatic, the same costume could have done something very different). It isn't so much the problem as the attitude... Nerds are beloved on this show, but people with gross toxic attitudes such as insisting dinner is a date and not taking no for an answer on that are going to be summarily murdered round back for hubris.

I mean the title is "optimism" and he was WILDLY over-optimistic about his chance of getting with Harper, so. I mean. If that's the magnetism that pulls the monster in...

On the other side of the title card, Jack is stayin alive, and curiously pouring way too much sugar in his coffee as the title comes up - there's an immediate irony that he may be optimistic that he is doing better and on his way to hunting with all his dads and being part of the team again and also optimistic that this much sugar will not ruin the coffee... It's also a little worrying though I doubt he thinks this far ahead, in the sense that too much sugar is bad for you and like Dean being thrilled at the thought of bacon killing him, Jack risking the health damage from drinking sugar-coffee-sludge is an endgame beyond his current consumptive state.

See also: tragic or byronic heroes who are gonna self-destruct because they have mayfly lives in the age of consumption. Jack again being at genre odds with himself as part of an internal conflict...

"What's with the sugar?"

"without my powers, everything tastes different, and I can't get this how I like it"

Maybe you aren't meant to be drinking coffee if it's too bitter for you. I mean in your current state what is chugging red bull gonna do to kill you faster.

It's very Cas in 9x11, commenting on being an angel again after being human. But we know Jack's still in that state. It's interesting because we know he has a sweet tooth because literally the first thing he ever eats is nougat and now we all call him nougat child, but I feel like with powers he was probably rather less discerning because nothing would kill him and everything was digestible... Coffee tastes bitter because it's technically a bitter poison warning, telling us not to consume because caffeine bad... Er, yeah, sorry, coffee plants. But bitterness to humans is supposed to repel us on a “is this food safe?” level, and kids have trouble with bitter foods, and prefer sweetness and uncomplicated flavours because they're instinctively safer.

Jack's struggling to consume the bitter adult juice that makes the hunters run, and is dealing with it by a Sisyphean task of just adding more and more sugar to taste. It reminds me of when I was smol and wanted to drink cranberry juice because I thought it would make me more sophisticated, but it was too bitter, so I kept adding more and more water until it went from even remotely resembling juice to sort of pinkish tart water that still tasted gross and made my mouth dry and didn't even taste like juice any more. At no point did I hit the sweet spot where it was drinkable, because I wasn't even putting the right stuff in to make it taste better. In that case, a spoonful of sugar. In Jack's case... dude. A splash of milk. You don't have to drink it angsty black-like-his-soul like Dean does.

Anyway, "I can't get it how I like it" is very telling of Jack's current overall mindset and sense of place and all. Now he's human but despite having chosen his family and even declared himself human before his powers were stolen, he now has no powers and is consumptive to boot, so the balance has swung way too far over from super powerful cosmic entity to sick kid who can't keep up with the adults. No amount of sugar can change that to something he WANTS to drink when there's still a fundamentally fatal problem with his situation. Sure the dangers of being cosmic lil nephilim on everyone's radar is over, but as this show always does, it swings over to an ironic flip of the first problem, and he's too weak to help.

I suppose the optimism is that he can change this scenario by pouring sugar into it - hunting with the dads - when he needs a different drink.

Whoops already with the dramatic irony - Jack's excited and admiring of heroes Sam and AUCharlie (ChAUrlie?) and just assumes they're having the time of their lives. He's yet to solo hunt with either Sam or Dean, but he'll tick Dean off the list today. For now, what No.1 Dad gets up to (no offence to other dads, this one just tackled Lucifer for him that one time) is mythically amazing, so probably why it's the last on the list... if we'll ever see it. After all, Sam and Jack had their whole season structured around their dynamic from open to close, while actual conflict and confusion remains between his dynamics with both Cas and Dean, as much more complicated, less ideal dads.

Meanwhile: Sam is discovering that it's SUPER AWKWARD to go on a stake out with an AU version hardened by war and with like at least 5-10 years less pop culture than the Charlie you knew, loved, and got murdered by accident that one time.

Which I am totally sure is not on Yockey's mind at all now he's caught the Charlie ball that Buckleming threw recklessly out there.

Anyway. Dean not sugarcoating (haha) "he just left you here" "yeeeep." Obviously Jack's spent a LOT of time in the Bunker recovering and training (he's back in his tracksuit top at least here) but Cas declared him fit for service and they even seem to have survived that hunt together. Somehow. (No slight on their competency, but it's Cas and Jack. Come on, that was a TRIP and I'm so bitter we didn't see it :P) So now Dean can say this in a way that makes it sound like Jack's being left out and get his bitterness immediately on the surface, as he doesn't really have filters.

More bitterness you can't pour sugar over.

The fact that Jack is sitting with his back to Kevin's coffee machine is the worst thing ever.

LOL, poor Dean. Sam deputised Jack to wait for Dean to get back from his supply run to the love cabin, because he was worried about him, which means that Dean now has his own kick from Sam which I am assuming is the spite motivator to take the boy out hunting with him, that he thinks that *Jack* now has to look after *Dean* at least emotionally.

Obviously, like. Yeah. They're good for each other especially if they can bond some more. But like. Try telling Dean that while insisting it's mandatory father son bonding time out of CONCERN.

*cat falling in a bathtub and freaking out and reaching supersonic speeds out the door gif*

Nougat Son attempts a pep talk anyway because he is good and pure of heart and adores his pop pop, even if by sheer lack of interaction or early interest he technically does rank at no.3 in the charts. Listen, Dean WOULD tackle Lucifer for you if he had to, but the story wasn't framed in such a way that he COULD over Sam's narrative need to tackle Lucifer for you.

Dean rebuffs it not out of harshness to Jack but to himself - Jack repeats the line that no one blames Dean, but Dean is like "i do"... Honestly I'm curious for the Dean n Cas version of this because Cas was there in the room and he so far hasn't given Dean the pep talk. Mostly out of them not spending any time together, and I'm sure Dean has a lot of shame that Cas saw him do it, but for as much as Cas blatantly loves Dean still and all on first sight, does he have a more complicated view on it, given he was in the room and tried to argue Dean down?

Anyway Dean and Jack share a very knowing silence of mutual self-loathing and wow this is hilaaaaarious that that's their mutual relationship bedrock but yeah. Last season the most bonding they did was in 13x23 when Dean was like yeah we all get horrifying nightmares kiddo.

*consumptive noises* *Dean's eyes immediately shoot over to the kid*

"Maybe I'm allergic to sitting around doing nothing"

THERE HE IS. THERE'S MY SARCASTIC LIL NOUGAT

We do not get enough of him. I mean, like, maybe since 13x04? He had a rough childhood but now he is a Teen, with all the door slamming and threatening to kill dad no.3 that entails.

"What do you want to do?" We really are getting Dean coming towards Jack from arms' length even now, so he sits down with him and NOW and only now he stops the pretence of being a somewhat disinterested grumpy adult talking to another angst ball adult - very 13x02 last scene kinda wary understanding but without the threat of murder - to sitting at the table with Jack (who of course is in Sam's place) and reaches out to him with a very clear opening up of father son bonding time. I think obviously Jack has grown on him and he cares but he's resisted overt responsibility and their connection has been tentative and weird, and as paternal as Dean can be and has been since the start of the show, with Jack only he's been very careful about opening himself up, specifically for reasons of not wanting to get lumped with another baby to care for right when he was truly setting Sam down at last, and also for like, the whole getting Cas killed thing, and even a year and a half later, he may actually HAVE tentative paternal feelings towards Jack, but he's very much intent on keeping himself Dad no.3, and to only open himself up when it's necessary or else he's emotionally ready for it.

(The description of next episode makes me pretty sure Dean is the worst person of them all to have to discover Consumptive Nougat Son issues which is why I’m assuming he’ll figure it out)

In this case, this appears to be a mutual distraction from their angst - "HUNT" Jack says, with the kind of horrifying enthusiasm of one who still doesn't see it as nightmarish as Dean does.

"Cas is an insurance policy on those hunts" Awww Dean loves his hubby and thinks he's still the biggest BAMF ever, even when Cas has, er, a patchy record lately. Though perhaps low-level monster nonsense is still within his scope...

Anyway, after the Sam n Cas nurturing Jack conspiracy (how dare they love and care for him!!!) Dean straight-talks the kid that he's still very much on hunter probation and has been tagging along with Cas specifically for his own protection. Again, Dean never sugarcoats for Jack, but that honesty has always been a core part of their relationship, even when things were really, really, really bad. Jack still cared what Dean thought and Dean, eternally bitter from his own childhood, gave it to Jack straight, even if it would hurt. No fairytales for Jack.

Even though he has fanciful notions of sleeping beauty from his more whimsical fathers and whatever Kelly left in there :P

Why does Sam have a fidget spinner except that Charlie may be about to declare HIM the monster of the week and kill him.

I mean, dramatic irony and making him look goofy. And Sam is very very very hard to make look goofy because he had all his funny bones replaced with serious bones.

It is very embarrassing to watch him be a goof for this exact reason.

I suppose it is a way to make us start to sympathise with AUCharlie and start to get into HER headspace. We're seeing Sam from an outside perspective - Jack and Dean saying admiring things about him, while looping over to Sam to show us what CHARLIE is experiencing of this. Especially as she's spent a lot of time on the road being an independent agent, rather than sticking with the AU Peeps all the time, she's very much a strong personality of her own as a former rebel leader, and yet knowing OUR Charlie it's less the leading and more the rebellion that would have drawn her. Though she makes a great Queen of Moondoor, that's her softer, nerdy side, and she very clearly had a hunter!Charlie persona of a rebel that struck out on her own, and even when she was a civilian whistleblower/hacker from within RRE, she was acting on her own initiative against the corporate enemy. With her trip to Oz she also had a similar role as AUCharlie of being perhaps a general to a higher leader such as AUBobby in Dorothy.

The adverts on the McCook Sentinel are for TRAVEL, retirement funds, eating healthy and a local student initiative cleaning up the park - the next generation doing their bit to make the world better.

Oh dear, Winston "sweater guy" Mathers - the same name as Dave Mathers in 13x06 - was bitten all over and it was probably bath salts. Case closed.

Now the negotiations and loopholes: Sam said we all need partners now "so we can be hunting buddies!!" Oh Jack. Alex really is good at sounding innocently purely enthusiastic with total childish glee.

"A: don't call it that."

Dean snarks at Jack that HE is going to back ME up? Nah kid. Mistake - this is the key to the angst floodgates. Honestly pausing just after the "I could have killed Michael when i was strong enough!!" declaration is enough info for me to accept a smash cut to Dean and Jack kitted out and on the case, guilt trip accomplished.

It's also very familiar to Dean to have the guilt of having not done enough, to find someone else also specifically feels responsible for what Michael is off doing. And Jack's claim to guilt lies like a whole FIVE MINUTES earlier than DEAN'S claim to guilt. If Jack had killed Michael, Dean wouldn't have had him there to say yes to.

Check and mate.

Sorry, Jack is saying he was distracted and stupid so now Dean is legally obligated to take him hunting to cheer him up.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"AND NEITHER DID YOU, BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY EASIER, DOES IT?"

Okay, what is the one that comes after check mate but even more vicious because Jack's running loops around his old man.

Dean is making.... left over noodle... taco.....

Jack, knock him out, drag him to the impala, and start driving before he can eat it

He also sharply identifies hunting as the coping mechanism and how they don't just sit around in the Bunker feeling sorry for themselves, and Dean not only can relate but he is being wildly called out by someone who has no filters and also will tell him the absolute truth about it. More than Cas, these days, who carries so much of his guilt and shame secretly so as not to burden Dean, that Jack is now the refreshing voice who cuts through all their crap and shows it for what it is.

Dean is like, man, I never wanted kids. Because they do this to you.

Thank god Jack won that argument with the final emotional appeal and we shifted over to Sam and AUCharlie's adventure.

They really are not getting along.

Charlie just has a jar of sloppy goo. What did she get it from? How did she get so much in the jar when it's so runny? Why does she still have it? Why did Sam put it on the dash? How comes they have Bobby's truck?

Or do the AU Peeps have a whole collection of identical beaten up blue trucks as part of their uniform shabby hunter look?

It's super weird having Charlie pull out an old book instead of a laptop. How do you do product placement????

Dick's Red Rooster diner!

There's a massive photo of a barn at sunset behind them. Putting them out to pasture??

"Yeah, when a young guy dies they never know what to put in those things." Ouch, Dean. Spent a lifetime reading obits, he has a deep insider knowledge of the writing style of them.

The line itself in a more meta way is really sad to think about contemplating anyone having that thought to write it in the first place :( It's deep enough that it doesn't seem an obvious thing to occur to you unless you're super morbid or have first hand experience with this.

Let's just go with these writers all have to write fake obits all the time for their show(s) so they know the struggle of trying to pass off the obit as legit sounding while also contemplating what to even say about their fake people who of course they have just imagined up so don't even know anything about them to start with.

Cocks, everywhere.

(Man, I really hope there aren't people who read these notes before/instead of the episode also hi if you do, you weird wonderful people) (the diner has a heavy red rooster theme and there's metal cockerels all over the place)

(I assume they're for Dick Speight)

Oh dear, Dean is indeed going to have to be the parent who gives Jack the birds and the bees talk, because they've left their kid to learn what he can from TV while creating a perfect circle of Cas assuming Sam will do it, Sam assuming Dean will do it, Dean assuming it's not his problem but it would be hilarious if Cas did it...

So of course Dean ends up being the one on the hunt with Jack where he goes down the sudden horrifying rabbit hole from explaining courting to hearing Jack say "the sex" like he's freakin swap-meated Sam...

Worst case scenario: Cas has ALREADY given Jack the talk but Dean's now going to have to fix that damage :P

Oh teenagers. You want them to stay disturbingly 1 day old naked manchildren forever.

Of course the waitress leans in like "sometimes you just have 'the sex'"

Dean shifts uncomfortably and rotates the cock that had been staring right at his midsection away, like he'd not only clocked it earlier, thought about what it innuendoed, but now in the moment where they're thinking about all this stuff surface text, he's too uncomfortable to deal with cocks right now.

Thank god Dean is as uncomfortable as I am dealing with the concept of Jack being adult bodied and now emotionally teenaged, because he puts the conversation back on track before I actually expire of horror.

Me and Dean are mutually uncomfortable at the realisation that Jack is catching up fast with his outward age. More than halfway there, probably. Only just started bonding with the kid and now we have to let him fly the nest :P

Awww we're getting the everyone loves Harper montage of townsfolk. I love one of these things.

We're spending a LOT of time on the Dean n Jack side of things, which is making me wonder if Sam and Charlie will play catch up later, or if they really are a comic cutaway case to the real angst. That Yockey really really wanted to get our two tragic main dorks into one room alone to work through their issues of guilt and murder and stuff and Sam is too emotionally well-balanced currently to be around that.

I'm pretty sure one set of the townsfolk are two married women

Oh Harper. She's so bubbly and she keeps losing people D: Is there a Nice Guy latched onto you?

(Is it stapler!guy? Nooo I was rooting for him. Maybe he's innocent but will be the next victim... Or maybe not. He DID just see Winston trying to pick her up moments before he died)

"She's bad luck" "real shame."

Yeah, something wants her for itself >.>

Maybe Harper is the one doing the murdering and eating

Probably not.

Sam sits there picking his teeth and AUCharlie finally snaps and tries reaching out to him if it will make him a less annoying stakeout partner. She also does not come under the bracket of Sam's hunter army in the sense of being inexperienced and over grateful of the rescue - that fierce Charlie spark clearly sets her aside not to treat him like the Chief in the same way of needing to be coached and looked after and she was immediately free last season to head off with main named characters like Rowena for side adventures.

It's interesting just because WE know better that she's interesting and Charlie-like so obviously worth a main side character promotion, but in-universe in a practical way, on the surface there might not initially be anything to set her aside from why she gets special treatment except that she had a former leadership role and clearly more experience and innate feeling towards hunting and rebellion than the rest, compared with Maggie who clearly comes across as a refugee wanting to make a new life and learn the ropes of this world with skills she didn't even develop growing to adulthood in the AU.

Anyway, AUCharlie's attempts to shore Sam up end up with Sam throwing the awkwardness back on her and finally opening up the emotional heart of their story - telling her that Charlie was Dean's old wingman and that she'd been a best friend of his (see also: they'd been going to Moondoor meets off-screen)

This is also hilarious that they're using the term wingman when Cas is blatantly the "wing man" in Dean's life and yet Sam is of course focused on Charlie when it comes to dealing with the awkwards of being in a car with AUCharlie but also this skips over Cas's place in the order of best friendyness, because Cas is so much beyond that with his family status.

Anyway Sam uses "you" to refer to Charlie to AUCharlie, which is a direct comment on how they find it weird to have her around and she recoils also from the weirdness that they'd been so close to her in their universe. Their mutual discomfort with each other probably also being why she's been happy to go off on extended adventures on her own getting to grips with this world.

"I'm just saying, I'm not surprised you survived the apocalypse" "Well, I am!"

Sam and AUCharlie going back and forth on his uncomfortable admiration of the other Charlie, while AUCharlie is of course having to fill the shoes of the dear departed first Charlie, a harsh copy of her to Sam's eyes and she can feel that because of course of the weird hug when they first met, it's clear that he, like Dean, struggles to separate her - even in a way where she's AU Charlie but Bobby is "new bobby" which is a distinction which shows more awareness of Bobby as a clean replacement while Charlie is a murky zone where should she be treated like just having another Charlie dropped in their laps, or should she be seen clearly as a completely different person from the one she's replacing for them?

Oh nooo this Charlie worked for RRE but she had a love of her life unlike our singleton Charlie. Just like AUBobby had managed to have Daniel with Karen so things were clearly easier between them than our version... It seems like Mary's sacrifice to not have John somehow boosted the relationships of all the AU people except maybe poor old Kevin :P

Oh noooo what if AUCharlie goes to find this universe Cara??

Oh goodness actual details of the "angel wars" - a massive EMP that put Charlie out of a job just for starters.

"We banded together, thought, someone will save us! No one ever did." Probably not a commentary on the effectiveness of the current government/world leadership at protecting us from disaster >.>

You made AUCharlie cry, you asshole. D:

It's mass grief vs personal grief - the AU peeps lost their world, Sam and Dean saved their world at great personal loss. They took on every one of these deaths into their own personal angst machine, so no wonder it's still rolling on :P

Because in the AU everyone has a Karen or a Cara - everyone who was left lost everything and everyone who was gone.

In Sam n Dean's world, paradise world, the heroes had their own grief, but it's a mythologised version, the great mytharc of losing Mary, Jess, etc that powered the intense personal angst of the apocalypse. But that angst which was so intensely forged in Sam and Dean for taking on the entire burden of everyone's angst that made them the heroes who stopped the apocalypse.

And literally one episode later I'm back to Dean's 2x20 speech about why does it have to be us who saves the world and sacrifices happy normal lives - throw "Carmen" into the Karen, Cara collection.

"One day the water gets shut off. The next day, people are on fire."

Anyway, AUCharlie is intensely hardened to the point of "it all falls apart" because of course she's seen their world crumble.

And again, the outside view point where she's not got the perspective that Sam is the hero that saved the world - it's for us to remember that Sam is the reason this world hasn't crumbled, that hunters are the secret glue holding this world together and we can correct Charlie about their world.

Going too deep is quite uncomfortable to end up comparing 2 worlds, one with a set of destined heroes who are just about holding this one together from at least supernatural threats, and one which immediately fell to pieces when the damage came. In 13x14 AUBobby said that their world just had him, again leaving that empty space that Sam and Dean fixed. But implies the everyday heroism of the AU peeps who managed to hold it together enough to rebuild communities and organise fighting back in their spaces, even heroic-minded people like Bobby and Charlie... AUBobby reckoned he didn't have it together as much as Sam, but in our world, Bobby was a pillar who held the boys and hunting community together much of the time. And Charlie helped save the world once, yet this one felt it crumble around her.

There's something vaguely divine right of kings going on with Sam and Dean at this point, that whole Chuck getting personally involved and calling Dean the firewall between light and dark, that puts their role in a much stranger and more cosmic position. The same thing that made Billie angrily stop pursuing the Winchesters and sit back to read Dean's books in bafflement about how he doesn't die every other day of the week, but is so important on the grand scheme.

To go another step beyond that into meta realms, they have a main character narrative purpose in their own world, so embedded that in the world building of a similar universe, there's no one remotely fit for purpose to step up because no one else was narratively placed to do what they did. And that's their tragedy that they were the people singled out by the narrative, that it's character fights god, directly and on a meta level at times, yelling "why me" and getting "because you're the main character, dumbass, now get back to work" as the answer.

Sam has CONSIDERABLY less interaction across the entire show with being the more meta character, as Dean has genre savvy and was the onlooker to Sam being the one in the crosshairs, that the choice was on Lucifer's vessel to say no or yes, or crack him out of the cage or put him back in. Michael's only purpose was to kill Lucifer, and the rest was free character development space for Dean to yell about how unfair it was that he was there and Sam was being forced this way and that to fulfill his destiny. Even in some meta episodes Sam stayed within the lines or played a role while Dean was the one critiquing and going to speak to the manager, as per the metaphor of Swan Song - 4x18 is the best example of that.

So I think Sam having to confront this here and now is really interesting that he seems considerably less challenged over time to think of himself as the centre of this narrative and what causes and effects this has caused, and to see himself from outside eyes rather than being the one trapped in the middle of it. Lucifer showed him a clip of Swan Song from outside eyes, but it's just not been enough for Sam to really conceptualise himself in this way. Perhaps it'll help him appreciate more what he's done for the universe. I think 6x15 might be the only time he showed more interest than Dean, and that also was about an alternate universe and working out their effect or lack of on it. Of course it was a branch AU from OUR world, while Apocalypse AU is a branch AU from THEIR world.

"not here"

"not yet"

More sugar for Jack. Dean rewards him for finding a case with PIE. Not cake though there was a lot in the displays.

There's still cocks in the background. In the old season 10 pie vs cake thing (10x12 and 10x13 and 10x15 working HARD on it) cake was the forbidden option and pie was the sexy thing that literally was used as a yonic symbol. I'm beginning to dread that Jack's going to get the talk, if for no other reason that Dabb's pre-episode tweets of Jack as Fabio on romance novel covers, but the previous conversation sure didn't help. We're visually and show-language primed for Some Nonsense.

Oh Christ Jack starts asking about courting, and he says he's never experienced it "unless what you said about Rowena and Gabriel counts"

This dumb lump of nougat has witnessed one of the most ridiculous chapters of Dean n Cas angst and hasn't got a clue.

"No, definitely doesn't count."

He never saw them together, but he would have been there when they broke the news to Rowena I guess. Maybe had some innocent questions then too.

Maybe was advised not to touch the books on that side of the library until someone hosed them down with holy oil.

I've been avoiding watching more for like. 2-3 hours. I mean I've been dipping in and out but the mere prospect of this conversation has had me noping out for extended chunks of time to knit and stare into the void and I just realised it's 9am and I started at 5 and only some of that was typing.

My second hand embarrassment squick is barely able to cope with this concept. Now I'm IN this scene I've watched all of Rachel Maddow and nearly checked my dash before I remembered I'm avoiding watching the new episode because Dean has to give Jack the talk so I still have an unwatched episode and spoilers to avoid.

I'm ranking this episode right up there with my conceptual horror at 11x04 just for the prospect of Jack and sex in the same sentence.

Oh thank GOD "when we get back I promise I'll give you the Talk" I should have pressed play so much sooner.

(No, you're fooling yourself Lizzy. This concept doesn't just come up in the first quarter of an episode and then go away)

Oh. Oh Dear. Yeah, trying to do a trust fall with the rest of the scene just meant I walked right in to Dean proposing, I think, using this strapping young lad he has with him as bait to investigate Harper, by sending him to meet cute with her. You know, Jack, dressed in his tan coat, Harper now dressed with her red bandanna ascoting around her throat and a black shirt so she's more Dean-like.

Bless, Jack's all grown up, he's in a Destiel parallel :')

A Ploy! Father Son roleplay! Dean plays the horrible looming FBI man who is threatening a smol lady with only a book for protection to interview her aggressively... And in steps the hero, in his red shirt and still tan coat of course, primed for young love and a hunger for local history books! :P

Well at least maybe stapler!guy might be protected by this if he's not the monster :P

Dean has watched enough rom coms/read enough romance novels to know how to set this up even if Jack doesn't. Canon.

Put that nasty FBI man in his place! Bam! Jack's getting another one in over Dean in the roleplay which mirrors their starting conversation of him emotionally triple-checkmating Dean over letting him come.

It is also a position of trust to let him do the work to chat up Harper.

Gosh I am curious about the endgame of where the Jack vs Dean conflict goes. Jack was literally yelling at Cas that they might have to murder Dean to get Michael a few weeks ago. There's shit going on here and the self-aware staged conflict really makes a curious sort of play within a play aspect, where it mirrors the dynamic. Set a play to catch the conscience of the king.

In this case, Dean being overbearing and threatening to a young woman mirrors Kaia and his treatment of both versions of her, but this time someone is here to step in and stop him, when Jack has been a bystander in the past. And in 13x09 of course, when they first met Kaia, Jack was being really grabby and possessive of her, and she had to beat him off and when Sam and Dean caught up with Jack, Dean immediately said "Good!" about Kaia hitting him, because Jack really was overstepping lines and was wavering one way and the other about being a Joffrey.

Jack is again playing the hero - he's been the prince to sleeping beauty and now he's the Fabio to this love-challenged cursed town darling. This is about perceptions and surface levels - playing the games of being the hero while still working out his own place in the world and discovering that heroism can sometimes mean a murderous revenge quest against the AUncle and the high collateral damage of achieving that. Despite Jack's full on tragic narrative he's battling it hard to dabble in other more light-hearted genres, and join his dads who have all survived by travelling between genre lines and becoming action heroes instead of tragic heroes.

And why is Dean now the possessive and grabby one when he was possessed and grabbed? Or is he still the one who did the grabbing? He CAN'T be Just Michael for all this time, but what's the secret Michael has set up? We can't know it yet but there must be clues, and more we'll work out when we know and can look back on these episodes with hindsight...

But Dean also was presumably the one to come up with the ploy so is it HIS play, and we're getting the boy king (v.2) conscience caught here?

"Why don't you back off kid?"

"You back off... Old man" Jack suddenly sounds threatening enough that Dean recoils, having never been on that end of Jack's terrifying switch Alex can make to being a truly frightening presence, at least not when Jack wasn't naked and lashing out dumbly because he was literally hours old. Jack's never threatened Dean with intent because why would he.

Dean's caught off guard and makes a genuinely "uh" noise in his throat while recovering from the threat, but it impresses Harper so I suppose that's what matters.

Dean vs Jack is very much the Dean and John version of this whole thing, except Dean tried to launch himself to Mars rather than parent Jack and give him the same experience... While accidentally doing stuff like handing Jack a shovel and dismissively telling him to dig which had the exact same effect of being raised as he was. Because like it or not, by 13x02, Jack was mimicking Dean and idolised him a little all along. And now of course, with Daniel laying into Bobby and probably a bunch of other stuff I can't recall mid sentence, we're deep into confronting father figure territory, with John's ghost looming over them all.

"This isn't over" after a moment of comical blustering, the squint Dean gives Jack is almost imperceptible but there's a bit of confusion/curiosity there about just where Jack's assertiveness came from, because DEAN didn't teach him to disrespect authority like that (he totally got it from you Dean). The warning is of course nice and meta in the sense that this staged conflict probably is over, but the Dean vs Jack stuff is only just kicking off.

Jack... Smith.

Aw hon.

Still no surname then? Not Kline or Winchester or... whatever Cas's surname is.

"Dean what do you mean you don't know Jack's surname? It's the same as mine!" Dean stares blankly at Cas. Cas squints at Dean. Dean slowly, slowly, sinks to the floor and crab-walks backwards out of the room.

Anyway awwwwwww romance hero Jack! You play those genres! Find the one where you don't have to be consumptive and murderous!

Aha, Stapler Guy is probably called Miles, since Dean is getting perfect audio on this conversation from the car.

Jack is the politest nougat ever, and wants to shake hands with everyone. SOMEONE raised him right. Probably Kelly. I can't even begin to imagine where else he gets it so it must be an instinct she hammered into him from the womb.

Anyway as soon as another guy leaves to get coffee with Harper, Miles comes shooting out of the library to ask what's up, so he's looking more and more like the monster. Grabbiness as the motw!

Oooh she's taking Jack to her apartment to get him a book. Oh dear, Jack, this is what Dean did in 9x08.

Be careful, sweetie. No one's given you the Talk yet D:

"You don't even know this guy!" "Miles, stop it!"

Yeah, staples guy is definitely my no.1 suspect.

Oh.

Is staples guy about to be eaten?

Whoops, me and Dean both made the wrong call there. And I was just about to tell Dean he should have been following him in case he was the monster, which would have at least saved him.

Apparently just crushing on Harper is dangerous enough. Though Staples Guy crushed hard enough to be a threat. Which means, I would guess, that the MotW feeds on toxic masculinity.

Oh my GOD Sam is still stuck in the truck with AUCharlie.

"Who wants to be a hunter? Just a lot of tears and death." Yeah, our Charlie got into it with only personal sacrifice of broken arms in exchange for a bunch of thrill-seeking adventure. Until she died, of course. AUCharlie is what you get when Charlie has a tragic backstory involving monsters. I think she must still be hunting for the same principle Charlie had on our first meeting, of what sort of douchebag doesn't help when monsters are eating people in your very building you work... But at the same time, AUCharlie has none of the sunshine, because it was already all taken from her, and she never started hunting to save people, only to fight angels and survive. I suppose the only difference in this world is that now there's no angels to fight, she's outcast from society by default and has ended up with the same asocial vigilante skills from guerrilla warfare as hunters use day by day for their less world ends stakes job.

Sam says "you" and then corrects to "our Charlie" - I can't remember exactly when this was but I think it was 10x18, after Charlie had been through enough that she was starting to lose the shine and Robbie knew he was writing a Charlie who was about to be chewed up and devoured by the story. By Sam's man pain in the story.

This is a baton that Yockey is having to take very seriously and carefully, because of course AUCharlie is so different but the meta perspective on bringing her back is very much about replacement and loss of a fave and facing what the story did to Charlie and for what stakes, vs what was she brought back for and can just shoving a new different Charlie into the story actually make up for doing what they did to her.

"So glad this is my last case" aw no she's retiring to the beach. Has she just been working with them while she gets enough resources to start over?

She's going "away" - from monsters and people. Go live on a mountaintop or something. Again, this is more about the trauma she's been through and how she copes, and what she needs to do to settle herself.

(PS: I will weep openly if the last shot of this is Charlie outside a cupcake shop)

I don't think this means she's necessarily out of the story or that through this van conversation bottle episode, Sam might not convince her to at least just take a break like Mobby are doing, but she's clearly there in the collection with them and Dean of people who have been so badly hurt that they need to retreat from the hunting frontlines. Dean NEEDED to watch 2 weeks worth of horror movies and take it easy. He's not exactly describing himself as really ready for action now either. Charlie may end up a mirror that's a fair bit darker, because while AUBobby is full of grief and self-destruction, it's open and explosive, while she's cold and retreating and surrounded by people who see the wrong person when they look at her - the bubbly fun Charlie we used to know. In the same way, if Dean has changed, people look at him and see the Dean THEY used to know and expect things of him he's sometimes not ready to offer. He made a big step in letting Sam take charge of the operation, in the sense of acknowledging himself under Sam's direction.

It's interesting now that both AUBobby and Charlie lost romantic loved ones, when we saw Dean change so dramatically in season 13 without Cas and that being the beginning of Sam's tentative need to take control and start to be right about his hunches like nurturing Jack. The swap in the roles and Sam struggling to understand Dean, and in 13x05 - the Yockey episode - failing so desperately to help Dean on his chosen cheer up hunt compared to acing it the same time next year.

LOL Harper's house has "AMOUR" and a huge love heart on the wall. This poor romantic sap. I'm so sorry a monster is eating all your prospective boyfriends.

She has stuffed toys on her bed and so many shelves of books. I love her. She's the best. Protect her, please, Jack.

His "??" over the "moves" also is a great way to make her way more the flustered one, because Jack could be way more awkward with inexperience except he's literally transcended it, as Cas often does, back out the other side of obliviousness :')

He leaps into action to prepare to test her for monstery things :') He's been trained well!!

On the other hand it does look like he now has REALLLLLLLY sweaty hands after covering them in holy water.

Oh christ, Jack, this is why we don't do Christo any more. Also. You shouldn't be aggravating your cough. You could really set yourself off.

"I'm just nervous"

Harper goes through the correct range of emotions for how adorable Jack is.

Charlie's "I got something" is layered over Jack being invited to sit with her - both of them just got a break on the case, though for Jack it is being prey for the boyfriend eater, and Charlie has read enough books.

Muscas look horrifying. I love the 17th century illustration of one.

Awww AUCharlie calling him a nerd. Those awful flashes of her being the Charlie they once knew.

LOLLLLL the Musca has a "bad egg" who FAILS TO FIND A MATE and goes bad, and starts killing people to nest. So we're really roasting beta males who fall into the woe is me victimisation trap of incels and would rather kill people (literally, unfortunately, in some cases) than address their own issues, get help, and find some peace and probably, honestly, a girlfriend as soon as they stop behaving like that and learn to see women as people, not mating-prey >.>

Why do I feel like whatever has latched onto Harper is going to have a suspiciously similar motivation where it's picking off men in order to leave her single...

Not that I have the best judgement on her case, but it's B L A T A N T L Y about courting.

And these guys are courting her - lots of innocent courtly gestures like dinner dates, protecting her nobly with a stapler, fighting off the nasty FBI man... She's their damsel.

"Our perp might just be a giant fly with low self-esteem" Don't sugar coat it Sam.

Is this episode "wow look at this hetero bullshit by Steve Yockey"

AHAHAH THE GIANT FLY IS MANSPREADING AT THE BUS SHELTER

It also has ribbons at the front of its cloak. The design is both modern with the suit and boots, but with enough of that old 17th century twist to give it a nice spooky old fashioned uncanniness. it's not of this time, place, world, etc...

Awww Harper has a halo with the lamp!

Oh Jack no, I told you not to aggravate the cough.

Vance... probable monster. (I say that a lot but we’re past the elimination round)

She didn't want to leave town... we could see the world in books!

You are also adorable and not quite of this town or modern world. Her "sappiness" does make her a weirdly good match for Jack, though, just because of the pure-heartedness they exude.

Jack can not IMAGINE someone leaving Harper behind.

"That was the beginning of my bad luck" Fancy that.

Also you still keep a photo of your ex in your apartment.

That’s weird, hon.

Oh dear, now Jack's opening up. "I try to stay optimistic." "Me too."

Awww sweetie. for all the bad that's happened he keeps on powering through, because sometimes that can be powered by optimism for a happy ending

Unfortunately, we're in irony town where the grimmer you are about your fate the more chance you have of surviving just to spite that. And, you know, vice versa, it gives you consumption just to make it harder... like, how much can we throw at this kid before he stops?

"Do you believe in love in first sight?" "Harper..... do you mind if I use your bathroom?"

Unlike 9x08, Jack is rather less distracted by being adorably hit on by the sweetest romantic. Time to flee.

Dean has been standing awkwardly at the corpse this entire time.

The bathroom has dragonflies all over it which I assume are interesting symbolically in a way which relates to her love struggles. Also the other side of the story's bug struggles.

"Harper is not a monster. And i'm 99% sure she's in love with me."

"She was looking at me with these googly eyes"

This is like, warning for next time Cas and Dean are in the same room because you SAW them last time

Next time, you will be prepared.

Dean is convinced she couldn't be in love with him so instantly. What do YOU know about love, Dean?

"But if she is I need to know everything about sex. Go:"

Kid, there isn't time in the world to tell you everything Dean knows about sex. Also, are you really going to pull a Dean and hook up despite all the deaths in town? ALSO dude, courting. Court her first. You know NOTHING about this or what you're feeling.

Teenagers are the worst.

Ooops Dean just stood around talking and now he's been eaten.

Guess it's time for Jack to SAVE HIM

"You're fine. I'm fine." No you aren't Jack, stop kidding yourself.

Oh good, she's scaling back to saying they should get coffee.

This is sensible and take notes, Jack, but also disregard this offer of a date entirely and go save your dad, you're not in a romance novel.

"I... don't know" this was Jack's stock response when he was younger to encountering new things about himself and deep philosophical questions which he just had not had time to ponder but in the world he had been thrust into, he was being asked to immediately have an opinion on.

I think we ought to file courting and sex under those headings for now :P He will figure it out but not at this breakneck speed, no matter how fast he grew up.

Bam, Dean bursts in on them - is there remotely time for him to have done this fast enough? Is this really Dean? Are we supposed to be doubting who Dean is?

Vance has literally come back from the dead to bother her about having new boyfriends. Great.

Oh, okay, this looks pretty cut and dry that it's a zombie now he's in the room :P

he looks like Archie Andrews. Is this the crossover we've been waiting for?

"Archie! Hey!"

oops.

*puts another penny in the "quoted Dean before he said the line" jar*

I can't believe Dean watches Riverdale.

I mean, yeah he grew up reading the comics, but you know it's on his netflix queue.

Stop smashing up Harper's bookshelves! Dean's all "let's dance," still looking waaay too excited to get to wrestle monsters to take his mind off of all his angst.

Why are Sam and Charlie still sitting in the truck instead of following their weirdo fly?

"You can't just quit and go live on a mountain somewhere"

Somehow when he sits in cars with female characters in Yockey episodes he ends up saying a lot of things like this. Bless your heart, you just described my whole life.

"People need people." "We're social animals" Sam is finally starting to realise that maaaybe that bit in 8x10 where he and Dean removed everyone they cared about from their lives and sat gloomily in silence anger-eating chilli in a dank cabin in the backwoods was PERHAPS not the best way to be people.

He's really starting to like having a squad around him... Maybe this is awakening a bit of Sam that he never had except in college when he got to have people around him without too much fear about having to leave them behind because he was so determined to stick to his new life there.

Sam pulls that not only he tried and failed to quit hunting, but our Charlie did too.

"She ain't me!" but you are still cut from the same cloth whether you like it or not.

"It's my life, Sam! not hers and not yours" basically no one else can tell me whether I should be here or not, and it's on my terms if i am or not. Which is very healthy but kind of sad about the commentary on having a Charlie on the show if she's so insistent to escape hunting. Because it killed our Charlie so we should want AUCharlie to be safe. But at the same time, bringing her back then sending her off to a mountain... it's a cold comfort that a version of her survived, that they saw her face again before she left in slightly better terms. But what does it bring to the show to have had her back but then to let her go again?

And, on a character level, can Boss Sam wrangle a great asset and potential amazing friend to stay and work with them and be a key part of his hunter squad, or will he have to let her go and fail to achieve some networking people skills.

They have a funny friend potential moment as sam says we don't want to tackle him in case it’s a guy into weird fashion and she's all, don't we?

This hesitation was enough for that poor guy to get grabbed under cover of the bus.

Though perhaps the hesitation was also timed to stop Sam and AUCharlie getting mowed down by a bus and very disappointingly ending both their careers.

Harper stops and demands to know what's happening. Jack throws aside the book that was the ruse, and holds out his hand for trust with open honesty now and she takes it, and he continues to pull her away to protect her. Awwwww.

Has Dean been wrestling in her apartment since it got dark?

How has no one called the cops.

Vance gets a spidey sense tingle that someone is holding Harper's hand, and marches out of the apartment, to Dean's disappointment that he didn't get to smash a chair over his head. Because that was a totally normal amount of enthusiasm for a fight.

Jack is clever, Harper is snarky... aw :P

I can't believe Sam and Charlie can walk after sitting all day.

"Brass nail dipped in sugar water" lol flies are drawn to sugar. More flies with honey than vinegar.

If you creatively mock that up using American beverages I will be horrified that corn syrup counts as sugar. Charlie literally just reminded us of Dick Roman taking advantage of your industry's corn fetish

BUGS

Those who don't learn from history etc

I don't think that's enough fly papers

Sam just sniffed a chloroform rag. Er.

Oh that is disgusting. Why weren't you wearing the orange jacket so we could ritually burn it.

Oooh gross. (pt.2 - Yockey was only warming us up with bug juice)

Harper let the zombie in and now she's kissing him? She better be mind controlled or this is a whole level of weird Jack should not have had to deal with because no one should start the Talk at necrophilia and work backwards from there D:

Oh NO this is going to be the Talk Dean has to give Jack, and to top it off they have a jealous boyfriend stalking roleplay kink, AND she threw in a bunch of other things for Jack to ask questions about >.>

Told you she was a witch. It was the Sabrina-like collar that gave it away.

Who knew my dorkiest joke about my suspicions was the most accurate.

She's even wearing a red jacket, just like Sabrina has her signature red coats.

This is a CW cross-promotion episode.

"It's first love, Jack. The best kind. Without baggage or compromise. I mean. I did have to kill him to keep him here after college..."

She's a Mary mirror. This is Mary and young!John. Oh god. Azazel's deal is her raising the dead, and sharing a gross kiss to boot... And Harper is from a long line of necromancers and Mary was from a long line of hunters, the last of them...

Of course, Mary has all that baggage from her first love but has moved on and is now having a happy vacation with Bobby but I don't think it's symbolically unimportant that that was literally last episode and now we're seeing first loves with an undead boyfriend, that Harper couldn't let slip out of her hands so she did the most toxic thing to bring him back. It's very much like the Plum sisters being the zombie-raising parallels to Sam and Dean and their need to bring Mary back come what may - which of course after Jack's vision in 13x09 made Dean threaten Kaia in the first place

Can't spell Necromancer without "Romance"

I love the hiding from the zombie chase going on here. Vance is dumb as a box of rocks and we’re getting lots of new gifs of Jack being “sneaky”

Ahaha she has a romance novel called "Lances and Laces" (i think?)

Awww Jack is doing a Ruse again, playing dumb for her. "I thought we fell in love at first sight!"

Awwwwww he's proposing to her. The allure of un-undead love.

"But I tried to kill you!" "Every relationship has its stuff, right?"

pffffffffffffffft

You aren't officially in love on this show UNTIL you try and kill each other

Ow, Jack. That's going to shake some bloody phlegm loose.

FATHER SON TEAMWORK SAVES THE DAY

Lol, Vance got ditched as soon as it was awkward to have a zombie boyfriend

Sam is seriously using the fly as a parallel to Charlie being a loner. I wonder what you could put in front of him that he WOULDN'T be able to twist into a moral. He really is the camp leader :P

Awww the gross bug thing's people came for it

Sam I can not hear a word of your motivating speech over these terrifying things and their nightmare aesthetic taking home one of their own who strayed from the swarm to swooping music.

AUCharlie relents enough to have a door open... Yeah, she did also get knocked out when trying to hunt on her own and though she wanted to retire, well...

I can't believe Yockey metaphorically compared the hunter community to the fly swarm. Like, Charlie was all blurr the metaphor has holes but they had no idea the bugs looked after their own like that D: Dramatic irony again - this time against Charlie to make her more right than she knew that she has people who would care for her.

Oh NO, Jack has left an impression on Harper... Oh dear oh dear oh dear. You can NOT have a necromancer long distance girlfriend.

Even though she's in a different diner there's still a cock in the window.

"I'm sorry I have to kill you!" heee she's so cute. In a very twisted way, I still like her even though the necromancy thing is gross, and Jack should steer WAY clear.

But awwwwwwwww.

"And that's love."

Dean saying it can get crazier than that... Dude, just give him the talk, I'll turn off the last 2 minutes of the episode. You clearly need to. Or at the very least start the ball rolling on suggesting Sam do it, Sam asks Cas if he’d want to, Cas comes and asks you for help to do it and you end up being the one to try after all.

I LOVE Jack hanging with Dean, with his too-sweet coffee, angling to make Dean let him come on hunts more because he was right.

I think Dean just pointed out neither of them are ready to be hunters if they can't cope with the mistakes they make without feeling super guilty, since they had the guilt Olympics at the beginning.

Oh Jack, no.

OH NO HIS NOSE IS BLEEDING

Down he goes!

This is what happens when you meddle in genres you don't belong.

Tragedy comes back and kicks you in the face.

Dean on his knees by Jack yelling his name: same. D:

#14x06 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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tragedybefalls · 6 years

Note

'five times kissed' (you... you said i could send it again for mainverse... *appears* YO)

1. there’s no time for affection in purgatory savefrantically clutched hands pulling the other along, except arms aroundshoulders and knees brushing as they rest, except for rushed attempts at keeping the other alive.and when dean steps through the rift and cas doesn’t, dean doesn’t think therewill be time again. that it’s over and he failed. but then cas is there, he’s safe, he’s alive, and maybesomething is off with the angel, but the moment sam is out of the room, dean’spulling cas to him in relief, his kiss apologetic, for letting him stay or forleaving him or whatever really happened. all the times he wanted to kiss theangel while they were fighting for their lives manifest in that moment, andonly sam’s return separates them.

2. the first time they kiss after the incident isprobably more awkward than their first was all those years ago. forgivenesspasses between them, for each other, for themselves, for letting it go on aslong as it has. there’s hesitation, touch uncertain, a cautious awareness ofwhere boundaries are and staying far, maybe too far, from them. it’s checkingthat things are okay between them, asking for permission to stop the self-hatred, wondering if this will bethe first on a road to recovery or the last on a path of mistakes. shakingfingers settle as they intertwine and maybe it doesn’t fix things, but itstarts to.

3. when cas comes back from the dead, dean doesn’tleave his side. refuses to go with sam to look for solutions to getting theirmother back, refuses to help track down lucifer, refuses to deal with anythingif it could put cas in harm’s way again. and all the anxious energy – it rubsoff on an irritated cas, and they collide messily, clinging to each other in desperate fearthat maybe he’s still in the empty, or maybe he’s hallucinating, or maybe thisis all a dream and one of them will wake up and the other will be gone. there’sno patience, no teasing, only a trail of clothes that leads to a locked doorwhere words meaning nothing and touch is everything. where lips claimeverything they can find and a morning after where a hunter relaxes and anangel is allowed to leave the bunker alone.

4. it takes dean awhile to recover from michaelbeing kicked out. he has blank spots in his memory, suffers nightmares for weeks. sometimes he’llfind himself staring at his hands as if he expects them to do something withouthis control. flexing fingers, startling when someone asks if he’s okay, hidingthat things inside him feel wrong. or rather, hiding that he feels wrongbecause there’s nothing inside any more. the hunter doesn’t trust himself toleave the bunker because if he drops a glass when he forgets he’s holding it,what will he do with a gun? and everyone’s patient with him, watches himcarefully so that he doesn’t do something that could hurt him, but he onlytells cas that he’s scared this won’t go away. and even if cas isn’t surehimself, he kisses dean’s forehead and promises it will.

5. he’s not sure if it’s the traces of cas’ graceinside him that has him feeling more peaceful than he has – in his entire life,but something in him is calm now. and he worries, he does, about what mighthappen to cas if heaven dies out permanently, but the remaining angels keep tothemselves, keep heaven locked, and if something is going to happen, it won’tfor awhile. and he likes that now, he can feel where the angel is, can pick upon traces of what the angel is feeling. where it might’ve before beenstrange, been uncomfortable to always been connected, now – now he feels thisis the closest to happy he’s going to get. and underneath the stars, where hefirst told cas what he felt, has become home to him. and when the angel joins,the hunter’s kiss is gentle, a greeting as much a gesture of affection, andwith only the night sky as witness, says it again.

#m;dean #v;i got chains and you got wings #s;you're my mortal flaw and i'm your fatal sin #waywardfeathered #delivered

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hamburgergod · 7 years

Text

*posts Halloween fic in July*

the installment of orange and grapefruit verse you’ve all been waiting for! where Cas -- a human-harpy hybrid -- finds out about Halloween, midterms happen, and Dean helps Cas celebrate Halloween to his best abilities. ~3.5k

[AO3]

They’re just about done with their groceries, and Dean is making sure they got everything they need, when Cas decides to stop in front of a mechanical ghoul doll that says step here. One of those things people put on their front lawns for Halloween.

Cas reads the sign, and politely steps onto where it tells him to. The ghoul shrills ominously.

Dean stops him from almost ripping the ghoul’s head off.

“That was entirely unnecessary,” Cas says with a scowl, after Dean calms him down. Dean only doesn’t laugh because Cas is already so angry; he figures if he can see Cas’s wings right now, they’d be all puffed up. “What’s the point of that thing?”

“It’s for Halloween,” he gestures towards the HALLOWEEN section behind them. Cas stares back blankly. “Gonna go on a limb here and assume you don’t know what Halloween is.”

“I know about it. Sort of.” They move up the check-out line. “It’s when the boundaries between realms thin, and humans wear masks to blend in and prevent being killed.”

“Uh, I guess.”

“I’m not really sure where all the chocolate comes into play.”

Dean starts loading up their stuff onto the conveyor belt. Cas helps. “People don’t dress up for that purpose so much anymore, and the chocolate thing—wait,” Dean lowers his voice, “do the gaps thin during Halloween? Are there alternate realms? Is that actually a thing?”

Cas shrugs. “I don’t know,” he adds helpfully.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

They pay for their stuff, and head back to the bus stop. “So you never did Halloween before.”

“What does ‘doing Halloween’ involve, exactly?”

Dean thinks about all those times mom took him and Sam out for trick-or-treating, going to haunted houses, handing candy out on nights he didn’t feel like going out, carving pumpkins, et cetera. He tells him about the time Sam tripped over his cape when he went as king Arthur one year. “He decided to go as a street magician the year after, and dumbass did the exact same thing with his cape. Don’t think he’s worn one with a cape since.”

Their bus comes then, and they lug their groceries to their seats. “So, yeah,” Dean continues. “It’s mostly going around in costume getting chocolate from your neighbours and carving out pumpkins when you’re a kid.”

Cas thinks this over. “And when you’re not a child?”

“You can hand chocolate out, or it’s mostly going around in costume getting drunk.”

“Hmm.”

When they go to the store together the next week, Dean brings a pack of jack-o-lantern shaped sugar cookies to Cas’s attention.

“I know about these,” Cas replies.

“Yeah?” Dean pops it into their cart, and they move on from the bakery section.

“A man named Jack trapped Satan up on a tree and refused to let him down until he promised to never take his soul—”

“Not today, Satan,” Dean mutters.

“—and Jack won. So when he died and was refused by heaven for his sinful life, Satan gave him a coal burning with hellfire, and Jack carved out a turnip to keep it lit. He wanders with his lantern ever since.”

“Huh. Cool. I think I heard that somewhere. Never knew the details before, though.” Dean eyes the corn, picks one up, and stares at the sign. Hmm, five for one. He beckons Cas towards him. “Let’s get ten of these.”

After making sure Cas checks the corn before he shucks it for the taking, and after halfway through shucking his third corn, Dean puts a finger to it. “Have you been looking stuff up on Halloween?”

“Mostly just Wikipedia,” Cas admits. He puts a feeble-looking corn in the bag, and Dean internally winces. Oh well, he’ll learn one day. “It was still interesting to read about. Did you know that some think trick-or-treating originates from the practice of giving out soul cakes for children and the poor during Halloween and Christmas?”

It’s almost like he’s been waiting to be asked, since Cas goes on and on about all these things about Halloween during their entire way back home, and over dinner. They eat the jack-o-lantern shaped cookies for dessert, and Cas’s smile matches the one on the cookie he holds. He supposes it’ll technically be Cas’s first proper Halloween, so it’d be a shame if Dean’s not a cool roommate who doesn’t care about whether Cas spends his first proper Halloween in a proper Halloween way or not.

Lucky for Cas, Dean is the coolest roommate.

He manages to find the time to stop by the dollar store and scout for deco. None of the blatantly corny looking shit, but still authentic enough that Dean’s willing to put it in their house. It’s not much; just some Halloween stickers that goes on the windows, those pumpkin necklaces that light up he figures they can hang on things, spider webs and little plastic spiders, and one bigger spider doll.

Dean’s wondering if he should start on decorating or if he should wait for Cas, when Cas solves his little conundrum by coming back just then to find Dean sitting in the living room, staring at a set of stickers.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean grins up as Cas takes in the scene.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas slides his bag off. “What is this?”

“Halloween’s close, so I figured, why not?”

Dean swears that Cas beams, and they get started right away. Cas is scarily efficient at it, somehow already knowing exactly where he wants most of the stuff. The lights go on top of the TV, they try to stick the spider webs on the corners of the wall with tape and fail spectacularly so it goes anywhere they can drape them on their furniture, and the spider doll goes on the top of the fridge.

“So it can look down on its prey,” Cas explains.

“And we’re the prey?”

“We’re the prey,” Cas nods seriously.

They do argue a little over the stickers, mainly in that Cas can’t decide on where to put them on.

“Cas, anywhere on the windows is fine,” Dean says for the hundredth time.

“Dean, you don’t understand.” Cas clutches at the sheet of stickers. “This is a huge responsibility.”

The stickers—a bat, a jack-o-lantern, and a ghost—end up on the corner of their living room window by the balcony door.

“Lookin’ good,” Dean grins, and Cas smiles with him.

“Thank you, Dean.”

It’s weird; every time Dean walks into the living room, he remembers the decorations and admires it for few seconds. It’s not like there’s much of it, and it’s not really that big of a deal, but he’s never done stuff like this with his roommates last year.

Sort of weird how Dean knew for sure that his gesture wouldn’t have gone unappreciated, that they’ll always be welcomed. Cas isn’t even wholly human, but how many people in his life can he say that about?

Yeah. Sort of weird.

Dean’s not able to find the time to set aside to think over a proper, home-made costume this year despite Halloween fast approaching, bombarded with midterms and projects right beforehand (and isn’t that a shame, and he puts aside his real pure panic over growing up real fast). But it’s cool, since he’s going as a generic cowboy, and cowboys are always cool no matter how generic it is.

Halloween is actually on a Saturday this year, which means midterms until the Friday if profs are nice, and midterms on the following Monday if profs are dicks. Thankfully, the former is the case for everyone he knows (except himself, who has a midterm on Saturday, which is bullshit, and molecular bio is bullshit), which means everyone’s free to party on Halloween.

Dean’s counting on all of these factors when he asks Cas as casually as he can possibly manage, “Hey, so if you don’t have any plans, you wanna come to Charlie’s Halloween party Saturday night?”

It’s good that he waited until after Cas is done pouring hot water into his mug, because he’s staring at him like Dean just asked him to marry him.

“You’re okay with that?” Cas asks, and it’s Dean’s turn to blink.

“I mean, I wouldn’t have asked you if I wasn’t,” Dean jokes, but Cas is putting the kettle down with a serious frown on his face, and Dean feels a heart-to-heart talk coming. Did he do something wrong?

“Uh.” Well, Dean didn’t prepare for this. He mostly expected Cas to be over the moon about getting to do something Halloween-y again. “You can say no if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not human, Dean,” Cas says slowly, like Dean hasn’t known that for the past whole month already. “Your close friends will be there.”

“Yeah,” Dean replies, still kinda clueless about where this is going. “So?”

“So.” Cas hesitates, and shrugs. “It wouldn’t be right.”

Dean blinks rapidly, trying to process this new info, but mostly it’s making the dial-up sound while a lot of question marks fill up his brain. He gives up. “What are you talking about? Is this a harpy thing? Am I stepping boundaries here?”

“No. Well—yes. Mainly in that I’m not completely human.” Cas’s shoulders slump. “This party is important to you. Why would I…”

“Dude, Cas,” Dean says, “it’s just a small party. It’s going to be me and few buddies, and we’ll grab some pizza, watch a cheesy old movie, that sort of deal.” Cas still doesn’t look at him, which isn’t the best sign, and, well, this sort of hesitation is new. “Cas?”

“I’ve never been to a party,” Cas mumbles. “I never had the occasion, and I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“That’s fine!” Dean laughs, though he doesn’t mean to sound rude about it. Cas, however, glares. “Cas, of course you don’t know jack shit about how humans do things. I don’t know how harpies party, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try new things.”

“I don’t really know how harpies party either,” Cas helpfully points out. “Except maybe the occasional family gatherings.”

“Cas. Buddy. Pal.” Dean pats him on the shoulder. “That is exactly why you gotta come! C’mon, what d’you say, huh?”

Cas stares at him, and he huffs at his face (rude). The corner of his lips quirk up slightly. “Alright.”

Dean grins. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Cas replies. “But I don’t have a costume, and I don’t think we have time to find something for me.”

“You can borrow mine,” he says quickly. “I was going to use one of Charlie’s, anyway.” Dean glances at the clock. It’s eight at night, and they still got few hours before some of the costume stores and thrift stores around town to close. Dean does have a midterm tomorrow and he’d be in a bit of a tight spot, but he might just have enough time management skills in him yet to work with whatever time he has left after costume shopping. “Unless you want to try to find something for yourself…?”

“No, that’s fine. We both have a midterm tomorrow, so I’d rather not.” Cas smiles. “You were going as the cowman, right?”

“Cowboy,” Dean corrects, and thumps him on the shoulder few times. “Dude, I’m stoked! I can’t wait ‘til you meet everyone.”

“Me too.” Cas beams, standing there with his cup of coffee in hand, his hair still ruffled from unconsciously running his hands through it while he looked over his notes. Dean wants to reach over and flick at the strands that are standing up. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dean nudges. “Study hard, so we can party hard, alright?”

Cas nods, and Dean watches him retreat back into his room. He makes himself a cup of hot chocolate with a little bit of the instant coffee mix they have, and sit back down in front of his desk himself.

Maybe now he’ll be able to focus on studying.

Dean’s midterms come and go, and he finds out just how much he hates molecular bio all over again, but he’s quick to put that behind him now that he’s free for the weekend.

He has a slight bounce to his steps on his way back, no worries for tomorrow and nothing to do tonight except to hang out with good company and chill. Needless to say that he’s wholly unprepared for the sight that greets him when he steps into his apartment.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas turns around casually. His wings are poking out from underneath the dark brown trench coat, relaxed as Cas stretches his arms to the side. “What do you think?”

What does he think. What does Dean Winchester, trademark Bisexual, think of Cas in jeans with a decorative belt buckle and a (toy) gun strapped to the side, a black vest accessorized with a fake pocket watch, with a red scarf tied around his neck and a dark brown cowboy hat sitting just above his dark brows.

“You look good,” he manages. Should’ve just put Cas in a potato sack instead of, whatever, is what he wants to say. “Dude, damn. I’m impressed.” Maybe too far. “Glad that you’re fit. It. It fits you. Glad that it fits you.”

Cas smiles, which is just about the hardest thing for Dean to endure right now. “I won’t have these out, of course,” he says, his wings fluttering a little. “But this is nice.”

Dean laughs. This was a mistake. “The trench coat is a look I never thought would be for you, but hey, maybe next year, you should be Constantine,” he says, and regrets it immediately. He, Dean Winchester, trademark Bisexual, does not have the strength to see Cas in a Constantine outfit.

Cas cocks his head to the side at the mention of someone he’s never heard of before, and Dean leaves him to looking up who Constantine is while he himself gets ready for the party. He’s excited to find that the knight costume is slightly tighter around his shoulders compared to when they ran the Moondoor campaign over the summer. When he steps out of his room, Cas grins.

“Ready for a taste of Halloween?” Dean smiles, and Cas nods. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Cas meets Charlie, who’s dressed as a Ravenclaw (“Ravenclaw? You are not a Ravenclaw.” “Don’t judge a girl by her house, Dean.”) and has had a lot to say to Dean in private on his choice of costume for Cas (“I just lent him mine, Charlie. Nothing else to it.” “It’d be more convincing if it came from someone who didn’t have the biggest cowboy fetish I’ve ever met.”).

Cas also meets the rest of the nerd club (Jo as a kraken, Ash as goblin king, Victor as Captain America, Jesse as Falcon, and Cesar as Hawkeye), who collectively decide to take turns to bring up one embarrassing thing Dean did during LARPing per person, those sick fuckers. Dean hates that every time there’s someone willing to listen in their nearest vicinity they bring up that one time he fell face-first straight into a puddle, but Cas, surrounded by his friends, steals a glance at Dean and smiles, and the story becomes a hundred times more embarrassing, but, well, it’s alright.

Jesse lets Cas poke at his wings and lift it here and there, letting him inspect it with a smile, and he listens as Cesar explains about the Marvel universe. Cas also listens to Jesse bicker with Victor about how they’re both technically Sam Wilson and how they should’ve discussed this beforehand. Dean can tell that Cas doesn’t understand, and that he’ll have a million questions after this party.

They play a game of Catan where they don’t miraculously kill each other after, probably because Cas wins. Everybody else calls it a beginner’s luck, but Dean knows better. So doe Charlie apparently, because she tries to scout him into playing for the next time they start a new DnD campaign.

“That sounds fun,” Cas says, glancing at Dean. “Will you be there?”

Dean ignores everyone else’s knowing looks and nods at Cas, because they’re dumb and they don’t know that Cas isn’t some socially inept roommate who’s overly attached to Dean but an actually different species altogether, and that he’s still somewhat hesitant when it comes to joining the rest of humanity, so he needs at least one human he knows to be there for emotional support. Understandably.

After, they all cram into Charlie’s two couches with a box of pizza and a bowl of chocolate bars in front of them, and argue on whether to watch The Haunting or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Dean wins with the latter by using the Cas-has-never-watched-it-and-it’s-a-classic-Halloween-movie-so-it’d-be-a-tragedy-if-he-didn’t card.

“It’s more fun at a showing with more people,” Dean says as Charlie hands out the bells, “but these kids are all nerds so you’re probably okay.”

Dean gets a shower of popcorn for that, which is totally unfair, because they all prove his points by throwing rice like confetti and yelling at the top of their lungs on their cues. Cas is bewildered, but he shakes his bell and does the Time Dance even though he has no idea what the hell he’s doing or why, and he laughs while they hop around in Charlie’s living room, and throwing toast and toilet paper in the air. Ash knocks over the pizza box, and he’s banned from standing on the table after that.

After that’s the clean-up, and then back home. Charlie seriously invites Cas to come to their nerd club the next time he’s around, and he thanks her for the invite. Dean watches the exchange as Charlie hugs Cas, and he tears up a little, but that’s really dumb so he’s going to pretend it didn’t happen.

“So,” Dean prompts on their way back, both of them stuffed full of pizza and popcorn and chocolate, “how was it? Your first human party?”

Cas forgot his cowboy hat back at Charlie’s place, and he’s loosened the red scarf around his neck a long time ago. He has it tied onto his belt where he rests one of his hand as they walk back. “It was… enjoyable,” he replies with a nod.

“Ah, don’t be like that. You had so much fun.”

Cas grins. “I did. They all care greatly about you.”

“What?” Dean laughs. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“They tried to make me feel welcome, for you.”

“I guess. They wouldn’t have done that if you were a dick, though.”

Cas laughs, ducking his head a little as the sound echoing low into the night sky. “I guess.”

“Wait, hold on.” There’s a grain of rice stuck on Cas’s hair. “You’ve got a—”

They stop in the middle of the street, and Dean holds his shoulder steadily while he aims for the white grain. Cas’s eyes go together as he looks up at Dean’s hand on his head, and Dean makes the mistake of looking down at Cas while he’s holding him by his shoulder.

There weren’t any alcohol at Charlie’s, but Dean feels like he’s drunk on something, the way his entire body feels light and somehow removed from the rest of the world. It’s a physical feeling, too, a tingle in his chest as he’s suddenly too aware of how empty the rest of the street is, and how easy it would be to just lean over right now and give Cas a kiss.

It’s a fleeting thought, and then it’s gone, as if it hadn’t existed at all. His heart beats steadily as Dean gets out the rest of the grains of rice that was hiding in Cas’s hair. “Did they all pelt their rice at you or something? Why d’you have so much in here?”

Cas chuckles quietly, vibrating with joy as rice falls out of his hair. It’s a sight, alright, and damn does it feel good to make someone happy like this.

“So what was this Marvel Cesar was talking about?” Cas asks.

“Marvel, pff. Wait ‘til you hear about Batman and the rest of DC, dude…”

They walk the rest of the way back, mostly with Dean filling Cas in on everything he knows about Marvel and DC. It’s almost two by the time they’re home, and Halloween is officially over as they retire to their rooms. Dean is changing into his pajamas trying not to think too much about how he did on his midterms when there’s a knock on the door.

Cas pokes out from behind the door, changed out of the costume he’s now holding in his hands. “I just wanted to return this, and thank you for inviting me along,” he says. “So, thank you.”

“Hey, no problem. I had fun.” Dean gives him a good tap on the shoulder. “Besides, that’s what friends are for, right?”

Cas smiles with a nod. “Good night, Dean.”

“Night, Cas.”

Dean stares at the door as it clicks shut. He’s gotten few texts in the group chat on how he should bring Cas for the next club event. He rolls over in his bed.

A good Halloween overall.

#orange and grapefruit verse #my writing #destiel #au #spn #ficlet #*dusts off this old relic and finishes it after one encouraging comment*#this is from last year haha but it's okay #halloween is eternal in our hearts

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'Supernatural' keeps pushing emotional boundaries with The Raid

Maybe it’s something about being in Season 12, but Supernatural has been pretty fearless this season about being controversial. Last week’s episode, written by Robert Berens, continued this season’s tradition of pushing boundaries and putting fans through a roller coaster of emotions. All in an episode that was well written and paced – and in which a helluva lot happened! Most of what happened had to do with the ever more entangled relationship between the Winchesters and the British Men of Letters but threaded throughout all that was the painful struggle that Sam and Dean and Mary are going through trying to figure out who they are to each other. The episode picks up where we left off, with Mary confessing her lies and Sam and Dean hurt and angry. Because they’re played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, that means their emotions are right there on their handsome faces, and mine are already spilling over as I grab for the tissues. They are SO HURT. I can’t stand the pain I can see on their faces. Sam is trying to stay calm, but Dean is about to explode, he’s so angry. How many years did he spend wishing that he had his mom – and even more compelling for Dean, wishing that Sammy had his mom? Both of the brothers want things for each other more than for themselves, and I think this is one of those times. Dean must have desperately wished that Sam could have that, and now it’s possible – except Mary just cannot be that mom. Dean: How about you try being our mom? Mary: I am your mother, but I am not "just a mom." And you are not a child. Dean: I never was. Me: (sobbing on the floor) All the kudos to Berens for writing that line, and to Ackles for delivering it with three decades full of emotion, because it SLAYED me. More kudos for Dean reverting to calling his mother ‘Mary’ instead of ‘mom.' It cut her just the way he knew it would, and it said so much about how hurt he was. So hurt he wanted to take away her power to hurt him and Sam some more by refusing to see her as his mother. That entire scene was masterful and intensely painful. We find out that Mary’s motivation for hunting with the BMoL is that she does indeed believe they can rid the world of monsters – which was what most fans assumed. She seems to want a monster-free world as much to assuage her own guilt for how her sons ended up hunters as to keep them safe, but there’s no reason she can’t be both, I suppose. Samantha Smith gets her turn to shine a little later as we see Mary perhaps finally realizing how much she’s hurt her sons, trying to get them to answer her texts and to forgive her. Of course, in true Winchester fashion (like Dean’s text to Sam in those dark dark Amelia days), Mary then deceives Sam again to get him to come to the BMoL compound, telling him she needs his help. Sigh, Mary. Sam does go, his longing for his mother and his love for her still clearly there beneath his hurt and anger. She tells him he can get out, that he can go to school the way he’d planned to. I sat there shaking my head though because I just don’t think that’s Sam anymore. He says as much, reminding her that he chose this life. And really, what would Sam and Dean do if they weren’t hunters? It’s their purpose in life; it gives them something to fight for, something that makes them feel pretty damn special. It’s brutal and dangerous, but it’s what they know – and what they’re damn good at. The Winchesters in a monster free world would be like The French Mistake – a monster free world that Sam and Dean elected to leave, where they knew they didn’t matter. The BMoL compound reminds me of either something from Star Trek or Dark Angel, but I will grudgingly admit it does look impressive. Sam refuses to even sit down, but he does hear them out. And they apparently have made a lot of progress in ridding the area of vampires. (Long way to a monster free world, though, Mary…) I loved Sam in these scenes – his strength as he refuses to be drawn in, his calm consideration of just who these people are who tortured him so horribly not so long ago. Jared Padalecki did an amazing job, conveying so much with just a look or a gesture. Meanwhile, the other Winchester brother is going through struggles of his own. He takes some of his anger out on Sam at first, yelling at him to “pick a side,” but I think it’s only an expression of his extreme frustration. He doesn’t know what to do with all that anger without the violence of a hunt, and he knows himself well enough to know that. Dean: You find us a case... I need to hit something, NOW! Then out he goes for a drink. No, drinks. Sam goes off to save Mary, and Dean goes out to get alcohol. When he comes back, he’s cooled off – he calls for Sam with “Lucy, I’m home…” and then finds the note Sam stuck on the lamp. Is that the Winchester equivalent of a bulletin board? Did anyone else feel very unsettled indeed when Mr. Ketch showed up at the bunker? Of course, it makes sense, it’s a Men of Letters bunker, so Mr. Ketch would know about it. But ewww, I did not like him there. I suspect Dean let him in because Ketch already knew plenty about the bunker, and because Dean is wondering what makes him tick. What better way to find out than to drink with him (and all the better if he’s buying)? Dean, much like Sam is doing in parallel, sits back and engages in that same sort of calm consideration. Ketch gets under his skin though, when he says he understands Dean’s need to get out there and kill some monsters. Ketch: You’re a killer, Dean Winchester. And so am I. You can’t go too long without hunting, punching, etc. or things get ugly. Ketch equates the two of them, even though it makes me cringe. And really, the two are worlds apart. But killing vampires? Dean is down with that. The unlikely duo (did it remind anyone else of Dean’s initial affinity for Gordon, also a psychopath in the guise of a hunter?) – anyway, the unlikely duo head off to the vamp nest, only to find it empty except for one newly made not very scary vampire. Ketch decides to beat her up instead of kill her, and Dean visibly flinches watching. He wants to kill monsters, yes, but he doesn’t get off on torture the way at least some of the BMoL do. So, almost empty nest. Hmmm. Didn’t that seem a little convenient? Mr. Ketch just didn’t seem all that surprised. Hmmm. The vamp nest is empty because the Alpha Vamp himself has arrived to save the day (played by the absolutely awesome Rick Worthy). I am SO loving that Show is bringing back so many fan favorites in Season 12. Worthy made the Alpha Vamp a character we cheered for when the Winchesters let him live, just because he was so damn fascinating. I was sad to see him taken out now, though another glimpse of badass Sam F—king Winchester I will never ever complain about!] Before that epic moment, the BMoL are woefully outsmarted and outfought by the vampires, all their fancy toys proving not very useful. Sam and Mary are the ones keeping Mick alive, and then Mary asks Mick to go get ‘it’ and holy crap, Sam’s face when he sees the Colt! All the awards in the world to Jared for the riot of emotions that crosses Sam’s face in that moment. Mary stole it from Ramiel? Now Sam knows what we know, that the whole hunt that got that other hunter killed was a setup and based on a lie. There is a world of hurt on Sam’s face as that sinks in. Sam remembers how to make the bullets because of course, he does, he’s Sam F—king Winchester, and then he shoots the Alpha Vamp right in the head. It was such a powerful echo of the time when Dean shot the YED, and Show even gives it to us in slow-mo to play up the parallels even more. With modern day VFX this time. That was such a great moment that it took me a while to start scratching my head and going hmmm, isn’t that convenient? The Colt would have been useless to the BMoL without those bullets, and who is the only one who knew how to make them? The guy who coincidentally is standing right there needing to save his mom’s life. Hmmm. I don’t know if Show is thinking that deeply, but there sure were a lot of possibilities for twists and turns and surprises that eventually will come to light in this episode. I guess we’ll see. There were a fair amount of ‘did Ketch bug the bunker while Dean was out?’ hypotheses flying around social media at any rate. It’s also a bit of a Hmmm that Peirce the corrupted hunter was giving information to the vampires. How did he end up in that situation? Was he playing any other sides? Is Ketch really taking him away to torture him? Hmmm. The ending was a surprise in itself, and I’m not sure it was a good one. Dean and Mr. Ketch show up after Sam has already saved the day. Mick seems overwhelmed by the whole thing, his triple Ph.D. colleague lying dead on the floor. But Sam, without any more urging, announces “I’m in.” Me: Huh??? What are you doing, Sam??? At first, I was incredulous. It’s not like the BMoL were all that impressive, after all! It’s Sam who saved the day, with a little help from his mum. And they’ve done so many awful things… Then it hit me. Sam and Dean (and Mary, for that matter) don’t KNOW they’ve done awful things. They don’t know Mr. Ketch killed that poor girl Magda in cold blood. They don’t know what “that psychopath” Mr. Ketch has done – we don’t either, but we know it must be bad. The uncomfortable problem is that the pov of the Show right now is like the omniscient pov in a novel. We, as the viewers, know all these horrible things about the BMoL. But the Winchesters don’t. If they’re believing (and it’s a big if) that Lady Toni was rogue and not following orders, seeing the good things that the BMoL are trying to do might be enough to convince Sam to give them a try. It’s uncomfortable and frustrating for me, though, because I know more than Sam does about the BMoL. And I don’t believe for a minute that Lady Toni was just ‘rogue.' Yeah, they sent her back, but they seemed more irate that her methods didn’t work than that she used them. Either Sam makes a reasonable decision from the facts that he has, or he’s decided it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the BMoL at any rate, but he says yes. Sam: You’re saving the world. I want to be a part of that. I don’t like that he says yes without consulting Dean, but his ‘give me some time’ seems to indicate that Sam won’t be going behind Dean’s back as much as trying to convince him to come over to that side too. I know some fans felt that this was Sam ‘choosing a side’ that wasn’t Dean, but I didn’t see it that way at all. Sam and Dean are in a good place with each other, neither of them very sensitive to the other’s ribbing. They both called the other out for leaving without letting their brother know where they had gone, and they didn’t do it in anger but with a reproachful smile that said hey, I care about you, don’t do that to me. [caption id="attachment_43658" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Caps from @kayb625[/caption] At least I hope that’s what’s going on. I’m not at all in the mood for Dean feeling betrayed by Sam and Mary, his only family. Dean has been very hurt by Mary’s lies and by the feeling that she didn’t just want to get away, she wanted to get away from them. He has a hard time accepting people’s decisions when he thinks they’re bad ones, as Sam has certainly learned a time or two. Yet when he thought he was going to lose Mary, he came running without a second thought – it’s family, and that will always mean the most to Dean Winchester. Dean: I know it’s not your job to make us lunch or kiss us goodnight. When I thought you were in danger, that’s all that mattered. One last little quibble – it really struck me when Mr. Ketch brought Pierce out and implied that he was going to be tortured, and Sam and Mary both said ‘good.' I get that he’s a bad bad guy and he doesn’t deserve to just head home, but torture? Of a human? That doesn’t seem like something Sam Winchester would be down with. Was it the emotion of the moment, that Pierce had almost gotten his mom killed? I don’t know, but it bothered me. And a lot of other fans too. It’s a tiny thing, but yeah. That was all wiped out by the previews for next week though because holy crap, Dean in glasses!!!!! One thing I’ll say for Supernatural, even in its twelfth season, I can’t wait to see what happens this week! Above is Supernatural 1215 Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell Trailer.

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