#Transformation from Dean Winchester to Soldier Boy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wiseoldowl72 · 2 years

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Finally posting my Day 5 prompt. Just finished editing today.

Suptober Day 5 - A Perfect Disaster

World War Me

Whooh oh oooh this is world war me

Wooh oh oooh I will never find peace

I look into the mirror and I hate what I’ve become…

~Theory of a Deadman

Dean Winchester was a Junior at the University of Kansas, located in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. For as long as he could remember everything in his home revolved around mental and physical control. His father, John, treated Dean like a soldier instead of a living, breathing child. John was a Marine, a “Boo-Yah” type of Marine, the effects from bootcamp and ‘Nam lingered.

Right before a game against the Kansas State Wildcats, when Dean should have been getting ready in his dorm to go meet the team, memories surged to the surface. He was completely paralyzed as he looked into the full length mirror and realized who he was now, compared to the life he had always had with John.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sammy, Dean’s little brother by 4 years, believed that John never knew how to parent. Dean was told from as long as he could remember that it was his job to take care of his little brother. Dean was to be the strong one. Always supposed to be making sure they both followed the rules.

John ruled the house with an iron fist. Mary Winchester always did her best to be there for her boys. She was the one who mediated the arguments. She negotiated punishments. When John was being controlling over food because the boys didn’t follow a rule, it was Mary who snuck a piece of pie to Dean at bedtime.

The summer before Dean started high school Mary died after battling breast cancer for several years. While Sammy sought refuge in his books and studies, John took to the bottle and started molding Dean into the man he wanted him to be. Young teens should not be coddled, like Mary tried to do, they should be hardened, Dean remembered his Dad saying like a mantra.

John had told him, in no uncertain terms, that he would play a sport in high school. He never felt his oldest had dedicated himself to something that would help his future. Several schools in Kansas were known for their sports. Dean would rather hang out with his friends, kick or toss a ball around, or maybe play a game of basketball with whomever was available.

The way Dean chose a sport really came down to which one might earn him a scholarship. He had the speed and coordination to handle a basketball, as well as play the strategic part of the game which meant getting the most baskets. He enjoyed making his own shots and setting them up for others.

John encouraged his son’s involvement in the sport and hoped it would put some iron in his backbone. Dean had always had the kind of looks that attracted attention: honey blond hair, green eyes, and a symmetrical face made him picked on by girls and guys alike. John absolutely wanted to instill in Dean the proper roles for men. Dean mentally shrank at the brutal lessons of what it was to be a man. To have steel in your backbone, to be a soldier, fight your own fights, and not be a fairy. He rarely looked at his back because of the scars from the metal end of a belt.

John’s own father left when he was growing up. He couldn’t wait to join the JROTC in high school so he could be around strong men and other boys that liked what he did. He knew he was going to Vietnam and didn’t want to go there unaware. While in the JROTC he learned to be regimented, follow orders, protect himself from attackers, give as good as you got, and, best of all, the girls flocked to the teenagers in uniform.

Since his mother was gone, Dean didn’t have a shield from John’s very strict opinions. He often felt the bite of a belt because he came in too late on a school night, or because John felt he was getting too much attention from his classmates because of his looks. He was also punished when he didn’t make sure his brother was taken care of while his Dad was at work. Somehow John managed to keep a job at the Lawrence Paper Company, though Dean never understood how when there were so many empty bottles strewn around the house. When John wasn’t at work, he usually was at the bar trying to drink Mary’s memory away. It wasn’t uncommon for John to show up in the early hours of the morning and pass out on the sofa, vomit on the floor next to him. Dean frequently thought about how their family went from four and fairly stable, to three barely surviving.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As high school began Dean avoided at least some of his father’s wrath by settling on basketball. It was a man’s sport and in Kansas it brought scholarships, kept the boys out of trouble, and was a source of pride. A Midwestern Kansas boy should be exploring his options, playing the field by dating every girl he could, and John wanted Dean to use his position on the basketball team to all its advantages.

By Dean’s senior year he was the captain of the Lawrence High Chesty Lion Varsity Basketball team, excelling in the position of point guard. He wasn’t the tallest on the team, but at just over 6 ft he was well rounded and dependable and put points on the board, making him a good choice the position. John kept pounding the importance of All-American values into his oldest son, only praising him when he earned accolades on the court.

Dean had done his part by his father’s standards. He’d gone as high as he could go in high school basketball and had multiple offers to various universities. His grades were good and he had a GPA that allowed him to have his pick of degrees when the time came. He never had a lasting relationship throughout his high school years. Though he always had his pick of girls, he focused on school and basketball. The scars on his back reminded him not use his handsome features to try to get his way with someone or something. Hard work was how you eventually made it in this world.

At Signing Day Dean accepted a full ride scholarship to KU to play basketball for the Jayhawks. The transition from high school to college was everything Dean needed. He worried about leaving Sammy home with John, but really it wasn’t an issue: Sam kept to himself and his books. He was going to get a full academic scholarship, Dean was sure of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life was uneventful until Sophomore year when the new Spirit Squad was announced. Dean passed his classes and decided on an engineering degree. He’d always wanted to know how everything worked. Now he had the opportunity to learn. He loved being on the court with the team, and didn’t bemoan the fact he didn’t have a social life. Life was so exciting with the JayHawks being a Division I team and traveling a lot. Practice took up much of his time, and if he wasn’t on the court he was in the library working on his class assignments.

One afternoon the Coed Spirit Squad was running their routines before the Jayhawks took the court. Dean dressed for practice in the locker room and, head down thinking about the upcoming team drills, and took his seat in the seats. Hearing the Rock Chalk Chant always made his spirit sing and he look up to see where the Squad was located on the court. That’s when Dean saw a man that made him stop and stare in a way he hadn’t in a long time.

He tried not to ogle at him as his insides twisted with the beginnings of desire. It had been a long time since anyone had done that. He made out with with female sensual bodies because that’s what he was molded to do. Eat, play the dating field, play basketball, keep your grades up, strive to get a good job, be dependable, and have steel in your spine were the commandments that made living with John survivable. But… this feeling of attraction brought on by looking at a male was so foreign. What was he supposed to do with feelings that completely contradicted his ingrained values? Especially when the person in question ticked all Dean’s boxes: a lean body; messy, almost black hair; blue eyes; and a smile that lit up the room.

John hammered home that boys liked girls and this new age “Love is Love” shit was just that: shit. It wouldn’t be tolerated in his home, especially now that Mary had died. That sentiment was all well and good until it didn’t work. Dean really didn’t enjoy sleeping with the girls. Sure it felt good, and what teenage boy doesn’t deal with his urges somehow, but one hand, the purple bottle and a sock for clean up only go so far. Dean didn’t know what it meant, only that not really being interested in girls beyond just noticing their beauty was important somehow.

Hours later after practice he stood freshly showered in his dorm room and questioned what he knew. This man, who Dean didn't even know his name, made him feel twitches inside that girls never did. Dean felt his iron spine bending and he didn’t understand why. He wanted to meet this man, see the smile on his face light up when Dean grinned at him and ran his hands through his hair to get it off his forehead. He wondered if the man liked girls or could possibly have topsy-turvy insides for guys. He would see the Coed Spirit Squad at every game, so Dean had to make sure he stayed focused on his game to help get the Jayhawks to the playoffs again this year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean felt completely uneasy in his own skin. Months went on, he pounded his feet on the court scoring points, hearing only the squeak of his shoes and the crowd roar as the team made baskets. Allen Fieldhouse was notorious for its noise level to support their team. The Spirit Squad only riled them up more making it difficult to hear anything but your own thoughts. Dean continued performing at the peak level his father demanded, and yet he kept finding himself looking toward the sidelines at the Spirit Squad. Was that man he couldn’t stop thinking about there? What was he doing? Was he looking at anybody between cheers, chants and stunt routines? Dean wanted the man to look at him. Did he feel anything the way Dean did? Did he know what those feelings meant?

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Dean was expected to check out the ladies, to find one to warm his bed for a bit. But he didn’t want one of the female squad members, he kept coming back to messy head and blue eyes. He dreamt about them. He even masturbated to the image in his mind’s eye in the shower. In his deepest thoughts he admitted he thought the man was beautiful.

Castiel Novak. That was his name, and he was a year behind Dean in school and an English major. Dean had bribed one of the Coed Spirit Squad ladies with a dinner date to get this precious information. He felt like such a sucker using her this way. If this had been high school and in a world with John constantly in his head, the night would have ended with her warming his bed. Now though, the thought repulsed him.

Oddly enough, once Dean went to KU, lived in the dorms, and spent his time at Allen Fieldhouse, John mostly just disappeared from his daily life. He would show up at games and always sat where Dean could see every muscle and hardened lines of his face. If the night went well, John stayed through the whole game and clapped his son on he back and told him good job. If not, well, the seat was empty well before the game ended. Dean knew he had disappointed his Dad, even though he was always praised by the coaches for doing a good job for the team. The memories of all the times he let down his family flooded back and Dean wondered if he had even grown up at all.

For a year, Dean could never bring himself to talk to Castiel when he saw him at, or around, the Fieldhouse. He mostly avoided any situation where he would have to talk to anyone unless he had to. He spent this year searching his inner self and talking to queer people on campus, sitting in on campus support groups trying to suss out his feelings on women and men. Each time he tried to open up, John’s words echoed in his head that he was never going be a man. He wasn’t strong enough, mentally, physically or emotionally to do the hard work that he to succeed. He didn’t follow the rules.

In the end he realized he was everything John despised.

Still staring at his dorm room mirror and terrified about his current memories and thoughts, if John saw him now he’d take the metal end of the belt to him. Possibly he would also punch and kick him to make the point he’s a pansy, not a man. Dean hated that he would be such a disappointment to the one person he always took orders from. He doesn’t recognize the man in the mirror. The man looking back at him was a walking disaster. If John ever found out that Dean wasn’t the soldier he was molded to be, it might be Dean at the end of the bottle. He hated the voices in his head. He wanted to quiet them once and for all, but the consequences of shutting John out were completely unknown.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean dressed for the locker room and grabbed his duffle, he took a final look in the mirror and told himself out loud, that all this ended tonight. He’s would talk to Castiel for the first time and see if they can go out after the game. He’d deal with John and his opinions when the time came.

#suptober22 #day 5 prompt #my 3rd fic #fanfic #destiel #ao3

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deans-cleavage · 2 years

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I've missed his stupid fucking face goddamnit

#why am i so deceased over this #jackles #hes back from the mountains transformed #like a butterfly #spn #dean winchester #the boys season 3 #the boys #jensen ackles #soldier boy

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butchcastiel · 3 years

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I saw your comments about honey!Cas and if it's not too much trouble, I was wondering if you can elaborate (I felt uncomfortable with honey!Cas too so you aren't alone in that regard)

So I had to sit and think how to explain this because I haven't watched season 7 in several years, and I've only seen it the one time. So I was definitely not watching it and taking notes on how Cas was treated by the writers in that season so to speak, I was more pushing through to access that sweet sweet destiel content in s8.

That being said, my discomfort with Cas' writing, and the way other characters (primarily Dean) are written when interacting with him in season 7 stems from the fact that Cas was written and performed as autistic prior to that point in the show. Cas' unfamiliarity with human social norms, with pop culture, and Misha's delivery of his lines and certain acting choices come off as flat, or very purposeful, which makes it easy to read them as a surprisingly realistic portrayal of an autistic person. At the very least, Cas reads as neurodivergent, both to the human characters, some of the angel characters, and certainly to the audience. Simultaneously, Cas is a very capable strategist, and a powerful soldier who feels deeply for his comrades in arms and for the Winchesters. I have to admit that my issues with season 7 are therefore somewhat personal, because it is not often I see a character who reflects multiple traits commonly found in neurodivergent or autistic people who is also respected as competent and not infantilized, and that means something to me as an autistic viewer.

Season 7 starts off with a somewhat interesting portrayal of Sam's Hell trauma. He suffers from psychosis and post traumatic stress, and Dean cures him of both by asking Cas to take on Sam's memories of Hell*. It is at this point where I began to feel uncomfortable with Cas' writing. After taking on Sam's trauma, Cas becomes incredibly childish in nature. He seems to lack critical thinking skills, is entertained by children's games, and their humor, and becomes incredibly averse to violence. Dean reacts to this punitively, which upsets Cas and causes him to flee. Cas was transformed, from a nuanced portrayal of an autistic person to something far more stereotypical**. Worse still, much of this was framed as funny and played for laughs. Watching this was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me, as the character on the screen was hardly reminiscent of the Cas in previous seasons (or the one who would follow) and was supposed to be the comedic relief for the season.

*Sam's Hell trauma, in my opinion, should not have been something that the boys could "cure". At best that was unrealistic, and at worst it was also ableist. Psychosis and PTSD cannot be magically removed, or even cured through any kind of physical intervention most of the time. Instead, they are treated through therapy to address the past, and learning new coping strategies to address the present. Psychosis in particular is highly stigmatized and I was uncomfortable with the way it was handled.

**There ARE autistic people who behave similarly to honey Cas, and those people deserve respectful representation just like the rest of us. The portrayal of Cas in season 7 was far from respectful, however.

#cas #honey cas #supernatural #anonymous #mine #ok to reblog #actually please do reblog this #ableism

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macabrefm · 2 years

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𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒅 : ─── welcome to bon temps , louisiana , DEAN WINCHESTER [ jensen ackles ] & SCOTT MCCALL [ tyler posey ] ! people have started noticing you’ve been lurking around merlotte’s bar and grill + bon temps animal clinic ! you might wanna get away from there soon & follow the checklist step by step to quiet that rumor mill down !

[ jensen ackles & he / him & cisman ] : my oh my, is that DEAN WINCHESTER in bon temps ? what the hell are they up to hanging around MERLOTTE'S BAR AND GRILL listening to EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE by THE POLICE when they should be doing whatever a HUNTER does ? between you and i, the 26 year old HUMAN is avoided for acting RUTHLESS, but whenever they let their PROTECTIVE side shine through people flock to them. i guess they're in town because THEY'RE LIVING THEIR BEST LIFE : SAVING PEOPLE , HUNTING THINGS , WITH THEIR BROTHER AT THEIR SIDE. explains some of it, though i can't help but wonder if there's more to a BROTHER'S KEEPER ⸻ YOU BREATHE A FULL BREATH FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS WITH YOUR PURPOSE RENEWED ( BUT WHO ARE YOU WHEN YOU AREN'T BIG BROTHER / DUTIFUL SON / FAITHFUL SOLDIER ? ) / YOUR WORLDVIEW ALWAYS A CLEAR BLACK AND WHITE ( BUT HERE THE LINES BEGIN TO BLUR , HERE THEY AWASH WITH GREY , HERE THEY ARE TERRIFYING IN THEIR OVERLAPPING EXPANSION ) story. ─── bee, 23, est, she / her.

[ tyler posey & he / him & cisman ] : my oh my, is that SCOTT MCCALL in bon temps ? what the hell are they up to hanging around BON TEMPS ANIMAL CLINIC listening to COMFORT CROWD by CONAN GRAY when they should be doing whatever a VETERINARY ASSISTANT does ? between you and i, the 21 year old WEREWOLF is avoided for acting OBSTINATE, but whenever they let their COMPASSIONATE side shine through people flock to them. i guess they're in town because BON TEMPS IS HOME. explains some of it, though i can't help but wonder if there's more to a SUDDEN PLUNGE ( THE BITE IS A GIFT , THE BITE IS A CURSE. PETER PARKER - ESQUE FUCKING TRANSFORMATIONS BUT WITH THAT ADDED KICK OF FEARRAGEHUNGER ) / THE FOREVER BOY NEXT DOOR ( YOU WANT TO BE SO MUCH MORE , YOU WANT TO BE SEEN. BUT NOT LIKE THIS. YOU SWEAR TO BE BETTER , YOU HAVE TO BE. ) story. ─── bee, 23, est, she / her.

#rp #rpg #appless rp #mumu rp #supernatural rp #tvd rp #true blood rp #new rp #dark rp #town rp #macabreaccepted.#tysm for applying !

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shortnotsweet · 3 years

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The Allegory of the Tin Man, the Dictator, and the Knight: a Dissection of Ironqrow and a Character Arc of Failure

“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men who were best of friends. They were so much happier when together that they were seldom apart.”

— L. Frank Baum

A brief Ironqrow meta and character analysis of James Ironwood, the ultimate screw up, in three parts.

I. Qrow and Ironwood’s Homoeroticism in Canon Source Material and its Translation

II. Ironwood’s Repressed Characterization and the Inherent Chivalry of the Dictatorship

III. Ironwood, Alone

Qrow and Ironwood’s Homoeroticism in Canon Source Material and its Translation

Within the Oz series, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow are layered within homoerotic subtext, even if it is included unintentionally. Tison Pugh’s analysis Queer Utopianism and Antisocial Eroticism in L. Frank Baum's Oz Series posits that the land of Oz as portrayed within the series is a largely asexual environment of suspended adolescence that involves the deviation of binary gender norms, and of performative heterosexuality. Pugh refers to it later as a “queer utopia”. Men are portrayed as a lesser military force to women, and heterosexuality is a flimsy presence at best; all signs of procreation within Oz are stifled. While this could be chalked down to Baum not wanting to get into the subject of sex and exploration in a children’s series, it does contribute to a particular tone with real-life critiques of capitalism and a particular deconstruction of gender norms. Ozma, who will become the ruler of Oz after the Wizard and the Scarecrow respectively, for example, is originally a boy named Tip (the name itself holds phallic implications) who is “transformed” into a girl. The strongest military force is one of all-women led by a rebellious female general. Pugh observes, “At the same time that Baum satirizes...women as leaders…he consistently depicts women as more successful soldiers than men, and female troops appear better capable of serving militarily than male troops…[the] male army comprises of twenty-six officers and one private, and they are all cowards…” and cites the Frogman’s declaration that “Girls are the fiercest soldiers of all...they are more brave than men, and they have better nerves”.

RWBY itself isn’t opposed to this kind of subversion, either in its characters or its relationships. There’s an obvious effort to include LGBTQ+ representation (albeit primarily in the background), strong female characters are prevalent and make up most of the main and supporting cast, a character’s gender is not strictly reliant on its source material, and BlackSun, while cute and a valid ship in its own right, is treated as a heterosexual red herring to Bumbleby. Additionally, there have been a lot of hints by the voice actors, writers, and creators on social media that Qrow himself is queer, the infamous Ironqrow embrace included.

Admittedly, if I wanted to write an essay about the likelihood of Qrow being LGBTQ+ or having some kind of queer identity, I would probably focus more on his relationship with Clover, which had a lot more overt and probably canonically intentional Gay Vibes, and despite having known Qrow nowhere near as long as Ironwood has, it has just as much, if not more, to extrapolate. Unfortunately, that’s not the main point of this essay, although it remains relevant. While I personally don’t doubt that Qrow has had sex with women or experiences valid sexual attraction to them, I get the feeling that it is, to a degree, a performative act and a masculine assertation of enjoyment intended as a coping mechanism. It plays into the trope of the handsome, tortured alcoholic (best exemplified, perhaps, in the MCU’s Tony Stark, Dean Winchester in Supernatural, and critiqued in the superhero episode of Rick and Morty) who sleeps around just to recall the feeling of intimacy, or because he associates sexual ‘degradation’ as a reflection of his worth. Real self-deprecating, slightly misogynistic stuff. Qrow’s recall of short skirts, as well as his brief exchange with the waitress in an earlier volume, reminds me of one specific interaction between the Scarecrow and his own love interest. Within the series, the Qrow’s source-material counterpart, the Scarecrow, has one canonical love interest, the Patchwork Girl:

“Forgive me for staring so rudely,” said the Scarecrow, “but you are the most beautiful sight my eyes have ever beheld.”

“That is a high compliment from one who is himself so beautiful,” murmured Scraps, casting down her suspender-button eyes by lowering her head.

Pugh points out that the two of them never develop this relationship further than flirtation, and heterosexuality is reduced to a “spectral presence” lacking the “erotic energy [driving] these queer narratives in their presence”. Specifically, Qrow never reveals a serious or long running heterosexual love interest - he is not the father! [of Ruby] (despite much speculation that he and Summer Rose were involved) and he and Winter never really moved past the stage of ‘hostility with just a hint of sexual tension’ - and there is no debunking of potential queerness. His interactions with Clover (deserving of an entire essay on its own) seem to support this interpretation, and is more or less a confirmation of some kind of queer inclination or identity. Again, the “queer utopia” of Oz comes at the cost of the expulsion of the sexual or the mere mention of reproduction - still, through this device, same-sex relationships gain a new kind of significance with the diminishing nature of heterosexuality. Speaking of queer narratives, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man have the most tender and prolonged relationship of perhaps all the characters in the series, exchanging a lifelong commitment:

“I shall return with my friend the Tin Woodman,” said the stuffed one seriously. “We have decided never to be parted in the future.”

Within the source material, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow voluntarily live together, and are life partners in nearly every sense of the word. The second book in the Oz series is The Tin Woodman of Oz. In summary, the Tin Woodman recalls that he had a fiancée before the events of the first book, forgot all about her, and now must search her out so that they can get married. Who does he ask to accompany him in this pursuit? None other than his no-homo life partner, the Scarecrow. Although this sounds like a stereotypical heteronormative storyline, “this utopian wonderland...rejects heterosexual procreation...First, the Tin Woodman does not desire...Nimmie Amee...” and even acknowledges that due to the ‘nature’ of the heart that the Wizard had given him, he is literally incapable of romantically or passionately loving or desiring Nimmie, and by extent, women in general - to me, that works perfectly as an allegory for a gay man who is literally incapable of experiencing legitimate heterosexual urges, but ‘soldiers on’ out of obligation and societally enforced chivalry. “The Tin Woodman excuses himself from the heteronormative imperative...Only his sense of masculine honor, rather than a heteronomratively masculine sex drive, impels the Tin Woodman on his quest to marry his long-lost fiancée.” Again, Ironwood’s character follows the lines of propriety within the sphere of the wealthy elite, and his persona as a high-ranking military man and politician, as well as the conservative values instilled within Atlas, prioritize duty and obligation. This kind of culture is stifling and in a lot of ways aloof, as the upper class deludes itself into believing that it is objectively better and more advanced than its neighboring territories. *ahem the myth of American exceptionalism ahem*

“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men who were best of friends. They were so much happier when together that they were seldom apart.”

I think it’s funny that the characters that Ironwood and Qrow are based off of are canonically the closest of friends, who coexist almost as a unit. In contrast, the first introduction we get of Ironwood and Qrow is a hostile exchange where they’re at each other’s throats, never on the same page, and never in sync, not when it matters. Indeed, Qrow snaps at Ironwood for his lack of communication, which is a recurring issue between the two of them on notable occasions. If the source material is anything to go by, there should be a significant relationship between the two of them, or at least some kind of connection, even if it goes unspoken or unacknowledged. To be fair, in RWBY’s canon, I think there is.

I’ve seen this joke that while Qrow hates the Atlas military, the only people he really seems to flirt with is Atlas military personnel. “Ice Queen” is something I interpreted to be partially hostile, partially mocking, and partially flirtatious, in equal spades - the voice actors and creators have indicated that it was flirtatious, and there was a whole Chibi episode dedicated to the concept of Qrow and Winter’s extrapolated sexual tension, albeit in jest. I might argue that his use of abbreviates aren’t reserved for people he dislikes, but for people who bring out his playful side. “Brat”, “Pipsqueak”, “Firecracker”, and “Kiddos” are all drawn from a place of affection, however short or mocking it may seem, because that’s what crows do: they mock others.

Qrow has little nicknames for people; while it’s not exclusively a sign of affection, I do get the feeling that ‘Jimmy’ is an informality that irks Ironwood, but can also be interpreted as Qrow giving James what he needs, rather than what he wants.

Glynda is by no means a pushover, but in assuring him that while he does questionable things, he’s still a good person, she’s softening the blow and probably further enabling deeply rooted and pre-existing traits, many of which contribute to his problematic control complex. It is established early on that Qrow resents the military (as he should), and it is implied that he’s spent a fair amount of encounters harassing and provoking military personnel (Winter being the most evident example of this), and has insulted the military numerous times to Ironwood’s face. He lectures Ironwood about the way he conducts his operations, his inability to communicate, and basically what a complete, inconsiderate asshole he really is.

What Ironwood needs is someone who operates outside of the pretense that he works, breathes, and lives under, and just tells it like it is. Jimmy isn’t all that - he’s a person, just like the rest of us, and he can flaunt all the titles that he wants, but James stripped down is still just Jimmy.

Qrow also is the kind of person who pries, who is insistent, and not particularly sensitive. For someone like Ironwood who has a lot of (physical and emotional) barriers, logically, in order for him to receive genuine understanding, Qrow fits the profile of someone who is invasive but not exploitive, who sees past the cracks in his armor and takes him for what he is. What is just important is that whoever Ironwood is with is someone who makes him want to try not only to be better, but to be real; thematically, General Ironwood seems to have a great respect for but a deep struggle with authenticity. He clearly resents the ignorance and frivolity of Atlas’s wealthy elite, as evidenced by his support for Weiss at the dinner party in announcing that “she’s one of the only people making any sense around here”, while struggling to project the facade that he’s carefully created.

See, we don’t have evidence that there is something going on between Ironqood and Qrow so much as we have enough evidence to inconclusively say that there’s not not something going on. I think there’s enough evidence to support the idea that something could be going on, or was going on.

When Qrow saves Ironwood at the Battle of Beacon, who is under the false impression that Qrow believes him to be the culprit of the attacks, his eyes follow Qrow and we get a closer shot of his awed expression; we the viewer can only imagine what he sees as Qrow arcs through the air and slices down a Grimm from behind his back. The focus on Ironwood’s expression portrays something like shock (so Qrow wasn’t trying to attack me after all, but then what the hell is he doing?), maybe wonder (I can’t take my eyes off of him, I can’t look away), maybe respect (I know he’s a good Hunter, but I’ve rarely seen him in action), but it is unfiltered nonetheless. In a show where fight scenes are vital to the progression of the story itself, the dynamics of these fights are at their best when they are character driven, whether it is revealing or reinforcing something about the characters and their relationships, or it is deciding their fates. There’s something to be said about characters being given moments together in battles, and what that says about the significance of their relationship. The best example of this might be the battle between Blake and Yang vs Adam; it served to give Adam what he deserved, help Blake and Yang reach closure in certain aspects of their own trauma, and solidify the bond between the girls. Similarly, Qrow and Ironwood’s moment is meant to reveal a theme that will later be revisited in volume 7; trust. Ironwood is startled but not shocked when he believes that Qrow distrusts him to the degree of attacking him, and is ready to attack or defend as needed.

Qrow tells him what he needs to hear, more or less: YOU’RE A DUMBASS. Ironwood is, indeed, a dumbass. While he does extend the olive branch of trust and good will to CRWBY and co. this trust is highly conditional and proves to be, while from a place of desperation and sincerity, at least partially performative.

When Ironwood snaps, he snaps hard.

Amber’s voice actress tweeted early on, joking that Qrow has two Atlas boyfriends, and Arryn has made comments, too. It’s one of the older ships, and the crew is certainly aware of it (“...extended chest bump...”).

Kerry has stated that he finds the Ironqrow relationship interesting, and wishes it had been explored more (additionally, allegedly lobbying that Ironwood’s arm in the Ironqrow hug scene be slightly lower). I’m not saying that they’re going to both make it out alive, or canon, or even that romantic subtext was intentionally woven into the script. All I’m saying is that I think their relationship is interesting too, especially when the subtext of their source material relationship is taken into context, and the way their characters are positioned is suggestive of some sort of compatibility, even if it is a hit or miss kind of opportunity, and I have the sinking suspicion that it was missed on both accounts.

The Tin Woodman of Oz concludes,

“All this having been happily arranged, the Tin Woodman returned to his tin castle, and his chosen comrade, the Scarecrow, accompanied him on the way. The two friends were sure to pass many pleasant hours together in talking over their recent adventures, for as they neither ate nor slept they found their greatest amusement in conversation.”

Ironwood’s Repressed Characterization and the Inherent Chivalry of the Dictatorship

“I don’t give a damn about Jacque Schnee...what about the other two? Do not return to this office until you have Qrow Branwen in custody.”

“And that’s not all we’ve lost...I had Qrow in my hands, and I didn’t do what needed to be done.”

Observe: Ironwood, at this point, does not care about politics. I doubt he’s ever wanted to, or ever liked it (if his tired outburst at the dinner party is any indication) but his Knightly qualities (we’ll get to that) have, up till this point, prompted him to adhere to them for both power and etiquette. James surrounds himself in a world that he understands and despises; more than anything, he’d like to be a general, a commander, and the Knight in Shining Armor archetype, because warfare is something he understands. It is a testament to his (superhuman) willpower that he forces himself to become fluent in the language of politics, and to live and breathe in it. To clarify, Ironwood sees himself as a man who does what needs to be done; if he wants to change and control Atlas, he will have to involve himself in its politics.

Likely, his resilience has contributed to the way he views himself and what he deserves, as someone long-suffering and almost martyr-like, a silent hero doing what needs to be done. But at the moment, he’s lost his goddamn mind coming undone. He’s murdered and jailed his political dissent (and might have considered executing prisoners), but at this point, that’s all that Jacque and Robyn are to him. First he dismisses Jacque, narrows it down to the two escaped prisoners, and finally reveals what’s really on the forefront of his mind: Qrow, free and out of his hands.

[ When recalling this dialogue, please do so while imagining a bad recorder cover of the Titanic music playing over the background. Here is a sample. ]

In the most recent episode, Ironwood seems to have gone off the rails even further. The fact that Winter, his most faithful lieutenant, is losing her unshakable faith in him, says a lot about how hard he’s fallen off the deep end. In Winter’s mind, I think that she sees him almost as a surrogate father figure, or at least a patriarch who can be positively compared to Jacques in every way. The previous volumes go to lengths to compare the two as adversaries and showing James in a favorable light; Winter is in her own personal horror right now, because she is beginning to understand that Ironwood is a man who may not be her father but is just as susceptible to corruption, and may have been that kind of person all along. Skipping over the...ah, genocidal tendencies, and the fact that he’s proposing to kidnap Penny’s friends to force her to obey him and likely is starting to realize that Winter is the perfect bait (let’s just say that “Ironwood is not good with kids” is the understatement of the year) Ironwood wants Qrow back (in captivity), I think that it’s significant that while Ironwood registers that Robyn is gone as well, his first priority is Qrow, probably for two reasons. On one hand, he still refers to Qrow by his first name, instead of the formal Branwen. Of course, that doesn’t have to mean anything at all. They’re colleagues within the same age range, both members of the same secret brotherhood and similiar skill sets.

On the other hand, it reminds me of the moment when Qrow and the kids first fly into Atlas, and they see the heightened security, and Qrow mutters, “James...what have you been doing,” under his breath, sounding concerned, apprehensive. He’s not addressing the kids, he’s talking to himself; he regards James much more seriously both as a potential threat and a friend than he’d rather the other know, and I think that James’ focus on Qrow at this point is similiar, only not only is this a sign of them knowing each other well, but of Ironwood’s slipping control. He offered Qrow his trust and camaraderie, his last attempt to keep a handle on his humanity (or, his heart). Qrow, in return, withheld vital information, got close with another operative instead, then allegedly killed him and and escaped ‘rightful’ imprisonment.

The Tin Man is offering Qrow his heart, at least proof of it, and the Scarecrow [and co.] steps back to observe the situation, and assesses that no, what you are going to do is wrong, and I cannot agree with it.

Ironwood is not an objective person, as much as he wants to be. He’s angry, desperate, scared, and humiliated. Worst of all, he’s rebuffed, and he’s taking Qrow’s escape personally. First, he understands that Qrow is a threat. He’s Ozpin’s best agent, he has years of field experience, and he knows too much, probably more than James knows. Second, they have history.

My personal interpretation of Ironwood is something this:

He’s a sad, sad, lonely bitch. What Ironwood longs for, just like his source material counterpart, is a heart. He will go to any lengths to achieve this, because he believes that he has self awareness and therefore is able to check and balance himself. He treats his subordinates well, is diplomatic, skilled in a variety of trades, fighting the good fight, and longs for the affirmation that yes, he is a good person, and yes, he’s had a heart all along. He just strays from the path, and loses his way.

This is symbolically represented by his partially mechanic exoskeleton; we have no idea how far the cyborg extremities extend, or how deep, but we do get the visual notion of humanity in conflict, or a man’s soul deconstructed and split between the cold efficiency of machinery and the very real warmth of a human body. Ironwood wants to appear human, and benevolent, and genuine, and in return, loved; he is human, and he could be all of these things. If my reliance on the source material holds any merit (although I highly doubt it), then there is also a potential struggle with sexuality, (Glynda herself even explicitly and exasperatedly references a testosterone battle between Ironwood and Qrow, suggesting a regular overassertation of masculinity) and a further incentive to achieve love and subsequent acceptance.

To clarify, I do believe that there were less-than-subtle allusions to Ironwood and Glynda having a vaguely flirtatious history, taking their shared scenes and background dancing into account, but this, again, does not “debunk” the presence of queerness within a narrative; it could be an assumption of heterosexuality, or performative itself, or just not an exclusive interest. Besides, Ironwitch isn’t what this essay is about. I’m not trying to persuade or dissuade someone of the notion that Jimmy is gay, or straight, or something else, only that the potential ambiguity exists. What I do think is most important is that James doesn’t openly ward people away, not when those people aren’t under his command and are technically outside of his jurisdiction. He’s friendly with Glynda, tries to extend trust to Qrow, is kind to people in the aftermath of battle, and overall clings to diplomacy as his first weapon. He wants to be accepted, to be liked, and to be welcomed. This is not an outrageous want, nor is it uncommon. Unfortunately, Ironwood’s understanding of love and acceptance is entangled within the concept of control, and he associates unquestioned compliance with this Want.

Ironwood’s introduction into the series shows him being openly cordial, and very considerate, especially his interactions with Glynda and Ozpin. He’s a gentleman, he’s apologetic, and, as Glynda assures him, he’s a “good man”. She doesn’t really elaborate on what a “good man” is, exactly, but we might presume that a “good man” is a person with good intentions, who strives to do what’s right, regardless of his options.

Here’s the thing - one similarity between Ironwood and the Tin Man is that they both have the capacity to love, but they fool themselves into thinking that they don’t; before the Wizard gives him a ‘heart’, the Tin Man suggests that he is only kind and considerate to everyone in Oz because he believes he needs to overcompensate for what he lacks, and is therefore doubly aware of how he treats others. However, the Wizard knows no real magic, only tricks and illusions, and what he gives the Tin Man is essentially a placebo that enables the Tin Man to act towards and feel about others the exact same as he always had, only with the validation that what he feels is authentic. Similarly, Ironwood has always had the option to be empathetic and not fucking crazy open to collaboration, which he’s very aware of, until his own paranoia cuts into his rationality and compels him to cut himself off from all allies and alternative perspectives. He then uses his difficult position and responsibilities to justify unjustifiable actions, to rationalize irrational urges, and to gaslight and brainwash his subordinates into compliance.

The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.

“You people with hearts,” he said, “have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful. When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn’t mind so much.”

Qrow sees through this, however, and not only seems incapable of following orders himself, but disrupts the decorum that Ironwood is used to. In return, I think we see a little more of James that he’d like to reveal.

“If you were one of my men, I’d have you shot!”

“If I was one of your men, I’d shoot myself!”

In case this entire ass essay doesn’t make it obvious, I do really ship Ironqrow. I’m open to other pairings, definitely, but this one in particular is just more interesting to me. It feels more revealing, more subtle. I have more questions.

In hindsight, maybe the dialogue example above ^ didn’t age well, considering where they’re at, but I do like how their professional animosity is flavored with a kind of camaraderie, and understanding. This exchange isn’t exactly playful, but they’re taking each other seriously - and, like repressed schoolboys, taking the piss at each other in a childish way, and isn’t that part of the fun of banter, when they’re so focused on each other that they forget to act their age? In a lot of ways, this is a really fun dynamic to watch. They’re opposite-kind-of-people, which I like, at least on a superficial level, and I can easily imagine them tempering each other in ways that would make them ultimately happier people.

They even look well-coordinated, with similar color schemes that lean on the opposite sides of the shared spectrum (white, grays, reds and black); I think the decorative design on Qrow’s new sleeves are supposed to be more ornate simply to communicate that Qrow is committed, and willing to be sentimental, but some viewers have suggested that it resembles the pattern on James’ weapon, Due Process (the revolver is based off of the Tin Man’s pistol, although, curiously, in The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow was the only character to carry a pistol, and the commentaries suggest that the 2007 Tin Man miniseries was the “basis of the allusion”. Does that mean anything? I don’t know. Probably not.). Still, it raises the questions: who was in charge of designing the team’s new clothes and gear? How much input did Atlas get, and was this intentional? Personally, I think that the vine-like pattern on Qrow’s sleeves also bear a resemblance to Ozpin’s staff, a subtle reaffirmation and foreshadowing of his allegiance in contrast to Ironwood, but I digress.

They can also deliver that UST kind of banter that takes up their attention, and get up really close to each other, in each other’s faces, and just be pissed, which I think is very sexy of them, mhm. Enemies to Colleagues to Reluctant Friends to Lovers is a trope that I very much appreciate. Gaining some sort of common ground at the Battle of Beacon only to reunite, tired and battered, after the shit has already hit the fan? Slow burn kinda vibes.

That hug between them was something genuinely vulnerable and a sign of Ironwood letting his guard down because he is tired as fuck. It also was uh...kinda fruity.

Ironwood approaches closer, and Qrow scratches the back of his head, a characteristically nervous gesture that he’s made before; it’s a nervous twitch, manufactured nonchalance. He has no idea what Ironwood wants, but he does know that Ironwood wants something. James is the one to initiate the hug, and Qrow startles and even freezes up before relaxing into it. He seems suprised, but gives the bisexual eye roll of grudging fondness. This is out of character for James - Jimmy - but Qrow doesn’t think that Ironwood is a bad person. He leans into the hug, and the camera cuts out before they separate, suggesting that they probably end up standing there for a long ass time. You can also see from the side shots that it’s a close hug; their torsos are pressed up against each other, front to front, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room. James must be really goddamn depressed. It’s a long, manly, intensley heterosexual hug. Like I said, kinda fruity.

Other people have analyzed the hug shot for shot, so I won’t get too into it, but I think that it was intentionally left as a double red herring; some people thought that maybe he bugged Qrow, and after finding out that he didn’t, we were forced to conclude that this is a genuine olive branch. To find out that Ironwood is sincere but was still susceptible to corruption is that second subversion that I didn’t really expect. I hadn’t prepared myself for it, at least, and neither did Qrow. I wouldn’t go as far to say that Ironwood’s descent into fucking craziness paranoia is triggered by Qrow not ‘reciprocating’ or something, but I do think it’s interesting how the volume opens up with a signifigant interaction between Ironwood and Qrow, only for Qrow to spend the rest of the volume homosexually bonding with Clover, while Ironwood basically has no one as emotional support (again, his subordinates do not have the power or the place to be viewed as equals and the veil of formality is one of isolation). Qrow initiates nothing further, and nothing further happens.

Ironwood’s downfall, in a thematic sense, is that what he Needs is a heart, and when he gets that chance to demonstrate tolerance and empathy, James ultimately rejects his Need (a heart) and his arc reverts into one of villainy. To be specific, Ironwood is essentially a fascist dick, and that is not very sexy. (Speaking of dicks, the thought of Ironwood’s dick makes me laugh. I bet in the RWBY universe, people have made memes about that. I do not accept criticism because I am correct. Anyway,).

Dictators are charming, charismatic, and one of the pillars of their method is absorbing potential political opponents into their own administration to reduce the threat of rebellion, to appear openly tolerant to their supporters, and to further consolidate power. A good example of this would be Mean Girls, which runs on a comedic commentary of dictatorships as a political structure of power. I hate to compare James Ironwood to Regina George, but Regina’s posse includes Karen and Gretchen, two of the only girls who might take away from the authority she holds over the rest of their school, both in their wealth and attractiveness, and Cady’s interesting backstory and conventional attractiveness is the main reason Regina draws her into her own sphere - because she detects a potential threat. Much in the same way, while Ironwood likely has good intentions, his efforts to win over team RWBY and co. - including Qrow himself - is a logical way to consolidate resources. His willingness, at first, to cooperate with political opponents (ie Robyn) is because he’s not inherently evil, and he has nothing to lose. It’s when he is openly opposed and diplomatic gestures no longer hold the necessary weight that he snaps.

In one really interesting meta about Ironqrow’s archetypes (that I reread occasionally just because I really love it), @onewomancitadel posits that Ironwood is framed within the archetype of the Knight in Shining Armor, which should inform us of the moral consistency of his character. The meta was written around the beginning of volume 7, I think, and obviously we have a lot more character development and information to go off of now, but I think she makes a really interesting point about the nature of parallels and how that might help drive Ironwood as a character. I love her analysis of the visual of Ironwood stepping out of an airship wreckage, onto the street, the smoke billowing around him to reveal his cyborg prosthetics, and of the intentional framing. Once his uniform is stripped back, we see a man who is literally half-armor, which could be indicative of a lot of things. He’s emotionally guarded, he’s used as a human weapon, and he wants to be a line of defense. In her words, “The symbolism is really obviously put into perspective of his actions in trying to do the right thing: in the flesh (his true physical self) he is literally a knight in shining armour. From the ground up. Even if it's unseen or distorted by his uniform, his nature is still true.”

While Ironwood clearly has gone down a darker path in the most recent volume, I think this analysis holds true in a crucial way. “Ironwood is working with different information, and he’s doing exactly what he knows: stick to his knightly virtues, even disgraced.” Disgraced, indeed. Ironwood is holding onto his knightly values, and doing what he believes is right. If not right, he believes that it is necessary. The problem is that these values are manifested within Atlas’s sociopolitical-military culture in an inherently toxic way - his response is, at this point, neither rational nor empathetic, but it can be explained partially due to his cultural (flawed) understanding of justice, and because of the extenuating circumstances. The harsher the conditions become, the more difficult it is for anyone to project a facade that is not sincere at its core. If James is to uphold his Knightly virtues, he needs to be a protector, a leader, and a servant all at once while operating under limited intel with dwindling trust. All he has left are the few key players still in his grasp, and the control of the people he is responsible for.

To digress: generally, knights take an oath. It could be to a King, or Lord, or some noble, but Knights are supposed to operate on a code of honor, and chivalry, and to uphold these values throughout the land as an extension of whoever they have pledged themselves to. The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a really good example of the way that, back in the day, chivalry and honor was supposed to place knights on a moral high ground compared to the common people.

In the middle of a celebration in Camelot, an obligatory tradition that has since lost real value but is rehearsed because Camelot fears that failure to uphold traditions that once had meaning is disrespectful, a Green Knight interrupts the celebrations and offers a strange challenge that boils down to a fight to the death. Gawain volunteers because accepting this challenge is what is expected of him, and Arthur would be humiliated if his knights, supposedly the best in the world, would not rise to the challenge. Gawain - and to a certain extent, the rest of Arthur’s knights - are fickle, in a sense, because their adherence to this code is performative, and it allows them to delude themselves into moral superiority and lie both to the commoners and amongst themselves; their identity as knights is based on a falsehood. Gawain is offered the first blow, and after beheading the Green newcomer, is horrified to see him become reanimated and immune to mortal blows. He invites Gawain to receive his own - likely fatal - blow, and gives him a time in which to meet, before promptly leaving.

Throughout the story, Gawain is tested in a variety of ways - in his final test, he fails, and allows his greed for self preservation and the fear of death to lead him to lie to his hosts and proceed to his meeting with the Green Knight under dishonest pretenses. While he is spared at the last second and becomes a better person (after it is revealed that Morgan le Fay orchestrated the ordeal to spook Queen Guinevere) - and by extent, a truer Knight, by the end of the story, the superficial and hypocritical nature of Arthur’s court is still in question, and still unanswered.

See, the entirety of Gawain’s trials was a test, not necessarily for him, but for Arthur and his court as a whole. Morgan wanted to prove the fickle nature of Arthur’s knights. The Knights of the Round Table were considered the best in the land, and to discredit one was to discredit all. What use is tradition if the meaning is empty, what use is chivalry if it is performed for reward instead of merit, and what use is loyalty if it is blind and unearned? Returning to Oz, the Tin Woodman, or Tin Man, grew to be made of tin because his axe became enchanted by the Wicked Witch of the East to sever his own body parts instead of the lumber he tried to cut down. A nearby tinsmith replaced each amputated limb with one of metal, until his entire body became tin and his meat body had been entirely discarded. Something to note is that Nick Chopper’s, (General Ironwood’s) wounds are technically self-inflicted. Each time he swung his axe, he made the decision to continue, knowing of the end result each time. In losing his bodily functions, the Tin Man believed that he had lost his humanity and ability to love.

The tragedy of his origin story draws a pointed correlation to Ironwood’s current dilemma; his unwillingness to stop, his self-imposed isolation, playing into the hands of the witch, and finally, the decision to let go of his ability to love remain consistent throughout both stories.

Watts even refers to Ironwood as a “Tin Solider”; a reference to the Tin (Woods)Man, no doubt, but could also evoke a soldier clanking around in metal armor. Ironwood is a Knight in Shining Armor, through and through. He wants to save the world, but at the terrible cost of civilian autonomy and possibly life. The problem is that he’s pledged himself to a discriminatory and hypocritical system, and his code is something that can easily be misconstrued by fear ( @disregardcanon ), much as Gawain’s own values. The Tin Man is, after all, still a man, and if we’ve learned anything from real fairytales, it is that men are fallible, whether or not they are made of metal.

Ironwood, Alone

he’s a lonely bitch

I know I f- up, I'm just a loser

Shouldn't be with ya, guess I'm a quitter

While you're out there drinkin', I'm just here thinkin'

'Bout where I should've been

I've been lonely, mm, ah, yeah

— Benee, Supalonely (2019)

You do get the sense that Ironwood is riddled with self-loathing conflicting with pride, with self-doubt clashing with competence, and that he is the kind of person who longs for things without verbalizing. Maybe his dad never paid enough attention to him as a kid. Maybe he suffered some terrible physical and emotional trauma, which might as well be assumed, given the extensive nature of his cybernetic limbs. Maybe (probably) he’d be more well-adjusted and would’ve made better decisions if the people around him trusted him and were a little more open. To be fair, though, he is the one at the wheel, and he is making the calls; no one else is to blame for his mistakes, and to pretend otherwise is to deny him accountability. I think we do enough of that in everyday life, in excusing powerful men of their responsibilities. To his credit, I do think he wants to help people. I think James also wants to project the personality of a leader who is stoic, controlled, and measured. He is charming when he wants to be, sympathetic when it suits him, and influential in just the right areas. He is not a sociopath, but he is a politician, and in a lot of ways, those are the same thing. We see in his brief flashes of temper, often prompted by Qrow, or most notably by Oscar, that this is not a calm, stable person. This is someone is on the verge of exploding, who is so fucking angry that he is not in control that it’s killing him, and so he is going to lash out and kill the things that are not within his grip. If the people beneath him will not reciprocate the heart that he offers, then he has no real use of it. James Ironwood does not begin this story as a bad person. This is a tragedy, in however many parts it takes.

I read, in one very smart and very put-together analysis that I cannot find and properly credit at the moment, that part of Ironwood’s (many) failures can be seen in Winter, and how, like Ozpin, he has appointed a woman as his talented, no-nonsense, second chain in command at his right hand. In this way, Winter is an intentional parallel to Glynda, who is, without question, a bad bitch. In theory, surrounding yourself with strong individuals is a demonstration of self restraint, in implementing your own checks and balances. James wants to project that he is powerful, yes, but he is reasonable.

I take this to mean that, to some degree, even if it’s unintentional or subconscious, Winter serves to boost Ironwood’s ego.

The issue with this is that within the inherently hierarchical structure of the military, Winter cannot question, undermine, or challenge Ironwood in a way that is particularly meaningful and their relationship is one of commander and subordinate before colleagues or equals (link to a fantastic post about Winter’s role as the Good, Conscientious Soldier by @fishyfod). Whereas Glynda is free to argue with, converse, and be as combative as she needs to be with Ozpin (although their power dynamic is arguably one of commander and subordinate albeit informally), Winter cannot temper Ironwood effectively, and through the illusion of equality, Ironwood is further isolated.

His head and arms and legs were jointed upon his body, but he stood perfectly motionless, as if he could not stir at all.

Dorothy looked at him in amazement, and so did the Scarecrow, while Toto barked sharply and made a snap at the tin legs, which hurt his teeth.

“Did you groan?” asked Dorothy.

“Yes,” answered the tin man, “I did. I’ve been groaning for more than a year, and no one has ever heard me before or come to help me.”

The Tin Man needs oil to lubricate his joints; without it, he cannot move, and he is rendered helpless and inanimate. When Dorothy and the group find him, he is entirely isolated with no one in sight, and he has been there for such a long time that he has begun to rust. Similarly, Ironwood needs valued voices of dissent to keep him in check. His colleagues were able to serve that purpose in the beginning, and out of them, Qrow is the best example of someone who doesn't take his shit, openly questions him, and looks down on the performative decorum of the military culture that Ironwood is surrounded by. What Ironwood needs is to be flexible and adaptable; his Semblance, Mettle (heh, metal, very nice pun, RoosterTeeth), is a double edged sword in that it gives him supernatural focus and willpower - enough, perhaps, to flay/chop off your own limbs - but it blindsides him, and is only further prolonging his pain.

There is a lot of sympathy to Ironwood’s character, as much as I’ve ragged on him for being an authoritarian, kind of a dick, and bad with kids. There are moments, such as the previously mentioned dinner party, where he shows his colors a bit, and when he assures the students at the Vytal Festival that there’s no shame in leaving before the battle begins, and in giving Yang a prosthetic arm before her father even has to ask. As far as Generals go, it seems that he’s seen soldiers come and go and understands, at least in his best moments, that not everyone is the same, and not everyone has power of unflinching determination to rely on. Ironwood performs his best when he tempers himself because he understands himself, and others. It’s when he fails to self-reflect that his hypocrisy shows through. Glynda points it out, too, as does Qrow; Ironwood advocates for trust but often fails to give it himself, going behind Ozpin’s back, being absolutely shit at field communication, and now the whole fascist, borderline-genocidal keruffle he’s gotten himself into.

I think that Ironwood reaching out to Qrow was his ethical last stand, his last chance and conscious effort to choose the right path. Qrow is unequivocally an equal, not like how Ozpin is the Big Boss, the authority that James becomes disillusioned with and tries to overthrow. He wants someone to trust, desperately so, and Qrow wants that too, but narrative subversion has hands. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man have no brain and heart respectively, and are in need of them. As it turns out, Qrow is actually a pragmatic guy with solid principles angled against authoritarianism, and Ironwood is a dick who would rather enforce martial law than to empathize and tame his military-shaped boner for one second.

I might conclude that someone like Qrow might be best for Ironwood, but that does not mean that someone like Ironwood would be the best for Qrow. Qrow has a brain after all, but Ironwood does not choose his heart when it matters, case in point. Even the intro of the current season features Salem and Ironwood on a chessboard; his white pieces are disappearing, dissolving into dust, as hers transform into Grimm. Ironwood is isolating himself by depleting himself of allies. As this post by @hadesisqueer points out, Ironwood isn’t even positioned as King, the supposed commander, but the Queen, the most versatile player on the board that is so far underused, since he hasn’t moved from his spot. Ironwood’s refusal to unify against Salem is his failure to strategically utilize the best resources that were available to him; soon, the pieces will be swallowed by the dark.

James is guilty of something that a lot of us are guilty of: doing a Bad Thing for what we have convinced ourselves is a Good Reason, when in reality, it is actually a lot of Very Bad Reasons. James Ironwood is a Knight archetype, through and through, and he is charging forward to do the right thing. He is afraid, he is lying to himself, and he will never surrender.

“All the same,” said the Scarecrow, “I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.”

“I shall take the heart,” returned the Tin Woodman; “for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”

Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted.

The lesson of James Ironwood is a lesson of failure, and of the way that we succumb to fear, because that is Salem’s agenda, really, in the end: fear. It’s the negative emotions, fear being first and foremost, that draw in and empower the Grimm, and it’s fear and uncertainty that causes chaos. It is when Dorothy’s friends give into their fear that they are truly defeated. FDR’s assertion that “The only thing to fear is fear itself” holds true here; it’s not so much that these characters are afraid of losing their lives, their loved ones, and of the dark, but that they do not have the love or the resources to be brave for themselves or for others.

Qrow as a character is introduced as one who is already defeated, in a sense. Half of his team is gone, dead or estranged, he’s forced into the shadows of espionage to protect a world he knows is darker than it should be, and he’s fighting a losing battle with alcoholism. As charismatic as he’s written, he’s referred to as a “dusty old crow”, a hunter of renowned skill but past the prime of his life.

Dorothy’s three titular companions are defined by what they lack; in the same vein of the Disney I Want song (a main character’s main monologue song in which their wants and desires that motivate them throughout the rest of the film is laid out in song; ie Part of Your World, Reflections, How Far I’ll Go), the Lion, Tin Man, and the Scarecrow want bravery, a heart, and a brain respectively. RWBY relies on flipping the script of its characters based on what the audience might expect from the source material; Ruby is not just a helpless little girl - her introduction is a badass with a scythe. The Scarecrow is a chronic alchoholic. Cinderella is a victim of abuse, and is also a villain who wants to set the world aflame. Subversion, subversion, subversion.

There are obviously parallels between the characters in RWBY and in their own fairytales to keep them in character, and part of the fun is spotting those clues and occasionally connecting the dots to anticipate the direction of the narrative and certain connections between characters and the significance of their arcs. While I’m not aware of Dorothy Gale’s RWBY counterpart, if she has already been established or is yet to be introduced, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Ruby has adopted a Dorothy-eque persona and can act as a surrogate in a way. She begins as a sweet, naive child eager to join a world of color and excitement, who initially believes that she has “normal knees” and is thrust into a political scheme full of powerful and older players. She even has a small dog as a companion, Toto Zwei, who seems like an odd addition, since he’s usually sidelined and basically forgotten about except in a few spare moments, unless he’s there to draw further comparisons to Dorothy. She may not be from Kansas, but she is first helped by Glynda (the Good Witch), and later expects assistance from Ozpin, Qrow, and the later Ozian counterparts. I find it a peculiar detail that for Ruby to be Little Red Riding Hood alone, she is surrounded specifically by Dorothy’s companions. This, of course, only increases the importance of the relevance of the Oz series in particular and the characters that are borrowed.

In the case of Ozpin’s inner circle, Dorothy’s closest comrades (sans Toto) differ in crucial ways to their source material. (After finishing this essay, I found a much better, condensed explanation by @neopoliitan )

Disillusioned by the Ozpin, the Wizard (who has been projecting an illusion of a failsafe) and overwhelmed by the rise of the Wicked Witch of the West, Lionhart (the Lion), gives into his cowardice and ultimately forgoes the arc and redemption of his character from the source material; as such, he is by all definitions, a failure and a premonition, as Ironwood eventually follows. If RWBY is a dark take on classic fairytales, then it is only fitting that these characters are charred husks of their fairytale selves - these are people, and some people are selfish, scared, and cowardly, and they do not overcome these traits.

This is all opinion based, pure speculation. I have no idea what will happen in the next episode, and whatever goes down will be...shit will hit the fan. I’m under no delusions that Ironqrow is going to be canon in a healthy, tender, endgame sense. They’re both kind of losing their minds, and Ironwood is shitting absolute bricks. No, they’re going to try to kill each other, and I personally cannot wait for Qrow to cleave this man in two. (Not sexually, just, literally. Like, with a scythe.)

On that note, I think that the RWBY writers are good at callbacks, at drawing attention to their own connections, and if Ironwood and Qrow’s inevitable confrontation is scheduled, then it will include visual callbacks to Qrow saving James at Beacon, maybe shot for shot. Their visuals have only gotten better as time goes on, and I imagine Ironwood’s eyes widening as Qrow leaps through the air, scythe drawn, in recal of a moment so long ago when they weren’t on the same page, but they were at least on the same side. When Qrow brings the blade down, there will be no enemy behind him. Only Jimmy James. The difference between the two of them will be that Qrow isn’t fighting out of fear, but out of love, for what happened to Clover, and to what could happen to his girls.

Qrow’s reliance on alcohol, as well as his (mostly) feigned nonchalance is meant to fit with the motif that the Scarecrow has no brain, and, had he a mind to desire anything, would desire it most of all. His role is, also, notably, gathering intelligence for Ozpin (his character is also based on Munnin from Norse mythology). There is so much about Qrow that is an act and so much that is not, and I think that this act is born both from this motif and from his own cynicism, and the alcohol contributes to this act. However, he eventually gets sober after Ruby expresses legitimate frustration, and he understands that he’s putting their lives at risk. While one could say that he gave up drinking for the kids, I would argue that the kids - Ruby in particular - made him want to give up drinking for himself, to better himself.

While Lionhart and Ironwood betray the people depending on them, Qrow’s love for his nieces (and for the kids) allows him to deviate from this pattern. The answer to fear is perhaps not merely bravery - Qrow’s triumph is love.

Ironwood knows triumph in the context of a military state, but he’s backed himself into a corner. Soon he will find himself alone and friendless. Hopefully, his last stand will not be in vain.

#ironqrow #james ironwood #qrow branwen #rwby #rwby8 spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby meta #ok this is all just based on my opinion ok #like i ship ironqrow but ironwood is a dicktator if u know what i mean #he is probably gonna die but anyway #ironqrow meta #winter schnee #snowbird #also includes links and credit to other posts and metas #I just had to get this off of my chest ok

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holyhellpod · 3 years

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

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

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

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

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

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Real Ghostbusters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m an entity of my word.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The French Mistake

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

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

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

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

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

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

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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lovelazarus · 3 years

Text

rating: Mature

archive warning: graphic depictions of violence

words: 2645

tags: Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Self-Harm (fairly graphic), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, graphic description of suicide attempt, Flashbacks, Trauma, Fluff, Fix-It of Sorts, Dean is alive, Castiel is alive, Hurt/Comfort, POV Dean Winchester, brief mention of John Winchester - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Sad with a Happy Ending, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Past Abuse, Homophobic Language, 15x20 Fix-It

summary: (This fic starts out with a graphic dream/flashback of Dean's mid-20s.) Cas showed up to save Dean in 15x20 after he let himself get impaled on rebar, his attempt to stop living while thinking Cas was truly gone in the Empty. It's been a few months since that event in the Barn. Things have been calm since Chuck lost his power & Jack brought Castiel back to help rebuild heaven (although Jack isn't in this directly!). Even with things being okay, Dean's decades of trauma are still bubbling up and Dean has to face the reality of his actions (past & present).

PLEASE read all tags before reading!

The last thing Dean remembers is sitting down on the couch in the Deancave, waiting for Cas to come pick tonight's movie. He must’ve dozed off at some point because suddenly it's 2004 and he’s 25 years old again.

The two years Sammy was off at Stanford was one of Dean’s lowest points in life; including his trip to hell, being a demon & helping kick start the apocalypse. He was completely alone.

Sam was gone, John was irate and blamed Dean for Sam leaving, for not stopping him from leaving. Dean was hunting alone, without his family, for the first time in his life. His last hunt however was the first to deeply scar him irrevocably.

A father and 2 sons, roughly the same age apart as him and Sam. Both attacked by an extremely vengeful spirit, the father was gutted and the sons were supernaturally manipulated into hanging themselves. Dean walked into their house hoping to save the family after following trails of the case, but he walked into a gruesome scene that left him shaking and holding back from vomiting.

In Dean’s mind, it was a representation of his own torn apart family. He left the home, found the grave of the spirit, and put it to rest with unsteady hands and bleary eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time… I could’ve saved you and I wasn’t there. I wasn’t good enough to help you. I’m so sorry.” Dean whispers, half to the victims and half to his younger brother, thousands of miles away and unable to hear his plea.

He gets to the motel room he rented with his duffle slung over his shoulder and stands outside the door with the key in his hand, almost afraid to enter, lest he finds another sick and twisted scene inside. He exhales roughly and shoves the key into the door and strides in.

All that's inside his cheap bottle of gas station whiskey and a pack of menthols.

He drops his duffle on the extra twin bed before scooping up his liquor and smokes. He wants to erase this entire hunt from his mind if he can.

Oh, how he wants to.

Three hours later his whole pack is gone, cigarette butts shoved into an old ashtray, and 3/4th the bottle of whiskey is sitting harshly in his stomach. Dean can’t stop picturing that family as his own. Thoughts of his father’s anger circle inside his mind like a tornado.

“I told you to watch out for Sammy, boy! Do you even use that brain other than to continuously disappoint me and fail your brother? To fail Mary?”

HIT

“I left you alone for two weeks! TWO WEEKS THAT'S ALL! Now Sam has run off and you’re going to pay for it.”

HIT

“So you blew through all the money I left you and now you’re turning tricks like some little faggot? You’re going to influence Sammy to that shit and I won’t allow my sons to be like that.”

HIT

With each memory of John rushing back into Dean’s mind, he can still feel the physical hits coming. His dad was right. This would never have happened if he hadn’t been more careful. If he had protected Sam like he was told to. If he had been a better son.

He finishes the last of the whiskey as the screams of his father’s voice start to fade back into the black void inside his mind. But the moment the last drop of liquor touches his tongue, he breaks. Every punch landed by his father that he took in order to protect Sam comes rushing back. Every harsh word and drunken fight he got into. Every argument with Sam over being too controlling, too much of a soldier.

Dean feels sick.

The toilet in that crappy motel room has certainly seen better days, but no matter how much Dean vomits, he stays just as drunk.

In a moment of blind anger, he destroys the kitchenette, the TV, and the nightstand. He chucks the empty whiskey bottle at the wall and watches the glass fly everywhere as it shatters.

He absent-mindedly picks up a large piece of glass.

This could kill me. One quick and easy slash to my neck or wrist and that’d be it. No more pain for Sam, and no more disappointment for dad.

He lets his hand drop to his side and allows the shard to fall to the floor. This isn’t the first time he’s had thoughts like this in moments of weakness, but it's certainly the first time there was a calm push behind it. He collapses to his knees with a broken sob. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He's tired.

God, he is so tired.

Dean isn’t sure when he decided this was his only option to stop the deep visceral pain he’s feeling, but it's where he’s at now.

Swallow all the pills in the med bag? No, that's what bitches and girls do, plus… it's painful.

Slit his wrists in a nice warm bath? Even worse than pills! You really are some kind of faggot, aren’t you?

Shotgun to the face? Now that's the man’s way out.

He pauses, looking over to his favorite sawed-off. It’ll be an absolute mess if that’s the way he goes. He thinks again to the family he couldn’t save; how gory and horrific it was. He shudders and breathes in sharply. He can’t do that to someone else, especially not some innocent civilian.

“Of course,” he mutters under his breath “I have a rope in the trunk.” So that’s the plan.

He stuffs all his shit into his duffle, writes out an apology to Sam, Bobby, and John (it’s a suicide note, but it doesn’t explain anything), and then he ties a military-grade noose. He finds a chair that isn’t completely destroyed by his earlier rage and begins to tie the rope onto the ceiling fan.

He stands there for a moment, contemplating. “Am I really about to do this? I’ve fought monsters and demons and ghosts for twenty years and this is where it ends?”

He shakes his head and shrugs.

“Always knew I'd die before thirty.”

He raises the noose to his head and just as he is about to slide it around his throat… The chair breaks apart, and he's left lying on his back with the wind knocked out of him.

“FUCK!” he manages to yell out before his lungs and chest start burning again. Tears begin to pinprick at his eyes as he lays motionless (and probably concussed, he didn’t break his fall at all). “I can’t even kill myself right.” he thinks to himself.

Slowly, he gets himself off the floor, groaning at the pain in his skull and back as he does. Crawling over to his bed, he sees the glass shard he dropped earlier.

“I just want to stop this fucking FEELING” his mind screams. “Just do SOMETHING you worthless son of a bitch!”

He picks the glass back up.

Everything is hazy when his brain starts to come into focus again. His hands feel slick and wet, so he brings them to his face to see what he touched.

Blood.

His own blood.

Three long gashes across his forearm, roughly a quarter-inch deep and four inches long each. He needs to stitch himself up for sure.

30 minutes later and it just looks like a hunt gone bad, his arm is sewn up and all the motel towels are stained red.

For a fleeting moment, he feels at peace. The rush of discovering what he did in a fog of failing to kill himself and the overwhelming feeling of failing his family, he feels like this was something he deserved. Like he deserved to be punished.

After an hour of dissociating and staring at the wall, he passes out and sinks into a moment of silent nothingness. No nightmares, not yet.

Dean practically jumps out of his skin when he hears Cas’s voice from the doorway.

“Dean? You look pale. What's going on?” Castiel asks with his familiar cadence.

Dean wishes he knew what brought that memory back up. Instead, he plasters on a fake smile and shakes his head reassuringly the best he can.

“Nothing Cas, just thinking I guess. What took you so long? You burn the popcorn or somethin?” Dean knows he sounds insincere, he knows that Cas knows, too. He doesn't want Cas to worry any more than he already does, though.

“Dean, your heart rate sped up and you were on the verge of hyperventilating, what happened?”

Damn it. He should’ve known Cas could still do that weird x-ray angel shit. Instead of trying to hide it further, he sighs and motions for Castiel to sit beside him on the couch.

However, he blanches when Cas passes behind him and brushes his hand against Dean’s shoulder. Cas sits down carefully, not to overwhelm Dean. Castiel has seen him during a flashback before, especially after hell. Cas looks inviting, ready to listen to whatever Dean has to say. Cas was always trying to be open with him lately, Dean knows it’s because of the struggles the last six months.

Cas dying, if briefly. Dean ALMOST dying, because of it.

Wait…

That's when Dean realizes.

Every time he’s lost someone, it's been bad. Drunk passed out on the floor, let Baby be filthy, run into hunts without any concern for his safety, bad…

The two worst times were when he lost Sammy, and when he thought he lost Cas to the Empty.

Dean must’ve been sitting there with a strange look on his face for a while cause Cas reaches out gingerly to silently ask if he’s alright. Dean gives him a half-smile and lets out the breath he was apparently holding.

“Cas, did I ever tell you about what I did in 2004 when Sam was off at Stanford and I was hunting by myself?”

Cas tilts his head in that endearing way he always does, “Not that I recall. Is something from back then troubling you now still?”

Dean clenches his jaw and runs a hand over his mouth, a nervous tic he picked up from John decades ago. “I did something similar back then to what I did in that barn. I gave up.”

Castiel’s eyes widen a bit, starting to understand what Dean is trying to say, but staying silent, to let him get this out.

Dean cracks a wry chuckle, “y’know, when you pulled me outta hell and into my body again, I was surprised you wiped the slate and got rid of all my scars.” He glances at Castiel, just for a moment, to see his reaction. It's soft but a little confused.

“At the time, I thought you would like to come back whole. A fresh start after what you went through in hell. I know now that life is about the imperfections and that the littlest things have meaning and memories. I’m sorry if I took those from you, Dean.” Cas meets Dean’s eyes with apologetic fondness and sincerity.

“Cas, it's okay. Really. Sometimes… I don't know, there's some scars I just miss sometimes.” He runs his hand along his forearm, where the self-harm scars would’ve been. “The ones that were here… they gave me a constant reminder of what almost happened. What I almost did.” Dean can feel his face getting warm as he talks about it, eyes watering up but no tears slip down his face.

Cas seems to nod along, waiting for him to continue with concerned patience. “I tried to kill myself back in ‘04. Sam was gone and doing fine without me, he had Jess. Dad was pissed at me for not getting him to stay and hunt. I had no one. I hit a low point after finding a really fucked up case about a vengeful spirit that gutted a family, father, and two sons…” Dean chokes up, as he pictures the glazed eyes of the corpses he found. A shiver runs down his spine as he can still picture it like it was yesterday.

“You saw your father and Sam in them and it brought up a lot of emotions, that’s understandable.” Cas tries to reassure him but doesn’t quite understand what Dean’s trying to get at.

“I got drunk after I salt and burned the spirit's corpse. I felt empty inside and like nobody needed me. I couldn’t save those kids and I didn't see any point in saving myself…” tears are now flowing gently down Dean’s face as he tries to push out what he needs to say, what he needs Cas to understand about this. “When you, when you said all that stuff before you left… I felt that same exact way. Even though I had Sam and Jack and then the whole bullshit after with Chuck and Lucifer and Michael… I felt so damn alone. Like I’d failed you, cause I couldn’t even save someone I love the most.” Dean’s voice goes harsh as he full-on sobs at those last few words.

The past few months since Castiel has been back, they haven’t talked about Cas's confession before being taken by the Empty, and Dean hasn’t said it aloud (even though his mind is screaming those three words every time he looks at Cas). Dean feels Cas touch his hand gently, reverently. A sob violently racks his body as he looks up into blue eyes also filled with tears.

“I’m so sorry Dean. I’m sorry.” the last word catches in his throat as Dean grabs his hand fully, intertwining their fingers.

“I know Cas. You did it to save me. You seem to keep doing that, huh? From hell, saying yes to Michael, Billie, from myself…” Dean softly strokes his thumb against Cas’s hand while tear tracks continue to stain his face. “Cas, thank you. I know I’ll never be able to pay you back for all that you’ve done for me and for Sam but… thank you.”

They lock eyes for a moment, Dean knows Cas loves him and he knows he loves Cas. He can’t think of a goddamn thing standing in the way right now. Dean releases Cas’s hand, cups his face, and brings their lips together, finally.

It takes a moment for Castiel to understand what's happening, but he quickly catches up and kisses Dean back fervently.

Cas tastes like summer rain after a long drought, like lightning and thunder all at once, like earth and something ethereal Dean can’t quite place. Cas tastes like coming home, and he is.

“Me too, Cas. Son of a bitch, I love you too.” he whispers into Cas’s mouth as Cas lets out a sob-laugh.

They pull apart for a moment, hands still against each other's cheeks. Communicating with their eyes is something they’ve mastered after 12 years, but there's something unknown now. Something new, something hopeful. And dammit if Dean isn't going to latch on to that hope.

They decide on an old western, Dean’s seen it a hundred times before. They’re leaning into each other silently watching as Dean’s eyes begin to close. He can feel Cas running his fingers against his arm, where those scars would’ve been. It's then, in the comfort of his Angel, that Dean falls fast asleep.

For the first time in 40 years, he doesn’t have nightmares. Not of yellow eyes, not of losing Sammy; not of John’s anger, not of hell; the apocalypse, Michael, Chuck, losing Cas… it all feels distant and far behind him now. When Dean wakes again, Cas still has his arms around him, eyes closed, and is running his fingers through Dean’s hair.

Dean knows all his trauma won't just vanish, but in this moment with Cas...it feels possible.

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shirtlesssammy · 4 years

Text

1x11: Scarecrow

Welcome to our harvest themed hiatus episode. Hope everyone enjoyed their freakin’ pie this week!

Burkitsville, Indiana

Sixteen Years One Year Ago

A young couple leave a friendly town after the townsfolk load them up with pie and gas for the car. “Everyone in this town is so nice,” remarks the wraith young woman. The man adds, “Yeah, what’s the catch?” The townsfolk’s daughter niece notes that the dude has a cool arm tattoo.

Once on the road, the couple’s car dies. I love how the woman asks what happened and the dude is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . They head into an orchard looking for help. They come across a scarecrow.

The woman is a bit freaked out, and I would be too if I saw the damn thing move! They hear strange noises and start running. The camera work gets grainy so you know we’re in scarytime land. The couple gets separated. The woman runs alone until she finds the man again -faceless and dead on the ground. She screams and then the now loose and animate scarecrow is upon her!

*John Winchester is a Horrible Father Alert*

Sam wakes to a ringing cell phone. He answers it and it’s John. He’s all evasive and apologetic about disappearing. He’s on the trail of the thing that killed their mom. It’s a demon! They have to stop chasing him. It’s not safe. Sam refuses. He wants answers. John jumps into drill sergeant father mode and Sam continues to balk.

Dean grabs his phone, AND MY GOD, watching Jensen transform silently while Dean listens to John talk is magnificent. He just falls right into order, writes down the names of three missing couples, and the brothers hit the road.

*Sam is driving Alert*

Ok, hold the phone, Dean’s giving backstory to the missing couples. They’ve gone missing every year in the second week of April. I --what? I should probably watch the whole episode before recapping, and I haven’t seen this episode in years and don’t really remember the secret. There were apples all over the orchard implying it’s the fall...hmm. Dean’s amazed at the level of research John did to figure out something was happening. He calls him “a master” and I just die a little knowing how very little John knows.

Sam stops the car and tells Dean that they’re not going to Indiana; they’re going to California.

John is on the trail of what killed Mary and Jess, and Sam wants to be there for it. Dean insists that John gave them an order (I’m having serious John/Chuck and Soldier Dean/Free Will feelings right now, give me a moment). Whew, Sam pulls the ‘My girlfriend just died six months ago’ card and insists that Dean can’t know how important this is to him. Dean continues to be a good little soldier though. Sam gets out of the car and tells Dean that he’s going to California. See ya! Dean tries pulling what I can only imagine the same move John pulled many times over the years, and tells Sam that he’ll leave him on the side of the road. That’s what Sam wants! Dean leaves.

Oof, there’s a lot to unpack with that fight. I’ll just throw up @mittensmorgul post. I’m just so very happy to see how far Dean’s come.

Dean pulls into the town in Indiana. He meets Scotty, owner of the local cafe. He introduces himself as John Bonham. “Isn’t that the drummer for Led Zeppelin?” How this hasn’t happened more over the years is beyond me.

Dean asks about the missing people and Scotty dismisses him quickly. They don’t get a lot of strangers around the town. Dean tries flirting with the guy but the man is a stone wall.

*Meg Alert*

Sam, meanwhile, continues to walk down the road hoping to see a passing car. He finds a young woman just sitting and listening to music instead. Like, wtf is Meg doing? Sam, how is this not suspicious activity to you? Anyway, a truck pulls up and offers to take only the lady.

Dean asks at the general store about his “friends”. Emily, the young woman there, remembers them. Dean heads off to where the couple was last seen driving. Dean’s driving along and his EMF starts to go nuts. He’s right by the orchard and walks in to investigate. How is this April? Anyway, Dean finds the scarecrow and we’re gifted with the now iconic line: “Dude, you fugly.”

He takes a closer look at the scarecrow and sees the tattoo on the arm. SMART, OBSERVANT BOY.

Dean heads back to town. He stops to get gas and talk to Emily. (Sidenote: Can all guest stars wear a necklace with their names on it so I’m not scrambling to figure out names every week? Thx.) Emily tells Dean how she came to the town when she was 13. It’s the middle of nowhere, but she loves it. This town seems blessed compared to the surrounding towns. Dean’s not suspicious at all. Dean asks about the scarecrow. Emily admits that it’s always just been there. Detective Dean also finds out a couple is in town waiting on their car to get repaired.

Sam is dealing with the nightmare that is the American Car Culture and lack of decent mass transit across our expansive 50 states. He runs into Meg again. This time she introduces herself.

Dean heads to Scotty’s to find the couple (and eat pie.) Boy does he need to work on his casual chit chat. Scotty is suspicious AF at Dean and tells him to leave them alone. Dean doesn’t and even offers to fix their car for them so they can hit the road sooner. They decline his offer, and like, I get it, but HOW DARE they accuse Dean of not being a mechanic.

Dean tries to warn them again but just comes off as creepy and they brush him off. Dean laments the lack of Sam’s puppy dog face, and then Scotty calls the local law enforcement on him. They literally chase him out of town. Lol.

Meg and Sam bond over a romantic bag of Cheetos and some beer. She’s on the run from family expectations too! Looks like they’re made for each other, friends. (This is the nicest damn bus station I’ve ever seen. It has NAPKIN holders! And tables! And beer!)

While Sam’s enjoying a meet-cute, the couple from the restaurant clutch each other in the apple orchard, the scarecrow in hot pursuit, when Dean appears. He shouts at them to run back to their car and shoots fruitless holes in the scarecrow. The moment they all arrive back on the road, the scarecrow disappears.

On his phone, Sam gets the hunt recap from Dean while he watches his new friend sleep at the station. Dean figures that he’s dealing with a god because the killing happens once a year, it’s always couples, and “you should see the locals. The way they treated this couple. Fattenin’ ‘em up like a Christmas turkey.” It’s ritual sacrifice, baby. While Dean’s talking, he’s driving out to a local community college to meet with a professor there and get some information about what kind of god he might be fighting. He tells Sam that he’s proud of him for defying their father and going his own way in life. Dean wishes he could do the same. To quote Boris, excuse me while I fling myself into a volcano.

Dean chats with the Cigarette Smoking Man a professor in the nicest damn community college I have ever seen. He asks about pagan lore and the origin of the residents of Burkitsville. They were Scandinavian which leads to Dean’s next pointed question: he’s looking for a Scandinavian god who might live in an apple orchard. They pull down an ancient book of lore - the kind that is standard issue in every community college classroom - and start paging through looking for a “woods” god.

Dean spots a creepy scarecrow drawing. The description lists the scarecrow as a Vanir, a norse god of protection and prosperity which keeps villages from harm. Worshippers built effigies of the Vanir in their fields, and some practiced human sacrifice. They’re tied to a sacred tree. Dean, my best and direct friend, asks, “So what would happen if the sacred tree was torched? You think it’d kill the god?” LOL, there’s no such thing as gods, young man! Dean bids farewell to the professor and immediately gets conked out by the Burkitsville sheriff. SIGNIFICANT LOOKS™ are exchanged between the professor and sheriff.

Later, rain falls heavily on a group of older folks standing outside under umbrellas. Three of them plead with Harley, the gas station owner. His wife tells him that the trees are beginning to die. It’s the “seventh night of the cycle” and they have one more chance to appease “it.” Dun dun DUN.

For Pretty Shot Science

Cut to a cellar door opening. The cadre of elderly conspirators hauls a tearful Emily down to be trapped alongside Dean. Her aunt comfortingly tells her that it’s for “the common good.” (This REALLY makes me want to rewatch Hot Fuzz again!)

At the bus station, Sam and Meg’s bus finally arrives. But Sam’s got a problem. His brother hasn’t answered his phone for the last three hours. He’s got to go to Burkitsville! “You’re running back to your brother? The guy you ran away from?” Meg implores Sam to go to California with her, but Sam tells her he can’t. His family needs him.

In the cellar, Emily freaks out about her newfound knowledge of a murderous scarecrow god and her accomplice relatives. Dean describes human sacrifice as “classier” than plain murder and…Dean Bean. More helpfully, he tries to put together a game plan with Emily. He asks her about an old tree - one the locals might treat with respect. Emily does know about a tree that the locals call “the First Tree.” Subtle naming, dear locals!

They’re seized from the cellar and tied in the orchard as evening approaches. Emily pleads for her life, but her aunt tells her that family bonds aren’t enough to save her. “That’s what sacrifice means. Giving up something you love for the greater good.” (I’ll just...look directly into the camera.)

Much later, night’s fallen and Dean is still working on a plan to free them both. Something insidious approaches and….wait, it’s Sam! Dean’s practically giddy to see his brother, who stole a car to get to town in time. What a good, thieving bean! Dean tells Sam to keep an eye on the scarecrow because it “could come alive any minute.”

In classic horror movie fashion, Sam asks, “What scarecrow?”

The scarecrow’s on the loose, but our trio is finally free in the orchard. They’re prevented from escaping by the four town elders penning them in with shotguns, however. Harley tries to convince Emily to give up (and die) when the scarecrow’s sickle slices through him, killing him. It drags Stacy and Harley away, having claimed its yearly couple at last.

The next morning Sam, Dean, and Emily walk through the orchard with a can of fuel. They find the “First Tree” which has runes carved into its bark. Sam douses it with gasoline and Emily lights the tree on fire. Look at this wholesome tale of youth dismantling a toxic system!

Back at the station I finally get a good look at the bus company. It’s called “American Freedom Coach Lines.” LOL, if you need me I’ll be picking myself up from the floor after being hit by this symbolic brick.

Emily boards a bus headed towards Boston. Dean gleefully anticipates the murder-town’s slow, god-less demise before asking Sam about his plans. “I still wanna find Dad. And you’re still a pain in the ass. But, Jess and Mom…they’re both gone. Dad is god knows where. You and me. We’re all that’s left. So, if we’re gonna see this through, we’re gonna do it together.” Can I get a yee-haw?!

Meanwhile, Meg’s hitched a ride with Creepy Driver Number 2 and suggests “pulling over” when he asks her where she wants to go. He pulls a little way off the road and she takes out a silver bowl. “I’ve gotta make a call,” she tells him before slicing his throat open and filling the bowl with blood. She stirs it, mutters an incantation, and then asks the bowl why she wasn’t allowed to just kill Sam and Dean. Someone clearly gives her orders and she says, rather ominously, “Yes, Father.”

Natasha: This is one of my favorite episodes! What’s not to love about creepy scarecrows and murderous fertility/prosperity rituals?

____________________________

I Hope These Quotes Were Frickin’ Worth It:

I’ve given you an order

I don’t understand the blind faith you have in the man

Dude, you fugly

Nice tat

My brother could give you this puppy dog look and you’d buy right into it

Indiana isn’t really known for its Pagan worship

I hope your apple pie is freakin’ worth it!

Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful.

____________________________

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn rewatch #spn 1x11 #scarecrow #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural season 1

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drsilverfish · 5 years

Text

Jack Kline Novak Winchester: Son, TFW Mirror, Trinity and Key; Quaternity, Ouroboros, Caduceus, and Harbinger of The End

“I am a hunter, I am the son of Lucifer, I am a Winchester!” (14x14 Ourboros).

“One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” (the alchemist Maria Prophetissima 1-3 C AD). This refers to the four stages of alchemy, the refining of base metals into gold on the material plane, but the refining of the soul to God on the spiritual plane - nigredo (black), albedo (white), citrinalis (yellow), and rubedo (red).

In Jung’s interpretation of this alchemical piece of wisdom, this means the refining of the psyche:

1) = Conscious Self

2) = Unconscious Self (the Shadow or Mirror)

3) = Inner Mediator

4) Integrated Self

(One of the books Dean uses to build the Ma’lak box in 14x11 Damaged Goods)

This meta is concerned with Jack’s rich symbolic role in the SPN narrative.

Jack enters the story to help Team Free Will face their Shadow-Selves and thus evolve psychologically.

This concludes my S14 meta series on the Jungian (and alchemical) themes of the season.

You can read all the previous meta in that series here:

1) The Shadow 14x08

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

2) 14x09 The Spear (Jungian Decoder Ring Edition)

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/181122764984/14x09-the-spear-jungian-decoder-ring-edition

3) Jung and Dean’s Journey Towards Self-Integration in 14x11 Damaged Goods

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182299438269/jung-and-deans-journey-towards-self-integration

4) Ouroboros in Prophet and Loss (14x12)

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182486474324/ouroboros-in-prophet-and-loss-14x12

5) A Pearl of Great Price - 14x13 Lebanon

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182660472289/a-pearl-of-great-price-14x13-lebanon

6) The Serpent and the Egg: Snake and Eye Symbology in 14x14 Ouroboros

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/183327000184/the-serpent-and-the-egg-snake-and-eye-symbology

7) Another Alchemical Easter Egg in 14x14

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/183388134889/another-alchemical-easter-egg-in-14x14

8) The Scapegoat: Speculative Musings on S14′s End (Moriah) (Linked to the Season’s Jungian Themes - Scapegoating and the Unacknowledged Shadow)

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184045009309/the-scapegoat-speculative-musings-on-s14s-end

9) Dean’s Jungian Shadow Arc in S14: Confronting the Internal Father (2x22 to 14x20 Moriah)

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184507150574/deans-jungian-shadow-arc-in-s14-confronting-the

Jack is dualistic; Good and Evil, Human Soul and Angelic Grace. He is a trinity: Human, Angel and “Demon” (fallen Angel); Dean-mirror, Cas-mirror, Sam-mirror. He is also a quaternity, thanks to the additional feminine element: his mother, Kelly Kline and his adoptive mother/ grandmother Mary Winchester (the latter resurrected by the feminine God-principle Amara).

Jung considers the quaternity to be highly significant (he refers to “squaring the circle”) including, as above, in relation to his interpretation of Maria Prophetissima’s alchemical summary as being analogous to the stages of psychic growth and integration. He often considers the, Son, Father, Holy Ghost and Mother Mary of Christianity to be external symbols for the four stages or elements of the human psyche.

“The quaternity, is an archetype of almost universal occurrence [. . .]” For instance, if you want to describe the horizon as a whole, you name the four quarters of heaven…There are always four elements, four prime qualities, four colours, four castes, four ways of spiritual development, etc. So, too, there are four aspects of psychological orientation [. . .] The ideal of completeness is the circle sphere, but its natural minimal division is a quaternity”

(Jung: Psychology and Religion: West and East).

Conceived by stealth-rape in a Bucklemming episode (12x08 LOTUS) Jack was possibly off to an inauspicious start as the Devil’s Baby.

But Jack the Nephilim, son of Lucifer and Kelly Kline, had the good sense to adopt Castiel as his protector in the womb, and from then on out he has ascended through the spiral narrative like the phoenix he is.

Born in 12x23 All Along the Watchtower, Jack was always part of Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative. A "demon” with yellow eyes in a nursery, a child, and a mother who dies; Jack was a mirror, reflecting SPN’s origin story, of Azazel feeding baby-Sam demon blood, and burning Mary Winchester on the ceiling. And Jack was Sammy and Azazel both.

Castiel died at Jack’s birth too, murdered by Lucifer in front of Dean’s horrified eyes, thus placing Cas in the role of Mary Winchester and Dean in the role of John Winchester.

Adopted by a reluctant grieving Dean and a hopeful Sam, Jack discovered he loved nougat and stole a lot of fandom hearts.

Importantly, through their adoption of Jack and his reflection of many of their previous experiences, TFW are forced to recognise themselves (including painful repressed elements of themselves) in him, thus he enables them to better meet their Shadow-selves and evolve. In this sense he is the mediator between the Ego and the Id, the conscious self and the unconscious self, the Self and the Shadow for TFW. That is why Jack is linked to the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail, because in alchemy that signifies transformation:

This self-recognition (of themselves in Jack) is initially much easier for Sam and Cas than it is for Dean....

Sam the boy corrupted by demon blood, of course sees himself in the innocent yet unstable son of Lucifer. Cas, fallen angel in love with humanity, likewise naturally sees himself in a half-angel/ half-human child who is struggling with his place in the world.

Juxtaposing innocence and enormous power (potential for good and potential for evil) Jack was a child who grew up too fast, literally (appearing twenty whilst only two). In this respect, he was a mirror for Dean, who had to grow up too fast when his Mom died, assuming the role of substitute-parent to Sammy.

Dean has a hard time recognising and having compassion for the innocent child part of himself that he gave up to become Daddy’s “good little soldier” and caretaker to Sammy. Which is why his journey into loving Jack (as a reflection of himself) goes hardest (see my meta on Dean’s Jungian shadow arc, linked above, for more on this).

Jack is also (like Dawn in Buffy) a metaphysical, mystical key. He opens doors; doors between dimensions/ worlds and alternate universes as well as doors in the psyche between the Self and the Shadow. He is the key to Chuck’s multiverse and to the larger God-machine.

Jack (responding to Dean’s intense grief) resurrected Castiel in The Empty, the space where dead angels and demons go. Only Chuck had resurrected Castiel previously. So, we see Jack step into the role of God, but in a place (The Empty) where (if we believe the Cosmic Entity that resides there) God has no dominion. Jack already presages God Level Mark II.

With Mary Winchester in the apocalypse world (she who was resurrected by the feminine God-principle, Amara) Jack stood on the side of humans against angels, and in this, he was a mirror for Castiel (who rebelled against Heaven to stand with the Winchesters).

When his birth father, Lucifer, stole his grace in 13x23 Let the Good Times Roll, Jack became de-powered (human-ish) again, mirroring Castiel (and his Human!Cas arc after the angel fall in 8x23 Sacrifice).

With his soul/ grace unbalanced, Jack began coughing up blood; a mirror for Sam’s journey during the demon trials of S8.

Knowing he was dying, Jack went fishing with Dean in 14x07 Unhuman Nature

Ahhh all the lovely fish and fishing metaphors SPN has employed over the years. Fish have sometimes stood for humans, sometimes stood for angels, but always for angel/ human convergence. Jung in Aion (reading medieval alchemical texts) writes about the fish as an alchemical symbol for the philosopher’s stone (the mystical substance that allows transformation - of matter and spirit and, for Jung, of the psyche): “...alchemical fish symbolism leads direct to the lapis, the salvator, servator, and deus terrenus; that is, psychologically, to the self.” (Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1979: p157)

So, Dean and his adopted Nephilim son fish together, which recalls, in particular, Dean’s fishing dream in 4x20 The Rapture, which Cas entered and there passed Dean a love note of assistance. If fish are angels, then Dean and Jack have already “caught” one, by means of love: Castiel.

Dean is placed here again in the role of his own father, John Winchester.

JACK: “You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.”

And Jack, as the product of angel/ human congress, has always stood (in subtext) as a metaphor for the love between Dean and Cas.

But, metaphysically unbalanced, Jack sickens further. An injection of Gabriel’s archangel grace doesn’t help. TFW take him to the hospital together, to no avail. Sam, his third adoptive father, keeps vigil at his bedside as he dies.

Jack finds himself in Heaven. Here he is a mirror for Sam and Dean, who have both died multiple times on the show. He reunites with his mother Kelly Kline, but The Shadow (a manifestation of The Empty particularly linked to Castiel, symbolising, as it does, Cas’ Jungian Shadow-self) has invaded Heaven and wants to drag Jack to The Empty with it. Jack’s duality is here highlighted, as his human soul belongs in Heaven, but his dead angelic self belongs in The Empty, (according to the SPN cosmic sorting hat!)

Castiel comes searching for Jack in Heaven, and makes a deal with The Shadow in 14x08 Byzantium - Jack’s life for his own (the moment Cas allows himself to be happy). Cas and Jack mirror Dean and Sam here, and all the supernatural deals they’ve made, or tried to make, to bring one another back from death over the years. Cas in particular mirrors Dean, because Sam has always, in one sense, been not only Dean’s brother, but his son.

As ever, there will be a price to pay for this deal. Not only Castiel’s promise to surrender himself to the Shadow, but also the second “death” of Mary Winchester (caused by a resurrected Jack).

But, Cas loves his Nephilim son so much (<my heart>):

Held in an unstable balance thanks to Lily Sunder’s dark soul-consuming magic, things start to get dicey for Jack post-resurrection. He tries to impress Max, Stacy and Eliot (the Lebanon kids) and ends up stabbing Stacy (Castiel’s mirror) with an angel blade (14x16 Don’t Go in the Woods) leaving Max (Dean’s mirror) grieving over her body, thus, in that moment, mirroring his father Lucifer (12x23 All Along the Watchtower), However, he brings Stacy back from death (mirroring his own resurrection of Cas) but every time he uses his powers, he burns off some of his soul:

Wow he is cycling, Ouroboros style, through so many previous TFW arcs.

And so we arrive at 14x14 Ouroboros itself, THE crucial episode in terms of all this symbology, in which Jack kills the Queer Gorgon Noah Ophis (himself an Ouroboros symbol = Noah from Genesis and Ophis from Revelation) to save the Winchesters and adopts his snake, Felix (also an Ouroboros symbol).

Then, he burns off considerably more of his soul (perhaps all of it - it’s unclear) to kill AU!Michael, and swallows his grace, Ouroboros style:

Jack is now another symbolic duality and trinity - he contains elements of both Michael and Lucifer, the two opposing forces in Apocalypse Mark I, now united in one being. The third element is provided by his humanity (now, seemingly, in jeopardy).

An evolved and fully re-powered-up Jack has sprung forth, just as Pegasus the winged horse and his brother Chrysaor of the golden sword did from the neck of their Gorgon mother Medusa when Perseus slew her:

In this form, Jack is linked (via a book on Donatello’s shelves behind him in 14x15 Peace of Mind - thanks to @postmodernmulticoloredcloak for this spot!) to the Caduceus symbol on the spine of the Book of Life here:

The Caduceus is the staff of Hermes, consisting of two serpents entwined about a staff crowned with wings. Hermes is the messenger of the Gods in Greek mythology. He can move freely between the worlds of God and men (linking to Jack’s function as a metaphysical key, on both a micro-cosmic psychological scale, and a macrocosmic God-machine scale). Hermes was also a psychopomp, a conductor of souls to the afterlife. The psychopomp is linked by Jung to the psychological mediator function - that which mediates between the Self and the Shadow, as Jack does for TFW via his mirroring function.

Jack’s visit to Donatello also serves to remind us that even someone without a human soul can live a good life if they pick the right role models (Donatello picks Mr. Rogers, Jack picks the Winchesters).

In 14x15 Peace of Mind, Jack demonstrates both his potential for good and evil in this new diminished soul-state, via a (misplaced) compassion (good) which leads him to kill Felix the snake (evil) believing the beastie is grieving for Noah the Queer Gorgon and will be reunited with him in death:

This death of the snake is also symbolic of Jack’s role as mirror and mystical key - old patterns within both Team Free Will and Chuck’s Multiverse must die, in order for newer and healthier ones to be born. Jack is the catalyst, the messenger, the Ouroboros, the Caduceus.

In Jack’s new, vulnerable, state (with either some, or all, of his soul gone) he banishes Lucifer back to the Empty in 14x17 Game Night after Nick (bleugh) tries to resurrect him, and he then burns Nick to a crispy cinder for good measure. Afterwards, Jack is tormented by Hallucifer (a vision of his father Lucifer in his mind). This is very possibly the actual Lucifer, communicating with Jack via the blood-link spell Nick performed, hoping to lead him astray. It certainly sounds like the actual Lucifer. It also, of course, mirrors Sam’s Hallucifer arc.

Distressed by Mary’s reaction to his incineration of Nick and taunted by Hallucifer, Jack loses control and (or so we are led to believe) kills Mary (in fact I think he’s blasted her unwittingly through a portal to an AU/ mirror universe, but that’s another story).

Now the crisis in Jack’s relationship with his adoptive fathers is set up.

Dean, is the member of TFW who (as I explained above) has found it hardest to have compassion for the mirror-self whom Jack reflects back to him (young Dean with the weight of the world on his shoulders) and he determines Jack must be locked in the Ma’lak box and/ or killed. Sam and Cas, who have been better able to recognise themselves in Jack and so have compassion for him, dissent (but Sam’s hangover child-role to Dean’s father-role in their toxic co-dependency means he doesn’t initially stand up to Dean).

Here is Jack, locked in the Ma’lak box (Jack in the Box 14x19) being tormented again by Hallucifer:

And, of course, that couldn’t contain him, so, deeply upset at being lied to by two of his three adoptive fathers, Jack busts out all glowy-eyed:

Chuck shows up to set Mount Moriah and Abraham and Isaac redux in motion , and Dean, possessed by his Shadow-self (the Ghost of John Winchester) gets ready to repeat history.

A yellow-eyed “demon”has killed Mary Winchester (again) and Dean-as-John picks up Chuck’s weapon of RevengeTM (the Hammurabi - see my meta on Dean and his Shadow arc linked above for more on this).

But Jack, in his role as mirror and mediator between the Self and the Shadow. freely offers himself as a sacrifice, a scapegoat.

And seeing this, at last, Dean has compassion, both for Jack and for his own mirror-child self, “murdered” by John Winchester’s revenge quest to get Yellow-Eyes/ Azazel. And so, he stays his hand.

Chuck, the bastard, kills Jack anyway and lights the fuse under Apocalypse III.

But, because Jack is a metaphysical key and the symbol of transfomation (Ouroboros) he can move between all the realms of the God-machine. And so, Death has no true dominion, and we see Jack awaken (14x20 Moriah) in The Empty:

There, he is greeted by a figure, presumbly the Cosmic Entity who presides over the place, as well as by Billie the New Death.

According to the Empty’s Cosmic Entity in 13x04 The Big Empty, “Before God and Amara, creation, destruction, Heaven, Hell, your precious little earth, what was there?... Nothing. Nothing but Empty... Angels and demons... you all come here when you die... I’m the only one that has any pull here. Not Heaven, not Hell, not G-O-D himself.“

As with the Amara storyline (she is mapped to Sophia, the cosmic feminine God-principle) it seems Dabb is drawing on Gnosticism in his conception of The Empty. Jung was also fascinated by Gnosticism.

The Gnostics made a distinction between the supreme unknowable Being, and the creator of the material universe, God, known as the Demiurge (who was often seen as amoral, even wicked).

We don’t yet know whether Chuck has already merged with Amara, and is the double entity Chuck/ Amara or, whether her feminine God-principle will be instrumental in persuading him to finally end his story, and let Team Free Will and humanity become the authors of their own stories. The latter would make sense in Jung’s quaternity structure, and would be linked to my theory that Mary Winchester is not dead and will return to her sons before the end.

Chuck, as the Demiurge, may perhaps be the mere avatar or emanation of the true supreme Godhood, if we take a Gnostic perspective. Whilst Chuck-the-Demiurge must be defeated, because he doesn’t want to relinquish control of the narrative, in his Supreme Godhood form, and/or merged Amara form, he may himself relinquish control and let Team Free Will go.

Whether Jack is initially manipulated by The Empty, Death and/ or an awakened Lucifer and/or indeed AU!Michael, or joins forces with them (in their good faith) remains to be seen. Lucifer may (ugh, but definitely possible) get a redemption arc, as he has, despite his many evil deeds, undoubtedly been wronged by Chuck (forced to bear the Mark of Cain and thus become corrupted by it).

Ultimately, I have no doubt that Jack, thanks to his loving connection to Team Free Will, will ultimately (as Cas has always believed) be “good for the world”:

(Jack and his three adoptive Dads in Unhuman Nature 14x07)

Jack, as the alchemical symbol of transformation (Ouroboros) as Mercury the mediator (Caduceus) between universes, between realms in the God-Machine, and between the conscious and the unconscious, and as the union of opposites (Michael and Lucifer, Good and Evil, Self and the Shadow), and as the trinity symbolising that unity (Sam, Dean and Cas merged as TFW) and as the quaternity (the ultimate integration [I hope] with the feminine principle symbolised by Mary and Amara) will, I believe, help usher in “Paradise” after the Apocalypse III; a “new Heaven and a new Earth, because the old Heaven and the old Earth had passed away” (Revelation) in which true free will reigns and Team Free Will have completed their psychic journeys.

“Thus we have the “hostile brothers,” Christ and the devil, who were regarded as brothers in the Jewish-Christian tradition; the tetrameria into four parts or elements; the paired opposites and their ultimate unity; the parallel of the lapis and Mercurius with Christ and, because of the snake or dragon symbolism, also with the devil; and finally, the figure of Mercurius duplex and of the lapis, which unites the opposites indivisibly in itself.”

(Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1979: p214)

https://www.jungiananalysts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/C.-G.-Jung-Collected-Works-Volume-9ii_-AION_-Researches-into-the-Phenomenology-of-the-Self.pdf

#Supernatural #SPN meta #Meta #14x20 #Moriah #Jung in S14 #Jack Kline Novak Winchester #Jack the Nephilim #Ouroboros narrative #Alchemy in S14

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theexecutionerssong · 5 years

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Hello, darling! I wanted to say thank you for reblogging that Destiel fic "Ninety One Whiskey" yesterday because it made me read it and I absolutely love it! So I was just wondering if you have any other recommendations? This was my very first Destiel fanfiction, I've never read anything from SPN fandom before so I'm very unware of those tresures out there! :)

ahhhh you have no idea how happy that makes me! here are a few of my favorites that I’m copy pasting from my old fic rec page. Most are a few years old, I’ve got way more and some more recent ones too if you’d rather. They are all deancas centered. If they aren’t online anymore then let me know and I can send you the file as I’ve got over 3000 saved lmao also I LIVE AND BREATHE for angst, if I don’t cry my eyes out at some point then what’s the point sdfghjk you’ve been warned

‘Til the Last by miss_grey (American Civil War AU, my fav ever, probably)

When the war came, Dean Winchester was determined that he was not going to get involved. He had more important things to worry about than some rich man’s fight. He had work on the farm and he had taking care of his family. Nothing else was worth his worry. But in August in the Year of Our Lord 1863, when the soldiers came knocking, they weren’t asking. They dragged Dean away.

Dean and Cas have been best friends since they were kids. When Dean is drafted into the Confederate army, to what lengths will Castiel go to ensure that Dean makes it back home alive?

Exonerated by thecouchcarrot (thriller AU)

Years ago, Dean Winchester was the detective who put serial killer Castiel Goodwin behind bars. Last spring, Cas was proven innocent and his conviction overturned. Neither could’ve predicted the way their lives would intertwine…

Lost Souls by thelastknownwriter (thriller AU)

Homicide detective Dean Winchester is thrust into a past he has tried hard to forget when he finds himself leading a manhunt for an unlikely killer: his childhood best friend, Castiel.

Painted Angels by WinJennster (human AU, so much damn angst but damn it’s worth it)

Author Castiel Novak has finally hit the big time, with a book based on his failed college relationship with a brilliant painter. He’s put all his pain behind him, but at a book signing, he comes face to face with Dean Winchester for the first time in twelve years, and the reunion doesn’t go like Cas hoped. Dean’s a broken man, with a lot of scars and secrets, shoulders weighed down by his demons and self loathing.Cas sees a second chance with the man he’s never stopped loving, but Dean’s moved on, and is about to get married. Sam launches a “brilliant” plan to reunite his brother and his best friend, but Cas is worried it will all blow up in their faces, and he’ll go through the agony of losing Dean a second time.Out of the Deep by riseofthefallenone (merman AU)

Stay away from the light-beds. Stay in the deep.It is the first thing hatchlings are taught the moment their fans unfurl and they can swim without their parents to buoy them along. It is the first rule, the first law. It is the beginning of every boogey-monster bedtime story told when they settle against the cliffs to sleep.Castiel should have listened better.

To Raise A King by riseofthefallenone (medieval/royalty AU)

This must be some kind of horrible joke at Castiel’s expense. Is he truly expected to protect a King? One who has been their enemy for as long as he can remember? He is much more suited to being a part of the army, or at the very least someone who helps to train the knights. That would be far more preferred than having to watch over the King. It means Castiel would get to keep fighting – and that’s the only way he knows to give meaning to his life.

Tramps Like Us by mkhunterz (human AU)

Dean Winchester’s life is falling apart. He’s lost his job, his apartment, and his brother, all in one day. He seems to break everything he touches. Frustrated and alone, he drives off into the night with no idea where he’s headed. But then he meets Castiel Novak, a quiet and reclusive man with a haunted past, and suddenly he finds himself with a very specific destination in mind.

Kiss You When It’s Dangerous by zoemathemata (thriller canon divergent AU)

When his partner Uriel, betrays him, Federal Agent Castiel Novak is saved from becoming a ritual sacrifice by brothers Dean and Sam Winchester. Discovering the world of the supernatural and learning about werewolves, wendigoes, vampires and things that go bump in the night also leads to learning more about Dean and the strange life he and his brother lead. The more he learns, the more Castiel finds himself drawn into Dean’s world and toward Dean himself.

Until Uriel wants to complete the ritual he started.

Pick It All Up by thepinupchemist (human AU)

Army veteran Castiel Novak is a wreck after his tour in Afghanistan, brought home to his brother’s apartment in Lawrence, Kansas with scars both mental and physical. He copes poorly, and during one night of bad decision making, meets somebody just as much of a disaster as he is – a prostitute named Dean Winchester. And suddenly, two damaged men might not be as irreparable as they believed.

The Bird That Feels The Light by ratgerastory (canon, no romance, Dean is a 5 year old but it’s the first I read almost 10 years ago and one of my favorites ever)

AU from 5.18 (or thereabouts). Castiel awakens in the middle of a smoking crater, stranded and very much human. According to the people who have discovered him, it’s six months to the day after Michael and Lucifer faced off on the field of battle outside of Detroit, and Castiel isn’t the only one to have returned. When, at his insistence, they take him to this other person, he finds a child –a little boy– and realizes that, contrary to all his expectations, he has been reunited with Dean Winchester. The world has changed in their absence, and not for the better. Sam is gone, whether dead or simply missing is uncertain. Castiel is given the name of a man in Idaho who may have answers for him. He is faced with the task of travelling cross-country with Dean, who is dependent on him now in ways he never was before, in order to discover the truth. But along the way, as he and Dean learn to know and trust each other once more, Castiel begins to realize that the answers he thought he wanted might not be the ones he needs.

the inexhaustible silence of houses by Askance (canon, I adored it but it left me in pieces, it took me weeks to get over it)

Almost two years after the world doesn’t end, Castiel falls from grace—and loses his voice in the process. It is the impetus for confession and change; before long, he is settling into a loving relationship with Dean, the Winchesters are tired, and hunting for a place to land has taken precedence to hunting anything else. Dean and Castiel fall in love with the strange little house on the end of Swallowtail Drive, and for a little while life is as it should be—sweet, affectionate, and beginning afresh. But more and more Castiel sees and hears things in the house that beg the question of whether or not a place itself can be alive. The walls and rooms seem to shift and grow and breathe, and one night, Dean comes home from a hunt changed in a way that Castiel cannot explain. In the months that follow, their domestic bliss takes turns for the dark and sour, and the confusion of their circumstances will ultimately test everything Castiel knows about the man he loves, and everything he believes to be true.

Last Man Standing by cerulea (canon, purgatory!verse)

Picking up exactly where we left off at the end of Season 7, Cas and Dean are stranded together in Purgatory struggling both to save their lives and their friendship amidst constant peril.

After The Fire by Themista (canon, end!verse)

Starting in 2013 and going through 2014 this is the story of Dean and Cas in their ill-fated quest to find the colt and shoot the devil - set in the endverse alternate reality seen in 5x04 The End. The apocalypse poses Dean and Cas many threats along the way, as they have to contend with the croats and Lucifer’s demons, led by Meg, all while trying to work out whether they can trust the infamously devious demon Crowley, with whom they already have a bloody history.

Twist and Shout by standbyme and gabriel (human 60-70s AU) (I don’t care how divisive and unpopular recommanding this one is, I was skeptical going in but it’s been years and I still have to skip Can’t Help Falling In Love and Twist and Shout when they come on shuffle in my playlists, that fic destroyed me))

What begins as a transforming love between Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak in the summer of 1965 quickly derails into something far more tumultuous when Dean is drafted in the Vietnam War. Though the two both voice their relationship is one where saying goodbye is never a real truth, their story becomes fraught with the tragedy of circumstance. In an era where homosexuality was especially vulnerable, Twist and Shout is the story of the love transcending time, returning over and over in its many forms, as faithful as the sea.

I also read ABO fics but I don’t know if you’re into that so I’m not including any in this list ^^ enjoy, let me know if you find something you like!

#gaelle parle #spn #fic rec #Anonymous

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

Text

WHY TWIST AND SHOUT IS TRASH.

I am writing this post, because I am sick and fed up of hearing about this story. It has some socio-political issues that the writers trivialize in order to use them as a masturbatory tool. Its all about ambience darling. The book is going to be published. Lets wait to gay men to get their hands on this things. The insults are likely to fly.

The summary of Twist and Shout is as follows:

This story is made from the usual destiel template complete with bad editing, and, like a typical destiel story, the focal point is Castiel, Misha's character. To put it in a nutshell, local bad boy high school drop out Dean, goes to Ellen's café or local teen haunt [cant remember] where the high schoolers are celebrating the last day of school. Cas is a big academic achiever. So high school fic. That is the usual destiel template. There is a reason why there are so many high school verses in destiel fanfiction. There writers are kids and high school is all they know. There is no real point for Cas being a big achiever. He makes stupid decisions further on in the story. They probably just wanted him to be important.

Dean beelines to Cas [instead of the other way around, because Cas is apparently nerdishly irresistible] and they start talking. Cas realizes that Dean is not a bad boy. He had to sacrifice school so Sam could go. Dad is a drunk or abusive or some such thing and we have another regular feature from the destiel template: Bad John/abusive John/homophobic John - take your pick. They can't make John good in their stories or meta, because their headcanons will fall apart.

While Dean and Cas hit it off, war breaks out. The two people who wrote this story should be ashamed of themselves. Setting your masturbatory vehicle against the backdrop of the Vietnam war is in poor taste. The war is not fictitious. It is one of the bloodiest, more horrible battles in America's military history. The USA didn't just lose the war. They lose 58, 220 soldiers. Those who returned were physically or psychologically damaged. A further 9000 committed suicide. Couldn't they make up a war, instead of leeching from history? The day will come when 9/11 will become a backdrop with a slash fic. The lack of good taste is in overdrive. Why not just leave out war, and PTSD because these are not tropes. But expecting good taste from destiel shippers is kind of difficult. They can barely recognize canon.

Dean gets drafted, and Cas is [as usual] too inadequate to be a soldier. Dean returns from the war, damaged and hurts Cas because of PTSD. So he leaves. In real life, he would have killed himself but the sympathy focus would shift from Cas to him and we don't want that, do we? Cas, the doormat, waits for him [for nine years, would you believe] but does a spot of drugging in the meantime to ''deal''. Whilst, sharing a needle with Meg, he contracts HIV from her. When his condition progresses, a mutual friend [Baltazar] runs into Dean and notifies him that Cas is dying. Dean returns. Cas dies. The End. Very sad. Snot and tears.

I don't know why the most intelligent boy at school was stupid enough to take drugs. He didn't go to war. He was not suffering from PTSD. He just got dumped by his boyfriend. And he waited two whole years before starting his drug taking adventure. Its makes no sense. But lets just throw it in there so it can facilitate Cas getting AIDS because of a needle. Cancer is not dramatic enough, anyway. Also, it will allow us to keep a shitload of the focus on Cas, because that is the whole point of reading a destiel story, right? Why focus on Jensen when you can focus on Misha? SMH. Drugs are such a good trope to use too. Its not like it kills anyone. Even Cas, in this story, doesn't die from drug addiction. He died from something else. Stupidity.

A gay man who lived through the AIDs epidemic, will be insulted by this. First of all, I don't think the writers are gay men. And yet they want to write about gay characters and do it wrong. Case in point is AIDS. This disease was called GRID [gay related immune deficiency], gay plague and gay cancer. Gay men were seen as the plague carrying rats, and were ostracized. Movies and television often depicted gay men succumbing only to this disease. The gay community had to fight to make them stop that because everyone gets AIDS, not just gay men. And now, years later, here are a couple of thirsty girls flushing their efforts down the toilets, and apparently making money from it too, because there are talks to get this trash published. First 50 shades and now this. Publishing houses are apparently being run by apes with no taste or common sense.

Citation for suicide estimates:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2343923

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mona-stay · 6 years

Photo

A real imaginary friend part 3

pairing - Lucifer x reader

warnings- kidnap, torture, evil Michael

part summary- Michael sends his angel to kidnap reader. will Lucifer give Michael the war he wants or will he lose y/n forever

part one part two

story-

When Lucifer told you all about Michael’s minions at the store and about how Michael wanted his war had you all on edge. Dean had every possible wording up, Cas was forever looking for traces of his brother’s whereabouts. You couldn’t settle over the next week waiting for Michael’s army to do something. Nothing happened a week went by and there wasn’t a single sign of an angel or any attempt on Lucifer’s life, after he childishly refused to stay in the bunker until Michael was found. Lucifer full of confidence saying Michael had lost his bottle after their sister told him what happened at the store but deep down you knew it wasn’t that easy. Another month went by and everyone started to forget about Michael and move on with life.

You were hunting again, today you had a possible wraith. In an old people’s home in Georgia, an old retired hunter called Dean’s phone looking for help. You headed into the home looking in every mirror hoping for an easy lead. Sam went into the communal room posing as a visitor, while you and dean went to see the manager for jobs.

Yours, a trainee nurse while Dean was posing as a handyman. It took 2 days and you still hadn’t found the monster, yet another body showed up during a night shift making you request nights the next morning. Your first night shift started and you scooped out each staff member finding nothing. Sam and Dean were parked outside neither of them officially allowed in at this time of night. You looked out the window giving them an OK thumbs up signal, letting them know you were safe but still hadn’t found anything.

“miss waters” you heard someone call out your cover name. You smiled at the old woman in the hallway playing the role of your fake job. “what are you doing out of bed at this time of night, Mrs white?” you asked helping her back to her room. Once inside something felt off, the old woman stood up straight raising her arm hitting you in the head. Dazed you get up blinking the stars away pulling out a silver blade. The old woman laughs at you “that’s not going to hurt me stupid girl” she said “well see” you call back slicing her arm.

There was no burning, no screaming expected by a wraith when touched with silver. “what are you?” you asked backing yourself into a corner. “I’m an angel of the lord and my brother Michael wants to meet you,” you said before hitting you again knocking you down. Your head hit a cabinet blood dripped onto the carpet, the angel stood over you smiling as she touched your head knocking you unconscious.

Dean watched the windows, it had been an hour since you’d last looked and he was starting to worry. “she’s a professional she knows how to look after herself and there is only half an hour of her shift left” Sam said trying to reassure both Dean and himself. 40 minutes went by and there still wasn’t any sign of you. Dean got out the car heading to the back of the building, in a rush. Sam followed asking Dean what he planned to do and to think before he acted. Knowing is brother’s shot first policy when someone he cared about was in danger.

Within minutes Dean picked the lock on the back door one he’d used as a service entrance during his fake job. Once inside he and Sam snuck around looking for you. They walked to the window they saw you last not really knowing where to start looking “should we split up?” Sam asked. Before Dean could answer they heard two voices down the hallway getting closer. Dean grabbed Sam dragging him into an open door. happy to find the room dark and empty. Not wanting to be kicked out before finding you.

Sam stood by the door listening out for the people to pass. Dean pulled out his cell and tried calling your phone for the 10th time. A faint buzzing could be heard in the room making both Winchesters look. On the floor was your mobile, a small pool of blood there too. Both boys looked at each other worried, Sam put on the light as Dean noticed a note next to the blood, under the phone. He picked it up feeling sick, he knew this was the reason you were missing and hadn’t checked in. he wondered how long you had been gone for he should have can in soon and maybe he could of saved you. His fingers shook as he opened the folded paper reading the black fancy writing.

Lucifer, you shouldn’t have said no to me! now I have your human! Your Soulmate! I will have my war one way or another! Meet me, fight me and save your girl. Keep me waiting and I’ll make sure she feels my impatience. Michael

Dean handed Sam trying not to be sick, Sam gasped as he read it out loud. “what are we gonna do?” Sam asked. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, “I don’t know Sammy! We give this note to Lucifer and he will kill us both then start an apocalypse. We don’t and y/n Gets beaten and killed. Trust me those dicks are creative when it comes to pain” dean said knowing they were caught between a rock and a hard place. “well we can’t just stand around here, let’s get back to the car and call Cas maybe he can help or he can tell Lucifer what happened” Sam said looking out the door hoping no-one would see them.

Back at the car dean called for Cas, not like he hadn’t been silently calling him since finding Michael’s note. “Cas get your feathery ass down here right now or so help..” dean yelled being cut off by Cas appearing in the back seat “Dean,” he said looking at the Winchesters “I sense urgency and fear. What going on? Where is y/n” Cas asked? Dean had his head in his hands trying to keep a grip on his emotions. Sam looked at Cas handing him the note “your brother took her” he said. Dean couldn’t handle the silence and started baby not knowing where he was driving too he just needed to be moving.

***

You woke feeling groggy, the light hit your eyes bright making you blink several times. The room around you was in a large and exquisite room, with white and gold walls. It reminded you of the best suit in a 5-star hotel. Your mind goes back to what you’re remembered last, being in the home with an angel posing as a wraith. You go to the door trying to open it, to your misery it was locked. You panic looking around all your weapons had been taken from you. Running your hands in your hair you pull out a clip, smiling to yourself. Bending the clip you place it in the lock, “that’s not going to work but points for trying” you hear someone say, making you jump.

Turning around you see a man in his 20s, he had jet black hair with honey brown eyes. Something about him seems familiar, liked you’d seen him before. He also reminded you a little of dean. “so you’re names y/n! And my brother’s new pet” he said it like he was telling you it more than asking. “yes and I’m guessing your Michael” you answer back keeping your body and voice strong. You watched Michael hold himself like a soldier in the army his legs spread shoulder with apart, his arms behind his back. “I am, the archangel Michael to be precise,” he said a hint pride. “so you’re the big brother, right we’ve met now like you wanted hello not exactly a pleasure. now open the door I wanna go home,” you told him. You may have looked and sounded tough and confident but inside your heart raced and stomach twisted and turned in fear.

Michael took a step forward “well I can see why my brother likes you and it’s not just the grace in you, but I can’t let you go, not yet anyway” his voice is cool and calm making your fear grow. “why can’t I leave? where are we?” you asked first hoping to stall long enough to find a way past Michael. “we’re in what Zachariah calls his green room and to answer your other question. Well, I need you to show my brother he can’t run away from his destiny. I’m sure holding his soul mate hostage will push Lucifer into starting an apocalypse just to find you alone” he smirked. “now I’m not a monster like my brother, while you’re here if you behave you stay here until the war is over then you can go home.” Michael started to say.

“behave. You expect me to just sit back and be a good girl after you kill people to lure me out, kidnap me so you can start a war to destroy the world,” you yell Michael steps closer to you, anger all over his face “who do you think you’re talking to? I am an archangel the firstborn” he started but you didn’t care for his speech or title.

“You’re not the first archangel I’ve met. You can’t scare me I’ve been tricked by the trickster and came out on top and as a child literally danced with the devil. You really think I’m scared of your choir boy angel threats” you shouted back.

You felt a sharp smack to your face, it hurt like hell but the adrenaline running in your veins you didn’t feel it as bad. Michael hit you another two times until you fell to the floor. “you will obey me and you will hold your tongue in matters you don’t understand” the room around you started to smoke and change. The luxury suit darkened the once golden walls turned into dark gray stone. The tables and artwork had gone, a metal chair was the only item left. The door now steel bars with another room on the other side, Michael transformed the room into a cell, a bed in the corner and a metal chair with chains, another click of his fingers you found yourself chained to the chair. You screamed a mouthful of curses at Michael as he walked out the cell.

***

Cas hadn’t said much on the ride back to their motel. He couldn’t believe Michael would do this, take another angel’s soulmate. One of the few things he did say to the boys, he explained about y/n soul how she’d been made for Lucifer. “This was my father’s plan bringing him to the bunker, so he could meet her again” he also told dean how he’d sensed it the first time he met her, he could feel the grace in her, it was one of the reasons he’d been distant with her. “I’ve never once hated y/n. I just didn’t want to anger Lucifer”

They got to motel all nervous about facing the devil, they decided not to go home just yet. “what if we just don’t tell Lucifer. We can save y/n ourselves” Sam suggests. Dean looks at his brother doubtful “I’d agree with that but how do we even find her. We spend weeks trying to find him the note didn’t even say where Lucifer was meant to go. So I’m guessing he already knows, should we tell him to find out where Michael wants them to meet” Dean argued. “and how many people do you think will die if Lucifer goes after Michael” Sam said back. “so what you suggest leaving y/n with Michael for God knows how long until we find them. You never know what Michael will do to her” dean shouted back. he’d been held by angels before, he knew what Raphael was capable of.

Cas sat on the bed looking at the note, while the brothers argued. Dean turned to him pulling the note out of his hand “your quiet, what’s your opinion?” he asked. “telling Lucifer is going to end in a lot fighting and bloodshed but Michael shouldn’t harm y/n unless provoked or Lucifer doesn’t answer his message” Cas said looking at Dean, Dean made the point you wouldn’t just sit back you’d fight against Michael to get back to the bunker. Making Cas give a nervous look, “give me an hour before you tell Lucifer. I think I can find somebody to help” Cas added before vanishing.

Not even 15 minutes after Cas left Dean started to get restless. Sam knew, he could see dean fidgeting and pacing around the room. “we can’t just sit here we need to do something” Dean said, “look give Cas a chance and if he’s not back in an hour. Well go the bunker and I’ll tell Lucifer myself” Sam said. “tell me what?” Lucifer’s voice came from the door. His eyes glanced around the room “where is my angel” he asked feeling the nerves coming from them. Sam and Dean looked at each other, Sam sighed knowing there was no way they could hide this from him now. “look don’t get mad, but…” Sam said as he walked next to dean pulling the note out of his hands and handing it to Lucifer, not knowing how to tell the devil y/n had been kidnapped.

Lucifer read the note his eyes going red with each line, the air in the room getting colder with his anger. Sam watches Lucifer’s hand scrunch the paper in his fist before the same hand came up hitting the wall leaving a large hole in its wake. “what the bloody hell happened, how could you let this happen! You were meant to be protecting her, have her back isn’t that what you hunters say” he growled through clenched teeth, trying to keep as calm as he possibly could. His body language was anything but calm, his clenched fists shaking at his side, his shoulders tensed and squared.

The look on his face alone was enough to scare any man. Dean swallowed hard “we’re not 100% sure on the what exactly. We were on the hunt y/n got a fake job inside the home and asked for a night shift. She checked in at 5 am with us letting know she was okay but by ten past 6 she was gone. We went in to find her and we found this note. Cas is going to get help or information on Michael’s whereabouts he said give him an hour” dean said holding his hands up, palms facing Lucifer. Lucifer didn’t answer instead his fist hit the wall again this time close to deans head this time he kept his hand in the wall. Lucifer wasn’t in a waiting mood, not when you were in Micheal’s hands. “I’m getting her back, you can either help me or stay out the way! Try and stop me and I will make sure you feel the full treatment hell has to offer when I kill you both” he said the full promise in his voice. Before Dean had a chance to answer Lucifer clicked his fingers and was gone, leaving Sam looking worried at dean a hunt of I told you so in his eyes.

***

You sat in the cell. Michael made around you. Losing track of time you didn’t know how long you’d been in here for. Well it looks like my brother isn’t responding yet, do you think we should give him some motivation” Raphael said. He was Michael’s second in command and more than happy to do his dirty work. In the time you’d been here Raphael had paid you three visits each ending with you in pain from some chronic illness he magicked up or bloody from his grace as he boiled your blood in your body. Raphael painted a sigils on the wall part of you wondered what it was for. “now let’s see if your screaming draws him in shall we” Raphael said coming at you with an angel blade in his hand.

It had been hours, you had stab wounds everywhere each non-fatal but that didn’t mean you weren’t in unbearable pain. You had lost a lot of blood but Raphael would click his fingers and stop the bleeding before you could die from blood loss, however he left each cut and bruise how it was. You closed your eyes picturing Lucifer in your mind, ‘Lucifer help’ you thought over and over as Raphael ran his blade into hip again making you scream loud. Raphael stopped and smiled at you “was it so hard to call for him, if you’d done that hours ago you wouldn’t be in this state, but because you made me wait and I'm having so much fun let's make sure he gets the full message shall we” your eyes widened at what he said then flicked to the symbol on the wall. When you watched him draw it, you assumed that was how they were going to contact Lucifer. You never believed they would use your prayers to torture their brother. “interesting thought, but no that sigil is so he can’t use your prayer to find you but he can still hear you scream” Raphael said. clicking his fingers, the pain in your chest was unbearable making you believe he was making you have a heart attack, you screamed again this time for Lucifer, Cas, God anyone who could hear you.

***

Lucifer kicked in the door to Crowley’s mansion, demons came running at him only to burst into dust. Lucifer wasn’t in the mood to deal with them, he came to see Crowley and nothing was going to stop or slow him down. If Michael wanted a war he was going to get one, right now Lucifer was working on getting his army. After the first attempted apocalypse when both Michael and Lucifer were locked in the cage, Crowley had found a way to become king. To Lucifer's annoyance a lot of demons followed Crowley, saw him as king and lost faith and respect in their creator. If he wanted a loyal army he needed Crowley.

Crowley looked at Lucifer “you should have called Lucy, I would have baked a cake” he said sarcastically. “I’m not in the mood for jokes Crowley, I wanna make a deal and if you say no well I’ll kill you right now” Lucifer said, if it were a cartoon he’d have steam coming out of his ears. “well I see someone’s shoved a stick up your ass, what’s this deal you wish to make” Crowley said part of him not wanting to test the devils word. “I will let you keep this whole king of hell thing you have going on. In return, I want an army of no less than 3000 demons. And I want soldiers, not your Wall Street crossroad demons. I need demons to go against Michael and his army” Lucifer said not batting an eyelid.

Crowley thought about it, knowing it was one of the easiest deals he’s ever made. He could lose that amount of demons if it meant keeping hell and his title as king. “3000 is a lot of demons Lucy, but I guess I can work with that, you sure you’re willing to give up hell. A petty fight with your brother just doesn’t seem worth it. What’s really going on?” Crowley fished. Lucifer wasn’t in the mood but knew without Crowley he’d only be able you rally up around 1000 demons for his army and that wouldn’t be enough to go to war with.

With a sigh, he told Crowley about your kidnap. Part of Crowley wanted to help Lucifer, he knew you from his dealings with the Winchesters and enjoyed your company and humour. When he was the resident of the bunker’s dungeon you used to come to sit with him and just talk for while even bringing the demon king a drink of whiskey some nights. if Crowley was honest about his feelings he developed during his time on human blood he would actually call you a friend. “well I must say it’s a shame I quite like the little kitten. Okay, I’ll get you your army, it’s a deal” he finally said.

As Lucifer walked out of the mansion “brother don’t do this, I have a plan let us help you” Cas called out with the Winchesters in tow. “Cassy like I told your human pet, you’re either with me and that’s great, but if your not and try to stop me I will smite you the same way I’m going to smite Michael” Lucifer told his younger sibling. “and what’s your plan open the gates of hell and start an apocalypse there is a better way” Cas argued. Lucifer was about to make Cas vanish when he heard your voice.

your cries for help rang in his ears followed by screaming, he could hear Raphael’s laughter in the background. Another loud blood-curdling scream came. “Lucifer, Cas, Chuck someone please help me” your voice called in his head. Lucifer turned to Cas who looked terrified by the prayer he’d also heard. “if you heard any of that Castiel then you know I have to do this” Lucifer said before walking off. Dean looked at Cas, he still had a look of horror “what’s going on? What’s he talking about Cas?” he asked. cas lowered his head “they are using y/n screams and prayers to torture Lucifer, to make him angry and it’s working. they are torturing her to make Lucifer mad enough to tear the planet apart” cas said trying to think of a way to stop this and save his friend.

part 4

#lucifer #lucifer x you #lucifer x reader #supernatural #supernatural x reader #supernatural angst #supernatural au #dean winchester #sam winchester #crowley #gabriel #raphael #michael #part 3 of 4 #castiel #trigger warnings

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lr-supernaturaladdict · 6 years

Text

Brother PT.2

Sister

Summary: You are the first Archangel god created. One of the most powerful beings in existence but you left heaven to pursue a human life, but when you finally decide you want your family back, it’s to late for some of them. Will the Winchesters allow you to release Lucifer and Michael from the Cage?

Word Count: 5271

Warnings: None, maybe some cussing

PT. 1

-Flashback-

You couldn’t help but smile as you watched over heaven. Everything had been running smoothly since your father decided not to meddle further in your existence. No one else knew some of the things he did when he created heaven and earth. You were his first, his most precious of creations, but he knew you weren’t as happy as you could have been. So he chose to create Michael, originally the idea had been that he would be your “mate”. You however never saw him as such, you saw him as a brother, not that you knew the term of endearment yet. Displeased by your rejection of his gift, he created Lucifer. You tried to accept your fathers gifts, but being able to make your own choices and do as you pleased made it impossible to care for either angels as more than brothers. His final attempt at creating a mate ended with Raphael, but when you finally snapped at him he quickly apologized and stopped, allowing you to care for your new found family as it was. You were their sister and that was that. Your father saw how happy you were even as you all were and made a choice to ask you what you wanted rather than attempt at choosing for you. When you said that what you had made you happy and you liked this odd little family you had, he chose to create Gabriel. He was different, a goofy bundle of joy that graced you with his bubbly presence constantly. You chose to believe he followed you around because he loved you, but you had assumptions that he was created to do so anyways. His grace was similar to yours, on a much smaller scale and his wings were golden in color, much like your own. He was simply beautiful, and even if they were created for you, not that anyone ever knew, you wanted them each to have their own choices.

Soon after the creation of the other Archangels, your father created the others. You lead your brothers and sisters to the best of your ability, having free will was something you cherished though. Out of all the angels, only you were made without an agenda. Your father created them with purpose, whether to be soldiers or slaves, you didn’t know yet.

Michael became your second in command when your father appointed you the leader of them all. Him being second oldest only made sense after all. He was the perfect little soldier, he knew it and so did everyone else. He made sure your orders and most importantly your father’s orders were carried out correctly. He hated when things went wrong and would easily let his anger over take him. His idea of free will was how he would decide on carrying out and order, as long as it was carried out in the most effective way possible. He had an attitude in which if you asked him to jump, he would reply “how high?” You loved him dearly but you knew that his dedication and need for fathers approval would be his downfall.

Lucifer was your best friend, if you were to put a title on who he was to you. You of course still considered him your brother, he was just the closest to you then the others were. The others were jealous of the was you two were. You could actually speak to one another without disagreeing on much of anything, at least until your father created humans. He was the only one of your brothers and sisters who knew at least a shred of free will. It physically hurt you when your father and your brothers would persecute him without proper cause. One mistake and he was the outcast of the family, no matter how much you tried to get them to see truth, they never did. He was misunderstood and you always did your best to make sure he felt he was loved. Even with all of the hate he had endured from our own family.

Raphael was another one of your fathers perfect little soldiers, although you never quite took him seriously. Of all your brothers he was the one you never quite got along with. He liked to undermine your authority, which you wouldn’t mind too much because he would be using his own choice to do so, but he would choose to make horrible decisions. They would normally end up in angels getting hurt in horrible ways. You tried your hardest to accept him into your heart, but with the horrible choices he had always seemed to make, he wasn’t your favorite brother by far.

Gabriel was your baby brother for sure. He was a very power archangel but you only ever saw him as your kid brother. You loved him very dearly and were often called his mother rather than his sister. If someone said you coddled him, you wouldn’t necessarily deny it either. No matter how old he had gotten, you would still often baby him. He was the only angel you would often times show affection to, which most of your siblings saw that as weakness. You just couldn’t help it, out of you many siblings he was the one that resembled you the most and seeing him would always make your heart swell with joy.

“Sister,” you were brought out of your thoughts by the stern voice of your brother Michael. “Is everything alright?”

“Certainly,” you turned to face him as he walked over to you. “I just wanted to appreciate the calmness of the day,” you moved your hand in the direction of where you had been looking before. You both stood on a balcony of a building that looked over the garden your father had recently created to hold his newest creation. “Heaven has been so peaceful lately, I almost cannot believe it.”

He nodded curtly at you and walked over to the edge of the balcony, looking out at the garden. “Yes, I fear that it may not last.”

You sighed but nodded, turning back towards the railing. “It never does,” you said softly as you leaned on the rails. “May I ask you something brother?”

“Of course,” he looked at you with an eyebrow raised.

“Do you ever wish that we could live like them?” you nodded your head in the direction of the garden.

He laughed slightly and shook his head. “Of course not, they’re practically hairless apes (Y/N).”

You smirked slightly. “You sound like Luci,” no matter how much they would always deny it, Michael and Lucifer thought similarly. They fought like cat and mouse, but deep down you knew they loved each other dearly.

“Yes, however I don’t refuse to love them. They are quite disgusting, but I do not wish them harm,” he scowled at the mention of the younger archangel. “But why do you ask me this?”

You shrugged. “I just get tired of playing peace maker between our own brothers and sisters. Everyone has different ideals on how to run things, but they can’t seem to use peaceful ways to resolve this. Including Raphael,” you pursed your lips in thought. “Sometimes I would like to just run away, but alas, I cannot. There is too much for me to see over here,” you stood straight and placed your hand on his shoulder. “I must oversee training this afternoon, I will see you later brother.”

He looked slightly saddened by your sudden exit plan but his face quickly transformed back into a blank mask. “Of course sister, take care.”

You smiled at him and nodded before leaving him abruptly. Within the blink of an eye you were in a large white room filled with angels, soldiers. They were stood in military fashion, backs straight and in lines. Younger angels were in front while the most seasoned were stood in the back. “Good afternoon young ones,” you said loudly, walking in front of them with your hands behind your back. “Many of you here will be among the rankings of our warriors, others may be lucky enough to be placed in higher rankings. Others may not be so lucky. God created us each with purpose, and in being here you will learn yours,” you stopped in front of one of the older angels, looking him directly in the eyes. “Some of you may even become God’s most trusted,” he continued to hold your gaze, which was bold considering who you were. Smirking to yourself, you stepped closer to him. Being in your vessel made you smaller then him, his standing well over 6’ foot. “What is your name angel?” you said coldly, not letting any of your emotions seep through. You were seen as the fearless leader, even if the other archangels knew different. You were to be emotionless and cold amongst the younger leveled angels.

His posture remained straight as his deep voice answered your question. “Gadreel.”

-Present-

Walking down the hall of the bunker, you sighed. You had been staying in the bunker with your brother, Lucifer, for about a month now and seemed to be getting nowhere with him. You were currently on your way to stop yet another argument that had begun to get heated between your brother and the older Winchester brother.

“STAY OUT OF MY DAMN HEAD!” you heard Dean yell. Great, now what did you brother do. You knew you could have just flew into the room, but decided against it because it probably was just another pointless fight.

Walking into the library you saw Dean with his back towards you and Lucifer just shrug nonchalantly. You could only see his back but the older Winchester looked as though he was going to burst with anger. His shoulders were heaving and he nearly looked like he was shaking. You cleared your throat, causing both men to look at you. Your brother smiled at you sweetly and Dean’s face seemed to go red, at least redder than it had been in anger. He reminded you almost of a cherry tomato. “Hello boys,” you said as you leaned against the frame of the entrance. “Sam told me you two were getting into it again, care to tell me why?”

Dean looked at Lucifer quickly and scowled, while Lucifer just smirked. “Well,” your brother drawled out.

Dean glared daggers at him before turning back to you. “He keeps using his powers to invade my head,” he huffed loudly.

You looked at your brother and rolled your eyes. “What have I told you about minding your own business Luci,” you cocked your eyebrow waiting for him to answer.

Lucifers smirked immediately fell from his face when you said his nickname in front of someone other than family. “Not to do it,” he scoffed.

“Exactly,” you pinched the bridge of your nose. “So, why did you do it?”

His smirked instantly reappeared and he walked over to you. “Oh well, I overheard him having a conversation with our baby brother. I just wanted to make sure the information was true. I’m just looking out for everyone,” he shrugged.

You looked over at Dean and saw him visibly freeze. You were never one who liked to enter someone’s mind without permission because you always hated it when people would invade your own privacy. “Care to share with the class?” you moved your gaze back to your brother.

Lucifer opened to answer but was interrupted by Dean. “Nope, it’s nothing,” he smiled grimly and walked over to the fallen angel. “We’re okay, right buddy. Just a little misunderstanding,” he gave Lucifer a stern look.

“Lucifer?” you watched as Lucifer took a moment to think about how he would answer.

“What he said,” Lucifer knew better then to anger you, if Dean gave you more of a reason to punish him, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Alright then,” you pursed your lips and looked at them both questioning. “No more mind reading then, or else I’ll block the rest of your grace,” you gave Lucifer a stern look and turned to walk away. You heard Dean sigh loudly but chose to ignore it. “I will return later, behave,” he said to them both.

“Where are you going?” Dean asked, walking after you when you walked away.

“I have business to take care of in heaven,” you continued to walk, not looking at him.

“Ah,” he nodded and tried to keep up with you. You walked fast even for someone with long legs. “Anything particular?”

You sighed and stopped walking, turning abruptly towards the green eyed hunter. “Look, Dean. I appreciate the curiousity, but I’m afraid that it is my business,” you watched as he looked down at his feet when he stopped next to you. “If it makes you feel better, it’s nothing dangerous. Just what you may call a check in, there is somethings I need to clear up. It’s been a long time since I’ve returned to my home,” you placed your hand on his arm and smiled at him. “I should only be a few days, at most. I can send Castiel to check on our brother later to assure he hasn’t been to much of a thorn in your side.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and cleared his throat, trying not to look you in the eye. He was relieved Lucifer didn’t tell you about what he saw in his mind, if you found out he was sure you’d laugh at him. Over the month you and your brother had stayed with them, he had developed a crush on you. He wasn’t sure when exactly it had developed but it made it hard for him to function around you without getting flustered. “Well-uh, just stay safe,” he looked at you and smiled.

“I’m probably the most dangerous thing out there, other then my father and aunt, but dangerous nonetheless. But thank you,” you placed your hand on his cheek and stood on your toes, kissing his cheek. You watched as his face turned bright red, spreading even to his ears.

Before he even had the chance to react you vanished, flying to heaven. You landed in one of your favorite places to go in heaven. It was the personalized heaven of a little girl named Lila. She had died at the age of 9, unfortunately the victim of domestic violence. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t actually been to heaven since you left, you just came secretly. No one knew of your presence because you kept it hidden, much like your father would do when he wished to be alone.

Lila’s heaven was her memory of going to the park with her father before he passed away. You had learned she was about 8 when it took place. There were flower bushes practically everywhere and a playground in sight that she would play on while her father watched. Often pushing her on the swing. It always hurt you to think about, it was years ago when she passed and you wished you could’ve saved her. Her soul was innocent and pure, she deserved to live a long life, but at least the man who shot her was burning in hell.

You watched as the little girl ran across a nearby field into her father’s arms. ‘At least she had her family with her’ you thought to yourself and quickly left to leave them in peace.

You arrived in main office of heaven, looking around you were greeted by Castiel sat at the desk in the center. “Hello, sister,” you smiled at the seraph you left in charge.

“Hello Castiel,” he smiled back at your used of his full name.

“I did not expect a visit,” he stood from where he sat and moved towards you.

“Yes, well,” you paused and pulled him into a hug. “I figured I would check in and see if things were running smoothly.”

He embraced you back lightly, obviously still not used to the physical contact. “Things are going very well,” he pulled away from you. “How are things with the Winchesters and our brother?”

You sighed and ran a hand through your hair. “I honestly can’t tell anymore, things were much easier when the only things we had to worry about were other angels,” you said remembering back to your time staying in heaven.

“Well,” Castiel shrugged, smirking at you. “One angel in particular.”

-Flashback-

“Gadreel, I must say that I am very pleased with your improvements,” you eyed the other angel up, while walking towards him. “Father must really believe so as well,” you smiled at him fondly, thinking about how much he had improved since you had been introduced to the younger angel. He quickly became not only your most trusted friend, but also your father’s most trusted angel, besides you of course. The difference between him and all the other angels in heaven was that he believed in what was truly right, not just because you or anyone else said so. He was also smart and very strong, he had become one of your strongest soldiers, but a part of you knew that he meant more to you than all of that. You stopped acting like a hardass with him after a short time of training individually, orders directly from your father. You found yourself growing closer to the angel, even to the point of feeling an emotion you couldn’t quite describe. You felt human with him.

“Thank you, (Y/N),” he smiled at you as he noticed you walking towards him. “Do you really think so highly of me though?” he cocked an eyebrow at you.

“Of course I do,” you said as you now stood directly in front of him. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” you smirked at him.

“You know,” he paused, reaching out to brush a strand of hair behind your ear. “If father knew what we do during our private trainings, he wouldn’t think so kindly of me. We’re practically breaking one of heaven’s rules.”

Stepping close enough for your chest to press against his, you looked him in the eye. “I’m the one who made most of those rules you know. I’ve told you many things over the years,” you paused, running your hand up his arm. “The archangels were practically made for me, but I didn’t want them,” you shrugged. “You are the only one who I would ever wish to know more, intimately. Much like Adam and Eve,” you felt your cheeks heat up at the admittance of your feelings.

Cupping your cheek he leaned forward slightly. “I believe I feel the same way,” he turned his head and looked around briefly. You both stood at the gate of the garden, were he had been trusted to guard by your father. Most angels knew not to bother coming to the garden because only very select angels were allowed inside, you and Gadreel included.

“Must we be so cautious every time?” you laughed slightly. Reaching up you placed your hand on his cheek, making him look at you. “No one will see us, no one dares come down here after the last angel to disobey was locked away in our prison.”

“No one but the other archangels and father,” he scowled slightly.

“You let me worry about them,” you shrugged and moved your hand to the back of his neck. “Lucifer and Gabriel will just encourage this, Raphael just won’t care. Michael is the only one we really have to worry about having backlash from. Father, well he did want me to find a mate once upon a time, and if you would have me,” you paused looking down. “I’d like it to be you.”

There was a moment of silence that made you worry for what seemed like the first time in your thousands of years of life. “I would love nothing more,” he whispered barely loud enough for you to hear him. Biting your bottom lip, you looked up at him. He ran his thumb across your lip and nodded his head, his smile reaching his eyes. You watched as he continued to lean closer, until his lips were only a breath away from yours. “Am I doing this correctly?”

Nodding you leaned forward and connected your lips together in a sweet passionate kiss. In all your years of life you had never experienced something so innocent and yet so powerful. You didn’t know when you had closed your eyes, only realizing it when you felt his arms snake around your waist. They felt strong and warm against you, something you never would have expected. You were stronger then him and more powerful then him, and yet you felt the safest you had ever been in his arms. You decided then and there, no matter what happened, he was home to you. Whether it was in heaven or anywhere else in existence, he was home and together you could be human.

-Present-

“You know, I don’t really appreciate you bringing that up,” you said to the younger man sternly. “It’s a whole can of worms I don’t want to open and think about.”

“What?” Castiel asked with an eyebrow raised and his head tilted to the side.

“Just,” you sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Nevermind,” you cleared your throat. “Do you have the reports I asked you to get on the prison?”

“Right, yes,” his face quickly changed back into one of a seriousness. “I got them first thing when I arrived, but with trying to run heaven for the time being I didn’t have time to get them to you.”

“I perfectly understand,” you said as you watched as he walked behind the desk and pulled a stack of papers from the desk. “I used to be the person to do, well everything.”

“And a wonderful job you did,” he sighed and reached over the desk to hand you the papers. “Can I asked why you asked for those?”

Taking the papers you began to flip through them. “I’d prefer you not to, but if you must know I want to take note of all of the angels still locked away.”

“You mean him, don’t you?” he raised an eyebrow at you.

“You know what,” you groaned and slammed the papers on the table. “If I didn’t like you, I would have smote you already.”

“Sure you would,” he pursed his lips and watched you carefully. “You may have acted like a brute when you were commander, but I know you’ve never been that type.”

Squinting your eyes at him you slowly grabbed the stack again. “Someone had to put the fear of God into them, considering he himself was rarely around after creating you lot.”

“So why do you care so much about checking on him?” he paused. “And don’t say you’re not because I know you are.”

Rolling your eyes at the young angel you stuck the papers between your arm and side. “He was important to me.”

“Important how? I mean, I know of your private trainings to prepare him to guard the garden, but other then that I’m stumped,” he looked you in the eye as he said each word carefully.

Glaring at him you sighed, you knew you couldn’t hide everything from him and you were never one to lie. “He and I were mates.”

“You were mates?” he asked monotonously.

“Yes, and before you say anything, we weren’t breaking any rules. We were both angels for one and two, if there were rules against things being together that were created by the same being, he wouldn’t have created Adam and Eve like he did. Humans wouldn’t exist. In a way, all of it is just one big incestual train, which is grosser than me being with him. Why do you think the archangels were created to begin with,” you shrugged.

“They were created as warriors for heaven,” he said as a matter of factly.

“Michael, Lucifer, and Raphael were attempts at creating a mate for me,” you sighed. “He gave up when I told him I didn’t want them like that, they were all just brothers to me. Gabriel was practically like my own son, not that he would have ever admitted that. God created him in the image of me for that purpose. The rest of the angels were created to be soldiers, but not them.”

“I feel like my entire existence has been a lie,” he looked down at his hands, almost like a kicked puppy.

“You were told what you were because none of them wanted to face the idea of rejection. Why do you think Lucifer tricked Gadreel into letting him into the garden?” you sighed and ran a hand through your hair. “Michael was the one who locked him up, along with Raphael. Gabe was the only one that really never cared. I thought that Lucifer wouldn’t have cared either, which is why I never hid it from him,” you paused and rubbed your hand against your cheek. “When I left heaven, I tried to get him to come with me, but he refused saying his duty was to heaven. I was in love with a simple angel and yet his duty was to our father, I was wrong about him.”

-Flashback-

“Why won’t you come to earth with me? We could live like humans and enjoy a simple life rather than be pawns in heaven,” you said with a large smile on your face as you hung onto your lover’s arm. “We could even create our own family, wouldn’t that be spectacular.”

“Ignorant dreams my love,” he said back flatly, looking straight ahead. You had been walking in a field of heaven, filled with rose bushes and tall willow trees. It was your favorite place to meet him when he didn’t need to guard the garden.

You scoffed. “How are they ignorant?”

He turned his head to look at you and stopped walking. “Our place is here in heaven, not on earth. Our duty is to father.”

Pulling away from him, you looked at him in disbelief. “You mean to tell me that you would rather spend an eternity standing in front of a gate then with me?”

“There is no reason why we cannot do both,” he looked at you with his brow furrowed. “Why do you not wish to stay a perform the duties our father asks of us?”

“Our duties?” you scoffed and walked away from him a bit. “Our duties don’t mean anything if our father simply doesn’t care.”

“How could you say that?” he asked, raising his voice.

“Because it’s true. For thousands of years we’ve been doing as we’re told, I wish to do something for myself. I did what he wanted and I hated it, and then I found my mate. I love you Gadreel, please say that you’ll come with me. I can’t be here anymore to watch our brothers fight an endless battle. He wants a war Gad, a war no one will survive. It may take a long time for it to happen but he wants them to practically rip each other to shreds. I can’t watch this and they won’t put a stop to it themselves,” you practically pleaded with him.

He shook his head and looked down. “I’m sorry my love, I must stay. I must protect his creation.”

Nodding to yourself you could feel your chest hurt. “Who am I kidding, you were made to please him. You’ll never choose me, even if your life depended on it,” you looked up at him with teary eyes, trying your hardest not to break down in front of him. “Consider this,” you motioned between the two of you. “Done.”

“(Y/N), my love,” he walked towards you with his arms outstretched. “No, you can stay and we can be together.”

Shoving his hands away. “Are you mad?” you threw your hands up. “We can never truly be together without backlash from practically every angel in heaven, we’ve hidden from everyone for hundreds of years. I’m tired of pretending not to have feelings. I’m tired of pretending I don’t have my own wants and needs. He didn’t make me like you or them, I thought you were different like me,” you sobbed. “This was a mistake, good luck with your duties Gadreel. Tell my brothers I said goodbye, okay?” you felt a tear run down your cheek as you looked at the angel you loved one last time.

Before he could respond and reach you in time, you vanished leaving him and heaven behind for good. You got to live your normal life, just without your home. No one understood the real reason you left and many believed you were dead. You made sure no one could ever find you, only Gadreel knew the truth behind your disappearance and he never told anyone. You only wished that he would have chosen to follow you, maybe he wouldn’t have been locked away for an eternity if he had.

-Present-

“So he chose to stay rather than go?” Castiel asked. You had both moved to sit in two desk chairs in the office you were in while you explained what had happened between you and the other angel.

“Pretty much, I was hurt and upset, so I just kinda left without explanation,” you shrugged. “Lucifer had apparently been watching us and heard what happened, he then thought it was a good idea to trick Gadreel. It was just a huge cluster fuck.”

“And yet you’re willing to forgive him?” he tilted his head to the side, looking at you skeptically.

“Yes Cas, I am willing to forgive and forget. All of us, and I do mean all of us have made some pretty stupid mistakes and I’m prepared to be a bigger person,” you said pursing your lips.

Castiel stood suddenly and reached out his hand. “Alright, then let’s go see Gadreel.”

“What?” your eyes shot open wide as you looked up at him, standing quickly.

“You said you’re willing to forgive and forget, why not forgive Gadreel too?” he made a grabbing motion with his hand for you to take his.

“I’m willing to forgive him, it’s just not as simple,” you said chewing on your lip.

“It can be, especially if you’re going to forgive someone like Lucifer,” he shrugged and took your hand. “You could at least go and see him.”

Sighing you gripped his hand. “Fine.”

You were instantly transported into the hallway of the prison where all of heaven’s prisoners were held. “Come on,” he said as he let go of your hand, walking straight ahead.

Quickly following behind him. “Are you sure about this?” you asked scratching your neck.

“Yes, I believe so,” he said sternly and continued to walk with you hot on his heels.

You soon found your way to a cell that had been inhabited. The person inside sat with their back facing you, you knew instantly it was your once beloved mate. Thinking back to the day you left heaven and him upset you, but you knew it was best for the situation. You weren’t in love with him any longer but you still cared deeply for the poor captive angel. Taking a deep breath you prepared yourself to speak with him.

“Hello, Gadreel,” you said flatly, much like you would have when you first had met him. You were his commander once more. He immediately turned to face Castiel and yourself, his eyes widening in surprise.

“Hello, sister.”

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