#anyway cas is the ONLY character in all of media thank you for understanding

[valesyn]

I'd ask you everything!! but I'll go with Castiel,

If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

What's something you have in common with this character?

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

oooo some hard ones (and thank you for the asks!💙💙)

Hmmm this one is super difficult for me because tbh I don't have that many other types of strong interests rn. However, I think a fantasy/medieval setting would be fun! Media off the top of my head would be like Lord of the Rings or the Witcher!

Do you want the long serious answer or the short funny answer? Let's do short answer first: I also do not understand most references. Long answer is a little sadder/darker ig? (and this is still abbreviated too, I've thought about this a lottt way before this ask). Anyway, I suppose in a way Cas and I both had everything we would want. Then both of us, trying our hardest to do the right thing, managed to mess it all up. It doesn't mean that we aren't 'good', it doesn't mean we don't continue to try. We just lost the innocence, the fire, the passion, the pureness, that we once had. And we have to continue moving on from that, we have to try to find our way in a life we don't understand; trying to help and spread happiness to those around us in the process.

I suppose it would have to be assuming he's something weak and helpless; that he wouldn't survive without the Winchesters. I do think at times he did need their help (just like they needed his help too), but to imply that he couldn't function without them I at least feel is a little silly? And it's not something I could really say the fandom does, and I've only seen it very minimally, but yeah. Thank you again for the asks spntrunk! <3

#valesyn answers #ask game

[roycefoxarts]

COMMISSION BATCH 5 IS OPEN!!

The previous batch is done, but money is still tight, and I need to keep the funds coming. I will take a short break after the opening of the coms, but I will be accepting commissions orders during the break. I just wanna take care of some personal art. I enjoy drawing for you guys and being both generous and experimental, but rent fund is important, and I can only offer so much at a time. I am still close to landing full scale employment, but I am not there yet.

I know I added greyscale to the line art, and I love doing that. In my regret, made the choice to make greyscale a seperate item rather than something I randomly add to the lineart tier. I am sorry, but rent money is important. Living in CA isn't cheap.

I appreciate your understanding and I am sorry for the inconvenience. I love you guys and I love drawing for you all. And if I could, I would draw for free, simply because I see art as a hobby rather than a profession.

Though I will still offer a 15% discount for anything sumo related, since that happens to be my selling point (i tried fighting it, but there is no escaping where I started).

Even if you cannot afford, You can always help by spreading the word and reaching a larger audience.

I thank you all for your support, It means a lot to me.

Now for the rules

Before I can begin, Let me lay down what I prefer to draw.

-Slim -fat fur -tasteful nsfw -vore (with heavy restrictions) -certian action scenes -modern or fantasy

and what I WILL NOT DRAW for a commission:

-overcomplex drawings (they take significantly longer than they should and I prefer to risk drawing complex stuff on my own time) -Gore (Which leaves hard vore out of the question) -Abuse and cruelty art (Things like rape, abuse, or degradation.) -Slob or uber immobile fat. -Capepunk (Modern "realistic" Superhero genre. I just don't like the current modern superhero genre and its oversaturation.) -Certain Copyrighted characters and IPs (There can be some exceptions) -Other people's OCs without their permissions (There is drama around it. Dont drag me into any more drama.) -Characters that are or look underaged (I have the FBI on speed dial) -Diapers fetish (just...just no) -Political art (Should I even need to explain why?). -politically incorrect shit (You are more mature than this.)

To order to order a commission from me, You need something of a social media presence. at least a DA, Twitter, or most importiantly FA, that you had for some time at the time of ordering a com. This allows me to screen for security purposes.

I will not be accepting commissions from:

-Newly created FA or social media pages, be it burner accounts or whatever. -social media individuals that have a significant degree of controversy within the last year or so. I want to avoid controversy. -individuals under the age of 18. -Individuals that have a habit of hiding their behaviors behind "muh free speech." I would rather be with mature people thank you very much. -MAPS (should I even explain?) -People who make their political views their own personality (I dont want you as my customer base anyways)

The second thing to fill out a google form, this has everything you need to make an order from teir to whether you want the com to be nsfw or not.

Major thing to note: Do remember that I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. So my apologies in advance.

Lastly, If I approve, I will send you the invoice. I am a Pay-upfront person, so that means if you want your slot in the queue, you need to pay upfront and that is strictly invoice only.

When you Order from me, you agree to the written agreements stated above and any violation would bar you from any future coms. Standards come first over money.

#open commissions #commission info #furry #fat furry #fat fur #sumo wrestling

[profcolsymorgan]

cas girls watching supernatural like

#my only spn posting for the last month has been about misha collins and i think that’s very sexy of me #anyway cas is the ONLY character in all of media thank you for understanding #misha collins #supernatural #spn #castiel #*

[wigglebox]

sorry to unload, I just meant I was reminded of those bad takes when people were discussing Misha's much better takes on Dean's reaction. but I had to unfollow so many non-spn people post-Nov 5 for acting like homophobia is funny, in general, and I'm wondering if that's me being oversensitive when I haven't seen anyone else say it's a problem. supposedly it's "ironic" but it just seems like a genuinely hateful response to (however flawed) queer representation y'know? I don't see the "satire".

"much better takes" like jackles is allowed to anyway?

nah i mean some folks have said some rude things. i remember once i saw someone tag a mollins video as like 'i want to hate crime him' and like???? that's fucking disturbing and upsetting. and others are like 'i wanna call him a slur' like either to mollins or jackles and i'm like how are y'all like — are you okay?

but it's annoying if folks truly are talking about jackles and comparing him to mollins. first of all, he's never been a big talker/social media user. maybe once he used it more than he did now but lbr social media is exhausting [and we make it exhausting for them]. but also, just by them not being in the CW thank you video, and due to his silence for 5 months until he was forced to talk about the show at a Creation con [and even then, he barely talked, made jokes about how Dean would be bored in heaven, and envoked his production company to do a continuation] —

like, his character didn't get to say I Love You. his character didn't get to complete this arc. his character didn't get to do anything other than run up some stairs. he even had a reportedly more emotional take when telling chuck he had to bring cas back but that wasn't the take they used, clearly.

if folks know from meet and greets and one on ones with jackles they'd understand a lot of the time he puts things in the fan's hands for interpretation. but it's clear he doesn't have a problem with destiel like at all. nadda.

but he can't really talk about his character because 1) he's not really given an outlet to do so. he has only attended one con and it's a j2 panel and 2) his character didn't get the same level of completion as cas did.

he showed us in little ways and comments how he felt about it — but it's going to be harder for him to be to the level like mollins was on saturday.

that being said, first in person con, it'll be interesting to see if during a j2 panel he just goes off the rails and talks about it, or talks about it in a solo panel. even with a panel with mollins, say, at JIB or something, it'll be interesting to see how far he takes it.

because his character just never got to finish the arc. mollins said over the weekend he liked where his character's arc ended. dean's didn't get that and for sure jackles hated it like i don't think it's so out of the realm of possibility to assume that.

idk.

i just think it's unfair to be like 'mollins is the shining star and jackles is falling flat!' because like — that's just not a fair game to play.

the shitty thing is that if he does kind of side step it a little bit because he has to, then I'm fearful folks really will just call him homophobic and never give him a chance.

it's terribly unfair. like completely and totally unfair.

#sorry this got long #fandom things #slight negativity bl

[americachavez]

Hey! I was wondering if you mind sharing why you keep reccing asunder by rageprufrock. It's one of my absolute favorite fics of all time and i recently couldn't 100% put my finger on why when I was reccing it to a friend. Of course all media consumption is subjective yadda yadda but I really like your meta so maybe..... Thanks in advance!

thank u for the compliment I resent the implication I’ve ever written meta in my LIFE but I’ll try on this one just for you!!!

the thing that really gets me about this fic is how rare it is in the realm of normal human AUs. it does the rare thing where it takes elements of canon and incorporates them into a non-supernatural AU in ways that are not only really interesting but that actually seem grounded in reality. obviously the easiest one is the demon blood to heroin addiction translation, but there’s a lot of smaller details that pull from canon but are still aligned with the world the story is set in. which is my main beef with AUs if I’m being honest—the lack of creativity when it comes to reimagining canon irks me because if you could just swap out the cast of your modern AU with that from another tv show/movie and have no major changes to the story I’m probably not going to be interested in it. not saying I HAVEN’T read those fics or judge people for enjoying them but they’re not really my jam. but asunder is like, it feels like the characters from the show with similar baggage but they’re still actual people for the most part. or as much as characters in a fic can be people, you feel.

and honestly it’s one of the few fics that actually felt like it could just be a short story. another caveat here I am NOT one of those people who is like oh I don’t need to read actual literature I only read fic because only reading fic is one of the reasons everyone on this webbed site is brain diseased. fic doesn’t serve as a substitute for published literature which is understandable because people do this for free as a fun hobby and shouldn’t be held to the same standards as professionals! that’s not what fic is for fic exists as an important and very specific aspect of fandom and is transformative for a reason I DIGRESS. the point is that asunder....hm. I know it would lose something if the serial numbers were filed off and it was presented as a short story about a Family Drama with A History because obviously the connection to supernatural canon is what makes it so ENJOYABLE but it’s damn close. I’d watch the arthouse movie version of it is what I’m saying.

this is way longer than I thought it would be so I’ll wrap it up but ugh there’s a bunch of other stuff I love. surface level it’s fake dating for a wedding, but that’s like, the LEAST interesting thing about it?? you have this complex relationship between dean and sam which is really similar to their dynamic in s4-5 canon but again, is closer to reality since they aren’t being manipulated by demons and angels. and then that unfolds slowly while also revealing the equally complicated dynamic between dean and cas, which is more than just a “oh we’re in love but we’re not dating because of Plot” it’s like oh they’re not dating because wow yeah that’s an awkward situation. plus I love my girl ruby getting some sympathetic screen time in a deancas fic, which is especially rare in older spn fic. also dean in!!! child protective services!!!!!!! less fics where he’s a cop more fics of This!!!!!!! I AM heavily biased because I am a Dean Girl (terminal) and I know the fic is like the EPITOME of a dean girl fic and is unfair to sam in a lot of ways but I still think it’s a good exploration of their relationship. which is another rarity in destiel fic where sam is either starry eyed destiel shipper, oblivious, or Sir Not Appearing In This Film. sorry, sammy.

anyways this is all to say. fic good. good words give me nice brain chemicals thank u mx. rageprufrock

#reply tag #sternflotte #spn tag #fic recs #I am. done now

[louisironson]

hell media trio for the ask meme. It, Supernatty, and The Office

oh just a slight amount of friendly resentment towards you for the last one. fine dredge up my tragic past. i’ll do it

It:

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): Eddie Kaspbrak

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): 1990 EDDIE ONLY j*mes r*nsone makes my features automatically contort into a grimace (thank g-d i never actually watched it chapter two and the muschietti movies just aren’t as much my thing. dgmw it 2017 was good but 1990 made me go crazy crazy)

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): did they make audra mean in it chapter two is that why people don’t like her. well fuck you anyway then i’m writing fic about her journey to being sober!!

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): adrian mellon 😭 the chapter describing him and how defiant and cool he was? shit dude

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): pennywise. oh gd could you imagine. uhhhh fuckin uhhh. i feel like stan can’t count but i haven’t mentioned stan or mike yet and i love them both so much but neither of them are unpopular OR pathetic but stan is slightly closer to both than mike is so. stan, my grandpa (almost fell victim to the let’s eat grandma trap. stan my grandpa ✨✨)

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): i’d show sonia kaspbrak my star of david necklace and tell her i’m here to take her money and stand in her house and maybe she’d have a heart attack and die

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): by being in derry, are they not already there? oscar “butch” bowers you don’t deserve to be called butch you racist fuck

Supernatty (allie is this you lol):

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): probably cas

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): dean smith that gay little homosexual man. we can’t all be project runway dean

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): i liked bela and i want her back but i’m pretty sure she’s permadead :(

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): becky but only bc i’m like “that’s emily perkins!! from such hits as it 1990 and ginger snaps!!”

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): sam. and yes i’m sam-coded it’s the pathetic ones that are most like me don’t you understand

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): dean but out of love. sam doesn’t make fun of him enough even though it’s a necessity that siblings mock each other in equal measure.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): john. bye bitch!

The Office (sigh):

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): it used to be jim oh my gd 🤢 these days i try not to think about the office at all. but i’ll pick one. for you. oscar

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): i hate you for making me assign this to a character from the fucking office. fuckin. phyllis are you happy

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): karen motherfuckin filipelli

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): karen motherfuckin filipelli!!

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): andy bernard i just vibe w him sometimes okay. that man’s not a heterosexual maybe it’s that

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): jan for shutting down the warehouse union. why was michael shown as stupid for hearing about a union and agreeing

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): ryan

#it 1990 #supernatty #the office #blorbo asks #asks

[iaintyourbro]

Hey! I just newly found out your acc and so far, I’m loving your posts/analysis. Idk if you’ve already answered or been asked this question but... how did you become a Cloti fan and the reason why you stan them (like what did you like about their tandem etc)? I’m just curious about your “journey” lol. Anyways, keep it up and have a nice day 😁

Hey anon! Thank you!

Oh you want me to ramble! I can ramble about this. Adding a Keep Reading!

You know, I’ve thought about this a lot today because of a conversation on Twitter. I can’t say I TRULY remember much about when I first played FFVII prior to the other pieces of the compilation coming out, things I saw in passing online, or other things that probably have affected how I remember it. 

My Thoughts on What My Journey MAY Have Been

I played FFVII 20 years ago. Of course I THINK I remember how I felt about everything, but the more I do seriously think about it, the more I think the bulk of my opinions have been impacted by multiple different areas over that 20 years. On top of it, I’m not sure anybody who didn’t stay very active in the fandom would fully remember what went on 20 years ago with the game, nor could you truly remember what you felt prior to seeing everything else. It impacts your ability to say “Yes, I was this way, 100%.” 

I wasn’t the biggest FFVII OG fan. I liked it a lot, but I preferred FFVIII and Xenogears by far. Those were the two I focused on the most. In terms of things like FanFiction, for example, I didn’t read Cloud and Tifa or Cloud and Aerith ones, I read Vincent x Lucretcia ones. As an adult, I appreciate FFVII OG much more.

I recall not being the biggest fan of Aerith, and I honestly don’t remember how I felt initially about Tifa. I do remember it feeling like it came out of left field when suddenly she’s in love with him in Mideel (we know it wasn’t sudden, but there was no real obvious buildup to me). If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think I cared at all about who Cloud “ended up with.” My assumption - and this I can say with certainty - was that Aerith died, so that was that. There wasn’t a relationship past that, nor could there be. She was dead. 

Playing FFVII first, but FINISHING FFVIII first may have impacted this opinion as well. FFVIII was in your face romance. FFVII was not. There are a lot of people (myself included) that felt there was very little romance in OG. However, as with all of the other games I played, I did not question the story much at all. Cloud and Tifa have the Lifestream, which I do remember being like “WHAT?!” over that reveal of Cloud being a Shinra Soldier, not a First Class SOLDIER, they have some words Under the Highwind, and then at the end he catches her from falling. The dialogue during the ending bothered me because it made no sense to me at that point. After seeing the original story board, I can see why. I don’t think that was the intention, but for some reason they changed it. One thing I’m pretty certain on is that I got that weird feeling in my stomach where I got annoyed over that line. 

I can recall being weirded out when people said that Cloud and Aerith ended up together, because I remember her dying. In life, 21 year old’s don’t pine for somebody that they knew for a month. That’s just reality. I’m not saying he didn’t feel anything for her, but it still weirds me out that people are okay with thinking he’d shut down and/or take more extreme measures to “reunite” with her, that I don’t even want to get in to. I will say that CA fans were much more vocal online, which I think is why folks like me who didn’t care never really got involved in online fandom. I never understood how it would make sense after beating the game, but I wasn’t the only one who assumed they did something weird at some point and made it where they could be together. I just didn’t care enough to look in to it. 

My sister actually said to me, “Isn’t he with Aerith?” And I said, “No, but I had the same feeling at one point for some reason, and have no idea why.” And I reminded her Aerith died and she said “You’re right.. why would they be together?” Shrugs. I honestly think at one point I assumed they pulled a FFX and revived her in some offshoot game I didn’t play and that’s why people were saying CA.

Oddly enough, I think when I played KH and KH2 it made it obvious to me that they weren’t really pushing CA at all... even though I know some use those games as an argument. Mind you those are NOT canon to the FFVII Compilation, but I found it interesting that they bring in Tifa for KH2 and it ends up that a) Cloud was looking for Sephiroth and b) Tifa appears to have been his light. Even they way Aerith acts towards Cloud in KH never felt romantic to me at all. 

Why I Like Cloud and Tifa

I like Cloud and Tifa because their relationship is very complex. It’s not flowers and sunshine like a lot of the FF romances. Not to say those don’t have drama - I mean Tidus is technically a dream, but they “revive” him anyway later on (never felt right about this, by the way... but I accepted it as part of the story). 

Even in OG, it’s shown that they have quite a history, and Cloud pretty much has built all of his life decisions around Tifa. I do laugh every time I see the meme of the Lifestream and it’s all “Tifa Tifa Tifa”. I believe, I truly do, that the intent in the Lifestream was to make you realize that Cloud had a false persona up until he breaks at the Northern Crater, and once his TRUE SELF is revealed, along with it comes his true feelings. So up until that point, when you, as the player, could make decisions for Cloud and move him in a direction you thought was YOUR CHOICE, it’s not. It was an illusion. 

I, in no way, thought that eloquently 20 years ago. However, I realized that he was in love with Tifa (which I thought was interesting for some reason) and that he created this fake personality to protect himself. The game doesn’t go into it much past that point, you get Under the Highwind, really, as a follow up to the feelings part, but that’s it. So I never saw the romantic aspect of it all as super important - it’s a nice to have.

Remake, however, really does seem to be pushing a more romantic angle, which ultimately made me a hard Cloti stan. I can’t say I WAS one before, even with all the “wait, is he with this or that one?” I never really thought he ended up with anybody TRULY except Tifa, but, like I said, I just didn’t care.

REMAKE MAKES YOU CARE ABOUT ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS. Like a lot. So I didn’t like Aerith in OG - I love Aerith in Remake. I love her relationship with Tifa, I love her sassy, judgemental attitude and her trolling of Cloud, because it’s hilarious. I don’t agree with EVERYTHING,  but she’s by far better for me than she was in OG.

So Remake definitely made me go “holy cow” on the Cloti stuff. IT’S SO IN YOUR FACE. The Train Roll, the touching, the staring, the longing, the flirting. Even if you go the Aerith route, you can’t avoid a large chunk of that. You can skip all of her side-quests and still have a boatload of Cloti. Remake made me love the pairing and love all of the characters. 

Cloti is now by far my favorite media pairing. When you compare it to Squall and Rinoa or Tidus and Yuna it seems much more interesting. Yeah, I’m saying it, and I’m a huge Squinoa fan. BUT - Remake didn’t make me care until now. Remake had me start researching the compilation, to understand where this and that came from. Folks on here have explained things that I may have missed or previously didn’t care about. 

I also have a hard time with CA now after all of the compilation stuff. CC and ACC made it clear that Aerith loved Zack. This is NOT obvious in OG. The only references you get about Zack are “we weren’t that serious” when it’s first brought up in the park, IF you take Aerith with you to Gongaga, then she’ll say he was her first love, and Zack’s parents will say he wrote home about a girlfriend. None of that makes you believe that there was anything really serious between them.

CC clears that up, ACC reinforces it. After that, I can’t mentally do it because of the whole “bro code” thing. If Aerith knows Zack and Cloud were best friends, I can’t see her simply saying “cool I’ll just go with him now.” If Cloud was aware that his best friend was Zack, I don’t think he’d go with her. Prior to that, I can see why people would be okay with it. After finding out everything we know about how close Zack and Cloud really were, I can’t do it. This is a personal thing to me, it doesn’t mean I think nobody should ship CA. This is just how I view it, and I can’t see Aerith OR Cloud being okay with it if they were aware of it. This is also my view post compilation.

Remake reinforces, even further, the whole Zerith thing. As somebody who was meh before about them, I love them now. Remake makes you really look at the whole compilation if you’re not totally familiar with it or haven’t seen/played something in a long time.

So yes, I am definitely a Cloti stan, and probably always may have been, but just didn’t care until Remake. 

But aside from all that - I took it as True Cloud’s One True Love was Tifa - and that’s part of what comes out in the Lifestream. So I don’t think True Cloud would have dropped Tifa. 

#cloti #cloud x tifa #ff7r #ff7 #zerith

[mittensmorgul]

OMG. California scenes. I'm a SoCal girl and I just realized that this... is true. I think of myself as guarded, but wow. I think I've actually sat down and opened up to a relative stranger over lunch and then coffee. But I don't do it to seem centered! Anyway, gotta go back and look over my unpublished fics and make sure that I don't accidentally put too much of myself into them...

hi there! I swear I’m gonna write a bit about your message, but for reference, for others reading this, I think I need to provide a bit of context first. :) This is regarding this post about writing exposition:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/190756281185/cthonical-gallifrey-feels-fanfic-authors

Disclaimer time! I reblogged it specifically for that highlighted bit at the top:

And my specific intent in reblogging this was every complaint I ever read about why Dean and Cas don’t just ~talk to each other~ and deal with their issues. Every single “but they could’ve dealt with this years ago and been together!” I will counter “No, they really couldn’t! Because that’s not the story they’ve ever been telling!” 

But, I’ve heard argued, if they really wanted to, they could change the story they’re telling. They could so easily make it obvious, explicit, textual between them. And of course they could! If they had zero authorial integrity, they could do whatever they wanted.

The way they have set up this story for the last decade and a half has established-- through the slow unfolding of more and more important facts, of gradually uncovering details, as above in purple, that become necessary for comprehension of the characters and their progression through this story-- that Dean’s relationship with Cas has been established in an ever tighter orbit around their mutual most deeply buried and tightly guarded secrets.

For reference, I’m not pulling this line of thinking out of nowhere. This is literally a rephrasing of something Davy Perez said in an interview when he first started with SPN back in s12. I never finished transcribing that podcast, but the relevant bit of the two hour conversation is included in this post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/160988290690/12-while-i-do-not-ask-this-to-be-negative-at

but the tl;dr of the handful of paragraphs of full context from that post:

Television is about a character that you become invested in, and that you fall in love with. That character grows in incremental ways. Not only do they grow in tiny little increments, and sometimes don’t even grow, they go backwards. You don’t close the loop. You keep the loop open, so that hopefully when you know that okay, this is our final season, this is our final run of episodes, that’s when you can find those landing points, and that’s when you can sort of say this is the end of this journey.

And Supernatural has been narratively riding around on that loop, on that spiral, for 15 years. And this is now the final season, and they’re gliding toward those landing points now. They’re homing in on those “painful truths the characters don’t want known,” those huge personal issues they’ve all been grinding down over the last 15 years and inching ever closer to unveiling. Because that’s how stories work when authors are writing to the narrative rather than writing instant gratification for a fickle audience. If one thing has been consistent over the years, it has been this progression of character. And Dabb era has chosen to lampshade all of this in text, through Chuck the Original Author.

And that is effectively the exact writing advice from this random post about how to write a believable and engaging story that has been all over my dash over the last few days. Like... the irony, right?

So now that I’ve explained my vagueing with this post, I’d be happy to address your actual question, from the rest of that page of writing advice. Thank you for bearing with me... :’D

I’d venture to say that the description of that sort of “identity info dump” that the article described as “California scenes,” where characters just spill their deepest secrets, isn’t always a negative thing. And it’s not a phenomenon exclusive to California, or borne of a need to prove someone’s authenticity, or angst cred, or whatever. Because it’s something we see happening on the internet, too.

And it’s absolutely something you can USE in your writing. I find it hilarious because it’s actually a major theme of my pinefest fic this year, which will be posting in April. Sorry I can’t point everyone to it yet, or really give too many spoilers... other than trying to explain this phenomenon.

Social media creates a weird sort of culture of identity. There was a post on tumblr years ago that explained it rather well. It said something to the effect of “in real life you meet people and slowly feel them out and reveal your deepest secrets only to a select few people after they already know your whole life story, but on the internet you’re just a screen name and an avatar and you might reveal your deepest secrets without any of the people who read them even knowing your NAME or what you look like or anything else about you.”

Because it’s not about complete open honesty, you know? It’s about understanding what carefully selected bits of information you present in a given circumstance. It’s social engineering.

Revealing your deepest desires or darkest secrets is an entirely different prospect when, say, sitting with a new acquaintance over a cup of coffee face to face or with a coworker in the break room than it is in an anonymous internet chat room. And it can be fascinating to understand what we’re willing to reveal about ourselves in these very different circumstances.

And once you sort through that sort of character analysis, you can write a truly believable and entirely in-character info dump like that without it feeling like an info dump. Because what the character chooses to reveal about themselves in a given situation can be as informative of the character and their relationship to the other characters as the details of what they say.

So, I guess the takeaway here is the reminder that you should still take all writing advice with a grain of salt, and remember that it’s not a blanket rule and all these “California scenes” should be excised in order for your story to be good, you know? If you know your characters well enough, they can be strategic moments of character insight, or even a complete misdirect. The key is to be aware you’re writing one, and then use it to illustrate a character’s weakness, or strength, or the dynamic of the relationship being exposed, rather than being a strict infodump of facts. Because infodumps are always boring if that’s actually the scene you’re writing and there isn’t a deeper layer of understanding going on or a deeper insight for the reader to gain.

Lol, this reminds me of another quote about writing that’s perfectly related:

“If the story you’re telling, is the story you’re telling, you’re in deep shit.” Robert McKee

If the only thing the reader takes from a scene is the words coming out of the characters’ mouths, you done screwed up... That’s why so many of these California scenes are just bad writing. They serve no other purpose than telling the reader a series of details about the characters’ backstories and fail to provide any deeper insight. The key to writing a GOOD scene is make it less a backstory catch-up bit of filler text, and more about what the characters aren’t revealing, or why they’re revealing any of this information in the first place. Because “to inform the reader of these facts” is never a good enough reason for a character to spill their guts like that.

#writing is hard #spn meta meta #lol because i can't control myself sometimes :'D #this is how stories work #Anonymous

[impala-dreamer]

The Chosen - Part One

Rebekah’s Story

Written and conceived by @impala-dreamer​ and @covered-byroses​

~If there was a chance to save Dean, a chance to save her friend...why wouldn’t she take it?~

In Order of Appearance: Kelly, Michael, Y/N, Rebekah, Sam, Castiel, Dean

8,253 Words 

Warnings: Angst. Plotting. Character Injury. Lies and Deception. All the Angst. 

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There was a single beam of light that snuck through the curtain each night and Kelly liked to play with it; running her fingers across the hardwood floor as if they were dancing on stage in a spotlight. It was stupid, she knew, but it was entertaining. Funny how something so simple could make her smile now. There wasn’t anything else for her. Not since he came and took over her life.

The cage was small but not too small, made to house a larger dog while its owner was away. But Kelly was small herself and was able to curl up with her pillow and favorite blanket, waiting for him to come back from wherever he went everyday.

And he always came back.

Some days she woke up and Michael was gone, others he was there, sitting at her desk; her laptop open, making his way across social media with a dexterity of one who’d been at it for years. She almost regretted now showing him how it all worked; almost. It was, after all what had brought him to her, and Michael seemed to revel in the attention that her blog offered him. He was recruiting, she knew, whether the other users realized it or not, and Michael was enjoying the adoration of those who threw themselves at his virtual feet.

Tonight, he sat before her, computer fan buzzing as he bounced between blogs, ‘answering prayers’ as he like to say.

Kelly lay still on the floor of her kennel, watching his thick fingers navigate the keys, wondering how much longer until he tired of this game and set her free. Deal was, she had until the end of the month to give in and join his crusade or be killed. Ten days later, she was actually getting used to the cage, to being held hostage, to him. Maybe it was early stages of Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe she was too tired to care anymore. Didn’t matter. It was what it was. Her life was thin metal bars and an Archangel now.

Michael made a noise that was almost a laugh and Kelly picked her head up from her pillow.

“Do you know this… Bamby person?” he asked, not bothering to look back at her as he spoke.

Kelly sat up and crossed her legs, stretching her arms a bit as she thought. “I mean, not really, really. We talk sometimes. I don’t know her off-line. Why?”

“She amuses me,” he said simply, tapping away at the keyboard. “She responds with pictures of kittens and likes me to call her my… pet.”

Kelly laughed and picked at a wayward string on the hem of her pants. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Michael went silent again, which wasn’t at all unusual. There were nights when he never spoke a word, simply sitting in the dark living room, staring at nothing, planning, waiting. Kelly never understood what he was up to, but she sure as hell had learned not to question him.

Kelly’s ears perked when Michael hummed at the glow of the computer screen. “Like putty,” he breathed. Unease churned in her gut at the archangel’s murmur - whatever he was planning couldn’t be good.

MIchael pushed his chair back, the wheels rolling audibly over the dusty floor. Kelly held her breath as he rose to Dean’s towering height. He turned slowly toward her, shoulders relaxed, head at a slight tilt. “I have a surprise for you,” he smiled, teeth gleaming in the low light. “I think you’ll like it.”

Kelly shakily released her breath and swallowed, very sure that she would, in fact, not like whatever scheme he had concocted.

The Archangel didn’t wait for a response, however. He simply turned on polished heels before leaving the room, clicking the door shut behind him. Kelly was left alone with nothing but her own racing thoughts once again.

Michael had left the laptop open, and if she squinted, Kelly could just make out the blur of the tiny text lining the screen. She leaned forward, pulling up to her knees, small hands curled around the bars of her cage.

It was an ask, of that Kelly was certain - but she couldn’t quite make out the sender. She shifted her weight, kneed her way as little closer, and pressed her forehead against the cool metal.

‘impaladreamer-main asked:’

Kelly’s heart lurched to her throat - Beka? Why would-

The sound of the door opening ripped her from her panicked thoughts.

Michael stood tall, chin lifted, eyes downcast as he gazed down at his captive. Kelly felt a tremble ripple through her as Michael twisted Dean’s full lips into an icy smirk.

“We’re going to have some company soon.”

The Bunker was quiet for once. The only time that happened anymore was in the wee hours of morning, before the crowds emerged from the labyrinth of rooms and made their way into the common areas. In a few short hours the atmosphere would shift into a controlled chaos, the tiled walls catching a dozen voices and duplicating them as they shot them back into the room.

Y/N liked the quiet. It reminded her of old times. Not that she’d been around forever, just before the sudden influx of new residents to the Bunker. Still, the calm before the daily storm was comforting, and she always tried to wake up early now to get some time alone with the old building.

A curious frown painted her face as Y/N stepped into the kitchen. The coffee pot was already on and brewing, meaning she was not the only one awake. The room was empty, however, and Y/N shrugged as she rubbed at her eyes and walked to the fridge.

It wasn’t exactly easy to cook for upwards of twenty people, but she felt funny cooking for just the four of them, and Sam didn’t eat much anymore anyway. He’d rush through in about an hour and grab an apple before heading out. Beka would sit and eat with her some mornings, and Jack was always around sniffing for a snack, but it wasn’t the same without Dean. Nothing was.

As loud as the place was, it lacked a certain spark. Whatever laughter Dean always brought to the world was gone now, taken away by that evil bastard, along with Dean himself. Y/N knew they’d get him back. They had to. But it was taking too long and the leads were thinning day by day. He’d been too long gone and it was getting harder to remember what his laugh sounded like bouncing around the kitchen.

She cracked two dozen eggs and got to work, eager to shake the blues away.

The smell of the bacon in the oven almost made her cry.

The sound of company behind her made her jump.

“Oh my god!” Y/N spun around, spatula in hand, and saw Beka at the coffee pot. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

“Sorry.” It was a passing apology, and Beka didn’t even bother with eye contact.

“You… OK?”

“Mhm.” Beka kept her back to Y/N as she filled her silver travel mug with fresh coffee and pressed the lid into place.

Y/N clicked her tongue at her friend’s standoffish behavior. Beka was far from a morning person, but she was at least always polite.

“I’m making eggs,” she said cheerfully, hoping for a reaction, “and bacon. Want some?”

Beka looked back over her shoulder and shook her head. “No, thanks.”

Y/N gave up with a sigh and returned to the stove, poking at the pale yellow mountains of scrambled eggs with her spatula.

“Hey, Y/N/N?” Beka called from the stairs. “You mind if I borrow your car? I’m like fifty-k overdue for an oil change.”

“That’s not good,” Y/N laughed.

Beka did not. “Yeah, well, the mechanic’s been out of town.”

Y/N’s laugh fell away. “He’ll be back soon,” she said, ever hopeful.

She turned to see Beka look away; something in her eyes that Y/N did not recognise. She was distant, lost to her thoughts, not caring if Y/N were around or not.

Beka licked her bottom lip and took a breath, pulling herself back into the moment. “So can I take your car or not?”

“I guess,” Y/N shrugged and turned off the stove. “Where are you going? Want company?”

“No.”

She was gone before her voice faded.

There was something poetic about driving as the sun rose.

The sky to her left was dark, still littered with pinprick stars, but on her right, the sky was aglow with morning. Thin strips of dark gray clouds hung against a backdrop of pinks and yellows as the sun poked its head out from beyond the horizon. The line above her showed the break between light and dark.

Beka drove that line.

Her phone buzzed but she ignored it. The only people who would be calling her now would only be doing so to yell, and listening to them was pointless.

She could almost picture Sam pacing around the Bunker halls, a tired hand scraping down over his bearded cheeks, eyes red from worry and exhaustion. Would he leave a message or grit his teeth and hold in a scream, trying to contain the urge to toss his phone into the tiles?

Beka knew she was no expert at espionage, but years in the library and watching the guys work had taught her a few tricks. She wouldn’t be able to hide from him forever, but her tracks were covered, for now.

Sam would be pissed, sure. Cas would probably clench his fists and scream at her, Jack would look to her with hopeless puppy eyes. Y/N…Y/N wouldn’t get it. No one would understand what she was doing, but it didn’t matter anymore. There were only two things that mattered, two people that mattered, and Beka was going to do what she could to help them. Even if it cost her everything.

Texas was looming in the distance; just a few more hours to go.

She was terrified but resolved, and the steering wheel bore her excess adrenaline; crescent moons decorating the leather where her nails dug deep.

“Company…” Kelly whispered to herself. She felt cold all over, like ice when it’s just started to freeze.

Beka. What has he done to Beka?

The ice flowing through Kelly’s veins quickly melted as seething anger began to take over.

“You monster!” she hissed through tightly clamped teeth.

Michael’s eyes darkened at her outburst, but Kelly wasn’t finished. “Let her go, you son of a bitch. Do what you want to me, but leave my friends alone!”

The Archangel’s lips twitched in amusement. “Let her go?” Michael echoed. “I’m not holding her. I’m not forcing her to do anything.” He crouched down to her level, the black metal bars splitting his face. “She came to me.”

Kelly’s slender fingers tightened their grip on the locked door of her prison. “Fuck. You.”

Michael’s head cocked, and Kelly didn’t miss the tic of his jaw - but her rage was building.

It didn’t feel like she had control of her own body when she threw herself back, mustering all of her strength to kick at the metal door.

The lock was released with dizzying speed, and before Kelly even had the chance to draw her leg back, Michael was wrenching the door open. She let out a piercing shriek as the Archangel grasped a fistful of her brown locks and jerked forward with a powerful strength, dragging her from her confinement.

Michael effortlessly pulled Kelly to her feet, fingers painfully tight in her hair as she struggled against him. His eyes burned a blinding blue, a testament to his anger, and she found herself frozen in true terror. The crack of his big palm against her cheek bounced off the walls, and prickling heat bloomed across her skin as his hand left her.

The powerful force of the slap made Kelly’s knees buckle and Michael released her as she crumpled at his feet.

She pressed her hand to her burning cheek as she slowly tilted her head up to his, and she could feel a warm trickle of blood roll over the plump curve of her lip. She whimpered at the icy glow of his gaze, and let her frightened tears slip down her heated face.

“Good,” Michael bit; the blue beginning to wane. “This is just where you belong; broken and obedient at my feet.”

Kelly sucked in a shaky breath that pushed back out in a pathetic whisper. “Please.”

The Angel towered over her. “Please?” His stolen lips curled into a faint sneer. “What more could you beg me for? I have given you... everything.” Michael spread his hands and lifted his palms to Heaven. “I have come to save you, delivered you from your pathetic life, offered you a chance to serve at my side, and yet… you beg. For what? My mercy?”

“For my freedom...for Beka’s freedom...for humanity. Please.”

Michael’s laugh was deep, piercing. His teeth gnashed as rage bubbled up inside of him, breaking through his normally controlled facade. “Freedom? And what have you or any of your...pathetic species ever done with freedom? Humanity is broken, flawed...hopeless. You talk of wanting freedom as if you know what to do with it. You don’t deserve to be freed.”

A new strength swelled in Kelly’s chest. Pride for her kind maybe. “We are your Father’s creations. We were made in His likeness. There’s good in us. In all of us.” Her crimson-tinted lips curled in a defiant sneer. “We’re better than you.”

Kelly stood her ground even as his Grace swelled once more, pushing away every speck of green and burning bright.

“Better than me,” he growled, lips shaking as he struggled to contain his fury.

A new fear froze Kelly’s blood at the sensation of an invisible heat closing around her throat. She gasped against it, feeling his Grace wrap around her like thick fingers. She tried to claw at the phantom palm crushing her windpipe, but there was nothing there to fight. Her eyes bludged as Michael lifted her onto her knees; his display of power striking awe as much as fear inside of her.

“You are nothing,” he seethed, dipping his chin to watch her struggle. “You are a parasite on this world.”

Tighter and tighter the power squeezed until she was sure it was the end. As bright white painted the edges of her vision, Kelly gave in, relaxing into the inevitable, ready to accept her end. She looked up at Michael, her eyes bloodshot and empty. If this was how she was going out, she wanted one last look at biggest mistake of her life.

Michael saw the defeat sparkle in her eyes, watched her break before him. As her pretty blue eyes began to roll back, he stopped himself, pulling his Grace back in and releasing her.

Kelly crumbled to the floor as her lungs screamed, sucking in as much air as they could. Her arms could not hold her and she fell down, bruising her face against the hard, cold floor.  

Michael closed his eyes and dropped his shoulders, taking a moment to regain his composure. He didn’t want her dead, not just yet.

“You foolish child.”

His voice pulled Kelly’s eyes open and her lashes fluttered against the dirty wood beneath her. She tried to sit, but her strength was gone, sapped dry by the fight and his attack. She whimpered as Michael bent to lift her, his big hands sneaking beneath her tiny body, arms hooking under her knees and around her shoulders. She fell against him, her forehead finding a resting place in the crook of his neck.

“So much potential wasted on anger.”

Kelly cried out as Michael shifted her in his arms, carrying her gently to the bathroom. She lifted a hand to steady herself, but she could not get it around his neck and it fell back down, limp against her own chest.

“You will learn to obey me.”

She closed her eyes against the harsh light of the bathroom, cringing as he set her down slowly onto the edge of the tub.

“You will learn to like it.”

She looked up, shielding her eyes against the light to look into his face.

“Or you will die.”

Beka cut the engine, the headlights briefly illuminating the large painted letters the small bakery’s sign before dying completely.

She released a heavy sigh before disengaging the seatbelt, alarms blaring in the back of her mind. This was beyond dangerous, meeting the Archangel alone like this, but Beka had a plan in motion, and she had to see it through.

The bell above the door jingled as she entered, and she let her eyes sweep over the quaint room. A crowd of people hovered around the counter, waiting in line for their takeaway treats, and a young girl with bushy pigtails pressed her nose to the glass display case trying to smell the cupcakes inside.

With a Hunter’s Gaze, she counted the civilians, something Dean had once taught her to do. She noted two exits and eight windows, three small cafe tables with moveable chairs, and a booth in the back corner with a view of the entire place.

“Always have an exit strategy,” Dean had often told her. “If you’re going in, no matter where you’re going in, make sure you can get out. Fast.”

Beka had not been the Hunter that Dean had hoped she’d be, but she never forgot things like that. Her natural paranoia lead her to cling to his words, and a thousand spy novels under her belt had helped her carry them out.

Once her preparatory sweep was complete and Beka had caught the eye of the perky blonde shop owner behind the counter, she stepped away from the door and made her way towards the booth in the back.

Michael was already waiting for her.

He watched with half a smirk as Beka had taken her survey, never letting her eyes meet his or show any signs that she was as nervous as he knew she was. But he could see it. He could hear her heart race as she walked slowly to his table. See the veins pulse quickly at her throat, the slight tremble of her right hand, the sweat begin to shine on her forehead. She was petrified and yet somehow utterly fearless as she came towards him, her gait steady, her eyes clear. She was just as intriguing to him as she’d been on every late night call, every online chat. Witty and sharp, funny yet deeply serious, nervous and easily flustered. She was every emotion at the same time some nights, and Michael could not fully wrap his mind around her.

That would soon change.

She had come to him, finally, and his plan was, for once, ahead of schedule.

Beka stopped by the head of his table and finally set her eyes upon him. She swallowed hard as a wave of panic flipped her stomach. Seeing his face after so long nearly knocked the breath from her lungs, but his eyes were wrong, the soul she knew and loved was not looking back at her when he tipped his chin in greeting.

“This seat taken?” she asked, throwing a thumb to the empty bench.

Michael smiled gently and nodded. “Please.”     

How strange, his voice. It hit her ears like a shockwave, deep and familiar yet laced with something she couldn’t describe. They had talked on the phone a few times, but seeing Dean’s lips move, watching the lines on his face crease, the muscles in his throat move, hearing that voice issue forth- it was altogether unsettling.

Beka swiftly slid into the bench, brown eyes steadily trained on his stolen greens. Michael blinked at her, smirk unfaltering as he watched her shift herself into a comfortable position.

“It’s good to finally meet you,” Michael smiled. “I hope the drive wasn’t too tiring.”

“It was fine,” Beka answered with a clipped tone.

Michael opened his mouth to speak again, but his lips froze as a red-headed waitress stopped at the edge of the table, slipping the order pad and pen from her black apron.

“What can I get for ya? We got cream and lemon meringue on special.” Her voice was a high chirp, and it grated against Beka’s ears.

Human and Angel both decided on apple pie and coffee, and it stung watching the entity wearing Dean Winchester devour the dessert. Beka felt a pang in her chest when Michael closed full lips around his fork, suddenly hit with déjà vu.

How many diners had she frequented with the hunter, Sam too, discussing cases or reminiscing about hunts gone hilariously wrong? This was some kind of twisted parody of that.

“You seem...anxious,” Michael said, easing back into the stiff cushion of the bench. The Archangel had dulled Dean’s vibrant emerald eyes into a lifeless moss, but they still burned like coals as he bored them into her.

“No, I’m not anxious, I’m just…” Beka drew in a heavy breath. “It was a long drive. I’m sorry. I’m really happy to see you.” The Archangel gave her a plastic smile and she returned it, making sure it reached her soft eyes.

Michael leaned forward, pushed his crumb-scattered plate out of the way before setting his forearms on the table.

“Rebekah…” The name sounded so wrong rolling off his tongue, sounded so wrong uttered in the low rumble of Dean’s voice. She couldn’t remember the hunter ever using her full name.

Beka’s eyes were locked on the Angel’s and she didn’t notice as he reached across the smooth surface of the table to brush warm fingertips over her knuckles. She sucked in a sharp breath, flinching at the touch, instinct jerking her hand away. She looked down to find Michael’s borrowed fingers still curled toward her; lax and searching. She let her eyes slip back to his, surprised to find a spark of hurt flash across them.  

Icy dread was swirling in her gut, but Beka had to regain her composure, had to play this right.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, licking her dry lips. “I just...this is all so new.” A closed-lipped smile blossomed across her face as she reached for him, her hand curving over the top of his.

A low smirk stretched Michael’s plush lips as he dipped his chin, looking at her from underneath his eyebrows. His thumb stroked across hers in tingling little trails as he held her gaze.

“Trust me, Rebekah. All you have to do... is trust me.”

Y/N checked her phone again, just to make sure she hadn't missed its buzzing. Though, with it always tucked in her back pocket, there was almost no way to miss it.

She tapped the screen, swiped away a spam email notification, and sighed as she sent the cell back to its bed.

Nothing from Beka.

She sent about her day, helping where she could, but mostly staying out of the way. The Bunker was too crowded and she couldn't get a word in anywhere anyway. Besides, there were things to be done, little boring everyday tasks that others overlooked that somehow fell to her.

She cleared beer bottles from ledges and swept the dried mud from the entryway. She stacked coffee mugs in the sink and set the dishes to soak. Cleared abandoned books from library tables and helped misaimed paper balls find the waste baskets.

In between each task she checked her phone, shaking her head at Beka's silence before hammering out another, “where are you??” text. It wasn't like her to be gone all day without a peep, very odd that she'd left so abruptly that morning, even stranger that she seemed to have her phone off.

The running gag was that Beka's phone was glued to her left hand, you never saw her without it; it wouldn't have seemed right.

So for her not to answer…

Something was up.

All around her there were faces, but none familiar. She hadn’t seen Sam all day, and Cas was a blur, swiftly coming and going with a flap of his trenchcoat. Y/N was worried but she had nowhere to turn, no one around to listen to her rambling, probably uncalled for concern.

As she shuffled off to the kitchen to start a pot of soup, she tried one last time, this time dialing in lieu of a thousandth ignored text.

It only rang twice.

“Bek, hey. So…” Her voice echoed in the hall as she slowed to a mosey, kicking her sneakers nervously against the polished floor, making them squeak with each step. “Look, I know you’re avoiding me, but whatever you’re doing...I could help. I’m not an idiot. Something is up. Please, just…” Just what? “Let me know where you are. Or… at least, just let me know you’re OK. Please?”

She hung up without a goodbye and shook her head. Maybe it was time to say something.

Y/N swiped her thumb again and opened a text message, about to shoot one off to Sam, when the phone vibrated twice against her palm.

A notification from Beka lit the top of her screen but did not make Y/N feel any better.

“Stop.”

Beka hit send and then turned off her phone completely, watching as the screen faded to black. With an angry hand, she shoved the cell back into her pocket and sighed.

“Is everything… alright?” Michael asked, tilting his head in question. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked across the table and Beka shrugged it off.

“It’s fine.” Hoping to end his inquiry, she looked out the window as she lifted the tall porcelain mug before her and downed the sugary dregs of her coffee.

Michael pressed on, leaning forward to catch her eye. “Your friends are worried for you,” he said simply.

Beka smiled and looked up at him. He was right, they were. Sam was probably running around in circles while Y/N begged him not to pull his hair out. She cleared her throat and shook her head gently.

“They needn’t be,” she told him, “I’m right where I’m meant to be.”

Beka looked back at her hand covering his and gingerly pulled it away. “Hey,” she started, her voice unsure. “Can I...can I see Kelly?”

Michael leaned back in his seat and smiled. “Of course.”

They slid out of the booth together, and Beka paused, waiting as the Angel dropped a folded twenty on the table. An electric shiver slithered down her spine when Michael pressed a palm to the small of her back. She grit her teeth against it, determined not to let him get to her, but her knees jellied at his melting touch, and she suddenly found herself leaning into him as they strolled toward the exit.

Beka had to fight the urge to wrap an arm around his waist, to breathe him in as they walked the short distance to the car. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t Dean, that the thing dwelling inside the hunter could turn her to dust with a simple snap of his fingers. She had to be cautious, had to be sharp.

If Beka wasn’t careful, Dean and Kelly could very well be lost to her forever.

Sam closed his eyes and shook his head quickly to clear his mind. There was too much going on, too many people needed his attention, too many fires were burning. He cringed as a bolt of pain struck between his eyes and he pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling another migraine coming on.

“Wait, where is she?”

Y/N hesitated, seeing the pain on his face. Last thing she wanted to do was give him something else to worry about, but Beka was in trouble, of that she had little doubt.

“I don’t know,” she said mekely, “she asked to borrow my car this morning, and she’s been MIA all day and then…” Y/N pulled her phone out and opened her messages, scrolling as she held it out to Sam’s gaze. “Nothing all day. Then that.”

Sam looked down at the single word reply and his shoulders fell. Beka was wordy. She used emojis when she wanted to be left alone, but ‘Stop’ and nothing else wasn’t exactly true to character. Something was awry. He cleared his throat and looked away. “She didn’t say where she was going? Nothing?”

“No.”

“How could you just let her leave!”

His voice boomed through the hallway and Y/N flinched. Her throat was tight when she replied, clenching her teeth to try and keep calm.

“I’m not her babysitter, Sam. Beka’s a grown ass woman and sometimes she goes out by herself. What do you want me to do, put a tracker on her ankle?”

“She never just goes out by herself.” Sam dropped his chin. “Fuck.” His whisper was deep enough to get lost, but Y/N heard it just fine.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t-”

Sam cut her off as he spun on his heel and took three steps away. He dialed Beka’s number quickly and held his breath as it went right to voicemail. “Shit. Find Cas,” he yelled over his shoulder, doubling back to add a meek, “please.”

They all met in the War Room, worried faces illuminated from beneath by the ever-glowing table. Castiel and Y/N hovered over Sam’s shoulder as he typed away at his laptop, every so often making a noise of aggravation.

“Nothing?” Y/N asked, chewing on her thumbnail and peeking over Sam’s head at the screen.

“No. The GPS is on her phone is off.”

“She never keeps it on,” Y/N said knowingly.

Sam huffed and looked passed her to the pacing angel on his right. “Cas? Anything?”

Castiel shook his head, still looking off to the left, listening. “She’s warded herself,” he said grimly.

Y/N let her thumb go with a wet pop. “She knows how to do that?”

Cas narrowed his eyes at her. “Apparently so.”

“Damn it.” Sam called them both back with his mumbled curse. “Traffic cams from Woodward, Oklahoma caught your license plate running a red light at 2:42, Y/N.”

She perked up and leaned over him, hand next to the laptop as she squinted at the screen. “Well that’s good! Why the ‘damn it’?”  

Sam sighed heavily and sat back, waving a hand at the computer. “Because CCTV from around the same time shows the car left abandoned at a Gas ‘n Sip a few blocks away.”

Y/N stood back up. “So she ran the light and then switched cars?”

Sam nodded. “She ran the light on purpose.”

“Why would she do that?”

“To let us know she’s OK,” Sam said simply. “And to tell us to back off.”

A silence fell, each tongue growing still as their minds reeled.

Sam broke the nothingness, turning to Y/N. “She didn’t say… anything? No clues as to where she was going?”

Y/N shook her head.

“What about yesterday? The day before? Has she been acting weird?”

“I don’t know.” Y/N shrugged.

Sam threw his hands up in agonized frustration and stood from his chair, almost knocking it backwards as he went. “How can you not know!”

“I don’t know!”

“She’s your best friend! How did you not know if she’s been acting strangely?”

Y/N’s annoyance level had reached its peak and she snapped. “She’s your friend too, Sam! Not that anyone would know it lately!”

Hazel eyes fluttered in shocked offense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You haven’t exactly been around for anyone these last few weeks, Sam.” She didn’t mean to, but Y/N wagged a finger at him scoldingly. “You’re a fucking mess. Look at you! You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you haven’t shaved in God knows how long. You’re gonna fall apart and you don’t even care.”

“I care!”

“No, you don’t.” She crossed her arms with an air of finality and Sam scoffed. “Maybe if you were a little less… I don’t know, exhausted, you would know what’s going on around here.”

Sam stammered, his brow creasing as he sneered down at Y/N. “So this is my fault?”

Castiel stepped in, throwing his hands up between the tense friends. “This is no one’s fault. We will find Beka and bring her home.” He smiled kindly at Y/N and then looked to Sam, his gaze firming up. “You should go rest.”

Sam rolled his eyes “Cas-”

A firm hand pushed against Sam’s chest. “Go.”

Sam made his way down the curved halls, his mind in a fog, not paying attention to his route. He turned left instead of right and ended up at Beka’s door, not bothering to knock before stepping inside.

The room was an organized mess, just like Beka. Everything had a place, but nothing was put away. Clean laundry was folded and neat but sat in piles on top of the dresser instead of within; her desk held a mountain of papers and scattered notepads, pens tucked everywhere but inside the pen caddy.

The trashcan beneath the desk was amazingly empty, as none of the waste seemed to be able to make the trip down off the desk into it. A ball of wadded up notebook paper lay on the floor beside it, and Sam bent to scoop it up, finding the mess somewhat unacceptable.

As he went to toss it into the can, Beka’s writing caught his eye, more specifically, the way her bubbled cursive spelled out his name.

Sam - I know you’re gonna try and stop me which is why I didn't tell you. I think I can bring him home. I found something

There was no more to the note and half of the words were crossed out as if she’d changed her mind midway.

“No… Bek.”

Sam bit down hard on his bottom lip, his eyes closing as well, done. He fell down onto her empty bed, sitting on the edge, not caring about the messy nest of blankets. The pain in his head was getting worse, the constant pounding picking up speed and intensity. He let out a full breath and hunched over, shoving his hands into the mattress to hold himself steady.

“Goddamnit!”

As he moved his hand, wanting to bring it up to shield his aching eyes from the light for a brief moment of piece, his fingers against the hard edge of a book tucked underneath Beka’s pillow. His eyes shot open and he pulled the text from its cave, quickly scanning the title.

“No...no.”

There was a tiny triangle of paper peeking out from the middle of the book and Sam ran his finger along the edges, carefully opening to the page she had left marked.

“Fuck.” He stood up quickly, making sure to keep his finger in the book as it fell closed in his big hand. He hit the hallway at a run, boots keeping him from skidding into the turn as he raced back to the War Room.

Michael held the screen door open as Beka stepped inside, eyes dancing about as she took note of the layout of the house. The living room was a bit dusty, and the carpeted stairs directly ahead could use a good vacuuming, but the place was otherwise tidy. Beka sighed as Michael stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Nice place ya got here,” Beka teased, unable to stop herself. She ended with an awkward smile and swallowed hard, waiting for his reaction. Nerves were creeping up on her again, the scene she'd played on a loop in her head so close to coming true. Just a little longer…

The Archangel dropped his eyes to hers, a half smirk twisting his mouth. “This way,” he directed, flicking a finger toward the stairs. Beka stepped back, letting him take the lead. She counted each step as they ascended - it was a habit, something she always did out of some strange compulsion. Sometimes, back at the bunker, she’d count them out loud, more often than not prompting some teasing jab from Dean. The thought of him sent a twinge of pain through her chest, and looking up to see his body so casually infected by the evil angel pushed that pain towards anger.

All the way up, Beka braced herself. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d find, but she knew it was going to be bad. She had been preparing herself for this, she knew the risks - but actually being there was like stepping into a oil painting of her worst nightmare. Every step was slow; she could feel every muscle in her legs as she walked, every fiber of her lungs as she pulled in each breath. Her entire body was pulsing with the moment, with nervous energy that crackled through her.

Just a little further, she thought, following a few steps behind. Just take me to Kelly and we can end this…

The staircase seemed to go on forever, like it was reaching up into Heaven, but Beka knew better. She knew it was leading to Hell.

Go faster you son of a bitch. I want this over with.

Michael’s polished shoe hit the landing and Beka pulled in a tight breath, anxiety and fury twisting inside her gut. Michael lingered, not moving forward, causing Beka to slow her steps lest she run into his back.

Go! What are you waiting for you motherfucking…

She took another step.

Goddamned evil…

Michael moved aside finally, turning slightly to allow her to slip passed him, but she was so wrapt in her thoughts she let out a deep growl as she stepped up beside him.

“Piece of shit!”

Michael tipped his head, narrowing his eyes as they landed on her face. Beka froze instantly, realizing that her thoughts had trespassed out of her mouth and into the real world. She held her breath, afraid of what he might do, but Michael did nothing. He simply frowned.

“What...did you say?”

The annoyance in his voice was clear; the crisp consonants lingered in the air like a poisonous gas and Beka pushed forward through it, mustering up all of her strength. So, she hadn’t meant to say it outloud, she had, and now was a good a time as any to bring this all to a head.

“I said… you’re a… piece… of shh…”

The words faltered on her tongue as Michael touched her hand. A gentle sweep of his fingers across the top of her knuckles broke her concentration. She looked down at their hands, slowly inhaling as a dizziness overtook her. She wobbled a bit on her feet and blinked, trying to clear her mind.

“What…” Her voice was shaky, diluted by the fog.

“Rebekah.” Michael called her name softly, letting it ring out and through her mind, pulling her eyes upwards to meet his.

Something in the green caught her, some power she could not define cleared her thoughts, pushing away every drop of rage and replacing it with a calmness that she’d only ever found in her dreams. He held her there forever, just staring, pulling her closer like a magnet.

“Breathe.”

Her lips parted as he commanded her to take a breath, her body screaming as she obeyed.

Michael smiled and released her, taking a step back and watching as her glassy eyes refocused.

“You forget to breathe too often, my love. It’s not good for you.”

“I… um…”

Michael licked his lips and nodded towards the hallway. “Shall we?”

Despite their many late night conversations, Beka had not been able to get Michael to tell her anything about Kelly’s wellbeing other than that she was alive, and being cared for. Kelly had mentioned a cage, but Beka had assumed it was metaphorical.

It was not.

The cage was real and Kelly was curled up inside it, tucked into a corner diagonally across from the door. Her knees were pulled up to her chin, her hands beneath her cheek. Beka couldn’t see much, but she appeared to be clean, fully dressed and breathing. But her face was purple and black, a deep line of red cut into her bottom lip, and another, smaller gash above her eye.

Beka grit her teeth and felt whatever spell Michael had woven around her fade. Her anger returned, her purpose for being there reset itself firmly in her mind. She was there to save Kelly, to break her out of this Hell and get her to safety.

And, if her plan worked, she could get Dean back too.

She felt Michael move beside her and Beka swallowed down her fear. She had to play this right, wait for the perfect moment.

“You see?” he said, stepping around Beka to wave a hand over the cage. “She’s alive. She’s fine.”

Trying to keep her gaze relaxed, Beka forced a smile. “Thank you for letting me see her.”

Michael nodded in acknowledgement. “Of course.”

The curl of his plump lips was desperately distracting and Beka struggled to look away. She had to get herself together, had to press on.

She cleared her throat. “I...I’m sorry, could I have something to drink? I’m…” She coughed and rubbed at her throat. “A little dry.”

Michael smiled more fully and nodded, accepting her request. He turned quickly and Beka listened to his footfalls disappear down the hall and fade as the staircase took him down.

She rushed to the cage, dropping to her knees by Kelly’s side.

“Kelly!” Her whisper was forceful, but Kelly did not stir. “Hey! Wake up damnit!”

Beka stuck a finger through the cage and poked at Kelly’s arm until she woke.

“Michael?” Kelly was groggy, blue eyes aflutter as she looked around for her Master.

“No,” Beka hissed, shaking the cage a bit. “It’s me! Hey! Focus!”

Kelly sat up and turned to face her friend. “Beka?”

“Yes, damnit!”

The poor girl smiled, lost in a haze. “You came.”

“Of course I came,” Beka said, softening her voice. “I’m gonna get you out of here, OK? Are you alright? Can you walk? We’re gonna have to take it at a run. You with me?”

“No.” Kelly stretched her arms out in front of her and shifted on the cold floor, getting comfortable.

Beka sat back on her heels, shocked. “What? What do you mean no? You can’t walk?”

“No,” Kelly said again, this time in clarification. “I can walk. I just don’t want to.” Her voice was so chipper, so blindly happy that an icy chill made its way down Beka’s spine.

“What are you talking about?” Confusion tightened Beka’s throat, frustration pushed tears into her eyes.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Kelly told her honestly, her smile cemented and terrifying against the bruises that painted her face.

Beka took a breath, closing her eyes against Kelly’s obvious insanity. “OK,” she whispered. “It’s OK. I’m gonna get you out of here.”

Kelly’s eyes were huge when Beka looked back. “No,” she told her cheerfully. “You won’t.”

“Whiskey?”

Michael’s deep voice broke through all else and Beka jumped to her feet as he entered the room, holding out a cloudy glass of amber liquid for her.

She stepped forward and breathed away her tears, smiling at the Archangel. “Thank you. My favorite.”

“It’s not the...honey kind that you seem to prefer, but…” Michael shrugged slowly as Beka took the glass.

“It’s fine,” she replied quickly, “thank you.” The whiskey burned and she took the pain gladly, hoping it would steel her nerves.

“I’m pleased you’re finally here,” Michael said honestly, his eyes trailing her face, watching for her reaction. He was calm, too calm, and his gaze lifted the hairs on Beka’s neck.

“Me too,” she whispered and knocked back the rest of the whiskey, holding it in her mouth for a long second before letting it go. She exhaled as she swallowed and met his eye, keeping her expression as soft as she could. “So,” she teased with a smile and held out the glass for him to take.

“So.” Michael returned her smile and reached for the glass, his thumb brushing over hers purposely.

She ignored the electric shockwave.

She held her breath.

He turned to set the glass down on the desk.

She attacked.

Beka withdrew a shining crystal from her pocket and held it aloft in both hands as the spellbook had instructed her to do. She turned the point to aim at Michael as she summoned up every ounce of will hiding inside of her, every drop of faith, every molecule of power she possessed. As the empty glass hit the wooden desk, Beka recited the spell she had painstakingly carved into her mind.    

“Murifri nibm od!”

Nothing happened, but she pressed on.

“Oadriax chiso berita!”

The Enochian felt wrong on her tongue, but she kept going, knowing that all her years in the Library and a lifetime of research had led up to this one moment and would not let her down.  

“Geh! Ip! Cures lap zir vohim!”

Beka gasped as a blinding white light erupted from the crystal and slammed into Michael, knocking him forward.

Sam was bouncing back and forth on each foot, shifting his weight as he watched Castiel read. His arms were crossed and he chewed on the nail of his right middle finger, wincing when he gnawed too far and hit the tender skin underneath. “Ow.”

Castiel sighed dramatically and set the book down on the table, his hands on either side. He hunched over the tome and shook his head at the faded black ink. “This is not good, Sam.” His deep voice was raw, harder than usual, as if the last few weeks were wearing on him as well.

Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah, Cas, I know. What is it?”

“A very powerful spell.” Blue eyes were dark with worry, his face creased and cracked.  “Beka cannot work this kind of magic.”

From across the table, Y/N piped up. “She’s really good at magic.” It wasn’t helpful, but she felt she needed to add something. She was coming up empty handed at everything else she tried.

“No, Y/N,” Cas said gently, falling down into the chair to his right. “This is… advanced spellwork. Far more complicated than anything she’s attempted before and…” He stopped, hanging his head, unable to deliver the worst of the news.

Sam stopped bouncing and stepped forward. “And what, Cas?”

A quick exhale dropped Castiel's chest and he looked up at Sam. “And...the translation from Enochian was incorrect.”

An invisible anvil settled on Sam chest and he sucked in a tiny breath to combat it. “OK. Maybe she realized it and...fixed it.” Frightened tears stung his eyes and he sniffed them back and away. “Beka is…” He cleared his throat to rid the last of the tears. “...Really good with words- languages. Maybe she caught the mistakes.”

Castiel nodded solemnly. “Even if she did, Sam… this spell was not meant for an archangel.”

Michael’s shoulders shook as he braced himself against the oak desk. Beka matched his tremble, almost vibrating with a mixture of hope and fear as she watched the Archangel succumb to the effects of the spell. She held her breath when he finally stilled, brown eyes wide as she watched him slowly turn to face her.

“Bek...” Dean was back, Beka could see it in his soft expression. He was panting, no doubt exhausted from the fight. She felt her chest tighten at the thought of just how long he’d fought and clawed inside his own head.

“Dean,” Beka breathed, a relieved whoosh of air pushing from her lungs. She ran to him, boots loudly rasping against the floor until she crashed against him. Her fingers scrunched into the fabric of his black sweater, and hot tears pooled in her eyes as she gazed up at the familiar face she missed so much.

“Dean, you gotta cast Michael out-”

“It’s not that simple, Bek,” the hunter panted,“I can’t just-”

“Yes! Yes, it is that simple!” Beka was frantic, voice a high screech, veins buzzing with adrenaline. “You can do it, Dean. This spell won’t hold him for long. Please!”

Dean nodded, mouth twitching with uncertainty, and Beka’s lungs expanded with a paused breath as she waited for the expulsion.

She watched as he doubled over, his face screwing in pained concentration. His lips parted to reveal gnashed teeth, and his eyes were welded shut. “It - it’s not working!” His words tore from his lips, and his voice was raw with the struggle. Beka’s heart hammered wildly as she took in the scene before her...and then stopped completely.

Dean’s face smoothed, his grimace morphing into a chilling grin as he straightened back to his true height. Beka swallowed as his shoulders squared, and her blood iced when green eyes ignited to a burning blue. She cried out when he suddenly fisted her hair, pain blooming over her scalp as he sharply tugged back, tilting her face up to his.

“In fact,” Michael said, voice even. “It won’t work at all.”

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#spn fanfic #michael!dean #angst #ocs #dean winchester #sam winchester #series

[saywhatjessie]

Fucking Hollywood

Aro!Dean 1.8k (Ao3)

“It’s just so frustrating!” Sam threw up his hands, the breath of his explosive sigh blowing his bangs around.

Dean just nodded non-committedly. Sam had been going on about this for the last twenty minutes.

“I mean, representation is important. Everyone knows that. Studies and stuff, right? So if we all know this, why is it still so hard to find content without sex in it?!”

Dean grunted. Sam waved a hand at him as if it had been a grunt of agreement.

This would be better if Dean had somewhere to go, but it was his own fault for offering to drive his brother back to school after his visit. He could have easily given the kid money for a bus but, no, Dean — being the amazing older brother he was — had offered to drive Sam back to Stanford.

And now he was trapped in his own car, listening to Sam bitch about sex in the media. Again.

“I’m not even talking, like, explicit HBO sex. But just this idea that sex is always the endgame and the thing that’s the most important of all things. When a character has sex for the first time it’s a Big Deal and like, why? Narratively? For what reason? Why does it matter in movies if someone’s a virgin?”

“Well, you know Hollywood, Sammy,” Dean reasoned, doing his best to diffuse the situation. “It’s like Hooters. Just there to do one thing.”

Sam snorted. “What? Titillate men?”

“Okay, A) You’re men. And two I meant make money. Sex sells, Sammy. I hate to say it but it’s true.”

Sam groaned. “Okay, maybe , but media also helps define culture. If we continue in this cycle where sex is the most valued commodity than how are we supposed to move past it?”

Dean sighed, unsure how to respond to that.

Sam had gone to college and come back gay. Or, rather, ‘queer’. Dean wasn’t totally sure what that meant except that, according to Sam, ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ didn’t necessarily mean he wanted to fuck dudes. Actually, in Sam’s case, he was gay in a way that meant he just didn’t want to fuck at all. Or he only wanted to fuck people he also wanted to marry. Something to do with Demi Moore? Dean still wasn’t clear on the details.

Whatever Sam’s sexual status, he had also come back from college with a vendetta against society’s obsession with sex. Which, objectively, Dean could get behind. But as a card-carrying, porn watching, one-night-stand having red blooded American, Dean couldn’t invest any personal devotion into it.

“It’s not even just Hollywood! Fan created content has historically been a refuge for marginalized people to create a space in the universes they love for people who are like them. Like Kirk and Spock in Star Trek.”

“Are you writing a thesis? What the fuck?”

“But even in fan-created spaces it’s like all they care about is whether or not the characters are boning,” Sam said, disgusted. “Like, that’s not what their relationship is about. Kirk and Spock aren’t compelling because they wanna bone. They’re compelling because they’re, like, accidentally the greatest love story ever told.”

Dean sighed again, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel.

“Okay…” he started, aware that the only way out of this conversation was through. “So I admit, I don’t know a whole lot about,” he gestured vaguely at Sam. “That. But me, personally, I have a hard time telling the difference between romantic and platonic love.”

“So like aromanticism.”

“No, what?” Dean glanced at Sam who was looking at him weirdly. “I don’t know. But one of the only ways I know how to confirm the difference is with sex.”

Sam was shaking his head before Dean had even finished. “But that’s not how that works. You don’t need sex to prove it’s love. That’s what I’ve been talking about!” Sam slumped dramatically in his seat, throwing his head back, before sitting straight again. “The difference between romantic and platonic love is there without sex. They feel different. They just do. As an asexual person, I know this better than anyone.”

Sam was pretty sure ‘asexual’ wasn’t the word Sam had used before but he didn’t really understand it all anyway and didn’t want to ask.

“Okay…”

“You can’t tell the difference between romantic and platonic love?” Sam asked, his focus now entirely on Dean.

Shit . Dean squirmed. “No, not really.”

“So you’re aromantic?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“No, no, stop looking like that.” Dean made an attempt to stop grimacing. “No pressure or anything, it’s just that that is, definitionally, what aromanticism is. Not being able to distinguish a difference between romantic and platonic love. Because you don’t really feel the first one.”

Dean was definitely grimacing again.

He looked down at his arm when he felt Sam lay a hand on his bicep. “Thank you for trusting me with this moment.”

Dean shook him off, scoffing. “Shut up, man. Whatever. You know how I feel about labels.”

Sam took his hand back, biting back a smile. “Yeah, I know. But it’s good to have a word for it. Helps other people understand where you’re coming from. Helps you understand yourself.”

“I think I have a pretty good understanding of myself.”

Sam just snorted, not bothering to further respond to that, but then, blissfully, changed the subject.

Dean hated himself for bringing it up but it didn’t stop him from asking. “Hey, Cas, you ever hear of aromanticism?”

It was Thursday which meant it was Roadhouse night. There wasn’t any real reason they’d chosen Thursday for their weekly bar meetup, it had just been the only night they had free early on. Further down the road, they had begun cancelling plans to make it to the bar on Thursday, and now Thursday was firmly bar night. The bar of choice: The Roadhouse.

Cas blinked over at him over his large pint of whatever shitty IPA he’d chosen that day. “From my understanding of Greek prefixes I can presume it means to be without romance.”

Dean snorted, taking a sip of his own (proper, dark) beer before nodding. It figured Cas could guess what it meant without being told. He was smart as fuck.

“Eh, kinda,” he continued, tracing patterns in the water droplets on his glass. “I think it means to be without romantic love. Romantic attraction?” He shrugged, eyes in his beer. “Sam explained it better.”

Cas nodded back, smiling softly. “It was lovely to see him. He’s grown up so much.”

Dean grinned, ducking his head.

It was a little embarrassing how soft he let himself get around Cas. They’d been friends for four years, meeting in Cas’s Sophomore year of college when he needed to interview Dean for his college paper. Dean had been working as a mechanic at the time. He was still working as a mechanic, actually, but Cas, as an actual reporter person, interviewed people far more interesting than Dean.

Cas had been there for John’s death. For Sam’s high school graduation. Sam going off to school. Cas had seen Dean in way more emotionally compromised positions. Dean let himself be soft around Cas.

It didn’t mean he’d let it last longer than he had to, though.

“Yeah. That kid picked up all kinds of wild shit in college. You know he’s gay now, right?”

Cas rolled his eyes, a touch of annoyance furrowing his eyebrow. “You really shouldn’t casually out your brother, Dean.” Dean rolled his eyes back. “But yes, I saw it on Facebook. He posted about it.”

“Well then I didn’t out him!” Dean waved his hand as if to say ‘there you go’. “And, besides, I couldn’t get the words right if I wanted to. I still don’t remember what he actually said he was.”

“Demisexual, heteroromantic,” Cas responded automatically. He blinked and then corrected himself. “Or… aromantic? Is that why you brought it up?”

Dean shook his head, looking into his beer again. “Nah, Sam’s not that. That’s what he says I am.”

A horrible pause of horrible silence Dean stared into his beer.

“Are you?” Cas asked, gently.

Dean looked up. Cas appeared nothing but softly interested.

Dean shrugged, all shoulders, no eye-contact. “Nah. Maybe. I don’t know about labels, man.”

Cas nodded, consideringly. Dean watched him take a sip of his beer. He spent a lot of time staring at Cas’s neck this way.

Cas tipped his head as he put his glass back on the bar. “You don’t have to talk about it. But it may be worth looking up so you can potentially learn more about yourself.”

Again with the learning about yourself thing.

Dean shook his head. “I don’t think I need to do that. I think I’m fine.”

Cas seemed to deflate a little, the sag of his shoulders making Dean cautiously curious.

“Of course,” he said, taking another long pull from his glass. “Forgive me, I suppose I hoped — ”

He cut himself off, looking sternly into the dregs of his own beer.

Dean watched him. His blue eyes were washed out in the yellow light from the bar but the dark shadows defining his profile made him just as striking. The clench of his jaw. The furrow of his eyebrows. The tension in his shoulders.

Dean downed his beer.

He put the glass gently on the bar, pushing both his and Cas’s away from them before turning and putting his hand on Cas’s shoulder.

“You wanna go on a date with me, Cas?”

Cas looked up at him, sharply, eyes wide. “Dean?”

Dean suddenly wished he had beer to nervously swig. Well, no going back now .

“If I don’t feel romantic attraction or whatever – if I’m not just waiting for the right girl and I’m never gonna – then I wanna be with my best friend. And that’s you.”

Cas’s eyes were still wide and it looked like he was biting his lip.

“My best friend who I’m still very much attracted to!” Dean rushed to correct, realizing that Cas might be afraid that this was just him settling. “Jesus fuck , am I attracted to you. I never did anything about it because I was probably straight, ya know? But obviously I’m not so...” He shrugged.

Cas was still just staring at him.

Dean’s hand twitched. “You gonna just leave me hangin, man? I don’t really know wh–”

Cas surged forward, hands coming up to cup Dean’s jaw as he kissed him quiet.

Dean had never allowed himself space to imagine this kiss. But he’s sure he never would have been able to capture it anyway. So easy. So nice.

It was the kind of kiss where if Dean would ever have had butterflies, he’s sure they would have been hammering away in his stomach at that moment.

Guess it’s official, then. I’m aromantic .

Dean could feel Cas smile as he kissed him.

I’m fine with that .

#aro!Dean #aromantic Dean Winchester #DeanCas #Destiel #oops I wrote a thing #SJW Sam #lol #Sam is me in this fic this is an actual conversation I had with my brother #Jessie writes Destiel fic

[deanstits]

(1) YO! That bisexual dean thing is a huge mood for me too! I feel the exact same way about it. The only fic I've ever read with gay dean where I thought it made sense and it seemed like it was probably something the author identified with, was one where Dean dated Lisa and thought he was in love with her and all this stuff and complained to Charlie that he didnt understand why in romance movies and stories and whatever they described love as feeling super overwhelming and all encompassing

(2) And mushy and stuff. He was like, why do they go so far over the top? Love is just like your best friend you sleep with jeez. And Charlie was like ummmmmm dude? And like helped him to realize that like… He maybe loved lisa but not more than as a friend and then after helped him embrace attraction to men. And that narrative made sense to me, growing up and going through the motions of loving the opposite gender cause that’s what you’re supposed to do or whatever.             

(3) I also didnt mind that story because Jo tries to call him out for it at one point and is like, “you’re gay? Yknow bisexuality is thing tho right? Like this isn’t orange is the new black dude.” And then he explains to her. So it did get addressed which I appreciated. But other than that one example I’ve never enjoyed gay dean very much because he is such a bi icon to me and I dont think you have to erase his love for women or other genders to acknowledge his love for men.            

Right? Like I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a homophobic bisexual, because I’m not. Make anyone else Gay as hell and I’ll eat it up and love it. And honestly? A gay Dean from the perspective of a gay person would be something I’d be down to read, as the perspective would be true and honest. But mostly, 95% of the time, He’s a Bisexual Mess™ and I won’t budge on that.

It just frustrates me when straight people write slash fic and “make dean gay to switch it up” (comments I have seen many a time). Our sexualities aren’t an accessory that you can swap out when you get bored. Gays are gay. Lesbians are lesbian. Bisexuals are bisexual. etc.

Sexuality is fluid and I’m sure there are gays out there who identify with Dean and see him as gay, which I’m far more understanding of—reflections of ourselves in media are seldom and rare, so of course we make our own. I appreciate that deeply.

But there are enough characters in spn to make 50% of them gay as a rainbow and keep Dean bisexual in almost every story, unless it’s one specifically about his character dealing with homosexuality. There’s no other reason to do it other than from a “Homosexual Dean as a concept” stand point (which, as I said above, I would be so down to read).

Anyway! this is a long, stupid answer but I just have a lot of Feelings™ about his sexuality and can’t help but feel invalidated and sad when people ignore so much canon evidence just for the hell of it.

(Also that story you outlined sounds kind of slightly Aro!Dean (or homo-romantic), as his sexual attraction to women was still evident despite a lack of romantic feelings towards them. But then Cas comes in and he’s like ok, this is someone I could love!? Idk I’m rambling.

Thanks for your messages, I really appreciate them).

#bisexual discourse #is it fandom wank? idk but if anyone tries to fight me then get ready to throw down

[elizabethrobertajones]

if destiel became canon i hope no destiel fan go around saying 'I TOLD U SO' to other ships and telling other ships their ship is meaningless. :((((

Wow, thanks for blessing my inbox with such a fantastically awful leading statement. What, you want me to say Destiel shippers won’t do that? I mean, there’s a bazillionity of them and a lot of them think Destiel is going canon or should do or at least would take canon as utter vindication of everything they’ve read in the text, which is a quantifiable, serious amount of storytelling and tropes which all directly imply Destiel. If people throw a street party because it happened, that’s their street party, you know? 

I am not very well qualified to talk about wider shipping culture but Destiel fans who see it in canon have a certain axe to grind with the show because of the feeling that it’s textually present and many (myself included) would not have thought to ship it until something in the text flipped them and sheer incredulity about the depth of this story brought them to fandom and interacting with others to analyse and understand the story better. 

I don’t believe other ships including ones involving Cas and Dean elsewhere have anywhere near the same textual level of storytelling and tropes to give them a shadow of what Dean and Cas have. I posted last night about how early Destiel was ship teasing without storytelling intent, and other prominent ships never moved beyond ship teasing and one of them certainly never will and can’t. But for YEARS Destiel has been running on the rails of a narrative between and about the characters which can be taken romantically. If it went canon it would not be the show just randomly picking one of 12 out of a hat and giving it their blessing.

Like, yes I suppose it does make the shippers look entitled if you ship on different means, e.g. chemistry, blurred lines between actor and character, which ones are hot and you think would look good fucking each other, and all the reasons which are great for shipping characters (and I’m not judging - I like ships which are completely implausible, not implied in canon, or are otherwise deeply unsuitable for shipping like Destiel. 3 of my coda fics this season were Mary/Charlie, Mary/Ketch and Cas/Benjamin instead of Destiel, and of those only Mary/Ketch was actually based on canon, and Mary/Charlie was hauling out a dead character who I thought would be great to ship Mary with from the realms of implausibility. And I can understand if you have all or a main ship which is in these sort of brackets instead of rooting for the canon storyline and waiting for it to provide you with all your material, then it’s different and feels different.) 

But I don’t think Destiel shippers enjoying the idea of it going canon (because this is what’s upsetting you RIGHT NOW, not the idea that it POTENTIALLY goes canon and everyone’s a dick, you obviously feel like people enjoying it IN canon are being dicks RIGHT NOW) is offensive to other shippers, or that if you meet us on the grounds of fanon where all the shipping goes on, we’re anything more than more well-fed by canon than other shippers who don’t ship off of canon, because we get a lot of material for our ship from canon. 

But great transformative works always add to the experience, and there’s so many interpretations of the characters in fanon which have moved 1000 miles from canon, in every possible way, which really just end up on what people LIKE to read, if they like D/s or AUs where they’re socially awkward hipsters or tentacle porn or canonverse but huge drastic changes. EVERY ship in every fandom has variations and fanon lives of the characters and if the fandoms are large enough, sub-fandoms within them that specifically enjoy certain dynamics. Canon HELPS but it does not define Destiel shippers in what we write about and how we enjoy the ship, and some people enjoy it only in fanon because they think canon Dean is a dick or they hate what’s happened to Cas since whenever or they just like an old dynamic which is easier to wallow in in increasingly AU settings and end up just reading coffee shop romances where the mains happen to be called Dean and Cas, and some people can probably only get into it if it’s so gritty and canon they can still taste the last episode on their tongue when they read the coda fic. 

As a cumulative experience of what fandom is, Destiel going canon is ONLY vindication, because we can enjoy it in fanon as is, but the issues around the canon debate and representation and what have you are an entirely other thing and on THAT playing field canon is the only vindication.

But in that world, it’s not about other ships at all. I’m sorry, but something like Sastiel is just not part of the argument because in canon it’s not teased, not laid down in the depths of the show’s foundations as important, and it’s not part of the massive metatextual, media and fandom and show dance about the show sucking it up and making Dean bi and Destiel canon because that is only the MEDIUM in which the show needs to deal with the representation problem. If the thing had been swirling around Sam n Cas the entire time, then the debate would be about Sam and Cas. But it’s not. It’s about Dean and Cas. 

Like, I’m sorry if other shippers want in on the idea of ship going canon vindication but on this show there’s such an entrenched, weird battle about Destiel’s place in the narrative, it’s 9 years too late on this one for it to be any other ship in any other way on this show. 

I mean I’d say to other shippers, don’t go out and be a dick to people if it DOES go canon, just enjoy it and try not to be too horrible even if you do get involved in ship wars, like, just take the win and be the bigger person, but that comment isn’t exactly going to do much because I’m not the queen of this ship issuing decrees which seems to be the only positive outcome you’d ever think you could get out of asking me this ridiculous question. Like. What the heck were you expecting me to say? Oh no boo hoo we’re so nice, we’d never do that? It’s a gazillion shippers and a lot of them feel bitter and disenfranchised and they’re not going to consider that they are somehow being rude to other ships, because this is not the side of fandom where you ought to be respectful to people’s fanon practices, but essentially a conflict and we all walked into it where the battle lines were already drawn and it’s this ship and it’s inherently political to ship it if you do so from canon rather than politely excusing yourself to fanon.

If you feel threatened by the ship’s presence in canon because you can see as well as everyone else and are just pretending there’s an equivalence between Destiel and other fanon ships, as if the fanon stage and the canon battle are the same thing, then  you’re just being deliberately obtuse as a troll. I mean, I don’t even fucking fight the canon thing that hard, I am a chill shipper who enjoys watching it unfold in canon and don’t make strong demands of canon, but I still know my ship is politicised on this stage about being canon or not and we have to think abou that all the time and if I HAVE to I will wade in as fight hard that it has full right to go canon and should, and that is NOT disrespecting other ships, it’s working with what I already have in my hands immediately from the moment I went “shit, there really is something to all this lovelorn staring they do at each other, isn’t there?”

Anyway YOUR SHIPS, DESTIEL INCLUDED, ARE SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT IN FANON AS MUCH AS EACH OTHER AND BECAUSE THEY MEAN SO MUCH TO WHOEVER IS SHIPPING THEM. END OF. 

But fanon is fanon and you’re making a ridiculous argument equating “meaning” aka what fans draw from shipping and what makes them feel good about it into creating transformative works about their ship, to the idea of Destiel going canon as if it’s somehow going to do ANYTHING to the fanon.

Like, people with radically different from canon ideas ABOUT DESTIEL can cope with the show consistently not actually being what they really dig but use it just as a jumping off point to their personal interests in what they use fanon for - whether it’s kink or emotional healing or personal empowerment or just for writing and imagination like the fic writers who mostly just enjoy creating stories and like using fanworks rather than original works to hone their craft and feel confident and comfortable with what they’re doing. I mean, fan artists do the same. They might have the faces of the characters but they’re being depicted in a million different ways nothing LIKE the show.

Fanon is not threatened by canon. Even when canon trounces fanon, fanon rolls its eyes and carries on. And mostly fanon is so far beyond the realm of canon that it’s fairly untouchable anyway. The show can’t do much to fuck up my Cas works in a diner and Dean comes and hangs with him there AU because Cas does not work in a diner and Dean is not exactly up to flirting with a dude across a diner counter all day every day while Sam is literally sitting in the corner the entire time rolling his eyes. If Destiel still goes canon, I still hold the means of production here - I get to decide on my own terms if and when one of them snaps and asks the other to marry them. I would have the luxury to put off making them canon in my fanon even though in real canon they already were together. It’s a fearsome power :P 

And I mean, something like Sabriel has enough little connections to canon that its fans can at least show them in the same room interacting and draw from that, but 99.99999999% of that ship is built out of tropes and fun and reading each other’s works and building off of that and creating a ship pretty much out of nowhere for their own amusement and gratification. Canon Destiel’s going to have a hard job doing anything to upset that boat, you know? If you’re offended you WANT to be offended.

Anyway I have now finished my cup of tea so that’s enough grumbling from me but seriously what the heck did you even send me this for? It’s such a petty, miserable view about fandom. If you enjoy your ships you enjoy your fucking ships and nothing can upset that and everyone should leave each others’ fanon fun the hell alone. 

#Asks #wank for ts #AND the canon battle is NOT A SHIP BATTLE #it's between is it canon or is it not #no other ships is actually involved in that you know #it's just between people who think Destiel should be canon #and wishing the show would do something about it and that's it #fandom problems

[awed-frog]

I love your 'love tropes everywhere' tag! And right now something came to my mind (Sorry I can't look it up by myself right now, but) might it be that most of these love tropes aren't recognized as such because of the music? At least I can't remember any "lovely" music in DeanCas-scenes, if you understand what I mean.

Hey! Thank you - that’s one of my most depressing tags, but it also makes it so clear what they’re doing with Destiel, doesn’t it?

(Sigh.)

As for the music - that’s a very interesting theory, but unfortunately, music is something I mostly know nothing about, so I don’t know if I can answer your queston. My opinion on that - and I presume that in this case, you’re wondering specifically about the parallels highlighted by this post - is that music can influence the way you view a scene, because even I know that, but I wonder if it can truly override our collective #NoHomo mindset. As I explained here, even for me, someone who grew up with a borderline hippy family reading weird books and watching weirder movies, both IRL and (often) on screen a gay couple is not a couple until they cross some line - and that line is much higher than it is for a straight couple. It’s unfair, but it’s apparently how brains work. For instance, yesterday a Facebook contact I haven’t seen in forever and ever posted a new picture - you could see these two guys, okay, arms around each other, some kind of beach in the distance - and there you see it again - if my friend had been with a girl, I would have assumed, 100%, that that was a romantic partner - a girlfriend or a wife - because something in the picture was very intimate and soft and that’s not how you pose with friends. But since they were two men, and I’d never heard anything about him being gay or bi, I just - I don’t know. You think best friend, you think jokey picture, like those best men playing bridesmaids and screaming at the ring. And whenever this happens, I’m not happy with myself - I tsk and roll my eyes and everything else - but our brains have this weird way of functioning statistically in how we see the world (in movies, 99% of couples are straight and 99% or bros are just friends, so that’s what you see) and then ignoring statistics as soon as there’s a rational decision to be made (a lot more people are killed in traffic and changing light bulbs than they are in terror attacks, and yet it’s the bombs we fear). So in the case of Dean and Cas I’m not exactly sure that even music can change anything, if simply because everything else really didn’t (all those I need you and breaking mind control spells and mixtapes and the platonic staring - if this had been a man and a woman, everybody to the Moon and beyond would have accepted it as canon asap). 

I mean, Sam and Jess were a couple, and this is the data our brains have been given - they were in love, they lived together, they went to parties and whatever - this means that what they’re doing with them - Sam seeing Jess by the side of the road, Lucifer pretending to be Jess, Sam rushing to save Jess from the fire and everything else - that’s not subtext - it’s text, and it supports the coherent and honest narrative we’ve seen from the very first episode. For those mythological creatures, the ‘casual viewers’, there’s no ambiguity there, no math to do in their heads. They’ve been told straight out that Sam loved Jess in a ‘I want to have babies with you’ way, so when Lucifer slips into her skin the situation is abundantly clear. Dean and Cas, on the other hand - what is missing, and mostly the reason I’m so angry, is that there is absolutely nothing textual there. Everything we have about them are things that can either be read both ways, or are so ‘unimportant’ that a normal viewer wouldn’t even notice them. This means that when Lucifer pretends to be Cas, the situation is very different (maybe not for us, but for a ton of people out there). And, frankly, not even Céline Dion could change this - after seeing the media’s reaction to the mixtape, for instance, it was clear to me that the next season could open with a montage of Dean teaching Cas how to dance with My Heart Will Go On blaring from some jukebox and it still wouldn’t be enough.

(Ugh.)

And the thing is, part of me understands this reluctance or obliviousness we’re seeing about realizing Destiel is a thing, because there is no reason, none, not to insert it in the text. If they want to preserve some UST and general misery, which is always a good idea, they could still have Dean talk to Jody - they had the perfect opening this season in her You can tell me anything speech - or, whatever, they could have filmed the magnificent episode someone (sorry, I never remember who) wrote here on tumblr about a case featuring some ex boyfriend of Dean’s. Seriously, it’s not that difficult.

(But, yeah.)

So, I’m sorry - the only thing I can offer here is that I checked out the first parallel (because I can’t bear to rewatch that last episode, and I do remember Casifer talking to Dean wasn’t framed in any particularly romantic way).

When Sam sees Jess in Bloody Mary, the background music is The Rolling Stones’ Laugh I Nearly Died, which starts well before that scene and seems to be more about Sam’s feelings of guilt and ‘unmooredness’ than his everlasting love for Jess. Jess appears during the guitar solo and disappears over the last refrain - I’m so sick and tired / Trying to turn the tide, yeah / So I’ll say my goodbye / Laugh, laugh / I nearly died. As for the Destiel scene that was heavily paralleled to that one, well - it’s neatly done, isn’t it, because in this case, Dean sees Cas right at the beginning of the episode (Sam and Jess, that was the very last scene) and, again, the scene is framed by a classic rock song, The Animals’ We Gotta Get Out of This Place. Now, the interesting thing is that the Destiel scene is played in a much more insistent way - that song is way more romantic, for starters (‘Cause girl, there’s a better life for me and you), and when Dean sees Cas, the lyrics go Now my girl you’re so young and pretty / And one thing I know is true, yeah / You’ll be dead before your time is due, I know it. The second thing is that Dean, unlike Sam, acts upon this vision - he stops the car, drives back, gets out, and looks around, whereas Sam simply stared in awed desperation at Jess before the screen went black. And, third point: when we saw Jess, that was filmed from Sam’s point of view, but when we saw Cas, that wasn’t Dean’s point of view - it was the external narrator’s (so to speak), and that generally means what we’re seeing is objective reality. Now, I’m not saying that’s yet another indication that Dean loves Cas (or maybe a little bit) - I think what’s happening here is that Cas, unlike Jess, was not dead, and that Dean actually had a glimpse of him walking along some road - maybe not the one he was driving on, but that scene - and this is confirmed by how it was filmed - was real. Dean saw Cas, and Cas saw Dean. That wasn’t a vision. As to what it means, subtextually, if anything - I am reminded of that Fanfiction thing where the two girls playing Dean and Cas were a couple in real life. External narrators and objective reality outside the theatre’s stage usually means, this is actually true, pay attention - but, again, it’s subtext, so, whatever.  

Anyway, if you’re interested in this I can recommend TV Tropes, which is devouring Supernatural with a vengeance (see for instance their Ho Yay! page, which features many examples of barely subtextual homoerotic moments).

(By the way - I rewatched bits of Bloody Mary to find that Jess scene and there he was, baby Dean waking Sam up from a nightmare and saying, ‘Sooner or later we’re going to have to talk about this’ - and that’s another example of viewer bias, isn’t it, because when I first started to watch the show, I didn’t really like Dean and mostly saw him as some insensitive fuckboy - and yet I bet there were plenty of little moments like that one which already contradicted this alpha male façade Dean was trying to cling on to. I guess I just didn’t see them, not until later, because I’d already decided in my mind what this character was like. 

Brains are funny things, aren’t they?)

#ask #destiel #sam and jess #spn music #love tropes #love tropes everywhere #viewer bias #no homo mindset #sorry i only analyzed that one scene #but i'm still upset about the finale #and it's causing me a lot of grief #i should rewatch it #to pin down this story i'm writing #but i really don't want to #i think my characters will have a sudden case of traumatic amnesia #and fuck it #anyway #thanks for that question #it was really interesting #:)

[elizabethrobertajones]

I just want to see some character going "Wait, Dean made you a mixtape??" at Cas. Someone should teach Cas the proper meaning behind the gesture :p

I feel fairly certain he objectively knows, thanks to Metatron. But as 9x18 immediately showed, when it comes to application of the references, Cas really isn’t too great. The most he’s enjoyed human culture has all been music, and we saw him already being fond of it in 9x06 and 9x10, so honestly the whole Beyonce thing doesn’t even have to be Metatron’s fault, just that Cas lived on Earth for about a year by then, and would have been exposed to enough radio to know :P Anyway he basically never applies his pop culture knowledge because he still doesn’t get the lateral thinking part to apply metaphor and fictional references to day to day situations, which is exactly what Metatron wanted him to do and exactly what he completely failed to pick up, because he’s still Cas, and it’s the only honest way to keep writing him after that - still Cas but occasionally unnerving Sam or Dean by getting/making a pop culture reference. 

This article: http://www.hypable.com/mixtape-moments-media-supernatural/ went into a ton of detail on other moments, many of which predate season 9 enough you can hope they were among the things crammed into Cas’s brain, plus there’d be many more references and instances they’re used out there, for Cas to access. 

I do think Cas has a fair amount of misunderstanding going on with Dean giving him the tape, specifically because it’s Dean and he’s not sure what Dean means, ever, especially when Dean keeps on saying “we” to the point where he’d probably try and make their wedding vows about what he and Sam feel, but I do wonder if Cas has a sort of idea about how mixtapes are used culturally.

I mean there’s literally nothing, nothing in that scene to suggest he doesn’t know it’s a romantic gesture. Dean is the one who uses “it’s a gift, you keep those” to make it sound like Cas didn’t know or understand, but Cas has a different understanding of the scene, that he’s not just being oblivious, he’s going to steal the Colt from Dean and betray his trust, and he’s either using the tape as a pretext or feels too bad to keep it… Either way, he’s staging a drama with it, and I think preemptively trying to be contrite and apologetic about deserving Dean’s friendship (or whatever) by returning the tape… 

It would be funnier to me if Dean was forced to explain what the mixtape meant generally, thinking Cas hadn’t got it, when Cas totally had, and was just stunned that Dean would actually TRY to explain because he had never thought Dean would actually mean it that way :D

#Asks #12x19 #top 13 Zepp traxx