#i can talk about cain and abel parallels all i fucking want but in the end. neither brother finishes the story in their roles.
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IN THE END IT WAS NEVER GOING TO BE MAVEN AND CAL. YOU GET IT RIGHT? IT WAS NEVER GOING TO BE CAIN AND ABEL. MAVEN WAS NEVER GOING TO GET BACK AT CAL. CAL WAS NEVER GOING TO SAVE MAVEN.
MAVEN WOULD NEVER KILL CAL. CAL WOULD NEVER KILL MAVEN. THEIR HANDS ARE FREE OF THEIR BROTHER'S BLOOD FOREVER.
CAL TRIED TO SAVE HIM. BUT IT WOULD NEVER BE ENOUGH. MAVEN TRIED TO LOVE HIM. BUT IT WAS NEVER ENOUGH.
TRAPPED BY THE FUCKING NARRATIVE. THERE WAS NO WAY OUT! DON'T YOU GET IT?!?
IT WOULD NEVER BE ENOUGH!!!!!!!!
#mare being the middle man too...#she bridged the gap between two estranged brothers its only right she burnt it too.#LIKE FUCK#red queen#cal calore#maven calore#caps tw#victoria aveyard are you aware you have made me irreparably crazy insane about these two brothers. do you even know.#i can talk about cain and abel parallels all i fucking want but in the end. neither brother finishes the story in their roles.#abel (cal) still lives. cain (maven) dies.#im eating glass and sheet metal as we speak
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My friend read Torah this morning, and it was the portion with Cain and Abel, and we were talking about it just now. And of course since I've got TLT brainrot, I'm thinking about Cain and Abel in the context of Cainabeth and Abella/Ianthe and Coronabeth. Some thoughts:
Cain was the one who had the idea to make a sacrifice; but the implication of the text (per my friend) is that the sacrifice he made wasn't "good enough," because he wasn't sacrificing the best of the land.
Abel, by contrast, does sacrifice the best of his portion (the animals) and this is why his sacrifice is accepted.
Cain is essentially told "better luck next time," at which point he kills his brother and hides this. G-d asks him "where is your brother, his blood cries out to me" and Cain says "am I my brother's keeper?" and he is forever cursed because of the blood he sheds.
Since I'm hearing this story again with Ianthe and Corona in mind, my read on the Cain and Abel story has now become: when G-d tells Cain to do better next time, to make sacrifices that are worthy, and specifically to sacrifice the best of what he has, Cain asks himself, "what's the best of what I have?" and the answer is "my brother, Abel." this is of course a deeply misguided Lyctor-ish kind of thought, and like the Lyctors in TLT, this act fucks up his sense of self -- so he hides, but cannot escape the curse that this murder puts on him.
Interestingly, in the text it isn't clear that it's G-d who curses Cain. G-d tells Cain that he shall be more cursed than the ground, and Cain blames G-d for putting this curse on him. The curse is that he won't be able to use his gift anymore -- he was a tiller of the soil and the curse is that he won't be good at that anymore. So he has to wander the earth. And in the text, when G-d puts a mark on Cain it's so people will know not to kill Cain. I hadn't paid this much attention to the text before but it's actually pretty easy to see a read in which the mark of Cain is not a curse, but an amulet protecting him from the consequences of his actions.
So... who is who, in TLT? On the one hand, seems clear to say Cainabeth -> Coronabeth and Abella -> Ianthe. Ianthe makes a sacrifice (Babs) which is accepted, so she can ascend. Corona makes a kind of sacrifice (pretending to be a necromancer all her life even though what she wants is to be a cavalier; asking her sister to "take [her]" instead of Babs) and it is not accepted; she doesn't become the furnace of her sister's Lyctorhood. And if that's the read, then if this parallel is actually going to play out in its entirety, Corona will kill Ianthe. But is she her sister's keeper? Ianthe is definitely Corona's keeper; we see that over and over again. We see it in Harrow's letters; we see it in the way she has been covering for Corona for her whole life; we see it in the fact that Ianthe says in Nona that she has a plan for "us to be us" again. Corona is not exactly Ianthe's keeper; she's definitely submissive where Ianthe is dominant; she does betray Ianthe to Blood of Eden, but she's so grateful to Palamedes for not hurting Ianthe, and just over and over we see that she doesn't want harm to come to her sister. Her values and actions are in conflict with the empire that Ianthe has come to symbolize, but it isn't at all clear that Ianthe isn't trying to subvert the empire from within, so they may not be working at cross purposes at all. Corona is not not Ianthe's keeper, and she does feel responsibility towards her.
On the other hand, the order of the names in the GTN end matter suggests Cainabeth -> Ianthe and Abella -> Corona. After all, of the two, it feels clear to me that Ianthe has to be the "worse twin." I just don't know if there's scope for Ianthe to kill Corona. As spectacularly awful as she is, Corona is the one person who's consistently important to her. G-d is not (she didn't say the prayer, her motivation to ascend is ultimate power and pictures of her face). But at the same time -- her sacrifice of Babs is certainly not her sacrificing the cavalier that's most important to her. Really, Ianthe's sacrifice is a lot more like Cain's sacrifice than it is Abel's. She refused to give up the best of what she had, instead giving up Babs -- nobody cares about Babs -- whereas Corona absolutely does give up the best of what she has. She literally gave Ianthe her whole life, and Ianthe didn't even want it. (ooh bonus Corona/Gideon parallel, I've got chills.) Corona's sacrifice is worthy in the way Abel's sacrifice was worthy; it hasn't been accepted yet, but who's to say that it won't be? What throne will she mount? Will someone bind her down?
A lot of this question -- who is Cain and who is Abel -- comes down to asking, who is G-d in the Locked Tomb? John claims the title, but he has all of his power because Alecto chose him; so isn't Alecto actually G-d here? Isn't Alecto the figure who could accept or reject a sacrifice in this tale? Or put a mark on someone to protect them from being killed? (Is the Lyctoral eye-switch a form of the mark of Cain? I think so.)
Also a lot of this question could be answered if you just assume that what we're looking at is a subversion of the Cain and Abel story and not a straight retelling. And I think we're more likely to be dealing with a subversion; in which case probably neither twin will kill the other.
I do think everything that follows after the murder feels extremely Locked Tomb. Being cursed to wander the earth, or the universe (Blood of Eden); having to give up the skill that made you you (HTN I'm looking directly at you); G-d putting a mark on you that makes you unkillable (Kiriona Gaia hello). The elements are extremely there.
so... not clear I've come any closer to unraveling the mysteries. but it's been fun anyway. good Shabbos, hope you enjoyed this little drash.
#tlt#tlt meta#cw ianthe tridentarius#coronabeth tridentarius#ntn spoilers#tlt spoilers#the locked tomb#locked tomb meta
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“Inherit the Earth” and the Fakeout
Absolutely genius. Amazing, iconic, legendary, something only our showrunner Andrew Dabb can pull off.
"But Lilly, the episode was so bad! It was just the brothers, they didn’t look for Cas and Eileen!”
YES. THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT. THIS WAS A FAKE ENDING, THE END OF THE SEASON, NOT OF THE SERIES.
Let’s get into it.
An empty world. No one left but Sam, Dean, and Jack.
So Dean ran, he somehow managed to pick himself up off the floor of the dungeon and meet up with Sam and Jack. That jacket was this silent reminder. Remember what I’ve been saying, Cas has occupied the negative space all season, this is no exception.
Dean can’t look either of them in the face, he’s doing that thing, where his eyes move everywhere BUT where he should look.
“I couldn’t save anybody.”
Sam couldn’t save the world and Dean couldn’t save the one person that means the world to him.
“Where’s Cas?”
“Dean?”
I think it’s there, in that pause where Dean tries to push down the emotions, continue the fight, not think about the memories he left in the bunker, that Jack realizes what must have happened. Jack is the only one that knows about the deal, he has to know what Cas not being there must mean.
“He saved me. Billie was coming after us. Cas summoned the Empty. It took her...and took him. Cas is gone.”
This may shock you, but I am GLAD they didn’t talk about Cas, especially with what happens at the end of the episode. Cas is allowed to just take up unsaid space. It’s obvious he’s missing with the way they blocked things, obvious he’s missing here. This whole “oh well they don’t care about Cas because they didn’t talk about him”? Malarkey.
“Jack I’m sorry.”
Guilt. Regret. Pain. Dean will carry this with him for the rest of his life. Not only that he lost Cas, but that Sam lost Cas, that Jack lost Cas.
That SHOT, with the distance between Jack and Sam where Cas is SUPPOSED TO BE, and then a zoom out to...THE WORLD.
Okay, as usual, Bucklemming has the subtlety of a sledgehammer lmao.
Jack crying??? Praying to Cas???? Bruh?????
Also it’s just straight-up frightening for everything around my boy to die he is my baby son.
Also not to point out the incredibly obvious, but Dean starts drinking immediately, and continues drinking throughout the whole episode. Grief arc 2.0 babey.
“We can what, Dean? There’s no one left to save! Everybody’s gone!”
“You can’t just give up.”
“What other choice do we have!”
Idk why, but for Sam, who’s the constant, the one who’s always had hope, through everything, through all these years, when he finally says this, when he finally loses his hope? It hits the hardest. Sam is the leader, so not only is he grieving the loss of Eileen, he is a general grieving the loss of his soldiers, his friends, the world that he feels the duty to save.
When they go to meet Chuck, I just can’t get that image of Dean, leaning against the car, handprint still on his jacket, staring at the ground out of my head. It takes him a few seconds to catch up to Sam, like he’s pulled out of thoughts like deep dark water. Remember friends, it doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful.
Chuck wearing BLACK? FEAR.
“That’s right, the whole Cain and Abel thing. Us dead, whatever. I’ll kill Sam, Sam’ll kill me, we’ll kill each other. Okay, you pick. But first? You gotta put everything back the way it was. The people, the birds...Cas. You gotta bring him back.”
Willing to kill his brother. Willing to die. Tears in his eyes, begging God to bring Cas back.
And Chuck? Chuck doesn’t care about their surrender, he knows he’s already got them beaten. He cares about their pain, he cares about them suffering, because to him? That’s the entertainment. He’s not entertained by their found family, by their happiness, by their joy. He wants them to suffer, all of them.
“Eternal shame. Suffering. And loneliness.”
And he leaves them with just that. No hope, no family, just the three of them, broken, alone. Jack locked in his bedroom, Sam trying desperately to make life “normal” again. And Dean. Dean who drank so much he passed out on the floor.
He doesn’t feel terrific, he feels like shit, because not only is he dealing with the shame of an empty planet, he’s dealing with the guilt of being back in the place where the Empty took Cas.
This whole thing with the dog was just absolutely heartwrenching shit and if I didn’t hate Chuck before, him snapping Miracle right in front of an already fragile Dean would seal that deal.
I just want everyone to know that this is a Jake Abel stan account.
“Daddy’s boy” is a big insult for my boy Dean to use considering his own past with his trash abusive father but I’ll allow it.
I do think it’s interesting, ending of his arc aside, that Michael is willing to help them now. What changed? Sure, he ended up trying to help Chuck, running back to his father, but why get back in the game? I wonder if it has anything to do with the loss of Adam. It’s an interesting parallel, a man loses his angel while an angel loses his human.
Everything is so DARK in the Bunker now too, even the lighting is loud.
When I tell you I lost my shit when I saw Cas was calling Dean, when I heard Misha’s voice?? I knew it didn’t make any sense but I didn’t care, I would’ve been one step behind Dean as he sprinted towards the door.
Fuck you, Eugenie.
I mean it’s torture not only to Dean, who looks beyond fucking crushed when it’s damn Lucifer at the door, but for us too. Who the FUCK wanted Lucifer back? And to tease Cas??? Garbage.
I mean...fam. Listen, we know who’s writing this episode, this whole Betty thing is just like blatantly unnecessary but again, Eugenie loves Lucifer, gotta distract her with a shiny toy lmao.
It was cool to see Michael and Lucifer onscreen together. It was a cool dynamic that we rarely got to see.
The whole episode is just twist after twist. Listen, it’s their last episode so I guess they needed to fit in a season worth of twists in one episode.
Bye Lucifer. We know Eugenie can’t bring him back. Blessings to all.
This scene with Adam is the FOURTH scene where Dean is drinking...big yikes to my guy’s liver.
Here’s the thing about Michael. He’s a mirror for Dean in season 5. Loyal to an absent father. He has never changed, but Dean has. Dean is able to acknowledge now, the trauma that his father put him through, he was able to move past the need for pleasing him at any cost. Michael and Chuck? Are John and Dean, if Dean had never been allowed to grow. And Chuck proves, like John did, that he would always put his wants (in John’s case “the mission”) over his children.
Also not to beat a dead horse but Michael’s death was also peak Eugenie.
Sam getting to punch Chuck in the face? Thank you, he deserves that.
Obviously I don’t love any scene of my boys getting brutally beaten. But what I love, what I will always love about them, is what Chuck hates about them: they won’t ever give up. They know they won’t win against him, they don’t even land any hits, but that’s not what matters. What matters is their controller doesn’t control them anymore, that they really are free. No matter how hard they get hit, the get back up. It is their choice to stand up to him, no matter the cost.
The moment where Sam and Dean are supporting each other, covered in blood, and they look God in the face, and they laugh. That is why I will love them unconditionally for the rest of my life. That is who they are, they will never cow to the villain, whether that’s Azazel or Alastair or Zachariah or Lucifer or Amara or Death or Metatron or Cain or God. They will always choose to stand up.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because. You lose.”
Chills. What a line.
And Chuck is left, small, human, no longer a villain, no longer anything.
Gotta be real, woulda been nice to, idk, not see all this essential plot in a flashback, but I know I can only ask so much of Bucklemming.
For Dean to walk away from killing Chuck, right after he’s called him “the ultimate killer” is quite simply the most beautifully heartwrenching thing I could ever ask for. Because that’s who Dean was under Chuck, that’s who Chuck wanted him to be.
And he would have before:
But he’s heard some things since then, heard some things about how others see him. Not as the killer, not as a monster, not as angry and broken or his daddy’s blunt instrument:
I’m not saying that Dean doesn’t kill Chuck for Cas. He doesn’t kill Chuck because he doesn’t think he has to anymore, he doesn’t kill Chuck because he listened to Cas, he took Cas’ words to heart. He made the choice not to be the killer.
“See that’s not who I am, that’s not who we are.”
And Chuck is angry, because he thought, after everything, even after losing, that he would still know Dean well enough to know that he would kill him. But Chuck has never really known Dean, he has never understood where he’s really come from. Cas understood, Sam and Jack understand, but Chuck never did, and writing off Dean as angry and broken is his biggest mistake, because that’s never been Dean.
“It’s not his power anymore.”
And it’s not just his physical power, it’s his power over the story, over the boys that’s the real power taken from him.
For Jack to be the one to bring everyone back, for him to be the hero of the story? That’s poetic right there. Now, I will say, I don’t think this story ends with him as God, because for him, the child, to take on this burden, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me for his arc, but we shall see next week. It felt pretty tied up, but there’s one major loose end: and that’s Jack seeing Cas again.
“Just you and me, going wherever the story takes us. Just us.”
“Finally free.”
This doesn’t feel triumphant to me, it doesn’t feel like relief. It feels like they’ve settled, like this is the best they’re going to get, so they might as well make the best of it, at least they have each other.
For Cas and Jack to be carved into the table? I cry.
And for the montage, very similar to “Swan Song” to be set to “Runnin on Empty”? Sorry but that’s just too sus to be ignored.
They packaged this episode as an ending, because for many, it might be. The season’s story, the season about fighting Chuck is over. So, you might be asking (or, well, screaming, judging by my replies lol), what’s left? And that’s a good question, Chuck has been defeated, so what is left? What’s left is what’s really mattered all season: the relationships that have been crafted over the years. Dean and Sam’s unhappiness at the end of the episode, where “just you and me” sounded more of a grudging acceptance than anything else, is one of the clues that has to be looked at. Why didn’t Sam find Eileen, why didn’t Jack bring back Cas? Those two characters specifically are the ones we need to watch out for. As I’ve said over and over again, peace, contentment, satisfaction, those don’t come from Sam and Dean on the open road together anymore. They have a family, more of a family than they did when they started hunting together all those years ago, and that family is what holds them together. They need each other, of course, but each other isn’t enough anymore. Sam needs Eileen, Dean needs Cas. That is where they will find their peace.
This episode, as many written by Bucklemming was sloppy, rushed, packed full of shit, and had little gems that we can talk about forever, but that was the end of the season, and next week? Andrew Dabb brings us home, where Dean and Sam will finally be able to choose what they want for themselves, and that, my friends, is Eileen and Cas.
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About a month ago, I had a fairly random revelation that Lilith was to Lucifer what Adam was to Michael. Not in the sense that she was ever his vessel, as all humans capable of serving that role are purportedly descended from Adam and Eve, and, while it’s never specifically confirmed to be true for the Supernatural universe, most lore surrounding Lilith sets her up as being too old for that.
And I also don’t necessarily mean that Lucifer and Lilith were in love—Lucifer is too egotistical and arrogant for me, personally, to believe he’s capable of a true romantic bond, and it is twice stated that he lost his virginity to Kelly Kline, in settings that leant themselves toward his credibility on this subject (musing aloud to an uncomprehending Kelly in the privacy of their bedroom, and awkwardly grappling for something to say in his first unplanned meeting with Jack, respectively)—leading me to believe that the recognizable sleazy substitute for love (lust) was not present between these two either. But, I do think that there was a connection there, and I do find myself curious about it.
After all, Lilith was willing to die to set Lucifer free from the cage. And yes, I am aware that she had made a deal with Michael to help set off the apocalypse, and she was obligated to carry out her part, but has anyone ever wondered what exactly Lilith got out of the bargain? She’s not exactly written like Eve, from season 6. She is not mothering toward demonkind. I can’t see her sharing Michael’s motivation to bring God back. The one who stood to benefit from her sacrifice, was, in fact, Lucifer. (And Michael, obviously.)
I think that the bond Lilith and Lucifer formed was a bit similar to what Adam and Michael had, in that it came from a lack of choice. I firmly believe that Lilith and Lucifer spent a decent amount of time together in Hell, just the two of them. Likely for a much longer period of time than Michael and Adam did in the cage. We don’t know exactly when Lucifer made Lilith, but we do know that he was out and moving around for awhile after the apple incident that Gadreel was incarcerated for—after all, Cain was a grown man when he caught Lucifer circling Abel and agreed to take the Mark. And bible ages are a little strange, but let’s say that that’s a good couple of decades in earth time. That’s much longer in Hell. Assuming that Lilith was turned prior to Cain, that’s a long time with Lucifer and Lilith being the only two occupants of Hell. (Well, except for Ramsey and her hellpuppies; remember she was pregnant when Lucifer saved her from extinction.)
And I wonder if in that time, the two of them could have developed a begrudging sort of friendship? Just from the forced proximity—Michael was clearly capable of decimating Lilith on sight if she went back to earth, and there weren’t exactly a lot of humans wondering around that early on in the species to provide her with cover—not to mention a meatsuit. She was pretty much stuck there, while Lucifer was presumably laying low, while he got his schemes together. Setting up the horsemen, binding Death, somehow getting and hiding the demon tablet, creating the Princes of Hell, and such. . .Just a lot of stuff, and where he used to have a vast multitude of siblings to talk to, he now just had this snarky little corrupted human soul, and I think—I think—they became friends.
And Lucifer considers this to be the filthiest thing that he’s ever done—on par with the most torrid, disgusting affair that anyone has ever had, and he still hates everything about it to this day. That’s why Lucifer never once talks about Lilith. He is nauseated by the fact that they were the original frenemies, completely disgusted and powerless to resist their intense conversational chemistry, and if they saw each other tomorrow there’s a tiny part of him that will still light up because no one has ever been more thoroughly on his level.
And it’s fucking mutual. If they saw each other tomorrow, they would exchange the most vehement of insults, maybe even physically attack one another, shouting their hatred at full volume—and then a few hours later be spotted at a coffee shop, passionately talking trash on Sam Winchester, and set terrible, terrible plans in motion that will plague Sammy’s life for the next several years. When they part ways, they would both feel intensely dirty, telling themselves that this will never happen again—but Lucifer has never been one to resist temptation, and at 3am finds himself sending that text message he knows he’ll regret later. . . “So what are your thoughts on Dean? ;)” And off they go again, all night long.
And that’s why Lilith was willing to lay down her life to set Lucifer free. And it’s also why she had her moment of doubt, when she nearly got Sam to agree to that demon deal. She had a moment of realizing that she was about to die for an asshole she doesn’t even like.
I personally like to think that Michael was the archangel who nearly came blasting in to defend Chuck that night, when Dean pulled the plug on the deal Sam was about to make (and before you try to tell me that wasn’t a real deal because Lilith was planning a trap—rewatch that scene, Sam was the one who played dirty by reaching for the demon-killing knife; Lilith was busy eyeing his crotch through his jeans and feeling up his chest). After Lilith smoked out of her meatsuit, I like to think that Michael followed her and gave a kind of prep talk, telling her that it’s important that they remember their motivations, shameful though they might be
At which point, Lilith just bursts into tears, crying, “Oh god, you’re right. . .He’s my best friend—how did this happen? How did this—Oh god, oh god, oh god, I’m going to be sick!”
Lilith sobs into Michael’s wings, while Michael is just sort of stuck standing there, because Lilith is gripping one of his four heads with both hands as she cries, while the other three are looking around for help, intensely confused because he, of course, was talking about bringing God back, and now he has no idea what to do to get out of this uncomfortable social situation that he does not understand.
And thinking about Lucifer and Lilith and Michael and Adam as parallels, it gets me asking these questions about how things would go if the roles were reversed. Would Adam willing lay down his life to free Michael from the cage? As a fanfiction writer, I enjoy the idea of saying yes.
In fact, I’m a little enamored with the idea of a parallel world where everything is flipped. Where it’s Michael in the box, and Adam running around breaking seals, Adam on that final, fateful night—after having had his moment of doubt in which he’d lured Ramiel into a secluded spot and offered to stand down and nearly banged Ramiel’s brains out in the bargain—but that’s all past, and now he’s firm in his resolve. Adam standing in front of a mirror—but instead of the white gown that Lilith wore, Adam’s in a black suit, dressed as if it were his wedding day, though he’ll never see his groom. And Raphael appearing at his elbow, looking concerned—instead of some random follower of Lilith’s, and Adam telling Raphael to be happy. Everything is going to be okay.
And it’s Adam reclining against the alter, all serene anticipation as Ramiel—the second Prince of Hell, who rejected his place in the succession because all he wanted was to live out a quiet life with his fishing gear, well away from the Pit and the Life—comes storming into the church with Zachariah at his side, assuring Ramiel that he’s trained for this, he can do it—only to have Azazel come bursting in behind them, shouting, “NO, RAMMY! IT’S WHAT HE WANTS!”
#micahel & lucifer#supernatural lilith#my thoughts#supernatural archangels#supernatural ramiel#adam milligan
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was forced to see this by tumblr:
and while obviously there’s no point talking about the minutiae of the argument because, well, we were there in season 9 & 10, we had this on lock, obviously you only come to this opinion by just not reading Destiel blogs with an eye to caring about the ship...
I wanna propose a new theory: the show wanted to do a whole Cain and Abel thing with Sam and Dean to emphasise the dramatic tension of maybe Dean murders Sam or not or whatever, and have the threat loom over the whole arc because, well, brother murder drama. See also: Chuck’s obsession.
But then the actual writing and execution of putting Sam and Dean in a Cain and Abel situation was just so poorly constructed and written with an utter lack of tension about if Dean would kill Sam one day when it needed like, the glimpses Sam got of other drafts where Dean kept murdering him like we saw in season 15, or other things to spend a LOT of time harping on it. Just like, rando people in their circle finding out Dean had the mark of Cain and looking at Sam like, are you not a little bit worried about that? ... I really wanted this dramatic tension and I spent as much time as I could trying to wring it out of my meta watch of those seasons, and it’s not even coherent. Sam occasionally just googles “Mark of Cain” every 10 episodes to see if the lore’s changed and just spends his whole time wandering cheerfully around with Dean working MotW with him and Dean only actually tries to kill him once in anger when he’s a demon and then Sam’s right back to hanging out with him pretending nothing happened...
Like the whole catastrophically bad collection of character traits and writing choices and general format issues not allowing them to explore this... No wonder people who would have really cared about a high tension relationship with constant “do I want to hug you or do I want to murder you” chemistry in every scene just end up fishing around for the next best relationship to compare it to when the mythologising brother narrative, the whole like, basis of the show being supposed to be an elevation of Brother Drama to high art...
As this rando anon said, the Colette thing isn’t even a big part of the story, either with Cain in terms of screen time, or in terms of the Destiel pay off (regardless of the year and a half of subtextual build up that would be finally realised in 10x22) in terms of like, it being one scene of the show where you can clearly just point to it and say “there it is”
(also lol the anon acknowledging that the show did have a scene doing this at all, having to accept the moment was a canonically written Destiel scene at all to snipe at it in this way)
but like... The catastrophically bad attempt to make Dean remotely threatening to Sam either existentially or moment to moment, with a ready-made parallel with cultural depth and a foundation stone of bible stuff I guess? Something that could have had so much material and they could have been really celebrating that they were cain and abel to each other if the show made it MEAN anything and bigged up the bro love between those two and thus the drama of it being applied to Sam n Dean.... All just completely ignored to try and jealously get in on the love side plot because maybe idk the destiel shippers wrote better meta to draw out the nuances and turned it into a fully realised story and got the benefit of watching with that constant tension and drama and every moment between Dean n Cas in that time being like “OMG HE’S YOUR COLETTE” and how anything could make us flip out with delight over the comparisons... We did genuinely have a better, more consistent dynamic to work with and great fun doing it.
I mean is this fixation on being annoyed at hellers and our Colette nonsense just because they’re jealous the show fucked up the easiest slow ball they could have thrown at the story so badly and meanwhile the raw power of Destiel subtext in that era was this irresistable forbidden siren song that they could only futilely try and put onto Sam even though the parallel itself DEMANDS a brother to brother comparison?
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maggie i’ve been trying to suss out the plot of ur bug lesbians for so long please tell me abt them. somehow it got into my head that they were?? like jaeger pilots? please confirm or deny
i can’t do a read more on mobile so i’m sorry in advance (coming back here after i’ve written this: it makes no sense. it’s all rambling. sorry. and i just put things everywhere randomly so this won’t even be typed chronologically)
yeah there’s giant fun robots! most of them are normal and fine but like a few of them are very fucked up
so there’s four pov characters and at the start of the story three of them are on the same ship and the fourth is the target they’re chasing? only one of them knows they even HAVE a target and is trying her best to stall because she and the target were roommates in fucked up robot catholic school. the other two are playing crazy 8s and being romantic and also terrified all the time but also doing a lot of theorizing about things because they know SOMETHING is up they just don’t know what’s going on. Bc you know. their commander won’t give them any information. and also avoids them because she hates narrative parallelism
also the one stalling is also having her blood drunk by her giant robot. and maybe being mildly possessed by it? so it’s maybe The most fucked up robot. it’s also a giant dog and a good boy. and an heirloom of a fucked up family. which may explain some stuff but honestly i think nisa’s mom was just a bitch and it didn’t have anything to do with the robot she’s just like that.
and she’s stalling bc she Knows she won’t turn perovskia in she knows she wouldn’t let her get hurt she Knows it’ll change her life forever if she finds her and she’s just not ready to face that. but yknow she has to so it was all just very silly of her but when something will change your life dramatically it’s terrifying even if you know that things currently Suck.
somewhere in here Arkansas’s family is threatened and it’s. upsetting. and i’m not sure what direction to go in with it but it will be important because her family means a Lot to her. she has two very good kind dads and a little sister named Tinsel. basically she has the only functional biological family out of all the characters and they make me :’) I also think they eventually meet Idabel and ADORE her and since she grew up without parents it’s just a very strange and emotional experience and. h. they r Wives. and the Trust family is all very sweet and kind even if Arkansas struggles a lot w gifted kid syndrome like i think her dads did their best even if they fucked up sometimes yknow. idabel goes fucking wild at the arcade like legitimately bloodthirsty and arkansas is just like i love my furious and powerful wife
anyway there’s some (a lot of) homoerotic space fighting (which perovskia usually wins BECAUSE she remembers when she and nisa used to spar and can predict what she’ll do. nisa ALSO remembers this bc. ofc she does. but perovskia had to learn how to adapt after Events bc her physical health changed a lot and she had to learn to be more careful about overexerting herself and also now knows how to swordfight. and moves more fluidly and confidently. so what nisa expects to happen often doesn’t bc perovskia’s fighting style has changed so much while nisa hasn’t really bothered to refine hers. anyway) perovskia (the gay little target that does a gay little crime and makes fun of you to piss you off) is like hey. what if you all committed treason it’s really fun and sexy. and then her adoptive mechanic mom gives everyone spinal surgery so their bodies don’t shut down and they won’t die :) that’s a thing by the way i won’t elaborate bc uhh :( but it is why perovskia has all the. nerve damage and chronic pain. i can elaborate on the actual Pre-story perovskia stuff later bc i think about it A Lot and it has a lot of bearing on her character but it’s also. before all this. but anyway if she hadn’t been bleeding out on Slice’s front lawn specifically she Would be dead. and there’s some fun narrative foil character shifts that happen four years before the main storyline but i will not say bc i’m tired
after this is Vague in my mind but a lot of it is Perovskia and Nisa reconnecting and just. talking. but being weird and repressed and deflective about anything Meaningful. And I have written a Lot about this so there’s more than I can condense but it’s very fucking good and. Idk. it’s a big shift in the narrative at this point and they’re just Agonizing about their dumb little feelings and it’s good. and P doing some work to make their giant fucking spaceship more stealthy. and Idabel and Arkansas being really cute and also going THROUGH it because i mean. a lot is happening. And it’s nothing either of them ever expected to happen but they’re like. hopeful for the future or whatever don’t look at me. It’s just like. put all of these characters on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere in transit and they all Have to have conversations even if they don’t want to because it’s HARD. nisa is forced by slice to learn how to make pancakes
Slice makes stew. They’re good at stew and contraptions and having a mild new england accent somehow. also canonically back in the scrapyard they would make things like the knife wielding tentacle constantly and perovskia would just stumble upon them. slice changed the live laugh love sign to say die cry hate because perovskia made fun of it. they r her mom.
so now they do some fun fun robberies and various crimes and it’s so sexy and i don’t think N and P are like. fully caught up at this point or know where they stand, so there’s a lot of very fun banter and having to work together despite really being afraid but also yearning to get to know each other again and just connect with one another honestly and openly after four fuckin years apart. because they’re both so different now but also very much the same. horse staring out into sea MAN. the thing is there’s no direct like. reason for them to avoid each other (at first P was shocked and overwhelmed and felt a little bit betrayed when she found out who was chasing her until she found out WHY. oh i forgot to mention Nisa BEGGED to be assigned commander for this mission bc she knew anyone else wouldn’t hesitate to get Perovskia killed. Forgot to mention that it’s IMPORTANT she fucking loves her so much god DAMMIT) but it’s just. tense and there’s a lot happening and it’s just. Ghhhdhbnm and ofc I and A have picked up on it since P showed up but it’s like. ok so what is Happening here. OH AND ONCE THEY START WORKING THINGS OUT IDABEL DOES START BEHAVING LIKE NISA’S SHITTY LITTLE SIBLING AND ACTING FUCKING DISGUSTED BY THEM ITS VERY FUNNY. they’re like perovskia you’re pretty cool what’s up with this. nisa sucks and also is a bitch. and perovskia says SHE CAN GET IT. and idabel says GET WHAT? BANNED FROM OLIVE GARDEN? and perovskia fans herself and is like yeah~ and idabel was just joking around but now is debating between mercilessly making fun of her and hitting her with a cricket bat. but god when P and N just get to hold each other in silence and security and just be. it’s . they. god. fuck. man.
oh i know this is a space story but perovskia just straight up has a sword (and some knives and maybe a gun idk) don’t ask me why idk but it’s very lesbian of her and she does gay little flourishes and is just. very annoying and i like her a lot. she’s very dramatic like her alias was madame revenant when she was living in the scrapyard and just doing some petty crimes like. she embroidered that jacket herself nobody calls her that she’s just a goofball. also warrior cats exist and she makes warrior cat fan animations. that just has to be true so warriors has been preserved for centuries. also she was presumed dead for a while uhh don’t think abt it too much but she likes that aesthetic.
Idabel takes the best to this new life of crime they are fucking FOR it she gets a FLAMETHROWER and Arkansas is like. wrow honestly my favorite thing abt them is that they’re both fucking INCREDIBLE pilots. like they know what they’re doing. and nisa is really really bad at it btw she cannot pilot a mech well. but this block of text isn’t about her i’m talking about THEM. Their chemistry is so good they r just. 🥺. and they both become Fast friends with perovskia because she’s just pretty likeable?? and ofc nisa’s jealous bc a) you guys don’t even like me :( but also b) that’s MY friend. it’s very funny. honey of course they didn’t like you you were being very unpleasant to be around. but arkansas does rlly wanna be friends with her and she and idabel have so much sibling energy it’s insane. i think they’d abel and cain each other for a scooby snack but also kill for each other. because they’re tiny girls who will growl at you solidarity and also probably hang out and just destroy things with bats sometimes. they all become closer and get a rlly sweet found family dynamic it just takes a While. oh also idabel is basically the chosen one and can set things on fire with her hands but it’s barely touched on because i think that’s a really funny thing to just ignore. but i also think it does become important because it’s largely fueled by anger and emotion and. h. i think idabel has a lot of feelings ok. Arkansas and Perovskia bond over having fucking anxiety disorders and have caprisun drinking competitions. i think it’s just like. these people all have similar trauma and need people to lean on when things are hard so they stick with each other once they have the option to split apart because by then they’re friends and work well together and Care. auto tuned baby crying mp3.
Alia and Agent Variety show up somewhere around here? They’re Slice’s very cool wives and Alia has a Vechicle Collection and own fucking stupid race cars and stuff and I love her. perovskia is afraid of being in vechiles so she has to take a fucking benadryl every time they have to make a getaway. Variety isn’t actually an Agent anymore and I also love HER because she’s very fucking good. they started out as just contacts slice had but it turns out they’re all in love <3 alia is also actually a sports car racer like. unprofessionally. illegally. which is just very cool of them.
Also i don’t think it has. a very BIG end, yknow? it’s like, they’re doing very good things and are up against a lot, and I don’t think they like.. singlehandedly take down the government or anything because they’re only a few people. but i think they get a happy ending and get to grow old while making positive changes to the world around them. like i don’t think they’ll be able to solve everything but they’re sure as hell gonna do what they can. But idk maybe they actually do get like. some good shit done. but again they’re not. an army. they’re a bunch of 20-somethings and their rube-goldberg-machine-creating chaperone. but i think they should get a fun climactic moment so i guess this is all to say i don’t. have an ending planned. but there should probably be one at some point.
OH AND the giant evil blood sucking dog vineyard vines robot Definitely almost kills Nisa (or at least fully destroys her in some way) and. it’s very narrowly avoided and she’s very very weak for a while because it took a lot out of her. also the dog robot does make grape vines grow and uhhhh any grapes that show up are 100% full of the pilot’s siphoned blood. also i think there’s still some remnants of that bitch in nisa’s mind afterwards bc an old mechanical god is hard to get rid of. but it’s mostly ok.
Also the bug people are just. a thing. like every person in the most recent generation in this specific society are at least a little bit genetically experimented on because. it sucks there. and i think if your parents bribe the government you can be a little Less fucked up but yknow. everyone’s a little weird. this was an excuse to put bug ppl in here they’re just the folks who were probably the most fucked with and i have many bug people here because i think bugs are cool and i want them to look like weird little bugs. This was all also an excuse to give the main characters fangs bc i’m gay. i don’t think randomly fucking with your genetics will make you a bug in real life so do not try this at home or at all PSA
SPEAKING of the society ok it’s very much obsessed with earth nostalgia and stuff and very yknow. basic cyperpunk shitty capitalism you know the drill you’ve seen space operas whatever but it’s also weirdly oligarchical? and like? it’s weird and bad and kind of a corporatocracy?? and. fuck. idk man they’re a fucked up space catgirl greeble-y amazon with catholic imagery. The Academy is also a thing but. idk how to describe it more than i already have it’s just kinda shitty boarding school. And after a certain point ppl can get sent on like. missions and stuff? in their fucking robots? but again i’m not sure what For. an option could be that there’s nearby Shit and nobody can tell if it’s safe because space is weird? also it’s only about 3200 so i’d say like. whole societies out in space is a relatively new thing and there’s some weird shit going on. so they sometimes send teenagers out in robots to see what’s up and that ends SUPER well for EVERYONE. hmm something SHOULD be going on actually there should be some weird eldritch space stuff. it should be connected to the more fucked up robots. it should also be Core’s fault somehow because uhhh capitalism and lack of foresight? anyway here’s women kissing i don’t know things. WAIT FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HOW SHADY SOME OF THE STUFF GOING ON IS LIKE THE DEATHS OF THE CREW PEROVSKIA WAS ON UHHH JUST TRUST ME DUDE like they are NOT afraid to get kids killed which was IMPLIED but also like it goes a little deeper than that and uhh i don’t know exactly what’s happening. but i’m sure it’ll all fall into place eventually. basically it’s very fatt shitty faction vibes idk how else to describe it. man it‘s like. just. there’s stuff happening they have goals and ideals and there’s probably more to it than i know so far bc stuff happens but i don’t KNOW what i’m tired and have been typing this for a year i don’t want to talk abt the bad capitalists i want to talk about tenderness and girls but unfortunately the ways in which the girls are tender are deeply informed by the environment they grew up in so i do have to think about it even if they all deserved better.
i think they all get a cat or a dog or something eventually. like they all deserve it. i think the final home they build together is actually pretty reminiscent of the scrapyard house. i think they get to live there for the rest of their lives and. just build something small and wonderful for themselves :’)
also i forgot to put men in the story they exist i just forgot about them. there’s nisa’s one ex i already forgot his name but he’s mentioned i think.
#IM SO SORRY FOR HOW INCOMPREHENSIBLE THIS IS I DONT HAVEA PLOT I HAVE CONCEPTS#ocs#long post#LONG FUCKING POST I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH#death ment#body horror cw#maybe#catholicism ment#again just to be safe#injury ment#possession tw
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Episode 11 - The Yunmeng Sibs have shitty parents & *Screams in Doctor*
Hello hello! Long time no talk, who’d thought finishing med school wound not free my schedule up? Not me that’s for sure. Btw I have an iPad case (where I’m watching and writing) that can turn into a stand so the screen is upright. HOWEVER the lower flaps that hold the iPad in the case broke so it just keeps sliding down and giving me heart attacks, you’ll hear me screaming about it further down I’m sure. So enjoy my pain.
This farewell scene is fucking me up tho. Why do you want tears so early in the episode screenwriters? Why? (Also, MY STILL HAS NOT HAD TREATMENT FOR THAT STAB WOUND)
Aw my One Braincell Trio worries about MY is adorable tho (yet another missed opportunity for him to make actual friends who care about him and not end up as JGY)
I’m sorry for the thirst but HOLLY SHIT WANG ZHUOCHENG’S BONE STRUCTURE.
That’s it. I’m going to stop the tv series here when they’re in Lotus Pier and everything is fiiiiine. Btw watching that servant girl run through the place has convinced me that I 100% would trip taking a corner and end up in the lake.
YUNMENG SIIIIIBS
Ok, pause to say: I do think Madame Yu is a BAMF. I also think that’s literally her only redeeming quality. I don’t like Mme Yu and I don’t like JFM and y’all are gonna have to endure my ranting.
This woman is just spoiling for a fight isn’t she?
Ok, the first time I saw this, I was willing to be on her side. My mum does the same thing where she rants when she’s worried and my dad is more phlegmatic (until he snaps then they just scream at each other and I eat popcorn). The instant I decided that she could go hang was when she started being an asshole to her kids. And they just take it, so it is clearly not the first time she’s called her daughter a mildness follower and her son idiot and useless fuuuuck her.
And of course JFM goes and pulls the “man from way back when” misogynistic bullshit and tells her to go rest. Why would he either try to not have this conversation in from of their children or stand up for all of them.
Ok. How did LWJ not get a massive footprint on his PALE BLUE clothes from WZL’s kick?
Also, let me go down the clothes, or rather footwear, rabbit hole for a second. Those fucking boots can’t be comfortable. I know that’s the shape they had and whatever but they don’t move when you walk. My god, I own 12 pairs of Doctor Martens, I did pointe in my ballet class for years, I know a lot about unyielding shoes and I can tell you, that walking without being able to flex you foot is horrendous. How. Why. Am I missing something that’s common knowledge about those boots by virtue of not being Chinese? (And having almost zero knowledge of traditional Chinese clothing)
Alright, back to the show LWJ about to throw hands at WC (not with, WC is too much of a coward).
Yay the butterflies!
My one track mind: *takes note of the fakeness of the fake blood*
Xichen bb noooooo.
Wait wait wait. Assuming the Cloud Recesses siege and the conversation when JFM tells our boys they’re leaving for Nightless City in three days are happening simultaneously that means LWJ fucked off to indoctrination ON A BROKEN LEG. And he got there only a bit before the people from Yunmeng, however Cloud Recesses is further away than Lotus Pier, so he was fucking rushing, ON A BROKEN LEG. Please tell me he was at least wearing plaster under his clothes (no he wasn’t, at least not in the Murder Turtle cave) *Screams in Doctor*
(But FR, don’t pull that kind of bullshit, walking around on a fracture can cause the bone fragments to shift, compress the blood supply to your foot and you can loose it)
Look, this idiot is back. Again, if you see random bouts of screaming is just me not wanting to listen to Su She.
Ok, ok I’ve got a bone to pick here. I’ve seen some people say that Su She cracking and telling the Wens how to get in is less about him being an asshole and more about he not wanting to die. Fair enough, wanting to survive is natural. HOWEVER, my problem with this situation in particular is that, as long as he saved his own skin, he didn’t give a fuck about all the people who were going to get murdered. That’s a dick move.
And before anyone can tell me that’s not how regular people work, my building caught on fire about a year ago, my first instinct after putting my cat in his carrier by a fresh air source was to leave my flame-free flat to go check on my neighbours. I don’t know my neighbours, hell, our relationship consists on them letting their kids scream until past midnight and me blasting death metal at 6am the day after in retaliation. (They were gone for the weekend and both me and the cat were fine, thank fuck for skylights). I know it isn’t the same stakes as being held at swordpoint but, my dude, human decency is human decency.
Su She: people like LWJ look down on us outer disciples.
LWJ: *literally gets his leg broken bc he saved Su She’s life*
My one track mind: where’s the arterial spray?
Every time I seen Yunmeng disciples shooting kites I start hearing Kill Bill sirens.
Speaking of shooting kites. I don’t think JC has ever actually been jealous of WWX like sometimes I’ve seen mentioned. He clearly encourages him to best his shot in front of all the disciples knowing he’ll make it. He’s had his mother’s poison and his father’s indifference poured in his ear since he was a child, if this really was a Thor-Loki/Scar-Mufasa/Cain-Abel brother dynamic those tiny little gestures wouldn’t exist. JC could not give less of a fuck that WWX is “better” than him, it has been, however, used to hurt both of them; and that’s what pisses him off. Not that he’s compared to his brother, but that whoever is doing that comparison explicitly seeks to hurt. Also, knowing that you baby brother (I don’t care WWX is older that JC, he’s the baby in this relationship) is a prodigy, and yet he’s in such deep shit he probably won’t be able to get out, and what can you, not a prodigy, do to help him out? Nothing. That’s terrible, that’s painful and as we all know JC only emotes in anger.
SOMEONE HUG NHS PLEASE HE LOOKS SO SAD.
Oh I’m living for Peacock’s facial expressions.
Ok, listen, listen. That whole scene where WWX turns around, LWJ is looking gorgeous dressed in white, flanked by the two Wen soldiers walking down the aisle to joint the front of the queue reads too much like a Western wedding for my poor heart to not make the connection. Also, LWJ (in white) is walking towards WWX (in black) which is usually the positions and colour schemes of an heterosexual version of those weddings and as much as I say fuck gendering WangXian (ppl calling WWX mother or wife makes me homicidal) you will pry those parallels from my cold dead hands.
I can’t even make fun of the *Bichen grip* because my taciturn bb is so hurt right now.
Thanks for reading!
#the untamed#cql#mdzs#mdzs live action#foxglove watches cql#foxglove watches the untamed#wei wuxian#lan wangji#wangxian#jiang cheng#jiang yanli#yunmeng shuangjie#yunmeng trio#yunmeng siblings#yunmeng bros#commentary#episode 11
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I rewatched 15x07 today and I just couldn't stop seeing how much Eileen was Chuck in 15x7. Her personality, the "ew" when Cas said some part of Sam's soul is in Chuck, her reactions to any talk of Chuck, how she was standing behind Sam and sort of side eying him when Sam said he had been in Chuck's head... Well, even when she propositioned Sam, they were supposed to be looking for ways to *stop* Chuck. Why do you think the show chose to focus on that instead of developing Saileen's relationship?
omg, okay... so you see this exactly the same way I do, and I really wrestled with whether to post this publicly or not, because every time I bring up these extremely valid points, confirmed in canon by Chuck, I get told I’m either a horrible person for thinking this way or I’m delusional or a moron for feeling uncomfortable ignoring this stuff just for the sake of a ship. And I just... can’t ignore it. Because it’s canon.
One of the Big Questions of the entire season is “what is real, and what is Chuck.” Eileen returned ONE EPISODE after we learned the extent of Chuck’s ability to fuck with them directly, via Lilith. The notion that Chuck would just drop that lesson on them and then peace out is just... idiotic to me. We were supposed to see Sam’s statement at the beginning of 15.06, and Dean’s reply, as the huge flashing neon warning sign it was supposed to be:
Sam: No. I haven't had a vision since Colorado. I think maybe they stopped.Dean: Oh, I doubt it. Not until Chuck gets His end game, you know? The Winchester Bowl. Cain and Abel 2.0. This is God we're talking about. G-O-D. Wouldn't be too worried about finding Him. He'll find us.
LOLOLOLOL I mean, yes? He doesn’t even have to look hard to find you? He knows exactly where you are and how to manipulate you. He’s been doing it basically forever.
and then all of a sudden *random dead character we haven’t seen or even MENTIONED in three years* just suddenly appears specifically needing their help? And we’re supposed to think it’s an unproblematic win all around?
Sure Jan.
Chuck honestly couldn’t have chosen a better lure to send them. Someone the Winchesters would be thrown off by, someone they felt guilt over not having been able to save. Someone they’d be willing to drop everything else to help, and wouldn’t question remaining present in their lives. Someone they would trust without question. And specifically someone who had the kind of connection to Sam that Chuck could exploit to further the divide between Sam and Dean. Exactly as we saw happen... Dean made assumptions about their relationship and retreated even further into his own issues, leaving Sam alone and open to Chuck using Eileen in exactly the way we saw play out in his Vision of the Future in 15.09... driving Sam into her arms only to kill her off in a horrific, tragic situation in order to manipulate Sam into the reckless nihilism that engulfed their world by the end. Sounds exactly like what Chuck failed to accomplish with the whole BMoL plot in s12, which we ALSO know was orchestrated BY HIM, thanks to 14.20. Same story, different turn of the wheel.
Because Chuck needed all of that to get around the effects of that wound and lay down a trap that would eventually be sprung at the end of 15.08. If Cas hadn’t gone poking around in Sam’s wound, compromising Chuck’s plan, theoretically I believe he would’ve continued to use Eileen as his eyes on the Winchesters. The whole “lure Eileen out of the bunker and ensure she brings Sam along for the ride” thing felt more like a scramble to find a faster solution to his bigger problem and eliminate the compromised middle-man in his ability to directly mess with the Winchesters, which brought us to 15.09 and his desperation to force Sam into “breaking the connection” by his own choice. Since it was Sam’s will that fired the not-a-bullet that wounded them both in the first place. He literally had to break Sam’s will that generated that connection in 14.20.
As far as Chuck knew, his plans for Eileen to seduce Sam had failed, repeatedly. Between Cas’s cockblock entrance in 15.07 (which I still struggle to see as Sam ready to accept her proposition, for SO many reasons... I mean just look at his face in the first moments after it registers that she’s propositioning him. Those initial reactions are absolutely not undiluted romantic interest and passion, much as some creatively edited gif sets would lead you to believe.
I appreciate this one, with the further context of 15.09 to support my tag on it from the day after 15.07 aired.
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/189512551075
The look Eileen gives Cas is just screaming come on you believe me right? I’m completely innocent in all of this! Just nice little sweet resurrected Eileen! Like Chuck hadn’t expected Cas to show back up and interfere with his Seduce Sam for Manpain plan.
But that seduction scene actually hurts to watch... I mean, Sam is still feeling the guilt and pain over having killed Rowena, only to discover all of her worldly possessions and magic had been entrusted to him (and not yet knowing that specific spell to resurrect Eileen had been planted by Chuck as a deliberate manipulation in itself...). LOOK AT THIS SERIES OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND EXPLAIN HOW THIS IS ROMANTIC INTEREST AND NOT GRIEF AND SHOCK:
https://canonspngifs.tumblr.com/post/189663948344/adaav-sam-winchester-15x07
Okay, now that’s out of the way, back to Eileen.
Why did they make this particular choice for her character instead of developing a real relationship with Sam and Eileen? Because she was never written with the intent of becoming Sam’s endgame love interest.
Full stop.
Anyone who says otherwise is either choosing to believe that because it props up their chosen ship or they’re unaware of the numerous times that Robbie Thompson has contradicted that statement.
I mean, I don’t usually quote this source, but this is Robbie Thompson speaking recently (within the last year) specifically about the creation of Eileen’s character:
Next up: Eileen and Shoshannah. Did they specifically want a woman hunter?
Robbie: No, it was just, they were looking for standalone episodes. So what will happen is the showrunners will come around and say, “Hey, we need a myth-arc episode. Please deliver X, Y, and Z, but build an episode around it. Or [do] a standalone.” I had this idea for this character and I had worked with Shoshannah, sort of tangentially, because I was the writer’s assistant and I wrote an episode of Jericho. She wasn’t in the episode that I wrote but she played Bonnie on that show and (this is a spoiler if you haven’t seen Jericho) her character has an untimely death. But Shoshannah was so good in the series, and she was so terrific in that episode. She’s a badass in that episode, with a whole infiltration thing and she’s blowing dudes away with a shotgun, and I was like, “Oh, I wanna see her kick some ass.” I always wanted to work with her again. So I pitched the episode with that character in mind, and then I was like, “I’d love to work with Shoshannah again.” They reached out and she fortunately had a window in her schedule; she was available.
Then I reached out, I think originally through her manager, to say, “Hey, can you put us in touch because I’m not deaf and I want to make sure I’m getting an authentic experience for the performer.” So she and I exchanged a bunch of emails. She’s since gone on to be a showrunner and a writer in her own regard. She’s a really, really brilliant writer and a brilliant actor as well. It was great being able to get her the script early so she could help me fix the parts that didn’t work. Then, on the day, she and Jared had really great chemistry and John Badham, who was the director of that episode ("Into the Mystic" 11.11), they really played around and found a lot of fun moments that weren’t scripted at all. That was just them having fun and building moments.
All those cute chemistry moments... were never even scripted. She was intended to be a one-off character that was unsurprisingly very well loved by fandom, and who was brought back when the overarching plot made her MoL connection relevant to the story in 12.17. Unfortunately for her, that meant her ONLY purpose for returning to the story was literally to be killed for Sam’s manpain. They gave her just enough cute chemistry with Sam to imply they had the potential for a romantic connection, and then killed her in one of the most brutal and horrific ways possible. Which was literally exactly what Chuck used her for in s15.
I’d like to suggest that, knowing the full truth of her entire situation, that the sinister parallel being suggested in 15.07 is not between Cas and Eileen, but between Eileen and Lee Webb. Sam’s history with her is similarly tragic to Dean’s history with Lee. And Lee represented a version of an apple pie life that tempted Dean-- the prospect of having food, fun, health, and happiness instead of the grind of hunting. Only it was a lie, because Lee hadn’t made that life for himself, he’d built it off the magic of a creature he sacrificed an endless stream of human lives to in order to falsely manipulate his own circumstances. The cake is a lie, in other words. Just like the cheerful hangover breakfast Sam and Eileen were preparing at the beginning of the episode. It just... wasn’t real. We were being urged to consider this parallel. And not seeing it for what it was required having some heavy duty ship goggles glued on.
This was doubled-down on in 15.08, with Sam being a bit overbearing and nearly getting himself killed in the opening hunt, pushing Eileen to their “agreement,” which additionally foiled Chuck’s plans to push them together romantically. Eileen couldn’t spy on Sam for Chuck if she still retained enough independence to set boundaries like that, you know? If she didn’t have eyes on the Winchesters, she wasn’t useful for what Chuck was using her for, and she was punished for that failure as much as Sam was, being forced to hurt Sam in 15.09.
Heck. This is how I’ve always seen all of this. If folks enjoy assuming some Grand Romance between Sam and Eileen, more power to them. But honestly I just can’t personally see the justification in canon for that read on things. Not to say that Sam and Eileen won’t choose to come to a different understanding in the future, or that their relationship couldn’t develop into something more once Chuck has been dealt with, but I can’t see it as romantic yet. I’d be totally down to ship them in that eventuality. And in fanon, I’m totally here for it even now.
#spn 15.06#spn 15.07#spn 15.08#spn 15.09#chuck's process#once again i'm just relieved i'm not the only one seeing it this way#seriously i encourage everyone to really look at that gif set i linked of sam's reaction to the proposition#show it to someone who hasn't seen the episode and tell them this is his reaction to being propositioned#by a beautiful woman who he has a lot of personal chemistry with#and ask if they think he's dtf... no one in their right might would say yes#madamoftime
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Witch Laws:
There’s an Infernal Parole Board.
It is a hex that keeps Ambrose imprisoned in the house. Though astral projection, though disallowed, is a loophole to the hex as shown in the previous episode.
Displays of Power:
Lilith is spying on the Spellmans through the scrying mirror she created and sees Batibat.
Batibat breaks the scrying connection by breaking the mirror.
Lilith is able to travel through dreams from quite a long distance away, though the accuracy of where she lands is off, as she can’t find Sabrina at first, and travels through Ambrose and Hilda’s dreams to get there. However, the fact she can walk through one dream to another when on the other side of town shows considerable power.
Lilith is also shown to levitate
Sabrina, after learning how to do it from Lilith (gin clear mind, self-induced sleep and clear intent), also travels through the dreams, though these are the dreams of those in her house, so she’s able to be more accurate with her direction.
Sabrina glamours Salem to look like herself
Spells: .
Protocols for a demon in house are you seal the house to contain the entity to prevent it from escaping into the world. The Latin spell for this is “Ex spiritibus neam sie te aeris. Qui Omnipotentiam Tuam parcendo clavem ad. Ostium ligate Diabolum hunc! Hoc captionem, et daemonium ab grandus cincinno” Roughly translated: The air will thus bar the spirits. The key to your almighty power. Entrance bind this trap and lock this grand demon.
Zelda appears to traps the demon the first time with the spell “turpis et infernis in terris pariunt. Adiuro vos tamen hoc graecas munus” Roughly translated, the beginning means, hell on earth and ugly, and the last sentence makes no fucking sense as far as I can tell. It’s possible it’s a type of bastardised Latin that became popular in alchemy etc in the 1600s. Such Latin can be near impossible to translate.
Sabrina traps Batibat using the spider familiars to create a dreamcatcher, chanting; "Turpis et infernis in terris pariunt. Et furantur verba haec locutus sum vobis Laetitia. Punctum baculus parit malediction. Adiuro vos tamen hoc graecas munus." Hell on earth and ugly and these words I spoke to you. and then something about sticking and charging a role.
Magical Objects:
Sabrina has let a demon out of Edward’s Acheron.
The demonic metranomes from Batibat seem to keep them asleep; they can’t be touched while they’re asleep, as Sabrina tries and gets a shock from it.
Lilith wakes up Sabrina by sticking a hair pin, sharply, into a fetish doll she had made of her. It makes sabrina’s actual finger bleed and pulls her out of the enchanted sleep.
Grimoire:
Hilda often uses a little foxglove to help her sleep.
Dream Analysis:
Sabrina’s dream is a direct mix of her lives. She’s set entirely in her mortal high school, but the students are witches. She is marrying Harvey, but is asked to run away with Nick. We also see Harvey’s witch hunter nature shown even before Sabrina knows he’s a witch hunter; foreshadowing. We also see Zelda portrayed as cold and unemotional, and Hilda as soft and romantic, which is perhaps the subconscious way Sabrina perceives her aunts. When she is attacked by the Hunters, she sees no one helping her, showing she feels alone in her duality.
Ambrose’s dream is all about being alone, having no connections, feeling no one will mourn his death. Feeling trapped, and being stuck in a vicious circle that never ends. He quite literally dissects himself, misquoting Hamlet as he does so and when he eats his own heart, he claims it tastes bitter, reflecting how he feels about his situation, and those who are free and untrapped around him. Blackwood’s grant of freedom to him in the dream is foreshadowing of the false promises Blackwood makes to him in the future. Ambrose dream is the first time we bump into Lilith.
Hilda’s dream is a mixture of sexual exploration and feeling confined and trapped and belittled by her sister, unable to escape her or her criticism. We also have Lilith’s second appearance in the dreams interrupting the flirting between Hilda and Hawthorne. Hilda declares no one has ever cooked for her before, and we have it confirmed that she is a virgin. Zelda in the dream is cruel and mocking and unsupportive, which shows us how Hilda feels about her sister much of the time. She declares ‘you never want me to happy do you’ and ‘I’m sick to death of being the put upon one’. Hilda slaps Zelda and binds her mouth, calling her an insufferable bitch. Yet, even when she’s bound her and she’s on her date, Hilda only talks about Zelda, showing that her sister will always be a part of her life no matter what, and that’s what she can’t escape, for good or for bad. Which concludes with Hawthorne having sewn them together, permanently. Batibat calls Zelda her ‘dark half’
Zelda’s dream starts with her talking to children about the origin story. This shows Zelda’s maternal inclinations, her focus on children, and as she’s teaching them about Eve (a part she played) and their Satanic bible, it also shows what else Zelda focuses on; the Church of Night. Having the Dark Lord visit reflects her desire for the family to rise in the Church. She sees Hilda as bright and bouncy, but also perfect; she sees Hilda getting all the praise and approval of the Dark Lord, showing not only her own self-doubts but also that she sees Hildain a more positive light than she ever admits out loud. Faustus reperesents thr Dark Lord, because he’s the closest thing to Satan, and Zelda’s attraction to him also reflects her ‘in awe’ feelings towards the Dark Lord, so it’s all compounded into one. While Hilda’s nightmare was being bound to Zelda forever, Zelda’s nightmare was losing Hilda forever, when she kills her and she doesn’t resurrect (also foreshadowing as that happens in part 3) and we actually do not see her kill Hilda again out of malice and irritation ever again. We also parallel the Cain and Abel story where the Dark Lord asks where is Hilda and Zelda replies “Am I my sister’s keeper?”
Infernal Phrases
I treated her like hell rot
For the love of Lucifer
For Satan’s Sake
Mythology:
Batibat is a sleep demon who fills people’s dreams with sublime nightmares. She lulls them to sleep, separates them so their dreams don’t cross over (implying this is possible) and then plagues them with horrific nightmares. Her purpose for the Spellmans was for someone to set her free, but in general she messes with people for the fun of it apparently.
The witch hunters in Sabrina’s dream quote the bible ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.
Dialogue:
“Never open a magic box if you don’t know what’s inside it” - Zelda
“Your attempts to conciliate your duality will only bring you pain and suffering” Dream Zelda
"Sometimes the oldest simplest magic works best”- Sabrina
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REPOST. quick summary of the whole seb & jace thing.
TIME TO TALK ABOUT MY FAVORITE ASSHOLES. No, for real, I will always adore the deep parallels into these boys existence and the fact that it is canon that for a point in time, they couldn’’t live without each other. LITERALLY. And it keeps me up at night that they were forced by circumstances *cough cough* valentine *cough cough* to hate each other instead of being friends, alies, brothers. Because that’s what Jonathan thinks of Jace.
Despite all his hatred, Jace is his brother. They were raised by the same father, under the same heavy hand and under the exact same teachings. But, man, can you imagine the stark contrasts still in how exactly they were raised? Can you imagine being the boy in Jonathan’s position? Made aware of this other boy who held divinity in his veins while he burnt from the HELL FIRE in his and told time and time again, that he would never be enough? Raised to believe that this boy, not even your brother by blood, is the son most favored? The one always loved? The boy who could have stolen everything you held dear if he hadn’t been so weak? And Jace was so close, so close to wearing the crown his father had promised. But he was soft where Jonathan was too harsh. Too bitter and too ruthless. Then Jace was sent away for his weakness while he suffered through chains and whips for his.
And then there’s the after math, what’s left of Jace in his departure, and how it still affects Jonathan. Because here’s the thing: so much of who he is or who he became is because of these two boys. VALENTINE AND JACE. Jocelyn and Clary were just ideas to him ; they weren’t fixtures until he twisted them into the delusions he had of them until his death. But Jace and Valentine were concrete, they were real people to him. And everything he has ever done before his death, sans Clary, was to make his father proud and to prove himself better than Jace. ( Because he had to be, he was the Morgenstern, he was Valentine’s son, it was his blood in his veins and not in Jace’s. ) But, of course, he would never be enough.
He was CAIN and Jace was ABEL.
No matter how loyal a son he was Jace would always be the son Valentine wanted.
And then he dies, abandoned, forgotten in the gutter of a river bank only to come back more DEMON than HUMAN. More Lilith than Valentine’s son. And who does he come back to? FUCKING JACE HERONDALE. This boy whose taken everything from him ––– his father, his name, his life ( albeit thru Izzy because yo give credit where credit is due man. ) This boy that was time and time again was offered the castle but threw it all away. And yet he’s the one granted a second coming while he had to grovel for his? His LIFE tied to the very focus of all his hatred for so many years.
But there’s the shift. The change. The tremor of possibility that Valentine never considered cultivating. These two wild boys untamed and thrown into the wild together ; this boy made of fire who wreaks havoc yielding to a boy made of tender gold. His tie to his humanity gone and in its stead he finds this boy who yields under his command and want, whose very face and name still fills him with rage and envy, but soft as soft comes. A willing prey and victim. HIS ONLY ALLY in a world where he’s untethered. A version of Jace who no longer takes and takes without permission but would do anything FOR HIM. Jonathan, a boy always in want, always in need, always hungry for everything and anything, finally managing to haul in a boy who can do all. BECAUSE WHILE JONATHAN THINKS CLARY IS HIS EQUAL, JACE IS TOO.
( AND ITS A THOUGHT THAT MERELY LINGERS IN THE BACK OF HIS MIND AND NEVER QUITE FINDS IT FOOTING BECAUSE THAT WOULD MEAN FORGIVING THIS BOY HE HAS HATED HIS WHOLE LIFE. THAT WOULD REQUIRE SEEING JACE AS LESS OF AN ENEMY AND MORE LIKE HIM. WHEN NO ONE ELSE HAS GIVEN HIM THE SAME COURTESY. )
Jace, actually, the only person in the world that could ever come close to understanding him cause while Jonathan makes him see the darkness in him, pushing and shoving him into every decrepit corner of the world ; sucking him into the mad mad world of the ruthless and the cavalier ––– Jace was the contrast. He was always the light. And can you imagine what that’s like for a boy whose only known darkness? to be opened up to the light like that only to have it ripped away again? And be forced to meet the same brother on the battlefield where the lines are blurred and it’s no longer him dirtying his white and jace desperately cleansing his black? It’s equal ground again BUT STILL Jace stands on the side of the angel. Always high on their pedestal and once again robbed of the darkness he revels in exquisitely.
BUT SHIT, EVEN WITH HIS HATRED BACK. HE KEEPS HIM. He keeps this boy that could ruin him ALIVE. And he reasons its for Clary, he reasons its the only way to make Clary say yes, another leverage for her to choose him, stay with him ––– for them. But this is Jace, the boy that would always be competition for his loved ones affections, this boy that is nothing but good intent and the blood of the martyr ––– he should kill him. End his pull before it spreads and he topples him over again and WINS like he always does. But he doesn’t. ( CAUSE HE COULD HAVE KILLED HIM IN IDRIS TOO, CUT HIS HEART OUT WHEN HE WAS BURNING FROM HEAVENLY FIRE OR MADE HIS ENDARKENED DO IT FOR HIM, BUT HE DIDN’T. YOU CAN FITE ME ON THIS. ) HE EXTENDS HIM THE SAME GIFT HE GAVE CLARY; THE ONLY THING HE HAS EVER GIVEN FREELY: MERCY.
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i think i got just enough of the biblical stuff in mother! to be significantly more confused, spoilers below
so obviously this is just having seen it and not having read up on it at all so i’m just making guesses here but the first part was very clear with the allusions but also confusing in that i guess it’s supposed to be a rewriting of the bible, but ed harris is over the toilet with a wound on his ribs and then suddenly he’s got a wife (i missed the scene leading up to that while in the bathroom, when i left ed harris was pulling out his cigarettes and jennifer lawrence was asking him not to smoke inside and when i came back in it was night and jennifer lawrence was waking up and going to investigate sounds and saw them in the bathroom) so that’s adam and eve and the rib, but then they break the thing in the study (which i guess is the heart of the previous hope that bardem used to start over except now jennifer lawrence is that so i don’t know what the stone is) and bardem bars up his study which would i guess make it like the tree of knowledge/forbidden fruit but he only casts them out of his study. which can’t be the garden because they weren’t staying there and still doesn’t want them to leave and it’s jennifer lawrence who wants them out. so i don’t know if it’s meant to be like the torah with friendly (to everyone but jennifer lawrence) god here (holding off on talking about jennifer lawrence’s part in this til later)
starting a new paragraph so this is easier on the eyes. anyway, then comes the cain and abel part except not exactly cain and abel which furthers the confusion. cain kills abel over not receiving as much of god’s affection, the sons here more directly parallel jacob and esau in their fight over a will and their father’s legacy which bardem-god seems indifferent to/unaware of, jacob and esau fight over a birthright one was kind of tricked into giving the other and the one son who got the birthright then tricks isaac into giving him the status due to the firstborn which would fit in with “dad, did you read this before you signed it?” stuff except jacob and esau doesn’t end in murder and the one bashing the other over the head was cain and abel and bardem-god gives cain the mark of cain on his forehead.
and then this is where the wheels start to come off the bible stuff. the bloodstain dripping down and the reveal of the frog bring to mind the plagues but then comes the funeral/wake/party where people keep trying to fuck. the sink bursting and getting everyone to leave would i guess fit into a version of the torah where god doesn’t wanna punish anybody so the great flood is, instead of god wiping out the wicked, wicked people screwing things up themselves? except there’s no noah, animals, covenant, etc.
and then things get harder to parse until the baby arrives and bardem-god gives the son to people who kill it and eat its flesh and blood literally instead of crackers and wine and bardem-god stresses the need for forgiveness.
which then brings us to jennifer lawrence, who i guess is nature/the heart of the world/the living embodiment of the house which is the world and she and it share the same heart. and bardem-god keeps bringing about humans to trample and abuse and take from her and she’s unable to be heard or act except in the eruption of water from the sink or fire at the end ie natural disasters. she keeps trying to tell bardem-god she lacks the resources to support all these people and what they’re doing to her/the house but he can never have enough worshippers. he just wants to use nature and her bounty as a resource to bring in more worshippers with no regard for the fact that he’s killing her.
so the ending where bardem tells her she needs to forgive everybody seems to be “now you see what we’ve put her through, do you think mankind should or could be forgiven? would you? of course not, we didn’t listen to nature and abused and imposed and destroyed and now everybody’s gonna deservedly burn.” but then the ending ending where bardem starts over, i don’t know. it’s always god getting angry scorching cities/the earth and starting over but with this neglectful god who didn’t seem to care about anything that happened it kinda registered as, after all that, him shrugging and going, “whoops! well, whaddya gonna do? let’s try again.” and it gave me a note of “he screwed up but that’s what creators do so he’s gotta try again. real shame about jennifer lawrence but eggs and omelettes, you know” that i found pretty unpleasant.
although i guess at the same time the movie did make the argument that jennifer lawrence was the source of all of bardem’s creativity and that creative men drain and destroy the women in their lives for their work and would be nothing without them, but also jennifer lawrence’s character seemingly has no other aspirations or interests beyond being a wife and mother to bardem so she’s not capable of taking what she’s got and turning it into art, he has to take it from her to make things for everyone, which is too bad for her? it seems a bit like aronofsky wants to have it both ways
as for the actual experience of watching the movie: really stressful. having unwelcome guests that you can’t get rid of (and having your attempts to get rid of them actively thwarted by a housemate) and having them get irrationally angry at you for trying to live in your own house is horrible, and having that amplified to absurd and upsettingly violent degrees for two hours and pushed even further with the guests throwing some nasty misogyny into their attacks on jennifer lawrence was something i don’t wanna do again.
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Meta: Jace/Seb
SEND ME A TOPIC TO WRITE A META ABOUT MY MUSE ON. // ALWAYS ACCEPTING cause im trash.
TIME TO TALK ABOUT MY FAVORITEASSHOLES. No, for real, I will always adore the deep parallels into these boysexistence and the fact that it is canon that for a point in time, they couldn’’tlive without each other. LITERALLY. And it keeps me up at night that they wereforced by circumstances *cough cough* valentine *cough cough* to hate eachother instead of being friends, alies, brothers. Because that’s what Jonathanthinks of Jace.
Despite all his hatred, Jace ishis brother. They were raised by the same father, under the same heavy hand andunder the exact same teachings. But, man, can you imagine the stark contrastsstill in how exactly they were raised? Can you imagine being the boy inJonathan’s position? Made aware of this other boy who held divinity in hisveins while he burnt from the HELL FIRE in his and told time and time again,that he would never be enough? Raised to believe that this boy, not even yourbrother by blood, is the son most favored? The one always loved? The boy whocould have stolen everything you held dear if he hadn’t been so weak? And Jace was so close, so close towearing the crown his father had promised. But he was soft where Jonathan wastoo harsh. Too bitter and too ruthless. Then Jace was sent away for hisweakness while he suffered through chains and whips for his.
And then there’s the after math, what’s left of Jace in his departure, and how it still affects Jonathan. Because here’s the thing: so much of who he is or who he became is because of these two boys. VALENTINE AND JACE. Jocelyn and Clary were just ideas to him ; they weren’t fixtures until he twisted them into the delusions he had of them until his death. But Jace and Valentine were concrete, they were real people to him. And everything he has ever done before his death, sans Clary, was to make his father proud and to prove himself better than Jace. ( Because he had to be, he was the Morgenstern, he was Valentine’s son, it was his blood in his veins and not in Jace’s. ) But, of course, he would never be enough.
He was CAIN and Jace was ABEL.
No matter how loyal a son he was Jace would always be the son Valentine wanted.
And then he dies, abandoned, forgotten in the gutter of a river bank only to come back more DEMON than HUMAN. More Lilith than Valentine’s son. And who does he come back to? FUCKING JACE HERONDALE. This boy whose taken everything from him––– his father, his name, his life ( albeit thru Izzy because yo give credit where credit is due man. ) This boy that was time and time again was offered the castle but threw it all away. And yet he’s the one granted a second coming while he had to grovel for his? His LIFE tied to the very focus of all his hatred for so many years.
But there’s the shift. The change. The tremor of possibility that Valentine never considered cultivating. These two wild boys untamed and thrown into the wild together ; this boy made of fire who wreaks havoc yielding to a boy made of tender gold. His tie to his humanity gone and in its stead he finds this boy who yields under his command and want, whose very face and name still fills him with rage and envy, but soft as soft comes. A willing prey and victim. HIS ONLY ALLY in a world where he’s untethered. A version of Jace who no longer takes and takes without permission but would do anything FOR HIM. Jonathan, a boy always in want, always in need, always hungry for everything and anything, finally managing to haul in a boy who can do all. BECAUSE WHILE JONATHAN THINKS CLARY IS HIS EQUAL, JACE IS TOO.
( AND ITS A THOUGHT THAT MERELY LINGERS IN THE BACK OF HIS MIND AND NEVER QUITE FINDS IT FOOTING BECAUSE THAT WOULD MEAN FORGIVING THIS BOY HE HAS HATED HIS WHOLE LIFE. THAT WOULD REQUIRE SEEING JACE AS LESS OF AN ENEMY AND MORE LIKE HIM. WHEN NO ONE ELSE HAS GIVEN HIM THE SAME COURTESY. )
Jace, actually, the only person in the world that could ever come close to understanding him cause while Jonathan makes him see the darkness in him, pushing and shoving him into every decrepit corner of the world ; sucking him into the mad mad world of the ruthless and the cavalier ––– Jace was the contrast. He was always the light. And can you imagine what that’s like for a boy whose only known darkness? to be opened up to the light like that only to have it ripped away again? And be forced to meet the same brother on the battlefield where the lines are blurred and it’s no longer him dirtying his white and jace desperately cleansing his black? It’s equal ground again BUT STILL Jace stands on the side of the angel. Always high on their pedestal and once again robbed of the darkness he revels in exquisitely.
BUT SHIT, EVEN WITH HIS HATRED BACK. HE KEEPS HIM. He keeps this boy that could ruin him ALIVE. And he reasons its for Clary, he reasons its the only way to make Clary say yes, another leverage for her to choose him, stay with him ––– for them. But this is Jace, the boy that would always be competition for his loved ones affections, this boy that is nothing but good intent and the blood of the martyr ––– he should kill him. End his pull before it spreads and he topples him over again and WINS like he always does. But he doesn’t. ( CAUSE HE COULD HAVE KILLED HIM IN IDRIS TOO, CUT HIS HEART OUT WHEN HE WAS BURNING FROM HEAVENLY FIRE OR MADE HIS ENDARKENED DO IT FOR HIM, BUT HE DIDN’T. YOU CAN FITE ME ON THIS. ) HE EXTENDS HIM THE SAME GIFT HE GAVE CLARY;THE ONLY THING HE HAS EVER GIVEN FREELY: MERCY.
#loyaltysworn#ofgoldenblood#ᴡʜɪsᴘᴇʀs. // ANSWERS.#me @ me: y so many caps#also tags my jace babes#also me: pls dont think mercy is a metaphor for dick#i have a lot of jace and seb feeeeeeels okay
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Hey Lizzy, do you think Michael was a bigger bad guy in Season 5 than Lucifer? Everything that was happening could have been prevented by Michael, if only he decided that The Apocalypse was not worth it. To me, Michael could've "walked off the chessboard" and stopped Lucifer's evil plans without needing to fight. Lucifer wasn't the one above reasoning, Michael was. What do you think?
I absolutely agree that he was the bigger bad guy… I hadn’t thought about his motivations so much because he seems impossible to reason with that I can’t imagine he’d actually have walked off the chessboard in any version of this, but he was the one kept at arms length and represented through the most slimy intermediary of Zachariah, who is probably the most easily-despised character on the show ever, and that’s just his underling as a taster to his personality. :P
The narrative played with it in a lot of ways - Lucifer you’d EXPECT to be the worst because of the name, although I think he was doing truly evil things with truly evil methods all year, and all their previous trauma and all the mytharc related death sources back to him through the whole show, e.g. Azazel working on his orders.
I think Michael represents the unfeeling establishment in a lot of ways - that there wasn’t really an option to him of walking off and not doing the thing and that fate was sealed by the fact Lucifer had already done a whole lot of awful… In 2x13 he’s described as “The fighter of demons. Holy force against evil.” and in a lot of ways he’s paralleled to Dean in roles and family dynamic, but in a really bad way. He represents the part of Dean that could be taken to the extreme to kill his brother if he was ~too evil~ and whether we’re sympathetic to Sam or Lucifer on this matter, Michael is not because he has the most absolute, black and white view on evil ever, the same thing that Dean was being taught to set aside in season 2 when this comparison was first made and the arc about him being a killer or not was first floated. Dean does have compassion and when Cain asks him about it later he says he didn’t kill Sam because you never give up on family, ever.
Michael seemed to have one purpose only and that was to do what God said up to and including killing his brother if he had to (although I suspect it was really more like striking him down and throwing him in the cage because of the whole Mark business, when you look back on it with retcons >.>) and the way he’s represented in the narrative, as the mystery person running Heaven we only know through his underlings - that is, a mindless army of angels and a middle management of snivelling brown-nosers in suits whose primary character trait is being petty - doesn’t reflect well on his compassion. We can deduce just from Cas’s programming and comments on archangels etc that Michael is so absolute and black and white, and since he’s been running Heaven, he is the root cause of what makes it everything that it is, especially as God’s absence is so heavily emphasised.
When it came to the storytelling in season 5, they showed us Lucifer in the first episode, and just a warning that Dean was Michael’s vessel, so in the first episode Dean is the one with the big burden, and though we might be able to guess Sam has the same thing coming because the Lucifer thing has been so tied to him, we see Lucifer get his standby vessel so he can go literally raise Hell for a while, and he fucks around playing the pantomime villain. In 5x04 the manipulation is coming from MICHAEL’S camp, showing us Lucifer as the villain who wins and the angels are all gone and can’t do anything about it, but Zach is the bad guy of the episode and it’s part of the manipulation on DEAN and the weight put on his shoulders. They’re USING Lucifer as the ~wooo scary~ bad guy to convince Dean.
Michael only gets a few minutes of actual screentime and only 1 appearance before the showdown, and I think holding back on his appearance made him far more the threat. Lucifer didn’t NEED Sam to fuck shit up because he was already causing huge earthquakes and gearing up to wipe cities off the map. He had Death tethered; the damage he was causing was already very real and he could have kept going and going and Sam saying yes was a way to slow that down as much as to have the big old showdown. Finding out about the rings and using them was again something they could have done without Michael - in the end all he was was bait to draw Lucifer out because Lucifer wouldn’t face him until he had a vessel strong enough he was sure he could win the fight. The THREAT of Michael is that he JUST wants to fight Lucifer and go for another round of the true story of Supernatural - the Cain and Abel/Michael Lucifer/God Amara fight that Sam and Dean are the lightning rods for. The actual THREAT in the show, really, is never that the entire planet will get blown up or whatever - if Sam n Dean die good but that happens, oh well, sad but noble ending. The darkest, worst way it goes is Dean kills Sam, bending to the endless pressure of the narrative which they inhabit, in a universe engineered in a duality between siblings with a creator/destroyer dynamic.
And Michael was the instigator there, the example of the Dean/God/Cain side of things that would destroy the sibling for being bad or dark or in need of saving from themselves or to save others from them or whatever. The real damage, the real threat in the narrative, is Dean killing Sam, and has been since season 2 in the sense that it’s just put out there that he might one day have to do it if it comes down to “kill him or save him” which is the same problem all the other versions of their story had until they hopefully broke the cycle by ~the river ends at the source~ing God and Amara.
Once Michael had possessed Adam and Dean had overcome this huge burden and the story switches all gears to Sam’s redemption arc and giving them a way to defeat Lucifer if Sam will sacrifice himself (and so nothing like Dean’s enormous personal arc of resisting everything Michael stands for and his so-called destiny to give into it knowing it will almost certainly be how he ends up killing his brother because 5x04 and he also believes that they “keep each other human” so as soon as he leaves Sam unattended he’ll somehow end up possessed probably :P), the fact that there had been choice there (in the sense that Dean has historically always overcome destiny and always had the philosophy against it in a different way to Sam that reflects how they won in 5x22 the entire show) is totally different for Sam and Lucifer. Lucifer as the obvious villain cavorting around has to be stopped and Sam has his own reckoning with him that NEEDS to happen and it’s been framed the entire time as something that has to happen via Sam being possessed - Michael is still out there now and with Dean not involved he suddenly has no power to STOP Michael from fighting and killing Lucifer (Cas seems certain he’d win and I listen to Cas and also this makes sense in the narrative and NOW we know Michael had that cruel lance so thanks season 12 once more for proving me right :P).
So the threat going into 5x22 is not that Lucifer will kill Michael and Adam, because that’s boring, and then go do the apocalypse, because that’s impersonal to the characters especially if Dean’s dead so we don’t even have Endverse versions of them to assume are out there, but that Michael will kill Lucifer and Sam, because that’s PERSONAL, so again he is the thing that they’re swinging against, the REASON they need a no-kill ending because SAM is involved and will get hurt (by Michael), and boxing Lucifer (and Sam) away is the plan to stop him because Michael can’t be reasoned with, so the only option is to take Lucifer off the playing field entirely so Michael can’t go after him - for the sake of the planet but also for the sake of not killing Sam. Because the Cain and Abel model says Michael will kill his brother and Michael thinks Lucifer is evil and must be stopped and as a representation of the worst mindset of Dean programmed by John (that Dean has been resisting all along since 2x01 when John did this to him in the same way God did it to Michael) that’s just what he has to do.
I mean the other side is always valid as a threat and something to be concerned about/care about, and for the characters weighs on them all the time as a thing they need to worry about, but the stories are powered by what’s PERSONAL and why them and not literally anyone… Adam here helpfully representing “literally anyone” :P The 3rd brother they just can’t afford to care about as much. Because we’re supposed to care about Sam so much more, and we know Michael is so absolutely unreasonable (not that I seriously trust Lucifer to have lain up arms but the point was I think to prove to us and for Lucifer needling Michael into it that he WOULD kill him and couldn’t forgive him for what he was/what he’d done), the threat is all absolutely coming from Michael, to the point he’s the one Cas “hey assbutt”s away for a few minutes because they hope there’s a chance to get Sam back to do the ring thing but Michael is not going to give Dean the chance to talk to Lucifer/Sam to try a peaceful solution. He HAS to fight and therefore he is the conflict in that scene.
So I think from the start of the season the conflict is presented first and foremost as Dean resisting Michael, Michael is built up as a totally unreasonable villain way before he ever says anything, representing destiny and the worst version of the cosmic sibling story, and then once Dean has resisted his part, Michael switches to the overall part of the story that causes the conflict, as the backdrop to what Sam is fighting for when he overcomes Lucifer, and why it’s so urgent not just to stop Lucifer but the WHY and WHEN of the fight and for their own PERSONAL stories it’s important that Michael is there to fail to kill Lucifer and to be resisted. His inability to let go is why he ends up going into the cage, pointlessly, leading to the instability in Heaven - although ultimately a better, more peaceful, hands-off Heaven once his influence is pretty much all gone.
Also it’s a crying shame they never brought him back, but he’s just too HUGE. If he comes back it will be a storyline that pretty much has to end the show because he was such an impossible villain to have on the stage, that he *only* showed up in a flashback, where history disarmed him from acting, as a ball of light to possess Adam, off-screen, and in 5x22 to say his bit and be locked away. And, I think, why they have emphasised he’s broken now, in case they do bring him back, because if they think Lucifer is too huge an element to reasonably have running around in the story, Michael would bring it crashing to its knees at full power. Raphael wanting to restart the apocalypse was bad enough for the world… But they CAN bring Lucifer back and have him run around like a pantomime villain, and they can find ways to restrain him and suck all the terror out of him and turn him into a caricature. Michael was so absolute and unwavering and absolutely needle point to a purpose, I’m not sure what they’d do with him. I mean bringing in that lance was amazing, and underlined that Michael only had one purpose, and how utterly powerful and awful he is - seeing his power destroying Cas like that but knowing it was meant for Lucifer… I mean, THAT is the scary character who stays hidden in the shadows the entire length of the show, in the way where Lucifer managed for like 2 seasons before he was like HI I’M HERE PAY ATTENTION TO ME, which then became his role but in larger text every subsequent time they’ve dragged him back out, and as loud as that gets, it proportionately diminishes him as a character >.> Horror works best when you don’t know the adversary or they’re so utterly incomprehensibly *something* that you don’t know how to deal with them…
… except I think that’s the problem the writers might have with Michael too :P
#Asks#this is a 'michael is the real endgame villain boss we dealt with god 3 years ago' blog#5x22#12x12#Lucifer is first mentioned in 3x04 so he has from there until lol dead nun nonsense to not be ridiculous#that's a very very short run of not being ridiculous while being a confirmed character
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