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elizabethrobertajones · 5 years

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14x06 watching notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANYWAY HAVE SOME UPBEAT MUSIC AND THE KOOKY STATUE GUY

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

Aww she is the librarian :')

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Harper, are you okay?"

Adsjfhdkjsfhskjfds

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

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

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

"Put the stapler down"

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

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

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

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

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

dear lord the music

RIP Sweater Guy.

We hardly knew ye.

Dear lord I love Yockey characters

And Speight directing

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

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

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

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

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

"What's with the sugar?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More bitterness you can't pour sugar over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THERE HE IS. THERE'S MY SARCASTIC LIL NOUGAT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A: don't call it that."

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

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

Check and mate.

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

"You didn't do anything wrong."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They really are not getting along.

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

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

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

Dick's Red Rooster diner!

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

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

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

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

Cocks, everywhere.

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

(I assume they're for Dick Speight)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, something wants her for itself >.>

Maybe Harper is the one doing the murdering and eating

Probably not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You made AUCharlie cry, you asshole. D:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"not here"

"not yet"

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

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

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

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

"No, definitely doesn't count."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why don't you back off kid?"

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

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

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

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

Jack... Smith.

Aw hon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.

Is staples guy about to be eaten?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm just nervous"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AHAHAH THE GIANT FLY IS MANSPREADING AT THE BUS SHELTER

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

Awww Harper has a halo with the lamp!

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

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

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

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

Jack can not IMAGINE someone leaving Harper behind.

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

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

That’s weird, hon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She was looking at me with these googly eyes"

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

Next time, you will be prepared.

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

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

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

Teenagers are the worst.

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

Guess it's time for Jack to SAVE HIM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Archie! Hey!"

oops.

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

I can't believe Dean watches Riverdale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How has no one called the cops.

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

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

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

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

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

BUGS

Those who don't learn from history etc

I don't think that's enough fly papers

Sam just sniffed a chloroform rag. Er.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a CW cross-promotion episode.

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

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

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

Can't spell Necromancer without "Romance"

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

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

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

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

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

pffffffffffffffft

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

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

FATHER SON TEAMWORK SAVES THE DAY

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

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

Awww the gross bug thing's people came for it

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

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

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

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

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

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

But awwwwwwwww.

"And that's love."

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

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

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

Oh Jack, no.

OH NO HIS NOSE IS BLEEDING

Down he goes!

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

Tragedy comes back and kicks you in the face.

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

#14x06 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

126 notes · View notes

allofthisnonsenseplease · 7 years

Text

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 XDDDD IT;S OKAY GABE IS TOO SPELLBOUND TO REALIZE THE WEIRD FACTOR

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 WHAT IS THIS BIZARRE MAGIC JACK HAS BOTTLE THAT SHIT AND WEAPONIZE IT

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 he's a siren or something seriously

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 :O au where he IS and he's got scales and shit all up his back

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 OOO this.... is his curse

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 XD

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 is gabe a sailor or just a regular dude

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 ffff Gabe is a pissed off force of fucking nature, the rage of a whole stand of dryads whose forest was burned down and Jack is a half human dryad who gets washed up along the banks of a river where the forest used to be i dunno

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 ooooo i dig it

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 **jack is a half human SIREN F U C K

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 LOL gabe is so pissed off and then jack shows up and fuckin hypnotizes him LOL IT'S OKAY I GOT U

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 XD just fukkin into the trash

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 XDDDD yay gabe angst about whether or not jack actually cares or if it's just bc he's a siren!!!

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 Jack has fallen in love with anger incarnate, and it's a damn good thing his inhuman side has given him enhanced healing abilities, 'cause gabe is not a gentle lover at first You think they're both maneaters? Like, Gabe gobbles up the soul and Jack gets the meat? Maybe Jack's full siren. He starts luring men in to replant the forest, then him and Gabe have a romantic dinner. They have a lovely white picket fence made of bones. I have found this humerus. XD

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 LMAO JESUS THAT GOT KINDA DARK

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 the sweet and horrifying monster AU no one asked for would it be better if the men who burned the forest knew they were killing dryads, so jack only goes after the ones gabe tells him are responsible?

firesonic152 - 06/19/2017 yayyyy jack gets weirdly horny after murder

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/19/2017 XD jack is a monster of many appetites

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 so i started watching buffy the vampire slayer of all things today this is not what i thought i would be doing LMAO Concept for half siren Jack: he doesn't know he's half siren, he just thinks he's really good at getting guys into his bed LOL

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 what happens if someone figures out what he is and accuses him of coercing his partners? what happens if that comes up shortly after he realizes that he might actually be in love with his most recent conquest, one Gabriel Reyes?

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 !!!!!! awwww jack is all like "holy shit gabriel is kind of the Best Ever maybe i want more than a one night stand with him" and then whoever-it-is accuses him and he's like oh,,,,,, okay yeah that makes more sense than gabe actually liking me,,,,,,, meanwhile gabe is wondering when tf is jack gonna call

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 ; ;

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 When Gabe finally gets sick of waiting and gives Jack a call Jack is like nO

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 okay, so if Jack won't talk, is Gabe gonna push? 'cause if Gabe takes no for an answer, how are they gonna get this resolved??

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 Gabe probably realizes something is wrong, Jack is acting weird

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 . . . how can he tell? XD

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 LOL good question Oh maybe Jack makes up an excuse like he's sick or something and gabe is like oh no Jack's sick!! Let me go take care of him!! But you see Jack ISN'T SICK XDDDD

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 was being mean to jack. 's prolly 'cause jack is no longer trying to set the world's record for most sexual partners w/in a week

AH!! Stupid panicking jack!! XD that one! THAT ONE!

and then he's like 'shit i have to play sick wtf i don't get sick how does this work???' and he makes a complete mess of it

and gabe figures it out right quick and is kinda pissed, but also way curious now 'cause there are tons of easier ways jack could've blown him off, so why'd he make this crappy effort?

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 gah my phone died right after i sent that XD kay back!! LMAO ja c k lol what if gabe gets back at him pettily by pretending to believe him and going over the top w the caretaking

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 omg YES. PLS. sicfic EXTREME EDITION XD

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 LOL awwwww oh no what if jack thinks gabe is trying so hard to take care of him bc of the siren shit qoq

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO X'D

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 gabe insists on tucking him into bed and making him soup and getting a heating pad and cold washcloth and everything jack is wincing internally (and a little bit externally)

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 he really wants to confess but he doesn't know how and it feels so nice to be cared for (when he pretends that Gabe is doing it for realsies and not bc of the siren shit) also, ngl, when I read gabe insists on tucking him into bed my brain immediately supplied: and tips over face-first into Jack's lips XD

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 AHAHAHAHA awwwwwww gabe carries on until finally jack just like blurts something out probably lol like I'M SORRY YOU REALLY DON'T NEED TO DO THIS SORRY FOR MANIPULATING YOU all in a rush

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 and Gabe's just: 'Well, it was a pretty poor attempt at manipulation. I knew you weren't sick. Wanna tell me why you were faking it after ignoring me all week, though?' Jack: . . . n O ?

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 LOL

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 But Gabe sitting on the edge of the bed, and thinking maybe Jack was just shy and didn't know how to say that he likes gabe so he put on this big show for attention, and Gabe is a bit flattered by that thought, so he's mostly just amused at this point and thinking that things will be all right. He reaches out to where Jack is wringing his hands, and gently takes one of Jack's hands in his. He's looking back and forth between Jack's downturned face and the contrasting tones of their skin as he plays with Jack's hand.

"Tell me what's going on," he urges. "I won't laugh, I promise." He can hear the smile in his voice, though, and he leans closer to rest his head against Jack's.

Jack is slowly filling up with misery as his magic continues to work its effect on Gabe even though he'd never, ever, ever wanted to do anything so horrible. Especially not to Gabe.

pass. :D

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 QOQ sobs quietly

gabe's confidence falters as jack only seems to retract further and further into his shell instead of opening up

jack slowly removes his hand from gabe's and inches carefully away, looking around skittishly

gabe tries to maintain his smile but it's getting more difficult. "whatever it is," he adds, "it's okay, you can trust me."

jack groans and hides his face in his hands. "it's... this is super cliche, but it's not you, it's me."

"that is the vaguest explanation you could have possibly come up with."

jack sighs and drags his hands down his face. "this isn't real, gabe. sorry. you can go home."

that doesn't clear anything up for gabe LOL

"i... don't understand," he says with a surprising amount of evenness.

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 Gabe: have...have i entered the matrix or...?

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 LOLLL

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 XD I'M SO SORRY PLS CONTINUE

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 LOL IT'S OKAY THAT'S TOTALLY WHAT HE'S THINKING

jack flops back on the bed miserably. "i'm not..." he struggles for words for a moment. "i'm not what you think, gabe. i'm not human. not... not completely."

gabriel has question marks above his head at this point he's so confused that they have manifested in reality

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 XD

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 Jack stalls for another minute and then finally gets out "I'm half siren and I manipulated you into sleeping with me by accident, it was a mistake, I'm sorry, I'm probably manipulating you right now, you can go now,,,," OKAY PASS XDDD

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 FUCK THAT NOISE XD uhm... gimmie a minute ((this is why i don't rp X'D))

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 XDDDD I'M WORRIED ABOUT MY PHONE DYING AGAIN

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 plug it in, plug it in~! it's gonna take me a couple minutes

Gabe takes a moment to process what Jack's just told him. He understands the words, but... "Wait, wait, wait. That doesn't make sense. You're...? Jack, I've seen you. You're definitely human. Where did you get this idea from?"

Jack draws up his knees and locks his arms around them. He's made himself as small as possible--which isn't terribly small, given his size--and is huddled as far away from Gabriel as he can manage. He's the picture of misery as he talks, face hidden against his knees and voice muffled. He tells Gabe about the person who revealed his heritage to him and explained why he's never had an issue hooking up with anyone who caught his interest. Jack's ears are burning red at that admission--Jack, who had never shown any hint of self-consciousness before. Gabe feels sick at heart watching him. He isn't sure yet if he believes what Jack has told him, but it's obvious that Jack believes it.

"Even if--" Gabe pauses, knowing how skeptical he sounds while Jack is apparently baring his soul. "Even if that were true, do you really expect me to believe that the effects lasted all this time when you hadn't done anything on purpose?"

"I don't know." Jack's gruff voice is almost a whine. "Gabe--Gabriel. Even if it wore off, if I did.... If I actually...." He curls in even tighter on himself. "Please go. I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do."

"You mean like leaving you here like this?" Gabe asks, deadpan.Jack flinches and looks up at him, wounded and uncertain.

"You can't trust me," he insists.

"I can trust my own judgment. I trust your sincerity right now, and I trust that you're hurting because you don't want to hurt me. You're the one with trust issues."

Jack opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, although he looks as if he'd like very much to argue that.

"You don't trust that what I feel right now is genuine. How about I confess something to you?" Gabe reaches out, catches one of Jack's hands and pulls it close to press it against his heart. "I felt something for you before you ever came on to me, back when all I knew about you was what I saw with my own eyes everyday and what I heard from the others. I've had you on my mind all week, wondering when you were going to call, but willing to give you space and not push if that's what you needed to be comfortable. I played your game, I heard you out, and I'm still here. Maybe you don't trust what's going on in my heart, but I do, and I'm the one living with it."

okay quick how do we make gabe immune to sirens so that it's all good for sure?

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 SOBS LOUDLY sorry for disappearing lmao I was actually socializing irl uhhhhhh hmmmm

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 haha no worries! ^^ i've actually been trying to turn that gabe-with-hanahaki thing into a thread ^^;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 ooooo!!!! Still thinkin about siren immunity

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 hrmmmm...

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 I consulted friends and all we could come up with deafness Oh how about Gabe offers to like put in noise cancelling ear things while they have sex to prove he wants it fun sensory stuff :DD

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/20/2017 XD but, like, if Jack isn't doing it on purpose, then any old flirting could be his siren song, right? I'm just imagining him and Gabe trying to talk this out, and Gabe suggesting 'well, just don't try to seduce me, I guess' and Jack being all 'But I WANT to seduce you! ;-;' and honestly upset by the fact that he can't do it fairly, and Gabe is just //// FUCK i want him RIGHT NOW

firesonic152 - 06/20/2017 AWWWWW OMG

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 oh how about it's like... jack genuinely likes gabe vs not genuinely liking all those other dudes so maybe those feelings like. are an automatic shut off to his powers?? idk

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 maybe like the siren powers are activated by hunger, you think? and while Jack's sexual appetite motivated all his other conquests, in Gabe's case he's motivated by love? 'cause he's fukkin' smitten like a goddamn loser? sorry it got too goopy XD

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 AwwwWWWWW yes how do they figure that out tho LOL maybe there's some visual cue that shows up when jack is doing his siren thing and he's unaware of it

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 haha what if it was Genji that told jack all like 'lol nice powers bro here's what you're doing' and then hanzo comes along all 'i heard my idiot brother was spreading half truths' oooh...i like the visual cue idea, tho or maybe it's a voice thing? maybe his voice goes a bit smoother, but it's always rough around Gabe, and he gets tonguetied sometimes, which he never did before.

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 AWWWWWW sweeeet gabe starts noticing it when jack sweet talks other people into doing shit without thinking about it

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 XD What if Jack, like, just knows stuff about other people--like what would work best to bribe them? But with gabe, he has to discover it or be told. The intuition doesn't switch on, either.

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 boiiiiii

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 'cause, like, sirens were supposed to tempt with stuff other than sex, right?

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 yeah!!! jack staring intensely at gabriel and when gabe is like "what are you doing" jack grumbles about how he can't figure out what gabe wants gabe grins and pulls jack into his arms and is like "you, you idiot" all smoothly

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 al;jbhf;akl meep. <3

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 <33333 jack works so hard and like takes notes on all of gabe's likes and dislikes and favorite things he has a little notebook of lists there is a very extensive nsfw section LMAO

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 XD

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 when gabe discovers the notebook he scribbles "JACK" on the first page surrounded by cute little hearts jack totally didn't cry (he did a little)

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 omg orz please you're killing me

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 >||3c oh earlier i sent a message and it never?? idk posted???

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 what, on here?

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 yeah lol i was just plunging the siren one back into angst by wondering if like. when their relationship is going to shit jack gets desperate and accidentally uses his powers on gabe without really thinking about it

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 D= WHY WOULD YOU NO WONDER IT DIDN'T SEND FOR SHAME!! we'd have to either re-work the trigger for his siren magic or have it so that he went and learned to actually use it, though. 'cause that's still a different impetus than just hungering for the D lol

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 hmmmm i was thinking like they've been getting emotionally distant for awhile but still having sex just for the sake of it but then gabriel is like "i need to take a break jack i can't do this" and like a combination of jack having practiced his powers for the needs of his job to get what he wants and just the primal Thirst triggers

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 ; ; i have a sad

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 oh nooo

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 you caused it

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 I'M SORRY BUT not that sorry

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 jeezus XD

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017

jack doesn't realize what he's doing until he becomes aware of the fact that he's been talking the entire time while gabe has been uncharacteristically silent

jack by now knows why he hadn't used his powers on gabe before, when he didn't know about them. it was because it was about more than just sating a hunger. the fact that he's doing this again - with gabriel - is a scary slap in the face about the state of their relationship

he's also scared by how much he doesn't want to stop. this is wrong for so many reasons but the worst part is that he just wants to let it happen. thankfully though, he gets too caught up in his internal monologue and stops talking. gabriel slowly snaps out of it.

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 oh god does gabe realize? or does he just think it was nostalgia and that he was missing Jack? so he's all 'well, maybe things are okay after all and i was just tired before' or something. so they sleep together, and it's almost like it was when they started seeing each other. Gabe is more tender than he has been for a long time. but Jack knows why. He knows that he went and messed with Gabe's head, confused him, and even though he stopped, the effects lingered.

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 SOBS LOUDLY jack had lured him back with a song about how they used to be

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 i'm upset

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 ASFASVSDHDFH when gabe falls asleep, jack has to get out. gabe's arms are wrapped loosely around him and he feels sick. he goes and curls up on the couch in his office.

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 s toP orz

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 IDK HOW TO FIX THIS SDGSFBDFNVN

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 I do. Gabe is now magically immune. The bad stuff was a nightmare Jack had about his powers going wrong. He wakes up and Gabe comforts him by complaining about all the annoying shit Jack does until he's more mad than upset, and then Gabe gives him sleepy kisses, assures Jack that he still loves him, tells him to shut up and go back to sleep, and wraps an arm around him to hold him close on the soft mattress beneath the covers.

Jack eventually gets comfortable with what he is, enough that he can turn on the charm, flirting with Gabe, and humming, which should work pretty well, but only bounces off Gabe. He can focus his bedroom eyes and hum and sway his lean hips as he crosses the room to sink down onto Gabe's lap, and Gabe will smile and settle his hands at Jack's waist ad lean up as if to kiss him and whisper against his lips: "It's still your turn to take out the trash."

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 afasvdsbdfhfdb even tho this is a cop out it's so cute that i don't care what if they're able to reconcile bc the song was literally just about "let's be in love again" and gabe is like oh goddd mistakes have been made we love each other idk how we forgot that

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 what's love got to do, got to do with it? what's love but a secondhand emotion? orz

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 akcjnasasxknj cries

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 yah TT^TT XD i'll take the fucking cop out fix idgaf tonite

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 you know what me too LMAO jack trying to use his magic to get out of chores and failing is hilarious

SuspiciousPopsicle - 06/21/2017 XD and continuing proof that he hasn't actually mindfucked gabe or whatever so he has to work, but at least he knows that his boyfriend loves him for realsies

firesonic152 - 06/21/2017 yay!!!!

firesonic152 - 06/22/2017 we never fuckin WE NEVER MADE A "VORE ME JACKIE" JOKE WHAT A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

#cornfuck and the reaper #R76 plot ideas

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