#like...its gotta be a decade since i last reread that scene and it still fucks me up to think about

[mppmaraudergirl]

I'm convinced the people who write Barty Crouch Jr as a friend of Alice/Frank Longbottom have never experienced the complete devastation of reading Neville visiting them at St. Mungos.

#like...its gotta be a decade since i last reread that scene and it still fucks me up to think about #its like the people who ship bellatrix with neville #yikes

[adhdeancas]

Dean Winchester (and the script leaks last night) possessed me to write this.

Dean happens upon Chuck's latest book: Carry On. Except it ends differently than it really went, and the ending? It's really fucking bad.

tw: suicide mention, transphobia (quickly shut the fuck down) 

Dean doesn’t make a habit of going to bookstores. Not because he hates books, contrary to what Sam might think; he just prefers to buy used books. There’s something comforting about a book that has already been worn and read over and over, that already shows how much the previous owner loved it. Plus, y’know, big corporations are evil and all that. And Dean only allows himself to overlook that when his stomach or his wallet wins over his hatred of the shitty mass-produced products. 

This time it was Jack who won; he’s obsessed with this new fantasy series and the new book just came out, so there’s no way he can hunt it down on Ebay. He makes his way to the fantasy and sci-fi section, eyes roaming over the displays of new releases, and his eye catches on something that turns his blood cold. 

“Supernatural: Carry On, The Final Book of the Winchesters’ Epic Journey” takes up a whole table, the generic and overly serious cover jeering out at him. 

He storms over to the display, anger covering up for the way his body feels light as a feather and like lead all at once, and picks up a book. “Why is Sam always fucking shirtless?” he mutters, the only thought that allows itself from the mess inside his head to his mouth. 

“Book sales.” A voice behind him says. He turns to see a teenager with their arms crossed over their work polo, pierced lip fixed into a customer-unfriendly frown.

“People want to see that?”

They snort, a small grin turning up the corner of their lips. It reminds Dean of Cas. “No. But that’s what advertisers think all ‘women’ want,” They use air quotes. 

He raises an eyebrow and asks. “Women?”

They shrug and uncross their arms, leaning back against the display table behind them. Their nametag says Jadyn. “Supernatural’s biggest block of readers is queer. I’d go out on a limb and say a lot of those the marketers think of as ‘women’ aren’t, or if they are, they aren’t itching to see Sam’s six pack.” Jadyn smirks. 

Dean takes a second to digest that, then grins down at the book, thinking past Sam’s apparently badly-received nudity now. “So how’d they like it?” he asks, waving the book a bit and looking up at Jadyn. Apparently they know a lot about the fans of the books, and for once, he’s proud of the way the story ended. 

Jadyn’s face sets into all hard lines. “Most people fucking hated it.” they say bluntly, then, probably remembering that he’s a customer, correct. “Sorry. I mean, it got some good reviews, mostly from people who like Wincest, but beyond that, it had some problematic plot points.”

Dean winces at the reminder of the ship between him and his brother, then scrunches his whole face together in confusion. “Wait, what? Why?” Why would Wincest fans like it? What was problematic about their end?

Jadyn shifts from foot to foot. “I don’t wanna spoil anything for you-”

“I don’t care about spoilers, just give me the short version.” Dean says quickly. A quiet panic is rising in him, and suddenly he has a horrible feeling that he’s not holding the truth in his hands anymore. 

“Uh, okay… Well, the most obvious thing is the bury-your-gays thing, then there’s the fact that it completely contradicted the rest of the lore. And it was ableist, misogynistic, and messed up, like, every character’s arc.” they take a breath, clearly worked up by it. “Even if they changed any of the details too, it was all built on Dean’s death, and that’s just bullshit. Sorry.” they apologize again, apparently mistaking Dean’s stricken expression to be in reaction to their rant and swearing. 

“No, nah, you’re… you’re okay. Uh, thanks.” he waves a hand and wanders away from them, only remembering Jack’s book when he’s almost to the register. He manages to make his way back and find the damn thing, but he’s still in a fog when he gets to the register. 

“Did anyone help you in the store today?”

“Huh?” he looks up and meets the middle-aged cashier’s gaze for the first time. Brent, from the nametag, looks at him impatiently. “Oh, yeah, uh… Jadyn. Jadyn helped me.” Brent scoffs and starts typing with a shake of the head. “Uh, is there a problem?” Dean asks, a little annoyed at this cashier’s unnecessary attitude. He usually doesn’t care if an employee’s rude, because they have to deal with assholes all the time and honestly Dean isn’t much better, but this one gives him a bad feeling. 

“No, no, sorry. It’s just - “Jadyn’s” got this idea that he’s a girl. Makes everybody call him that name now too. Just-” Brent shakes his head. “I mean, you get it. Their generation, everybody wants to be special.”

Dean glares. “No, I don’t get it, Brent.” He says through gritted teeth. “Seems to me like Jadyn probably deals with enough assholes like you that her asking for a little basic decency is the exact opposite of special. Sounds pretty normal, actually.” He can see the fear creep into Brent’s eyes, and he knows the cashier is reacting to the murderous look in his eyes more than his actual words. 

Brent hands Dean his bag of books with a quiet, “Here you go.”

Dean snatches it away. “Oh, Brent?” he checks over his shoulder to make sure they’re alone and then leans across the counter into Brent’s space. “You should find a new job, one where you don’t have to interact with other people. At least until you learn how to stop being a piece of shit.” He starts to ease away but thinks better about it. “And if you think that’s a suggestion, it’s not. My husband likes this book coming out next month that I’ll need to buy, and if I see you here when I come, well… it would be really embarrassing for you to tell all your little friends that you got your ass beat by a ‘special’ guy, huh?” He pats Brent on the cheek condescendingly and leaves with a huff. 

Damn transphobes. 

He only remembers the book once he’s back in Baby, and he takes the time to drive out of town before he pulls over to read it. It’s an old abandoned church, the cross long since fallen from the roof and the doors hanging off their hinges. He sits on the steps just because being in Baby seems claustrophobic for once in his life, and going back to the bunker to look at this is just… not happening.

Dean only skims the beginning to see that it starts the same. The ground erupting with bodies, hell spitting out its most-conveniently placed nasties, Rowena sacrificing herself, Cas leaving. His throat closes up at that, at Chuck’s description of Cas’s heartbroken expression as he climbs the stairs of the bunker. He clears his throat and skips to the end, right past Cas’s death that he doesn’t have the time to think about right now, past them defeating Chuck and then stops. He goes back a few pages, trying to find the disconnect. 

The story’s different.

After Jack takes on God’s power, in the book, he’s totally fine. Not almost vibrating out of his skin or anything, not crying like the three year old he is because he’s scared. Not like it really happened. He just smiles and leaves him and Sam, and they let him go. 

Dean scoffs, skimming over the story as it just gets more ridiculous. 

In the book, he doesn’t even try to save Cas. They barely even mention him. And they never mention Eileen, either. In fact, Dean notes disbelievingly, practically the only characters in the last few chapters are him and Sam. They’re hunting again.

“What, is Chuck trying to keep the series going?” he whispers to himself, anger flaring through him. They let Chuck live, and he decided to write obnoxious fanfiction about them? He’s gonna kill that shameless little fucker. For real, this time. He deserves it.

In the book, Sam and Dean torture some vampire mime, and they enjoy it. Dean cringes; this is really what Chuck thinks of them. Then they tussle with more vamps in a barn and- 

Dean’s brain stops working. He rereads the scene again and again. 

“There’s something in my… something in my back. It feels like it’s right through me.” 

Dean Winchester dies in a dirty barn, on a piece of freaking rebar. 

More than that, Dean realizes on his fourth read-through. This Dean? He tried to drag out his speech, Dean can tell by the way he pauses for fucking drama. He would never do that. He would never talk to Sam for fifteen hellish minutes when he could be trying. Trying to live, so he can actually get his life back on track, get his family back. No, he made that speech stalling. He made that speech so Sam wouldn’t try to save him. 

“You gotta admit, I had one helluva ride.” He was strangely calm.

Chuck made him kill himself.

Dean reads the rest of the book through blurry eyes, reading an ambiguous and nothing-ending, one where he’s somehow happy to be dead and driving around in heaven alone while Sam raises a kid into hunting and cries about Dean decades after he’s died. Eileen isn’t mentioned. Cas is mentioned once, and Bizzarro-Dean doesn’t even think about seeing him, apparently. The whole book ends with a hug between him and Sam, both dead. Both alone. 

Dean rips the ending up. He tears through the stupid paper covering and keeps ripping the pages up until they’re the size of confetti. His lower lip wobbles. He throws the whole thing against the side of the building, and it tumbles through the broken doorway and drops into a pile of dust and dirt. “That isn’t the fucking ending.” he grounds out, knocking his hand against the flimsy handrail. It gives a little under his fist and he kicks at it. “That isn’t the fucking ending!”

He’s having a panic attack. Again. He tries to take deep breaths, but they’re gulping, too big, they’re making him panic more. He scrambles back to Baby and grabs his phone, presses the first number on his favorites list and waits for him to answer on speaker phone.

“Hey Dean, what’s up?” Sam sounds like he’s been laughing. There are voices in the background, and Dean tries to convince himself one of them is Eileen. 

“Hey Sammy.” he chokes out, trying to sound normal. “You busy?”

There’s a pause, and then the sounds in the background. “Nah, Rowena’s just over.” he says casually. 

“So those voices in the background were-”

“Rowena and Eileen, yeah. They’re trying to convince me we need to go to Mexico. For the beaches.” A smile in his voice. Dean lets out a sigh of relief.  What’s up, Dean? You need something?” The smile drops, and Sam’s worried. 

Sam’s okay. Sam’s okay. “No, nah. Hey, you heard from Donna lately?” Dean just needs to triple-check.

“Uh, no, not since Sunday dinner… Dean, you okay?”

“Yeah, she just- she hasn’t been answering my texts. Just wanted to make sure.” Dean lies quickly. His breathing is still uneven, but his body is settling into uneven shakes. 

Sam sounds skeptical. “Yeah, well, she did tell us it’s been pretty busy at work lately. Y’know, everybody going out for the first time with COVID, getting stupid. Plus, y’know, nowhere’s drowning in EMTs right now.”

“Right. Yeah.” Dean takes a deep breath, a distant memory of Donna talking about that coming back to him.

“Pretty sure you were setting up a D&D session with Charlie while she was talking about that,” Sam laughs. Dean knows he means it as a subtle jab, but there’s too much relief flooding through him to care. Still, a string is pulled taut in him, and Sam can’t fix that completely.

“Gotta go, Sam,” Dean hangs up before Sam can say anything else, and goes to his next contact. It rings for far too long, and Dean’s heartbeat picks back up to thundering.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Cas,” Dean breathes out. “Cas, you know I love you, right?” He needs to test all the bounds of this, to make sure, just to make sure. Make sure Chuck isn’t still fucking with him. Because apparently, Chuck won’t let him be queer. Not in his story. Not out loud.

He can hear Cas’s eyebrow raise through the phone, and his chest is overcome with stupid fondness. “I would be a little worried if you didn’t.”

Dean grins widely. “Like, romantically. I’m in love with you. Because you’re the love of my life and I’m bisexual.” He says it all like it’s a checklist, like he expects some cosmic being to slap a hand over his mouth before he gets each next phrase out.

“Yes, Dean. We’ve been married almost two months.” Cas is smiling. It happens everytime he talks about their wedding. Dean adores it. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, now it is.” His whole body relaxes, still vibrating with leftover panic, but satisfied. “I got Jack’s book.”

“Oh, good. He’ll be so pleased.” Cas pauses. “Dean, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Dean eases off the ground and sends a last look at the dilapidated church before climbing into Baby. “Just- read a bad book. I’ll tell you about it later. When I get home.”

#i fixed it #god fucking damn it #dean winchester #destiel #saileen #saileena #sam winchester #castiel #eileen leahy #castiel winchester #jack kline #roweena #my writing #ficlet #deancas #trans dean #trans woman OC #tw: transphobia #tw: suicide mention

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (12/1/2020)?

calvatronlordofall said: Today’s comics?

Far Sector #9: Another comic I won’t understand until it’s done and I can reread the whole thing but that I’m enjoying anyway. Really, really hope Jemisin continues contributing to the medium in some form after this, because she absolutely has a gift for it.

Strange Adventures #7: He doesn’t care for tyranny, folks. And JEEESSSUUUUS, Doc

DCeased: Dead Planet #6: Some quality DC Comics nonsense problem-solving, but not sure at all whether the chips are gonna fall in favor of the stuff about this I’ve been really liking or the aspects I simply don’t care about at all.

Tales From The Dark Multiverse: Wonder Woman: War Of The Gods: While I’ve seen plenty of them around the periphery in anthologies and so forth I think this is Vita Ayala’s first full work I’ve been exposed to, and tbh I can’t say I’m taken, even given the pretty threadbare-seeming material for them to work with. I’ll still give Children of the Atom a try, but my expectations have been lowered. Nice seeing Trish Mulviihill’s colors though, thought they looked familiar and it turns out she worked on my beloved Superman & Bugs Bunny.

Batman: The Adventures Continue #7: Yeah, now that it’s all said and done, definitely the best take on the death and return of Jason Todd.

Batman #104: Art’s taken a hit, but Ghostmaker’s getting more and more fun as a character the more that comes out about him. And surprising seeing Dick in his real Robin suit in flashback, Dark Designs had him still rocking that New 52 abomination. It really seems like the policy RE: costumes in flashbacks with him remains up in the air at any given time?

Anonymous said: Thoughts on the long-awaited BatCat?

Anonymous said: Bat/Cat the objectively best comic of the week. Thots.

Batman/Catwoman #1: I imagine disappointingly, quite few - both the best and worst part of this book is that King’s entire spiel on “This is gonna be such a different animal from my regular run, this is my DKR, this is my ultimate prestige statement on the characters” was pure hype, this is just the next issue of his Batman run with Clay Mann as the new main artist. And it’s good! I like it! I think it’d take awhile for anybody to tumble onto the ‘three timelines’ aspect of it if they didn’t go in knowing about it since the color of Catwoman’s suit is the only obvious tipoff for a chunk of it, but it’s still a well-constructed piece of comics in line with the story up to this point, even if it’s so in line with it that it pretty much puts the lie to the notion that this was originally conceived of as a special prestige project in the same way as Strange Adventures or Rorschach. Mostly I’m just struck now that it’s out by the guts of doing a straight sequel to Mask of the Phantasm, given that’s maybe the singularly least divisive major Batman story: everybody on every side of the Batman-loving aisle recognizes it as hallowed ground, so nobody’s gonna not be let down if you fuck it up. I really need to rewatch it, it’s been well over a decade and unlike Return of the Joker my memories of it have almost entirely faded.

Black Widow #4: The further in I get the more I’m struck by the cleverness of the central conceit. How do you construct a drama around a century-old woman whose business has her have to mostly forsake most normal human connection? Make the literal supervillain plot that she’s been forced to have incredibly intimate human connections, and now she’s just gotta deal with that on top of what would otherwise be fairly routine Black Widow stuff.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #21: Hate to say it folks, but even discounting the severity of the delays this arc’s been a dud. Really hoping it finds its feet again soon.

King In Black #1: Holy cow, this was ass. I went in thinking “well, I’ve resigned myself to having to get this to understand the crossovers into books I’m already getting and tie-in minis I do care about, but Cates still has a baseline level of competency so it should still be perfectly readable”, but this is just...nothing. This is that modern Dan Jurgens tier where it’s so bland and perfunctory and inoffensively executed it loops back around to infuriating, except Dan Jurgens’s writing if nothing else at least doesn’t strut around in tangible self-regard as the next great sales-shattering triumph of the Punk Rock God Of Comixxx like Cates’. And when was the last Marvel event on this scale with such little hype behind it? Even Empyre seemed like it had more weight on arrival, and much as I enjoyed it I’m pretty sure that book mainly existed to fill space until we got this. Maybe it’s just the circle I run in. I swear I remember Thanos Wins being pretty fun, and I just reread Atomahawk and that was still a hoot, so it’s a shame Cates has turned out this way, and worse he’s ended up Marvel’s new golden boy. Unless my dad likes it (and if so hey, he’s not alone, I imagine this is selling gangbusters) I’m sure not grabbing another issue, so I guess I’ll have to do my best with context clues in figuring out what’s going on for...Guardians of the Galaxy, S.W.O.R.D., Daredevil, Namor, Return of the Valkyries, the Joe Fixit Immortal Hulk one-shot, Iron Man/Doctor Doom, and the next book below. Fuck.

The Union #1: I’ve only read Everything Used To Be Black And White for Jack Staff but I was definitely curious what Grist would do here, and it didn’t disappoint! Fun little story, bunch of neat character ideas I’m looking forward to seeing developed further, very lived-in feeling slice of its corner of a superhero world.

Marvels Snapshots: Civil War: An excellent little parable that I’m surprised we didn’t actually see the likes of in ‘06, and frankly worth getting a mediocre Miles Morales arc for (even if it was disappointing that that one had to be where the ball was dropped) if this is where Ahmed’s attention was going instead.

Daredevil #25: So I turned two pages at once and accidentally spoiled myself at the last possible moment for the big reveal of the issue, so that sucks. Still a great issue though - one that manages to function as a logical extension of an incredibly street-level story even though it can only possibly exist as an extrapolation of the wildest excesses of the Marvel universe - but I cannot imagine how the hell the next is gonna cleanly pivot into King in Black shenanigans.

Kill A Man: A new OGN by Steve Orlando, cowritten with Phillip Kennedy Johnson and with art by Al Morgan and letters by Jim Campbell, the reductive though not inaccurate pitch is ‘queer Creed’. But since this is likely to sail under the radar I need to emphasize this is one of Orlando’s absolute best works, a real triumph of the form that’s among the best comics of the year (good GOD does this put to shame 99% of superhero comics fight scenes by the end), and a must-buy for any fans of his work. I’m just gonna let how hard the title and solicit text go speak for themselves:

“As a child, James Bellyi watched his father die in the ring as payback for slurs thrown at the other fighter. Today, he's a Mixed Martial Arts star at the top of his game, and one of the most popular fighters in the world...until he's outed as gay in his title shot press conference. Abandoned overnight by his training camp, his endorsements, his fans and his sport, to regain his title shot Bellyi is forced to turn to the last person he ever wants to see again: Xavier Mayne, a gay, once-great fighter in his own right...and the man James once watched kill his father.”

#Week's Comics #Opinion