#supernatural for your blses etc

[lamphous]

as requested by a commenter on ao3, reference/allusion footnotes for this fic

“Alan Alda, M*A*S*H, the one where they all wear red” — season 7, episode 2, “peace on us”. this is really just a list of things that are constantly on tv. metatextually, also a reference to seemingly everyone getting into at least one of mash or spn the last few months of 2020.

“The Hangover” — also on tv all the time

“Law & Order, uhh, guest star Claire Danes” — season 3, episode 1, “skin deep”. here for the same reason as the previous two.

“Romeo + Juliet” — what it says on the tin. this reference did then make me recontextualize something later as possibly an unconscious r & j allusion so I’m including it here.

“that amorphous ‘it’” — haha, this is a reference to a passage in virginia woolf’s to the lighthouse, one of my favorite books. it’s... okay, it’s this passage in section 11 of part 1 that we studied pretty extensively in my vw and later modernism classes (ezra if you read this no you didn’t) where mrs. ramsay talks about the lighthouse’s light in a way that the pronoun “it” evolves to refer to a bunch of things at once, culminating in “it is enough” in a way that refers to, like, everything. so “it” is something much larger than the concrete things it could be directly referring to, as well as those things (here, dean’s imagined “it’s alright” being “it” their relationship, the specific situation at hand, life, the universe, everything etc).

“spine bowed like a tree branch coated in ice” —  robert frost, “birches” (“swinging doesn't bend them down to stay / as ice-storms do”).  one of my favorite poems that has some particularly cas lines (”I'd like to get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over. / May no fate willfully misunderstand me / And half grant what I wish and snatch me away / Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: / I don't know where it's likely to go better.”)

“long, dark, infinitely desolate avenue” — sylvia plath, the bell jar (“day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.”)

“’all-time creeper anthem’” and the surrounding conversation — oh you KNOW this is exactly how dean would describe aerosmith’s “I don’t wanna miss a thing”. like it would come on the radio and dean would talk through the whole thing but not change the station at all because it’s not... look, it’s not the worst, alright?

“half confession, half plea” — jane austen, persuasion (“I am half agony, half hope.”)

“Hands too.” — so this section was not at first intentionally a bit of “for saints have hands” / “have not saints lips” but when I was editing I almost cut it before I made the connection lol

“I’m sorry.” / “It’s okay.” / “It’s really not.” — cadence-wise, this is classic sacred text obelisk & metronome

“fries” — sufjan stevens, “john my beloved” (“beauty blue eyes, my order of fries”)

“world outside of time” — a softer world, #917 (“we talk in the dark as we fall asleep, and we are objects in the night sky outside of time.”)

“his lips to Dean's cheek” — also sufjan stevens, “john my beloved” (“the kiss on my cheek / where there remains but a mark”). also the general judas imagery. if we’re being honest, 80% of this fic ended up being inspired by this song lmao

“‘Are you happy?’” — mother mother, “happy” (literally all of it lmao)

“Dean is more than the sum of soul and body, some product of the combination” — THIS IS THE WORST ONE. this is a reference to fucking max scheler's conception of essentialism.

I’ll be entirely honest, the whole part about the tattoo was mostly an excuse to do a little “and lo dibs was called” reference. I’m pretty sure I still have that pic on my first gen ipod touch from middle school lmao

“liquid smooth” — I had stopped for one second to think of an adjective when “liquid smooth” by mitski came on and I went “alright, sure!” and just put it in without a thought lol

I do just wanna also say the thing about the oatmeal is something I do lmao. whatever, we’re right! it’s delicious

“A passing car's headlights tumbles through the bottom of the curtains.” — again, that section of to the lighthouse

“Carpe diem” — sure, cas probably knows actual latin, but this is intended as a dead poets society because dean canonically likes it and I believe he’d make cas watch it with 

“his beloved, his partner in crime, his magnetic north” — this is a more general reference to what I call the “you and I but we’re a list of concrete nouns” subgenre of music (“paul” is one such example; “litany” by billy collins is about the subject; see also: “I wanna be yours” by arctic monkeys, “love it dissipates” by mother mother, “brand new colony” by the postal service)

“his beginning, end, and all that glorious middle” — same as previous, and also, as my notes worded it, “both the christian concept of alpha omega AND a glee reference, bc this whole exercise is for my middle school self” (the glee reference is the nonsensical-but-lasting-in-my-memory “the rest is just a whole lot of middle”)

“like a crypt” — I didn’t mark the rest of the spn-specific connections because this list would be twice as long, but I wanted to point out this was originally “like an egyptian tomb”, you know, the phrase, and when I thought of this change I fucking cackled out loud. oh “goodbye stranger”, you’ve always had my back...

“Love you, love you, love you” — again sylvia plath, the bell jar (“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”)

“It's terrible” — took me a while to realize what about this line sounded so familiar but I finally nailed it in editing, it’s fucking richard siken, “litany in which certain things are crossed out” (“love, for you, / is larger than the usual romantic love. it’s like a religion. it’s / terrifying. no one / will ever want to sleep with you.”)

“clings to Dean and lets himself be clung to in return” — apparently the nat king cole song “nature boy” which I recognize best from moulin rouge (“the greatest thing you'll ever learn / is just to love and be loved in return.”), which I also associate with 2013 fandom, so I guess this one’s for the gleeks. fun fact: for the longest time I remembered this as a les mis reference. it’s really not. I don’t know why I thought that.

“All he has now is his hands” — richard siken, “boot theory” (“a man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river / but then he’s still left / with the river. a man takes his sadness and throws it away / but then he’s still left with his hands.”)

if you read this far, congrats! welcome to my twisted intertextual mind

#this has been in my drafts for over a month i just kept forgetting to look at my inbox >.< #(yes i am breaking out the old school emojis!!!! fuck you) #i just typed ''breaking out'' and clicked that autofill tag to see what it was wh... #well i AM breaking out the old school emojis i think i deserve it #supernatural for your blses etc #txt #fic writer tag