Dean's Not Fine

Turn the Page A Supernatural story by Jennie @DeanIsntFine This story takes place between Season 9's "First Born" and "Sharp Teeth" -- on Dean's 35th birthday. January 24th dawned soot-gray, with sleet spitting from the sky, tick-tacking on the steel and glass of the Impala. Dean was curled into a comma on Baby’s back seat, clutching a thin blanket around his shoulders. He’d spent a fitful night in the car alternately shivering and sweating, the fresh brand on his right arm burning and itching as, presumably, his body rebelled against it.  Long, dark hours, trying to convince himself he wasn’t feeling something -- a change -- coming over him already. He grunted, shifted on the seat, and squinted at the face of his wristwatch in the morning murk. 7:30.  “Happy birthday to me,” Dean muttered. *** On a long and lonesome highway East of Omaha You can listen to the engine moanin' out its one-note song ... D...

More on "Ouroboros" later, when we try to decide whether Steve Yockey is reading this blog or not... He really threw around the four-letter F word this week... Seemed like My Brand was never more on point! But I was immediately moved to change my Twitter header and profile pic. Thank you, Canva and Home of the Nutty !

It was all I'd ever needed from Mary Winchester. I wrote about this scene extensively in my Thinky Thoughts post titled "How Mary and I got square." Some of what I wrote there is reposted below. Way back in "Who We Are," when Dean confessed that he hated Mary as much as he loved her, he begged her: "Mom, I need you to see me." Here, at Donna's cabin, Mary finally sees him. She hears him. She listens to the story about his botched childhood efforts at making Winchester Surprise. She finally sees her little boys, alone in some motel room somewhere, fending for themselves -- with Dean shouldering the burden of responsibility. She finally hears about how John raged at them for stinking up the place -- for reminding him of her.  All I ever wanted was for Mary to hear that, one time. She doesn't have anything to answer for. She wasn't even alive. I get that. But if she wants to know her sons as men, she needs to look that in the...

I give Season 13 a very hard time. I need to watch the whole thing through a few more times... All I know is it starts off savagely violent, and the relentless brutality of it continues throughout the season. I'm not sure what it was all meant to do. The fact that it culminates in heartbreak for me, the worst thing I could imagine -- Dean saying "yes" to Michael -- doesn't help. But there are moments that I did love. And this one made me literally jump out of my seat and cheer. “This is me, learning from my mistakes.” I love Castiel. I love him in all of his forms. Seeing him struggle with what can only be called depression starting in Season 11 had been very difficult for me. Watching him reclaim his faith, his mission, as protector of Jack was an important step on his road back. Just as that mission was about to be fulfilled, he died by Lucifer's hand. Then, Castiel's encounter with the Empty... well, that was just another puzzling, brutal mo...

I did a lot of thinking about Season 12 when I wrote my two #Saileen fics -- Safe Harbor and Distress Call . (If you would have liked to have seen more of that couple, these stories might be for you! But they are canon-adjacent, so no happy ending there. Fair warning. They are not floof.) Season 12 is about identity... finding it, losing it, reclaiming it.  The British Men of Letters are introduced to show us something. Here's an entire agency, well-funded, with the highest technology and the brightest minds. And look: They want the same thing that American hunters do. To rid the world of monsters!  If that's so, then why do they stink so badly?   Throughout earlier seasons of the show, the Winchesters have grappled with "the ends justifying the means." Now here's an entire organization based on that, in the extreme. They do real evil in the name of their good. Their mission. They let nothing stand in their way. So Season 12 is a chance fo...

My most #UnpopularOpinion? Take away the introduction of the British Men of Letters, and Season 11 would have been an excellent way for Supernatural to end. IKR? People don't like to talk about Supernatural ending. But the Chuck and Amara storyline is so satisfying to me, and it brings the show absolutely full circle. Those who know me well have heard me wax philosophical about that... how the loss of Mary robbed John and the boys of the divine influence of the feminine, the maternal, and threw their lives irreparably out of balance. Years later comes the revelation that all of creation has been suffering under this split from the beginning... that the universe has a yin and a yang, a masculine and a feminine. Amara, the Darkness, is the Big Bad through the season, but really she's just an angry woman who has been silenced, who is screaming to be heard. I mean... we can relate, right? So the show-long theme of two halves being made whole comes to a brilliant end a...

Did I get all the way to Season 10 without honoring Charlie Bradbury? Yikes. Well, we can rectify that rather quickly and talk about Robbie Thompson's beautiful "There's No Place Like Home," the culmination of the Oz storyline he began in "Slumber Party." While Dean is fighting the effects of the Mark of Cain, the brothers catch wind that Charlie is back... but she's not whole. The relationship between Dean and Charlie is so important... Before this episode, she is seen as sort of a healing force for Dean, a cleansing light in his life, a perfect good that he is drawn to. And she is drawn to him, because she sees his glowing core of goodness -- she can see past all his pain. Seeing her split in two slaps Dean in the face with the battle he's fighting within himself: Become the rabid killer that the Mark demands? Or hold on to his humanity, to the hero that Charlie loves, the big brother who loves her back? The scene in the bar after Charl...

I was thinking the other day about how much Dylan Everett has helped us shape our image of the young Dean Winchester. It's not just the stories that Jensen-as-Dean has told us. It's the experiences we've seen through Dylan's performances -- some very pivotal, very formative moments that made Dean who he is. The young actor obviously made a commitment to the very complicated Dean Winchester... the kind of commitment that we know even Jensen himself appreciated.  Every moment of "Bad Boys" -- flashbacks and present day -- lies at the core of who Dean is. I mean, the very first thing Sonny does is feed Dean. And he's only there because he stole food for Sammy. You can just take it from there... What a heartbreak it is that Dean actually finds a home at Sonny's... freedom, identity... the things he'd been denied since he was 4 years old. But he never loses his sense of duty. When John and Sammy roll up to the farm, even when Sonny says he...

When does Sam Winchester take a Dean girl's breath away? Shivering, staggering. In a hotel hallway. In Colorado. When he talks about his boyhood. When he talks about feeling unclean. I always loved Sam, but I never really saw things from his perspective... because I identify so strongly with Dean. But this... Jared's acting, always more subtle than Jensen's, absolutely floored me in this episode. And the sheer physicality of the performance... his suffering is so loudly telegraphed. I was struck dumb, heartbroken. On its own, it still ranks No. 1 as my favorite Sam moment of the entire series. "I remember looking at this picture of Sir Galahad, and, and, and he was kneeling, and— and light streaming over his face, and— I remember... thinking, uh, I could never go on a quest like that. Because I'm not clean." What are your favorite moments from Season 8? Let us know in the comments below.

How much do you love Bobby Singer? Speaking for this idjit, it's a whole damn lot. Thinking about the nature of fatherhood throughout the show, and facing Bobby's last (well, "last" for Supernatural is never last) chapter, how fitting it is that Season 7's "Death's Door" all comes back to the relationships between fathers and sons. In the most stunning and moving way possible, as Dick Roman's bullet eats away at Bobby's brain, we find out the story of Bobby's own father -- how that experience shaped his entire future, and what it meant as he watched the Winchesters grow up. "As fate would have it, I adopted two boys. And they grew up great. They grew up heroes."  To me, it's a "masterpiece" episode... one of my very favorites that I've honored with that designation, as was "The Man Who Would Be King" in my Season 6 post . What are your favorite moments from Season 7? Let us know in the ...