Dean's Not Fine

Don't You Cry No More A Supernatural story by Jennie  @DeanIsntFine The story that started with a (very) random tweet. Thank you, Season 15 Script Bot . Dedicated to Melissa , who never lets us forget that Dean Winchester matters. Here's one imagined ending to his epic journey. -- Jennie DEAN comes over, he hands DEAN a number of toy soldiers on a bed. — SEASON 15 SCRIPT (@spn_bot) November 25, 2019 The peace talks were progressing around the bunker's map table. Dean, sidelined like a weary general after a long and brutal campaign, watched the proceedings from a darkened corner of the war room. Chuck and Jack faced off across a chess board, while the negotiations' true players huddled at the far end of the table. Amara. Rowena. Cas. And Billie, who it turned out had always held all the cards. The uneasy truce was holding, and crucial details were being hammered out. Chuck and Jack, adversaries for now on the checkered field of the game board, eyed ...

A Supernatural story by Mich  @raiahome It’s New Years Eve 2029. The Green Cooler is packed with beer, all nicely chilled of course, and is sitting in the backseat of the Impala as they wait for their boys. OK, some may say that at 46 and 50 Sam and Dean are no longer children, but to them, they would always be their “boys.” But that’s what happens when you’ve watched over people since they were babies. There’s a comfortable quiet in the garage. These two have known each other for more years than either wants to remember. They’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly of a hunter’s life and managed to survive it together.  Sure, things are a bit quieter now that the Winchesters are concentrating more on training up young hunters, but they still take on the odd job now and then, and Baby and The Cooler are always ready for a new adventure. Tonight, however, isn't about monsters. It's about tradition. As the silence stretches on, The Cooler decides to break th...

A Supernatural story by Mich  @raiahome I bet some of you are wondering: “How does a car come to life?” After all, it’s just a hunk of metal and wiring. It has no heart, no brain, no soul. That’s true, and it’s the reason most cars never become aware. But sometimes someone is willing to share their own life. Willing to believe so strongly, care so deeply and put so much of their love into something that it can’t help but to come alive. Such a person is Dean Winchester. Hi! I’m Baby, and this is my story. I’m a black ’67 Chevy Impala. I’m sleek, strong, sexy, badass and beautiful, or so my owner tells me. I belong to Dean, and he belongs to me. So does his little...well, younger...  brother Sam. Now that I’ve had time to look in the rear view mirror, so to speak, I’ve been able to piece together how I became alive. It didn’t happen all at once. It took some time. In the beginning there were just flashes of sound. The laughter of children. A man’s gravelly v...

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 ...

"Hey, dumbass! There are other characters besides Dean in Supernatural... You know that, right?" There are?!? *shocked face* Yes, yes, I know and love all the characters of Supernatural. I even love all the seasons of Supernatural. Including the much-maligned Season 6. In fact, I love everything about Season 6 -- most importantly of all: The treachery.  You could probably search Twitter for @DeanIsntFine and "treachery" and come up with a dozen examples of me squeeing about it. It's positively Greek, this season. Shakespearean. "I believe it's what you would call a -- tragedy, from the human perspective." And I will never fail to be captivated by it. Most captivating of all would be this scene in "The Man Who Would Be King," where Dean is at last faced with Cas' betrayal. Everything about this scene resonates with me, and to me, it's the very epitome of drama. The pain on their faces. The bad choices. The misse...

"This is the night you ditched us for Stanford, isn’t it? This is your idea of heaven? Wow. This was one of the worst nights of my life." Ahh, heaven. Apparently, it's not all it's cracked up to be. But as the Winchesters get tangled up in the angels' push toward Armageddon in Season 5, it seems like they ought to at least get a look at the place. Luckily, fellow hunters Roy and Walt are more than happy to send them there. This is a very important episode to me, and I'm convinced that before Supernatural is over, it's one that'll be revisited in detail. Don't be surprised to see Team Free Will, Chuck and Dr. Badass himself team up to give us the heaven we deserve. Your heaven may vary... Is this the afterlife that Chuck intended? Everyone sealed in their own little jar, as Memorex replays their greatest hits? And how much of this slice of heaven -- Sam's fleeting moments of freedom, Dean's even-more-fleeting moments of purpose an...

Don't get me started on Season 4! Top to bottom, it's the finest season of television I've ever seen. In my opinion, it perfectly ties together everything that came before it with everything that the show grew to be. And of course, it gave us the righteous man. He's not just the brash bad boy who loves classic rock and ragging on his younger brother. He's literally been to hell and back, and we're about to find out that he's bearing the weight of the whole world. Good thing he's had all that practice already. "But then I couldn't do it anymore, Sammy. I couldn't. And I got off that rack. God help me, I got right off it, and I started ripping them apart."  For those of us who were already in love with Dean, the depth of that love only grew in Season 4, along with all the pain we were about to feel. This season forged the bond... and for most of us, it's unbreakable. What are your favorite moments from Season 4? Let u...

"I know how dead you are inside. How worthless you feel. I know how you look into a mirror... and hate what you see." Another of the foundational moments for this Dean Girl! This whole scene is pure magic, pure gold, pure pain. And pure Jensen. Daddy's blunt little instrument. There's not much more I can say except: Watch it. What are your favorite moments from Season 3? There are a ton of great ones. Let us know in the comments below.

A Supernatural story by Mich @raiahome Hello, again! It’s me. Baby. I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of you seem to think my life is all racing back and forth across this land, hauling two cute guys, a trunk full of weapons, a box of old cassettes and a funky green cooler. Well, let me tell you! It’s not all tuneups and squealing tires! Like the year Sam was in hell, or so we thought. I was stuck in the garage, but at least I had company now and then. Lisa and Ben would come in looking for something, and Dean would check on me once in a while. The absolute worst was when those Leviathan douches were wearing my boys’ faces and driving around in a fake me causing mayhem! For the last few months of 2011 and the first few months of 2012, I was on what Dean called “lockdown.” I called it being bored out of my engine block! Stuck in a drafty, deserted old barn all by myself. I have to admit, my mind did wander a bit ... Well, I guess these excerpts should give you some idea of h...

"It's worth it, Dean. It is. It's not fair, and... you know, it hurts like hell, but... it's worth it." Sammy, I hate to argue with you, man... but he doesn't look like it's worth it. What is more heartbreaking than the djinn episode of Season 2? I'll be exploring more about what Dean's heart desires in my Thinky Thoughts piece on "Lebanon." But "What Is and What Shall Never Be" gives us that first look at what Dean longs for, and it shattered me. The one-sided conversation that Dean has at John's grave echoes my Season 1 moment... He's desperately calling out for direction from his father. "Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? ... Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad?"  Again, John isn't there to answer. But his father's words are so ingrained in Dean that he comes to the painful conclusion all on his own. When Dean finally breaks the djinn...

Everyone was trotting out truly epic threads on Twitter to celebrate the 300th episode of Supernatural! I waited too long to get started, but I couldn't let the milestone pass without honoring the achievement somehow. I decided it would be a good idea to mark one moment from each season that had a lasting impact on me. I thought it would be impossible to choose, but I just went with it, and picked the ones that leapt out at me. It was surprisingly easy. So, these posts will detail some of my favorite moments from the show that changed my life. I picked one from each season, but this doesn't even begin to cover all the times the show has made me weep, left me breathless, made me stand up and cheer. Will we ever be able to quantify, to break down and sum up all this show has meant to us? Thank you, Supernatural. I'm proud of us. (All screencaps courtesy of Home of the Nutty , and quotes from SuperWiki's collection of transcripts. Thank you to everyone who put t...

A Supernatural story by Mich @raiahome INTRODUCTION Hello. My name is Baby. I’m a black 1967 Chevy Impala. I was created on April 24, 1967, but I didn’t become aware until my current owner, Dean Winchester, brought me to life. In case you’re wondering, no, not all cars are alive. Only the ones who are treated like family. A few years back Dean and his brother, Sam, stored some books in my trunk. When I had some down time, I read them and was stunned to realize they were about my boys’ lives! It occurred to me that some folks might like to hear my side of the stories. If you’re not interested, then just drive on by, but if you are… well, buckle in and here we go! CHAPTER 1 Now this is what she loved! They were headed west on a long stretch of road. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, the music was playing loud and her engine was purring like a tiger. Dean seemed a little less tense. He was still trying to call his father every couple of hours, but the farther t...

So… you came out here to see Donna, to see Mom on some – some what? Some sick, secret farewell tour? Sam, I know it hurts. But there is no way your brother was going to leave without saying goodbye. This is Season 14, after all.  Dean needed a place to work, a place to do what needed to be done, without distractions, without hesitation. But there is no way anyone can convince me that he wasn't going to say goodbye to Sam, to Jack, to Cas.  He wanted the box to be a fait accompli, so he would need to brook no argument. He wanted to carry out the plan without debate. He took advantage of the opportunity to seek some measure of comfort from Donna and his mom ( see previous post ), but he was not going away permanently without telling his family.  And that's part of the difference I wanted to touch on here... This is Season 14. The brothers and Cas have been through so much. They have hurt each other, deceived each other, betrayed each other -- but they ...