i thought it was fake until the credits rolled. IT WAS AN EL SOL BEER

IT WAS TOTALLY FAKE OKAY. the whole enemy for the last five seasons has been THE AUTHOR and we thought they defeated the Evil Author in ep 19 but secretly they hadn't realised that God was in fact synonymous witht he showrunners and the secret tragedy is that they won in the end. truly it is epic and weighty storytelling for our time. the el sol beer is one final candleflame of individuality signalling desperately before it flickers out under the vast tide of Tidy Pre-Determined Narrative.

OH MAN I JUST HAD A THOUGHT. This whole season has been about putting Dean and Cas on an equal level. If you look at seasons 4-6, their problems mainly came about because they idealized each other, and when they didn’t live up to the idealized standards, their relationship suffered.

And being different species has been one of the biggest hurdles in seeing them as equals: Cas is more magically/physically powerful (being an angel), but in the TFW dynamic, Dean had more power as the keeper of social/human knowledge. And even when Cas became a human (or a hunter in 8x08), he floundered for a bit, having no power in this new situation.

BUT even from episode one of s9, Cas and Dean have been on parallel journeys that (I really hope) end with them on equal footing.

Castiel has been trying to figure out what he wants out of his existence, making the most out of the volatile situation and his changing species twice this season. As we see in 9x10 and 9x11, his time as a human, and subsequent re-angelification has made him understand humans, and more-importantly human emotion, better. He’s starting to get the physical language of humanity, with touches and hugs and sex. And with this episode, he now shares a common storytelling history with humanity.

Dean has also been moving toward seeing Cas as a person with feelings, rather than a blunt instrument (sidenote: this progression has been slowly happening in starts and fits since 7x17, but it’s been kicked into overdrive this season).

The times we’ve seen them together haven’t been them fighting monsters together (except 9x06). They are not using each other for whatever gifts they have defeating things (Castiel is very decidedly NOT Dean’s weapon this season), but instead when they are together on screen, or talking to each other on the phone, they have been shown to be each other’s friends first, allies second. In 9x01, 9x09, 9x10, and tonight, they provide emotional support (“How are you?” is asked IIRC in each of these episodes) and show that they really care about how the other is doing, and not just in the fight against evil. Cas cares about Dean’s state of mind and Dean cares about how Cas feels about being a human or angel again.

So as of this episode, Cas (more or less) gets Dean’s pop-culture references, one of the defining characteristics of Dean’s personality since s1. Now, Dean cares about Cas’ feelings and choices, letting Cas make his own decisions. 9x03 and 9x06 show us that they want to be together in some way or another, and I’m looking forward to them getting together on equal footing, making fully informed decisions to stay with each other without undue burdens of responsibility toward family weighing them down.

i am halfway through this episode and

I DO NOT EVEN CARE IF IT IS GABRIEL OR NOT well I care but I hope it isn’t because he had the perfect send-off and I have seen (and WRITTEN) far better returns than the SPN writers and RSJ could ever pull off AND I HOPE IT IS BECAUSE GABRIEL YES GABRIEL WANTING TO REFORM TEAM FREE LOVE WILL but I could be persuaded either way

but

I am just squeaking and trying to cook dinner at the same time as going GABRIEL GABRIEL WHETHER YOU ARE OR NOT IT IS RSJ THE SHOW REMEMBERS YOU CASTIEL REMEMBERS YOU AND LOVES YOU and you are just as cheesy as ever wow I always manage to leave that cringe-worthy bit out of my fics

but really

if that IS Metatron (and I’m honestly assuming it is at this point)

He is scarily good at pulling off Gabriel’s mental processes.

honestly, I just want DCSG all in one room together. Because it happened only so very briefly in that one episode and Castiel said almost nothing except for a very speaking glare, and. and. TFL is my ultimate ship and I WANT some screen time.

Sam.

Don told you that you both needed to wait for Amelia to make a decision and then support her in that no matter what.

How did you take from that that you should leave, thereby making her decision for her?

Because Sam's self-worth is almost as low as Dean's now, and he is getting far too much in the habit of being left behind, of believing he isn't needed. What he heard Don say is "I am so gracious and selfless that I'm actually the better man for her and you need to let her decide that."

So they’re riding along one night and Dean’s flipping channels looking for a half-decent radio station. And between preachers and country singers he stops over a classical music station. Goes right past it, of course, on to the country singers, but then his wrist flicks in the other direction and he lands squarely on the classical again, lets it play.

It’s a nice song, sort of subtle, woodwinds and violins.  The way Dean takes a breath on an upbeat, though, it’s like he recognizes it. Dean’s full of weird knowledge, but Sam’s never known him to like classical music. And if he did, Sam doubts he’d ever admit it.

But Dean seems to have zoned out entirely, his eyes on the horizon, the index finger of one hand twitching as though in his mind he’s conducting the orchestra. He takes in a deep breath, releases it, and almost smiles. All this for some symphony or other Sam doesn’t even recognize. But hey, if it makes Dean happy…

And then the B section ends, and the chorus bursts out into full bloom. And it turns out Sam knows the song after all. It’s Beethoven’s 9th. “Ode to Joy.”

dean pls

cas’ face is just like: dean, do you even lift?

He lifted Dean up and fucked him against the wall that morning.

Of course he can lift it.

New headcanon, Dean said “Can you lift this?” about his own dick that morning. It’s an inside joke.

(Cas is all “here we go again.”)

Gabriel: For as long as it’s more entertaining to keep them in the dark.

... I KNEW Gabriel was going to turn up in 8x08! You would just hang around an old people's home, insult Castiel, and give the boys incidental tips in finding an absolutely Loony case.

Ode to motherfucking Joy

And Supernatural opens up my brain, digs its fingers in, and says, “And here’s another song you’ll never listen to again without feeling feels.”

Really? Here, let me help you with that.

New headcanon: Gabriel was the cat

I would like to refer you to team free derp, who managed to predict this months ago!

Talk to me

He doesn’t lecture. He doesn’t lash out or assume he knows what’s going on.

He just goes to Cas. He sits with him.

“Talk to me.”

And Cas talks to him. He fucking talks to him and doesn’t hold anything back.

I’m so happy I’m going to die.

yes yes yes yes

and he did all the signals for I'M LISTENING TO YOU NOW

from shutting the computer to walking over to sitting on the bed facing him to open body language

like it's all so casual, because of course he can't make it look like a big deal because then there might be feels

but he DID IT

What I’m really hoping is that the writers created a so-obviously Gabriel-related episode that he didn’t actually show up in just to fuck with us, and that he’ll turn up in an episode we’re not expecting at all.

Desperate hope is better than none at all.

This is what they did in season 5, after all - the eps leading up to 8 were increasingly trickster-teasy!

I can see you two have a lot to talk about.

Favourite moment in the episode!

Also: The Mayan language is not dead. It’s actually a family of dozens of languages that millions of people still speak in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. So, uh, yeah.

True, but unless Mayan has a very long-standing written culture and has had no pronunciation shifts in a few thousand years (which could be true - I know nothing about it! - but would make it practically unique amongst the languages whose history I'm aware of) I doubt any modern speakers would be able to understand the Mayan spoken when 'Brick' was first born, any more than modern and ancient greek are mutually comprehensible, or you could understand me reading <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i> (which is only 620 years old) aloud without special training.

On which note, incidentally, given this is the professor who said GUYS STOP THAT IS A GREAT JOKE BEING ABLE TO DATE, DECIPHER, STUDY, AND CORRECTLY INTERPRET (IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT) AN ENTIRELY NEW TEXT RIGHT AWAY, I am sure he hauled them over the coals for just assuming that the fact that he can handle ancient greek also means that, no big, he's also proficient in a language from a completely different culture and a completely different linguistic group on another continent for which (iirc) there are very few written records, if any, still extant.

And then he deciphered it anyway. Because he could. (And probably because he used the resources available to him, ie, linguistic analysis and university subscriptions to obscure online resources and knowing where the experts in the relevant language were because he chatted to just the right guy two years ago at a conference in Missouri.)

(All of that said - my area of study is over a millenium and a hemisphere away, in 13-14C England, and I still got annoyed at their handwaving of OH THIS IS WHAT MAYANS WERE LIKE. Because, no. I know nothing about them, but you cannot have a society built all around that ethic. It's not culturally self-sustaining. And ignores the fact that society is made up of human beings.)