brightly_lit

On Tumblr right now, a blog I follow is doing a full week of MCR metas. This has enriched my life an astonishing degree. Meta is where I live.

You know how they used to have cool names for the months based on moons, like the Harvest Moon, and the Hunters Moon? Well, I have my own naming system for the months: the Pies. August is Peach Pie, when delicious Colorado peaches are so briefly in season. You can only eat so many peaches, so the rest get turned into pies (or frozen peaches, which later get turned into pies). August comes around? PEACH PIE. November is, of course, Pumpkin Pie. January is Pear Pie. AND SO FORTH.

Dean would be proud.

A couple nights ago, I rewatched 8.03 (to see Jensen’s dad!). Though it aired third, it was filmed first (so Jensen, who directed, would have time to prepare)--it is fun to see J2’s hiatus tans, so unlike their usual Vancouver pallor. ;-)

S8 doesn’t get talked about much anymore. The consensus (which I agree with) seems to be that as a season it was a mess, with very many subpar episodes, at least compared to the level of quality SPN sustained during the previous 7 seasons. Indeed, 8.03, on second viewing, is virtually nothing but exposition. While infinitely superior to Buckner/Ross-Leming’s most infamous episode, “Man’s Best Friend With Benefits” (although an argument could be made their racist truck episode takes the top spot), it’s also lame and boring, especially on second viewing, when you already have some idea what’s going to happen. However, I want to give credit to Bucker/Ross-Leming for always having had a knack for writing the relationship between Sam and Dean quite well, and again, that was the high point of this ep.

Given that it was the first episode of the season that was shot, they’re delving into the issues between Sam and Dean that S8 intended to explore for the first time, and in retrospect, they seemed crystal clear--and, in light of everything that’s happened on the show since, quite interesting and potentially illuminating, especially in terms of Sam and Dean’s current issues. The setup is simple: fresh outta Purgatory, Dean’s love for the job is renewed; he’s invigorated, since the ‘purity’ of always knowing what to do there (i.e., kill everything in sight) was something he liked. Sam liked what he did during that year, too: living a normal life. Their two desires could not be less compatible. More than once, Dean gustily declares his pleasure at being back where he’s happiest: in his baby, his brother at his side, hunting monsters. Sam, always more circumspect by nature than Dean, doesn’t say as plainly what he’s feeling, but it’s written all over his face: this is not where he wants to be. This thing that Dean wants is palpably, in every aspect, NOT what Sam wants.
( Read more... )

Title: So Wrong It's Right
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG for language
Genre: gen, angst, metafic, resolution!fic, bi-bro, brother feels, hurt!Sam, emotionally hurt!Dean
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jess, John, Mary, ODC
Word Count: 8,000
Summary: Fighting bitterly with his brother on a hunt, Sam gets caught by the djinn they're hunting and gets to live the life he's always thought he wanted, only to discover maybe it's not what he really wants after all.

Written for the Bi-Bro Challenge at spn_bunker.

Takes place between the events of 9.16 and 9.17.


( Read more... )

I’ve seen a lot of people talking lately about Sam’s depressed, defeated state of mind, expressing confusion and frustration about it--a frustration I used to share, until I wrote my last fic and suddenly got some insight into it. After certain episodes, I remain unconvinced the writers know what they’re doing or are truly taking Sam’s depression and Dean’s self-loathing anywhere other than deeper into both, but these insights did give me some hope that it all means something and is going somewhere and thus I thought I’d share them in case they did the same for others.
( Read more... )

Title: In the Garden of Eden
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG
Genre: gen, wee!chesters, angst, emotional hurt no comfort, family feels, metafic
Characters: John, Sam, Dean, Missouri
Word Count: 1,300
Summary: "John told Dean it was about revenge, but it wasn’t really. You didn’t pull your family up by the roots and force your kids to live on scraps, in and out of a new school every year or even every month, expose them to hunters and weaponry and danger, for revenge. You did it because it was the only way to save your son."

Now with amazingly gorgeous art from the supremely talented a_starfish!



( Read more... )

So, I'm going to bring up a topic that may be fairly controversial, but that has niggled at me since it was introduced in episode 9.01. This may surprise those among you who know me as a Sam!girl (or who took my last meta to mean I'm always in Sam's camp), but I've always been bi-bro, and in this case, I feel compelled to defend Dean ... and judging from the comments I've seen around fandom, am I the only one on his side in this?

I see that many people are, perhaps rightly, declaring that the events of S9 are entirely Dean's fault. Given that the Brothers Winchester have always had the unique knack of finding ways to blame themselves for things they have only tangential connections to, this is pleasant in a way, so that at least this time we're dealing with direct consequences of direct actions rather than mere Winchester guilt and bad self-esteem.

However ... what else was Dean to do? Up against the wall in 9.01, with time running out, he made the one and only choice available to him to save Sam's life. He prayed first to Cas, then to all angels, with the at-the-time reasonable-seeming assumption that at least a FEW of them would have positive intentions toward him and his brother. When Ezekiel was the only responder who seemed even remotely friendly, Dean questioned him closely to try to divine his motives, vetted him through Cas, and still harbored reservations until there was literally no other way to save Sam's life. Thereafter, Zeke had the upper hand and pulled Dean's strings harder by the week, until the disaster we all (plus Dean) knew was surely coming for him arrived and left Dean on the bunker floor whispering Kevin's name.

If he had known what would happen in the end, would Dean even have made a different choice? He probably would have warned Kevin. He would have told Cas. He would surely have tried to find a way to tell Sam (if that would even have helped, since Zeke could apparently simply erase the memories). But would he still have let Zeke into Sam?

I think he would have, since it was his one and only option for saving Sam's life. I think he would have engaged in as much damage control as possible, even trapped Zeke in holy fire, but Dean fights and fights to go on living, doing whatever it takes, and for Dean, that means Sam has to be alive, too, because Dean would far rather die than see Sam die.
( Read more... )

Ohhhhkay, let's just bring up a little something here: Dean tells Cas to unbutton his shirt? Has Dean ever unbuttoned his own shirt to go on a date? (Maybe a gold chain in the chest hair would add to the look ....) Does Dean really care so much about the amount of chest Cas may be showing? And ladies, do you rate the quality of your dates on how far his shirt is hanging open? (I have to say, the closer to his navel my date's shirt hung open, the closer I would be to kicking him to curb before even stepping out the door.) Does Dean really think Cas will have better luck getting laid if he shows a little skin?

Nah. That was just Dean getting Cas a little more naked while they're still alone in the car, in yet another Destiel bone (pun intended) thrown to the fans.

I've been watching the interactions closely, trying to figure out where all the steamy homoerotic vibes are coming from, and I've come to these conclusions:

1) Jarpad can make any scene steamy, no matter who he's acting with or what that person's relationship to him is supposed to be. The Christmas Cottage was pretty devoid of anything titillating, trust me on that, but the scene where he and his brother are talking in the dark in their room? Mmm .... (And I am NOT a Sam/Dean shipper.)

2) Jackles acts "affection" in a way that always comes off flirtatious. Always.




3) Misha's a troll and adores the subversion of the status quo/gender roles, so any opportunity to make a scene more uncomfortable/homoerotic/inappropriate, etc., and he's SO THERE.

1 + 2 + 3 = the most semi-intentionally subtextually homoerotic show on t.v.




I will confess that Cas's vulnerable, baffled expression is EXACTLY what I picture in top!Dean Dean/Cas scenes, so thanks for that, guys! Thumbs up, nice shipping fodder, great subtext, all that jazz. May this show always be all the crazy things that make it unlike any other show ever in the history of the world.


Some of you have left me AMAZING comments and/or very nice posts that mentioned me, and I will respond soon! And THANK YOU!!!

When Misha got the script for 9.01, you know he HAD to know there would thereafter be (mostly) naked pictures of him all over the internet. Sucks for Misha (or, who knows, maybe he's into that kind of thing), but lucky for us.

You're welcome.




(Thanks to cuddyclothes, from whom I shamelessly stole this pic.)

So, my latest fic, “Saving Sam.” (There are spoilers for the fic in this here post, so if you’re planning on reading it, you’ll probably want to read it first. It's pretty short. Then again, I saw a million spoilers for S8 before I actually saw it, and somehow it didn’t spoil much of anything!) I’ve been having the hardest time writing fic lately, so disappointed am I in season 8, which I am just now watching. I guess I’m glad I waited for the DVDs, or else it might have killed my inspiration sooner. :-( I wrote a spoof of the egregious “Man’s Best Friend ...” episode, but I would never want to write fic just to make fun of the show, so I’ve been trying to find my way into writing serious fic again and really struggling at it.

I guess there are people who can separate one season from another, one episode from another, their feelings for one vs. their feelings for another, but I’m not like that. Every fic keeps in mind everything that has ever happened throughout the whole series, and given that S8 carelessly retcons everything that’s ever happened throughout the entire series (even S8 stuff--even occasionally things that happened in the very same episode!), trying to do that is like trying to hold onto every piece of a big lego tower that’s crumbling.

So I’ve turned my mind to trying to figure out where the writers are going with all this. I have some ideas--personally, if I were one of the writers, with 2014 approaching, I couldn’t see how we could resist going end!verse, and that seems to be where things are headed, with Cas now cut off from the power of heaven and fully human, Sam and Dean estranged to the breaking point, and Dean already the kind of sociopath who will sacrifice his friends and allies if it helps him accomplish his goals, which have become his whole world. An lj friend pointed out that Lucifer DID say they would always end up there, no matter what. The writers did it gracelessly, but they got there. (I love the idea of going end!verse with the show, I just wish they were doing it BETTER.)

I’ve read a lot of people who agree with my not-so-pleased assessments of S8. I’ve also read a lot of meta that’s working very hard to defend the writers’ choices. At a certain point, I think you have to give up on defending the writers and let their work speak for itself ... but that got me to thinking. Leaving aside the question of whether the writers on the show are that good anymore or whether what’s ending up onscreen is exactly what they meant to create, I decided to instead have a good, hard, honest look at what the show itself says, taken exactly as it is.

( Dean has an unhealthy obsession with the brother who continually slips from his grasp )

There must be a thousand different metaphorical interpretations of SPN. Do you have any you’re partial to?

So, kalliel has inspired me to post about my favorite moments of season 8, since she's doing the same and it's always fun to revisit moments from a season and get someone else's thoughts on them.

It should be easy for me to narrow it down, seeing as how now, 18 episodes into S8 on DVD, I'm so disappointed with it that I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to finish the season. It doesn't even feel like watching Supernatural anymore. :-( Which is a story for another time, I guess, but it makes a brightly_lit sad.

But here begins a collection of the things I DID like, starting at the very beginning: the very first minutes of the season, which made me clutch my heart with delight--so good!! Another monster in the woods circling the tent and terrorizing the campers, as we've seen before so many times on SPN, from the very first episodes of S1 ... only this time, the monster is Dean!




Feral, like a cornered animal, SOO far from the Dean we've always known and loved. He casually steals their stuff, because he's forgotten what it's like to be a civilized human being (having just been threatened at gunpoint by someone who's undoubtedly unbalanced, and possibly completely insane, the campers probably figured they got off easy), and disappears into the night. ARRGHHH, everything I could have wanted from Dean's return from purgatory!

There was so much potential in this, to explore the always-uneasy question on SPN (I touch on this a lot in my fic) of whether monsters always deserve to die. Sam and Dean have killed some monsters just because they were monsters, when whether they deserved such an end was very much at question. (I never could bear the way they terrified the ghost in the "fear virus" episode to death when he only became what he was because he'd already been so cruelly tormented with fear in his life.) When Dean COMES OUT OF PURGATORY ACTING LIKE A MONSTER ... what do you do then? The writers could have taken this in a deep and brilliant direction. Would Sam begin to wonder if he should be hunting Dean? Would Sam and Dean become the monsters other hunters were hunting ... and might the other hunters' perspective be justifiable? Would the black-and-white values John instilled in his sons be forced to become shades of grey? What would this mean for these characters? Instead, the writers dipped a toe into the question of whether all monsters deserve killing here and there using Benny, then completely abandoned the whole notion, *le sigh*. Oh, well.

Yes, the first scene was fantastic. If only what followed hadn't involved cheesy music and "Dude, you're ... freakin' alive," and interactions between the brothers that didn't make sense and are never, to my knowledge, explained. Dean sure remembered how to act civilized quickly, and Sam seems ... not excited to see Dean again. wtf?? I mean, even if he REALLY didn't want to hunt anymore and he felt like Dean was all that was tying him to hunting, couldn't he ... I don't know ... find some balls and tell his brother he's out? Even if he was that much of a coward (and we have no reason to believe he is), he still wouldn't be HAPPY Dean was dead just so he didn't have to hunt anymore. I mean, eek. The whole thing feels off. (So now I know what everyone was talking about when they said Sam not looking for Dean never sat right with them!)

BUT AT LEAST THEY DID MANAGE TO WORK IN ONE LAST DICK JOKE. ("I guess standing too close to exploding Dick sends your ass straight to purgatory"--rim shot!) Seriously, though. The dick jokes made me happy.

Perhaps you will also like to share your favorite moments from S8?