“i love you so much my baby brother”

Both Sam and Dean are insane about each other, of course, but I will say that while people do often miss Sam's insanity, Dean's is really hard to miss. I don't get how you can see just how Dean does codependency and say that this applies to the relationship he has with Cas.

Like, I saw someone once talking about how as the show progresses, other characters would possibly describe Cas and Dean as "psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent" or how Sam would be concerned by how codependent they are and all I can say is ...No.

My strange musings ahead, be warned.

“I was loved. I was loved, Ev.” - Maudie (2016)

the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.

#you may think you - the writer - are your own most autistic critic #but somewhere out there is a motherfucker with the world's nichest PhD who has been waiting their whole life to prove you wrong

BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) dir. Richard Linklater BEFORE SUNSET (2004) dir. Richard Linklater BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013) dir. Richard Linklater

my fetish

my friend's fetish

Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey. And she became the most powerful editor in science fiction history.

Born in 1943 with achondroplastic dwarfism, Judy-Lynn grew up devouring science fiction in New York City's public libraries. At a time when the genre was dismissed as pulp fiction for teenage boys, she saw something else entirely: the future of storytelling.

She started at the bottom—an office assistant at Galaxy, the most prestigious science fiction magazine of the 1960s. Within four years, she was managing editor.

Then Ballantine Books came calling.

When she arrived at Ballantine in 1973, science fiction and fantasy were afterthoughts in publishing. Fantasy in particular was considered unsellable—unless you were Tolkien. Judy-Lynn thought that was nonsense.

Her first major move was audacious: she cut ties with one of Ballantine's bestselling authors, John Norman, whose "Gor" novels were popular but notoriously misogynistic. It was a risk. She didn't care.

Then came the gamble that changed everything.

In 1976, someone brought her an opportunity: the novelization rights to an upcoming space movie by a young director named George Lucas. Hollywood thought the film would bomb. Studio executives were skeptical. Most publishers passed.

Judy-Lynn said yes.

The Star Wars novelization sold 4.5 million copies before the movie even premiered.

She would later call herself the "Mama of Star Wars."

In 1977, she launched Del Rey Books—her own imprint, with her husband Lester editing fantasy while she oversaw everything else. Their first original novel was Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara. It became a phenomenon.

She didn't stop there.

Remember The Princess Bride? The original 1973 novel had flopped. It was headed for obscurity. Judy-Lynn rescued it, reissuing it in 1977 with a striking gate-fold cover and an aggressive marketing campaign. Without her intervention, there might never have been a movie.

She published the Star Trek Log series. She championed Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant trilogy—convincing Ballantine to release all three books on the same day from a completely unknown author. Unprecedented.

She published Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon—the first science fiction novel ever to hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

And she did all of this while competitors called her imprint "Death-Rey Books"—because she was utterly dominant.

Between 1977 and 1990, Del Rey Books had 65 titles reach bestseller lists. That was more than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined.

Arthur C. Clarke called her "the most brilliant editor I ever encountered."

Philip K. Dick went further: "The greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins"—the legendary editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

But here's what burns: the science fiction community never nominated her for a Hugo Award while she was alive. Not once. The men who ran the industry praised her in private and overlooked her in public.

In October 1985, Judy-Lynn suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died four months later, at 42.

Only then did the Hugo committee vote to give her the Best Professional Editor award.

Her husband Lester refused to accept it.

He said Judy-Lynn would have objected—that it was given only because she had just died. That it came too late.

He was right.

Judy-Lynn del Rey transformed science fiction from a niche hobby into a cultural force. She made fantasy into a mainstream publishing category. She bet on Star Wars when no one else would. She saved The Princess Bride from oblivion. She published the first #1 New York Times science fiction bestseller.

She did all of this standing 4'1" tall in an industry run by men who underestimated her at every turn.

The next time you pick up a fantasy novel, or watch a Star Wars movie, or quote The Princess Bride—

then, everything innocent and sweet burnt alongside their mother and was replaced with a desperate kind of love that made john glance twice. he sat beside a toddling sam in the back seat of the impala and kept their hands tangled together, fingers sticky and warm. he'd carry sam on his back until his legs were sore and screaming, hold him close when john was quiet and staring over a bottle of whiskey.

then sammy went to school, and dean was busy learning about things terrible and worrying that sam would be taken from him while he slept. he was there when sam was dropped off and there to pick him up, teeth biting lip and cheeks gnawed raw.

he was never far from sam, never. they ate together, slept together, shared the same bathroom all their childhood. and then sam was gone, for so long and seemingly never to return to his side and dean was distraught.

he didn't eat, he fought until his knuckles broke and his nose went crooked, he slept with every woman he came across and hunted in nameless towns miserable and tired.

and then sam was back. legs bent awkwardly in the passenger seat with cheeks flushed and alive and so close to him. he felt high with companionship, hands and shoulders grazing sam's and knees knocking under diner tables. they bickered and sang along to the radio and it was an overwhelming sweetness that scared him blind, and he kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye obsessively.

then their dad was back and so angry, and dean's teeth were oily slick with blood that dripped down his chin. his eyes were slits and he wanted desperately to be okay, for sam to be okay. and then his dad, who he was devoted to only second to sam, was pleading with sam to choose the demon over dean.

john said, "killing this demon comes first, before me, before everything."

and like white hot lightning, sam's eyes flicked to his in the rearview mirror, and he whispered, "no sir, not before everything."