LMV

Well, here is a sort of unpacking and analyzing of things from what I have been reading as I trawl through dozens of Tumblr accounts and also discussing with some fandom friends and ruminating about it all. 

All my own thoughts and opinions, so if you don’t agree, feel free to ignore! No hate, no abuse. 

If it helps you sort out your own thoughts, happy to have helped!

1.    The idea of the prequel itself

2.    The promotion/launch fiasco

3.    J2

4.    J2 fans

5.    J2 tinhats

6.    Fandom

So in this essay I will…..

graphic by the lovely bilosan ♥

I'll be honest. Most of these take place around 15x20 or after, so don't say I didn't warn you. This is a completely gen winchester fic rec. I'm a Capricorn and I still cried while reading most of these. Featured are codas, missing scenes, etc., and a whole lot of Dean Jr. These are truly really good reads, so enjoy! Or cry! Or both! Lengths, chapters, and ratings vary. They're all about..............those crazy motherfuckers.

Here is the bro playlist I listened to while making this. Good luck.

Remember the Mountain Bed (Gen, 1077 words) - nigeltde You have a son who is eight years old.

Premonition (Gen, 7620 words) - cherie_morte This is not news.

some and now none of you (T+, 1731 words) - Goldmonger “I’m better now,” Sam says.

Untitled Ficlet+Comic (Gen, 331 words) - peach-coke He looks peaceful.

Take these broken wings and learn to fly (T+, 2377 words) - caranfindel He's such a contradiction.

Ghost in the Machine (Gen, 2466 words) - phoenixflight  Once was plenty.

There will be no miracles here (T+, 562 words) - caranfindel A single-sentence coda for 15.20

what’s worth saving (is never worth letting go to waste) (T+, 2808 words) - iceberry “Do you remember what daddy’s brother’s name is?”

Sunspot (Gen, 3361 words) - Goldmonger  He tends to his brother’s elderly soul with the care of a gardener, and it feels natural.

How I Met Your Mother (Gen, 3206 words) - amoreanonyname She wasn’t looking for a soulmate - which was good, because Sam could never be one.

This one isn't really Winchesters, but holy shit its good:

The New Guard (T+, 2193 words) - Goldmonger So Dean had been run ragged.

<3

He didn’t get a clean wound — he got turned to pulp inside, with a wound angled like a damn tree tap to the heart.

if he had let Sam pull him off, he would have been gone in seconds, he would have bled out straight from the heart and it would have given out, or he would have bled into his lungs faster, and he would have suffocated.

He made comparisons for the captive vamp — a clean quick death vs. a slow one. He advised to choose the quick death.

But when it came down to it, he picked the slow death, he chose to suffer, for five more minutes with Sam.

His heart gave out in the end (which I always suspected couls happen, because of Faith and Devil’s Trap and so many subsequent attacks on his heart by monsters and ghosts and everything in between)

When they clasped hands, they could probably feel the metal try to force its way out of his chest. He was in so much pain. Just to make sure Sam knew he was loved. Just know Sam could accept his death.

He and Jensen added several things that were meaningful to them, 

In the barn scene, the script originally said, “I can’t do it without you.” but they thought it could reflect the scene in the Pilot and changed it to “I can’t do this alone.” “Yes you can.” “Well, I don’t want to.”

Jared is the one who thought of Sam and Dean’s first words to each other in Heaven paralleling the first words they said to each other on screen in the Pilot

Jared wanted the parallel between Sam telling Dean “You can go now” and his son telling him the same thing when he dies

Sam wearing Dean’s watch (which Jared thought nobody had noticed)

Sam wearing his Pilot clothes when he joins Dean in Heaven was Jared’s idea

About Sam quitting hunting and living his life,

“Sam tried to live his life the way Dean would have wanted him to live his life”

Jared said that if Dean had came back years later and seen Sam was still hunting he would not have been happy and would have told him “Lay your weary head to rest”

Sam told his son about hunting and all. “He told him about his uncle and why he was named like that.” The son wanted to get the tattoo.

On script changes due to Covid, 

There were supposed to be several other characters of Dean’s past when he reaches Heaven.

Jared said it’s a happy accident in terms of story-telling that there was no one else but Sam and Dean, since it started with Sam and Dean.

Who would Sam want to see in Heaven,

“Dean, obviously.” Jared paused to think for some time there. “Bobby, Mom, Sully.” 

“Sam’s Heaven is mostly Dean.” 

“Sam’s happiest moment was when he made that commitment to get back on the road with his brother.”

I love it and I’m stealing it. So. 

Firstly, let’s talk about why Sam lived. It was because when Dean was dying, he asked Sam to promise him that it was okay, not to bring Dean back, and Sam gotta keep living and fighting. That was the only way for Dean to keep on being with Sam in his heart, in every step that Sam would make. Sam simply lived because it was Dean’s request, his death will.

However, living without Dean was almost impossible for Sam. He had been struggling for a long time, isolating himself from the world. Everything in the bunker reminded him of Dean and he was living like a walking dead and had been crying for awhile. Until he got a call from work, he decided to leave the bunker.

When he left, Sam brought Dean’s duffel instead of his back bag. He left everything behind except for things that reminded and contained Dean’s memory.

After that, Sam got a son and he named him Dean Jr. Normally, we all knew that it should be Dean who names his son Dean Jr in case he got a son. However, Sam used this name for his own son. Naming your son after your dead brother proved that he very needed a Dean in his life. And Dean Jr became Sam’s living reason.

Speaking of those photos in Sam’s house, most of them were photos of Sam and Dean together. There was no photo of Sam’s wife or partner. Later, there was some of Dean Jr’s photos but they were just a few. Sam hung on life by creating a new family, naming his own son Dean Jr, but the real Dean had never been replaced by any of that. He held onto the new life, but he could never get rid of Dean’s picture in his mind.

Sam still kept Baby. At this moment, Sam was pretty old, but he still couldn’t hold back his tears when he sat in the Impala. Because it was where Sam and Dean call home, where their journey began. The empty feeling inside of Sam had always been there. As if it was “a stormy sea of moving emotion” and Sam got “tossed about”, “like a ship on the ocean”. After all those years, Sam could never stop feeling in pain when he thought about Dean.

When Sam was in his death bed, Dean Jr came to him, put his hand on Sam’s and told Sam it was okay, he could go now. They were exactly those words that Sam had told Dean to comfort him when his brother had been dying. And when the time came, Sam needed those exact words from a Dean to comfort a Sam. Sam, at his time of dying, was still carrying Dean’s watch as if it was their memory object, a symbol of his brother.

Sam walked right to Dean when he was in Heaven. Why didn’t Sam look old like he was supposed to be? He died old, not young, right? I have been wondering since I watched that scene. Until I realized that Heaven is where your soul lives. And the fact that Sam looked exactly the same as when Dean had died showed that even when Sam lived such a long apple pie life, his soul had actually died right at the moment Dean passed away.

In conclusion, Sam has always been alive, but he couldn’t actually live ever since that night.

Jack & Rose / Sam & Dean parallel for @magi2506

Finally being able to ‘drop the act’ and the bravado for a moment, and be brutally honest about how much he loves his brother, look him in the eyes and tell him how proud of him he was, when he really needs to hear it. It was going from being a man who used humor to stop himself from talking and thinking about his heavy, deep, vulnerable feelings- into a man who was able to tell the brother that he loves more than anyone, who he tried to protect, how scared he had actually been, and how, despite all his jabs at him- he didn’t know how he could ever have lived without him. It’s in his saying “it’s always been you and me” without giving a shit how ‘chick flick’ it sounds.

He finally didn’t care. He didn’t hold back, he poured his heart out with the words that punctuated his actions, hell, his entire personality. He told Sam how much he meant to him without trying to do the ‘manly’ thing and downplay the gravity of that love.

Sam always thought he let Dean down, that Dean loved John more, that Dean would have been better off without him. Even if he was reasonably sure about Dean, Sam needed to hear this, and Dean needed to tell him before he died.

Character development is not:

Making out with your male friend even though you have literally always been straight.

I hope this clears it up. The finale was great for me, Dean was not written off to further Sam’s plot, Dean and Sam, their all consuming love and brotherhood WERE the plot.

If they’d both just lived an apple pie life, it would have felt disingenuous to me. How many times did they talk about dying young? Going out in a blaze of glory? I would have loved for them to go out together, but then the Winchester family legacy would be over. And that’s something I was thinking about a lot leading up to the finale, who is going to carry on Sam and Dean’s name? Who is going to keep the world safe when Sam and Dean are gone? And I just felt so much peace watching Sam raise up little Dean. You know he loved that kid so friggin much, but he still ached for his brother, still missed his brother. It made my heart hurt but in the best way. 

So there’s still a Winchester around to keep the world safe, Dean barely had to wait at all before Sam was with him (which is good, because historically Dean doesn’t do well separated from his brother) and Sam got to heal the part of himself that always hurt because his father was distant and his brother was too young for all the responsibility put upon him. Sam got to do things RIGHT. And then he got to go home, to Dean.