#holisticfansstuff

asian palm civets are suspected to be the mysterious vector species that transferred SARS from bats to humans in 2003, the same way that pangolins transferred COVID-19 from bats to humans in 2019!

mid-sized asian mammals should probably just stop hanging out with bats, they’re clearly a bad influence.

MOTHERFU-

Look at that. Look at the phrasing there. Has the IMF forgotten India IS a developing country? Also, what do they expect us to do, keep exporting vaccines and let our own citizens die? Would they expect this of the US? Germany?

They don't have a problem with high income countries stockpiling vaccines they don't need and are not going to use, but this, this is unacceptable. The hypocrisy blows my mind.

my secret identity is out!! 

but yep, that’s me - my old alter ego on FFN, has a bunch of my older fic from...yeah, 2006 to when I stopped crossposting there in (pretty much) 2014. 

sorry i’m going to answer your question but first i have something to get off my chest about season 4, which is that it’s STUPID (sorry sorry i know) 

fundamentally sam’s plotline of feeling different and unclean because of circumstances outside of his control is one of those that’s set up to be resolved in one of two ways: either he learns to accept his differences, and we’re happy about that because he found peace (think about your classic xmen character arc), or he cleanses himself, and we’re happy about that because he overcame his metaphorical demons and took his bodily autonomy back from outside forces (this one is more dodgy and has to be done carefully because it usually winds up with the healing of disabilities, like bobby’s legs or tony stark’s heart, but it’s possible to do it well i think if you’re not on supernatural). anyway supernatural did neither of things

the way s4 is set up, it was like, oh shit, sam is finally gonna take his curse and weaponize it against the people who cursed him! and that would have been COOL AS SHIT. (there’s a good s2 au about this here actually.) particularly because the angels (who are framed as bad guys/douchebags) kept telling him not to do it. it would have been sam battling not just dean’s mistrust but also his own faith, like, god doesn’t want me to do this - am i wrong or is god BAD??

and instead it’s like. lol sam ur so stupid. how could you POSSIBLY believe you can do good with this thing that is bad? and everyone tells him he’s being stupid and he’s like no i’m not! i’m being good! it doesn’t matter what you are it matters what you do! and then the narrative turned around and proved dean right and sam wrong which i’m sorry is soooo insulting. 

addiction takes AWAY your agency. after dean found out sam was drinking blood his anger all but evaporated and turned into resignation. he can’t be mad at sam because it’s not sam, it’s the drugs (or blood). there’s no getting through to someone in the throes of addiction unless they want to help themselves or you stage an intervention, which is what dean and bobby did. i’m not saying don’t give sam an addiction plotline because there was so much of it that RULED but don’t tie it in to his demon blood complex

so like to answer your question i certainly think they should have not locked him up and just talked to him and they could have found out the truth about the seals together and avoided the whole thing. but the narrative tells us that sam was an addict and that there was nothing dean could say or do to get through to him, WHCH IS STUPID!!! and that the breaking of the last seal was always going to be unavoidable. which less stupid. kind of sexy actually bc it sets up the s5 fight against destiny itself v well 

sam gets healed from his withdrawals by god at the start of season 5, and it’s implied in season 4 that the withdrawals can and will kill him, which means god sort of gave him and dean both a get-out-of-jail-free card. because otherwise dean would have been killing his little brother, right? EXCEPT IN THE FAMINE EPISODE* SAM GETS LOCKED IN THERE AGAIN TO DETOX AND HE’S TOTALLY FINE WITHOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION. so the narrative proves dean right AGAIN - that not only was locking sam up the correct thing to do, but that it WAS a survivable ordeal despite how scary it seemed and dean was ALSO correct in wanting to double down and keep sam in there even though bobby wanted to let him out

*interestingly, the reason there’s not a single MENTION of sam’s detox in the episode after the famine episode was that originally the airing order of those two episodes was swapped - sam’s detox was supposed to segue directly into the heaven ep. they switched them in order to air the famine episode closer to v-day. stupid.

in a better version of that arc, sam would have used his powers in season 4 and dean’s protests would have been about “demon blood is bad and ur stupid” AND “i’m worried you’re going to get yourself hurt.” we’d frame ruby as the bad guy for getting sam hooked on something that has fatal withdrawal symptoms and leaving out the little detail that his training could kill him, and maybe sam would be stuck resentfully doing her dirty work for a few episodes near the end - like dean and sam working for crowley in s6, but make it sexy and not written by sera gamble. 

i guess he’d still have to kill lilith though so maybe, just to play into inevitability, sam at the moment of truth (when ruby is urging him to kill lilith) chooses to turn his powers on ruby instead and lilith (because she and ruby are totally lovers and also because she wants sam to kill her) jumps in and takes the killing blow upon herself anyway. so it’s like still a well-meaning accident without spending the entire season calling sam stupid. idk.

sorry! this was a longer answer than u were expecting i bet. but i have a lot of bitterness about s4 on sam’s behalf lol. i’m not even a sam girl