#wke

It lines up perfectly for the next chapter , but I also have a lot of like??? housekeeping??? to do in that fic??? So, we’ll see what happens.

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For your WKE trio! (also sorry tumblr’s being so weird about formatting)

lol I kind of love that formatting! Great choices, thank you!

Minor spoilers ahead for Whiskey Kisses For Everyone:

[ 📿 ]ㅤ.ㅤ what superstition or ritual do they cling to ?

Jess: She believes she firmly rejects superstition but in practice she will do whatever superstitious thing Sam&Dean tell her to do. Her life’s rituals used to be related to her art and her relationships and I think part of her ending will be picking up the pieces and finding solace in the ritual of making art again. She grew up nonreligious with a lapsed Catholic mom, so I think a lot of her perspective is influenced by that, too.

Sam: his big infamous superstition in WKE is “don’t say certain things out loud if Evil could be eavesdropping.” I think the Ripper case really brought out his deepest superstitions and he’ll always feel a bit guilty/ashamed of how he let himself behave. He learned superstition while being the kid left behind while Dad-and-Dean went to go fight monsters, and it shows. Going forward, he’s caught between trying to let go of superstition on principle and the enticement of occult ritual as a means of control and safety.

Dean: he’s superstitious AF but he thinks he’s being Extremely Practical as a hunter. He wants superstition and ritual to be tangible tools of the job and doesn’t really want to think about how either one could relate to his anxiety. He believes incest has occult ritual power and he’s done more research into the history of the occult than anyone gives him credit for (mostly, this is because I really wanted him to make Jack Parsons jokes in my fic, but it’s proved more plot relevant than I expected).

[ 🫀 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho taught them what love is ? did it hurt ?

Jess: I think Jess would say her parents taught her about love and that it didn’t hurt more than the average parent-and-child relationship. Her experiences of polyamory and queerness in college were also fairly positive and falling in love with Sam and building a trust-based partnership with him was a big formative experience too. She (and Sam) may have had some experience in getting hurt by Brady, but it’s something that exists as cut content for WKE, unfortunately. Dean was unique in her experience of love because loving him felt like such a deep loss from the very start, not just in loving him directly but also in empathizing with Sam.

Sam: he has always always loved Dean but the moment he realized it was Something Different was the night he left for Stanford, and he carried that romantic love for Dean with him and just kind of let it fester inside him ever sense. Dean was his model for love but also unfortunately John’s mourning and quest for revenge was also a model. Falling in love with Jess was a chance to build something brand new for him, something that felt safe and she defined what “normal” meant to him for a long while. Going forward, he thinks the way he loves Jess and Dean really counts for something, despite his mistakes.

Dean: he has a pretty canonical take on what love means: having his family together and keeping them safe. Adding Jess to his definition of family got more complicated than he ever anticipated but he’s so starved for affection and intimacy that it was inevitable. The hurt comes from his mother and father and Sam (twice over, Sam leaving Dean behind first and Sam kissing him in the cabin second). I think Dean loves very naturally despite the ways hunting and toxic masculinity shaped his upbringing. He could have been raised alone in a rabbit hutch in a cold shed and he would still love his little brother with so much devotion, yk? It’s the conflict between “doing the right thing” and “Sam wants to have sex with me” where Dean starts floundering because he knows it shouldn’t be so easy to be like “sure I’ll have sex with my brother,” especially when he believes incest to be inseparable from occultism.

[ ⚓ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat does “home” mean to them ?

Jess: her definition of home is Sam, and she is inclined to grab Dean by the collar and drag him “home.” Her experience of sex and relationships was very much about having fun and having experiences and then she met Sam and there was suddenly a home-shaped person in a way she never anticipated wanting, and now that she has him she’s not going to let go, bc he’s the only person she can imagine being home-shaped. Adding Dean in is less like Dean-is-also-home-shaped and more like “Dean should also be in my home—DEAN! GET IN HERE! YOU BELONG HERE!” XD ….Less relationship-related, she really does love California and enjoyed life in the Bay Area.

Sam: Home is Dean, home is in the Impala, he built a new home with Jess and it burned down but adding Jess to home in the Impala with Dean wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t like, under threat all the time, yk? He would still like a “normal” life but not without Jess and not without Dean, he goes where they go now, and they better go where he goes or he’ll pick them up and carry them over his shoulders if he has to.

Dean: “I want Dean to have a home.” I think Dean thinks he doesn’t have a home, and he doesn’t want to think about that very much, and yet he feels he is home when he’s with his family. Unfortunately, when he did briefly/technically have his entire family together, he was kind of in shock/dissociated, and didn’t get to feel that “I’m home,” feeling he’s always alway pining for. Going forward, I think Sam-and-Jess are going to define home for him, but right now they define family-as-responsibility more than family-as-home. He is too on edge all the time to know that being sandwiched between Jess and Sam would solve a lot of his emotional needs and make him feel home.

Confession: as a writer, I really like bullying Dean.

The fic inspo playlist: