you can't change the future.

Well, that would be a nasty surprise to Team Free Will.

It's been a consistent message that the timeline was absolute until they fucked shit up and allowed the Titanic fix. However, it's simple enough to have The End be a construction and not time travel.

I hadn't really thought about it, but to my mind the timeline that has already happened being fixed seems like a different proposition than the timeline still to come. Were there other glimpses of the future that I have forgotten?

I'm not convinced that "The End" was an actual alternate future at all, rather than just Zachariah playing mindgames with Dean to convince him to invite possession by Michael.

At any rate, apparently the events of "Swan Song" broke predestination entirely, so that whatever happens from that point onward is happening on its own rather than being fated. Atropos said as much in "My Heart Will Go On."

I guess the Word of God tablet cropping up is Chuck scrambling to get events under control, as I suspect there wasn't actually a beat-the-Leviathans contingency already in play for a divine plan that ended with Armageddon while they were still safely locked away in Purgatory.

the timeline that has already happened being fixed seems like a different proposition than the timeline still to come

Lucifer's assertion in the future was:

Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up—here. I win. So, I win.

So...was this the actual future? Does Lucifer know that it's immutable? Was he telling the truth? Was that actually Lucifer (who says he doesn't lie, after all)?

Zach's point is that it *has* to be changed--that was his motive in doing it. So, obviously, no consensus.

In any moment, though, aren't you predicting the future as you know it *at that time*? Even in the EndVerse timeline, Lucifer was a little vaguer than it might seem at first -- "You will always end up here" could simply mean facing him, in Sam's body. And that happened. In Detroit even, at least for a few minutes.

That showdown happened, even if every little detail wasn't as imagined, and the ending changed -- but Lucifer's prediction was already in an imagined future. So that was one possibility (or an elaborate construct of Zachariah's), but since the actual confrontation happened in the boys' true timeline, it seems like that's the *real* event. To me. If that makes any sense.

To me, Lucifer's "this" included him having the run of the planet, and Dean trying to brute force a solution with no real solution in his pocket. And that there was no way he could get around losing his brother to Lucifer (as opposed to with).

But I have no particular dog in the fight of whether it was a future or not. I just really really don't want it to happen, because then the central destiny/choice debate that we had for at least a season would be moot. I think it's important to the narrative that destiny be avoided, as opposed to bittersweet or just plain bitter that it can't.

Heh. This discussion is making me want to listen to Rush.

I'm reading this terrible summer camp AU where the author keeps switching pov every paragraph, sometimes within the same paragraph, and backing up in time to account for the other persons thoughts on and reactions to the scene playing out. Even mid-conversation, the next paragraph will be the other character thinking about and responding to what was said two or three paragraphs ago instead of the immediately preceding one.

I think the explanation for that is that it's written by two people. Dollars to doughnuts it's being done RP style. And they're both under 20. There it's no emotional awareness in that story at all.