Unless their knowledge of magic made them mega powerful, that level of arrogance when messing with the supernatural is likely to get them all killed.

So you're assuming they're not an ancient unbroken line? Or, say, not as unbroken as the hunters who make it back hundreds of years?

I have an easier time imaging a bunch of chickenshit ivory towerists hiding in their badproof bunker and making up new spells for useless things...or vivisecting demons all day.

I don't feel that a group that actually worked with hunters is usefully characterised by the reaction of one man (the other Man of Letters didn't seem bothered by the idea of them, and he was an initiated Letterer, unlike Henry, who'd never actually graduated).

Yeah, they might be cocky pricks out of touch with the world--but that's remarkably not fatal in literature.

Unless their knowledge of magic made them mega powerful, that level of arrogance when messing with the supernatural is likely to get them all killed.

If you swap "supernatural" for "weaponry", you could say this about most military forces, too, but it's not usually true.

Okay, Annalee's commentary for this episode is enraging me, and I'm only on the third paragraph. I want to get rage at HER in a comment.

See, now I'm imagining them in letterman jackets, which doesn't really work for me.

I think Henry might've been cute in a letterman jacket.

Henry's just cute, period.

I've seen his first inclusion in fic--on a multi-chapter, just a mention as they're searching Hell for Winchesters. He's not there. Irritatingly, it turned into Super!Dean. HATE. I don't want Dean and Cas on an even footing, ship or no ship. That isn't an interesting Winchester, unless you're going to do something like S4 and torture said Winchester too...

However, said fic had this:

“You don't understand. I don't think you can understand.” Sam put a hand through his hair, noticing but not caring that he was fighting back tears. “No offense. I just don't think you can understand. When Dean was gone before – when the Trickster killed him, and then when he went to hell – I lost it, Cas. I just snapped. Looking for him, trying to get him back, it just pushed me into a terrible, terrible place. I set off the apocalypse, Cas! The freaking apocalypse."

You know what? I'm 40% more understanding of his hiatus motivation, thanks to a fic I'm growing away from.

Yay! I sympathized with Sam so much, and I really got it from the season opener, but it's nice to have other people get it, too. Even just a little bit.

This makes me happy. Yay for all kinds of fans!

Adam Glass is the one saying some stuff they know the answers to, some stuff they just wrote, and implied that angel feathers was one of the things they "know" about. We shall see.

I don't sympathise with Sam. I only see Dean's OTT in the heightened emotions of the show. Up to the end of S7, they hadn't shown me that Sam would make that call, and nothing in S8 actually explained that, because they spent their time yelling, not talking.

The writers didn't do the work for me--and yes, I play between the lines when I ship, but I'm not adding to make the minimum requirements. Slash is dressing. Sam's motivation is foundational (to mess metaphors), and I think they slipped up.

Maybe that's a symptom of handing over the rei(g)ns? Maybe Sera saw him going somewhere else from where she left it? Dunno. But it's Carver's job to make the case, not a random Dean-is-Baldur fic.

I guess my take is that Sam's expression of abject desolation and grief at the end of S7 was supposed to communicate more than it did to most people. But I'm so used to seeing Sam's grimly determined face, or the scary focused face from soulless!Sam and Mystery Spot Sam, that the way he looked in that last scene really struck me as something new.

I don't know why Baldur reminded me, but I still want to write that Dean/Patrick ponr fic. Of course, the list of things I *want* to write is getting pretty long ...

But Sam just got healed at the end of S7--I didn't have time to see him get a new point of view--I just assumed he didn't have the same one when he was fucked up.

I'm used to the idea of Winchester desperation and panic being turned into action, not inaction/complete change of priorities.

THERE WAS NO BODY.

I know we have the TV reflex, but that just feels like he's been taken, not killed. I need to know Sam's abjectly depressed--and then I don't believe Amelia is going to be making him belly laugh (that fic has got me grumpily accepting he didn't search for Dean--guffawing is another thing indeed).