Probably not the scariest moment, but I was definitely most wigged out by that scene with the gods where they wanted to spoon out Sam's eyeball back in season 1 or 2. It might have had to do with how JP's eyelid was most definitely taped back IRL.

Okay, I'm obviously misremembering then, because I thought Doc Benton was planning to do something to Sam's eyeball. Any kind of incipient eyeball damage squicks me.

Hmm, two eyeball moments, maybe? Wasn't an icecream scoop dangerously close to Someone's eye? It's probably (most definitely) me misremembering.

That's my point, though -- those are squicky moments, but not really scary, the way you're scared waiting to see what's in the basement or who's going to come through the door.

ita's closest -- when John went all yellow eyes, that was frightening because it was so unexpected, and it seemed like all the rules had changed.

I think maybe for me it's having grown up on horror movies, where you're always waiting to see who is going to die, and how. By S3, it was pretty clear that when it came to Sam and Dean, death didn't stick, so it stopped being so scary?

I think the feeling of "not knowing what's going to happen next" is the scariest for me, and as much as I love the show, it's stopped mattering because there's usually a way out of it? Or a way to fix it? Then again, I don't really watch the show for the scares, so. And I think for me, once I've seen it, it's not scary again on rewatch anyway.

it was pretty clear that when it came to Sam and Dean, death didn't stick, so it stopped being so scary?

But at the end of S3, Dean stayed dead for a good long while. Broken record but I always harken back to Joss around S5 of Buffy (show not not called Buffy, to use Tim's reminder language) where he says it's not about whether or not they'll stay dead, but how much it costs for them to die, and for them to come back.

And the show's pretty good at accumulating damage, so although a season ender with a death is not necessarily worse than a season ender with one of them in Hell or in Purgatory, it's still way non-optimal. And that's definitely a feeling I can tap back into--even rewatching the beginning of S6 still makes me agitated for Dean, and half of his brother is right there.

However, I'm not like what feels like too much of my dash in not wanting any deaths (sticky or smooth) to happen--the ones that can stick often should! But make it all hurt. That is the show--show not called "Happy brother or angel romance with great big immortal social circle and holiday dinners". Why the fuck would anyone want to watch that?

That is the show--show not called "Happy brother or angel romance with great big immortal social circle and holiday dinners". Why the fuck would anyone want to watch that?

That's when I turn to fic. There are certain things I adore in fic that I would never, ever want to see happen in the source materials. It's funny, but what would scratch a particular itch in an AU could well turn me off a show for good if it happened in canon. This is true for more than just SPN.

I still feel it all on rewatch -- I cry every time in Heart and AHBL2 and when Jo and Ellen die and Swan Song and all that. But "scared" is a very particular thing for me, I guess, separate from angst or horror or tension. Scared is edge-of-my-seat stuff, and I didn't get a lot of that even on first watch.

The Benders is a good example of when I was scared -- there were a lot of jump scares, and a real sense of not having any idea what was going to happen because it was so outside the realm of the usual case for them.

Yeah -- I get scared for their hearts, not their bodies, ya know?

I get scared of how sad Dean will get, what lengths he'll go to for Sam, and what lengths Sam will go to in order to "redeem" himself.

Precisement.