I don't know about anyone else, but I could write all the fics after this episode.

And then it got even sadder! Adam Glass did say to bring tissues, though.

What was the preview for next week? It always gets cut off here because it's not a "real" CW station but something called ME TV that shows reruns and then shows CW shows in the evening. Only after the show they show the promo for the next night's main show (like Arrow) a promo for the local Fox News and then the "Next Week on" whatever show gets cut off.

Next week, Sheriff Jody calls in D&S because of a maybe-dragon which is eating virgins; they infiltrate a chastity club and become born-again virgins.

And this week's ep was sweet, though while watching I was wondering how many "JOHN WUZ ABUSING ABUSER OH NOOOOOEEESS!" fics it would promulgate.

Ugh. I hate the people who feel this is clear abuse message. Or clear "he leaves them with too little money."

I believe that they had barely enough money to get by, so Dean wanted to turn it into a proper amount to get by, and he fucked up. John doesn't pick him up because he's got a thing going, Dean's going to get fed and taken care of, Sam doesn't need to be watched, and a little bit of different discipline is Just Fine, Thanks. I do think those were werewolf marks, or rugaru, or whatever. Not physical abuse.

Sam didn't get told because then he's going to think it was an option, and I can't believe it took Sam three seconds to work out that Dean came because he loved him so much, and FAMILY. WE note, as he grows, that even though escaping his father was apealling at 16, ten years later, it was not and he wanted him right back in his life more than most of us have ours.

Clearly that was his first kiss with a GIRL. I will be disappointed if I don't see that fic.

My favourite WIP right now has Cas as a serial foster home offender that's finally found a home with Miss Missouri and Gabe, Zeke, Alfie, etc, in the same trailer park as the Winchesters. She does teeny things like have Cassie and Lisa be a) really nice and b) Dean's girlfriends and c) like Cas or when they share a bed that one time and Dean's got morning wood Cas tries to shove him off, exclaiming "Your dick is poking into my leg!" and Dean's embarrassed reply is "Ugh! I had my junk all over you! I'm so sorry!" John does hit the kids, but what Cas knows that the boys don't is that he cries about it too. She's given everyone layers, and I am a gushing fangirl commenter Every Single Chapter.

But this episode will give her feels in her fic place for sure.

I never even thought those wrist marks WEREN'T werewolfy in origin, but you're right; someone will think they were from John.

So here's what I got from Bad Boys that I am sure someone on Tumblr is disagreeing with entirely right now (not that I'm going to post this on Tumblr):

Sam, who ran away from home (initially I wrote Dean...) and got a dog that Dean didn't learn about until recently is so reflexive about his immersion into his brother's life that he doesn't countenance for a moment that anyone calls Dean a nickname that he he wouldn't know. Top that off with the lying about the whole petty incarceration Sam's starting this episode on unsure footing.

It could have been a Something WIcked type of situation where the normal pushes and pulls q on a teenaged boy overrode his mandate to parent Sam and he just wanted to play cards. Maybe there's something he wanted to buy that he couldn't afford--either for him or Sam. Maybe it wasn't going to be enough money for some reason--poor planning, hunt took too long.

*I* don't blame John for that happening, and I don't blame Dean. Shit happens. And Dean probably tried to make it better with the tools he had to hand. If this show ever hinted at him tricking for money as a teenager I will throw up in my mouth a little. That's for fanfic alone, thanks. Canon's bleak enough as it is. Hustling cards failed, stealing failed.

So John leaves him. Is John mad? Does John think a dose of juvie or whatever punishment he's going to get will do a boy good? With his former Marine current drill sergeant mode of thinking, this is the conclusion that I come to. He's not going to be overly sentimental about an absence of two weeks, and he trusts Dean to be on the job and protect himself (as he did, dutifully, warding the beds) and hopefully learn a lesson.

The bruises were from a werewolf. I don't want to hear it.

Dean's not seeing himself in Timmy, as far as we've been shown. Is he seeing Sam? I don't think so, although Sammy was bookish, he seems to have been a loner by choice and hung out with kids that needed people on his side. So that's just Dean and his pull to and facility with kids. I like that they still play this, and the running leap into Dean's arms at the end made my heartstrings clench.

Dean's sixteen, he's with a girl who plays the guitar, and he wants to get away from the family business and be a rockstar. At no point do we see him express any interest in the instrument, and the one instance we've seen of his singing was deliberately bad. So I'm seeing the kid who loves his father's records and the rock and roll life here, not someone who's looking to turn either love of or talent at music into a great career. Some kids want to be astronauts, some want to be archeologists, Dean does not want to need to finish high school for his, clearly. He segues into a mechanic here, his father's previous occupation, so even as he wants to give up the family business, his life has been so sheltered that he impractically wants to play his father's music, or more practically pick up his father's occupation.

I think right there we're not supposed to feel sad at a dream that passed him by, at a profession his father prevented him from having. I think we're to see that he could dream--that he had boyish impractical desires and was tempted to do boyish impractical things to make them come true. The audience is the grownup in this scene, not fellow adults who let their dreams pass them by as well.

This is reinforced, IMO, by the conversation with the adult Robin, where she reveals that the dreams she had at 16 weren't her either--that where she is right now, doing both her father's job and her mother's is the right place for her to be, and the right things to do. Is it deliberate that she's working at both her parents' professions? Is this saying something about both hunting and being a Man of Letters? Certainly, though, the parallel of we're doing the right things now is spelt out here.

At age 16, it's the love of Sammy that takes him back on the hunt with some regret, but without ambivalence, IMO. It wasn't about family, it was Sammy. But at age 26, it was about family. Once he'd gotten Sammy, he needed his father back (continued...)

( continues...) as well. That's what adulthood had taught him was important to protect.

At the very end we're shown a mother who loves her son so much she stays around to protect her son, but she's been driven mad by the trauma of dying. It takes not saving him (since there'll be another crisis around the corner) but him releasing her for her to move on and stop hurting people.

I'd draw parallels here with Home, when another mother stuck around, but for a much longer time, in a very specific place, and her only motivation was to save her son. What made Mary different from Timmy's mother? They're both horrific deaths with young children barely saved...I can't suggest much. Maybe knowing about what makes a bad ghost helped her not go all Shining on anyone, and just step in when Sam needed her the most, and then disappear.

That's two really sad episodes in a row. This had way less comic relief in it than last week to boot.

I'm reading this epic fic--it started promisingly, but I read the header while it was being posted, so I didn't know there were 200k words. AND THE STATUS QUO HASN'T CHANGED IN FOREVER. The sex was fun, the characterisation interesting...

And now they've gone back on Cas--makes his first couple chapters make no sense at all, and she's pulling surprises out of her hat. Tight, tight, POV, but how can you have two neurotic sexually active characters never think about being HIV positive? And I mean that in the plural--they blurt it out to each other and then it's one more reason they're so perfect for each other--I think the middle 100k is just a litany of the physical responses they get from each other, admitting their fucked up pasts, and explaining more love than can possibly be healthy. Oh, and mentioning the conflict they're hoping will go away if they ignore it.

But the funniest thing is that she has had Dean put his knees together not once, but twice so far. Yeah, never gonna happen, sweetie.

But the funniest thing is that she has had Dean put his knees together not once, but twice so far. Yeah, never gonna happen, sweetie.

They can't reach each other! Can they? It'd be as effective as unfolding paper. Still ending up creased.