So there's this library on my campus, it's a secondary library, far away from the main one, sequestered away in an old corner, and in this library, there's a floor where hardly anybody ever goes. It's full of the most amazing books, in languages I can't begin to recognize, let alone read. I love it. There are, however, some books in English, old, old, old books. Wandering around, as I do sometimes in between study bouts, pulling random books off the shelves, I came across a small, red book that was in tatters, and full of old Irish spells and curses. This is one:


A Charm against Accidents, Fire, Tempests, Water, Knife or Lance.

"Jesus, Savior of men. In Jesus trust, and in Mary trust truly for all grace.
This is the measure of the wounds of Christ upon the Cross, which was brought to Constantinople to the Emperor as a most precious relic, so that no evil enemy might have power over him. And whoever reads it, or hears it, cannot be hurt by fire or tempest, or the knife, or the lance; neither can the devil have power over him, nor will he die an untimely death, but safety from all dangers will be his to the end."

• Man. I really hope that we get a balls-out, cards on the table, hard-drinking, T.S Eliot inspired, no pulled-punches apocalypse. I want season 5 to open with a bloodied and charred angel stumbling down a cracked road, wings dragging across the melting tarmac, to pan out across a desert landscape, to see a smoking sign declaring 'You are now leaving L.A, city of Angels.'
  
  None of this season 3 'the devil's gate opened, and nothing's really happening as a consequence except some demons having a bit of fun' nonsense. It doesn't break the budget to say a plague's broken out in Britain, to say Australia's at war with Japan, to make American cities the new version of seals, falling, tumbling one by one without showing every epic battle. Nobody ever goes for the full-on apocalypse.
  
  Come, on Supernatural, game on.




• Having just finished watching Carnivàle, you know what could be really awesome? Ron Moore on the writing team. Kripke can keep a hold on his myth arc, thankyou very much, but Ron Moore can do apocalyptic imagery and ongoing, creepy, bloody devastation like no other.




• In Sam's condescension, there is the evolution of his belief throughout the season that Dean is weak made manifest, but presented in such a way that it is a statement of fact. It is a fact that women, on average, tend to have less sheer physiological strength than men. Sam, by his nature (or is it nurture?), is stronger. When he talked of Dean being weak, it wasn't contemptuous, as it was in his siren-fuelled declaration in Sex and Violence, it was a simple statement of fact. I occupy a higher hierarchy of power than you.
  
  The whole episode of WtLB, seems to be geared toward establishing Sam's frame of mind - and that of the audience - to perceive him as in the ascendant, on his way to becoming something monstrously powerful. At the very end, after the harrowing process of internal rationalizations, conflict and dialogue with the hallucinations, after his last attempts at justification to an outside actor failed, he eschewed the need to explain at all, and embraced the role assigned him: Monster, the powerful, necessary evil.




• Sam was so convinced that there was no 'after' for him. He was fully prepared to sacrifice his humanity and become a monster to do what he thought was right. And it was all for nothing. The demon blood, it was all a ruse. God. Sam.




• Sam as a nuclear warhead. I just loved that analogy from WtLB, because Sam really is the blunt instrument here, and Dean the sharp one, with the imagery of Michael's sword/spear.



• Dean by Alastair, Sam by Ruby, both have no changed from what they were, have elements of the demonic within them, Sam moreso than Dean. I hope that they continue with this line next season, that we see more and more of Sam as not-quite-human, Dean reluctantly, bit-by-bit becoming the holy warrior of myth.




• I adored naughty-schoolboy look on Dean's face after he got caught breaking the angel. With the beer and the hamburgers, the unrelenting demands to see Sam and the fierce morality, there was a brilliant amount of classic Dean in Lucifer Rising.




• WtLB: The hallucination of Mary read very much to me as the unholy mother of the Antichrist. In Sam's mind, she becomes the epitome of an undoubting believer in his compromised morality and methods, the inversion of Mary, mother of Christ, undoubting believer in the absolute goodness of God's laws.
  
  Also on Mary, she says she's from a long line of hunters. Which brings to light fascinating questions on the hunting community from which Sam and Dean were kept sequestered. How do hunter's families work? Do they generally have family homes, home bases, from which they sally forth, each having a local sphere that reaches as far as the next reliable hunting community, so each unit doesn't have to travel ridiculous distances constantly? Most would not stay mobile, not with families. So why did John? Because he knew about Sam. But how? How long and how far back has John known about Sam, and for the love of all that is unholy, how did he know about Sam? Have I missed some explanation of this?




• Speaking on the good old days, I loved that we got to see YED, though I wish they'd gotten an actor who could pull of charismatic and fuck-you attitude rather than seeming so ... oily? Slimy? I don't know, he just felt a little too minion-y to me. But how much do I love that his twisty, evil-plan-of-doom was so effectively and brilliantly laid out that it pulled itself off even without him pulling the strings after he died? So much.




• I loved that Ruby was playing the long game. In my personal canon, she is one of YED's children, a Meg mark 2. Or perhaps Meg was Ruby mark 2. And I loved that she had cared for Sam, in her own fucked up way, that she was such a devotee that she couldn't conceive of the idea that Sam wouldn't understand, wouldn't forgive her in time.
  
  The imagery of her death was disturbing and unnecessary. I think the writers were trying to use it as a way to demonstrate to Dean that Sam was back 'with him', which is even worse, making her death a method for bringing the brothers closer together in some kind of 'bonding'. Ugh. But my love for Ruby's crazy, fanatical, devious self remains unmarred.




• Chuck and Castiel! Facing down the archangels! I nearly died laughing at that look Castiel gave Chuck when he touched him.



• RUFUS.



• BOBBY.



• BOYS.

-- --


Deluge.

Coda to SPN 4.22




It’s raining when they stumble from the chapel, warm rain, too warm to be natural, with mist coating the air, brushing up against their skin like a living creature, twisting around the cracked road, still shaking with aftershocks, tarmac shearing up from the ground in miniature mountains and chasms that hadn’t been there before.

Before.

Dean remembers before, in the same vague, common way that he knows some families are nuclear and Afghanistan is at war. Time seemed to slow, in that light, Sam’s hand gripping his shoulder, eyes clear and holy in the blaze, unblinking and hypnotized. Light. Dean had never seen light of that particular shade before, not when Pamela’s eyes burned out, not when angels burned through the gore and grime of hell.

It burned and seared, twisting through the pores in his skin, gliding up his spine, freezing the world, changing everything and nothing, roaring through his chest, his blood boiling in his veins, and he could have sworn he felt bubbles cracking beneath the surface of his skin, sickening vibrations crawling up his belly, and down again, dizzyingly down, down, down.

Everything was falling apart, exploding under the unrelenting wall of light, and there nothing but need; he needed, needed – Sam, Sam was there, crashing against him, fists tight in his shirt, hot like no human could be and still be breathing, the heat burning through the three million layers of clothing he always fucking wore, his lips on Dean’s, harsh and biting, cracking with the heat, and salt and blood and pain was flooding between their mouths, blood sliding free down Dean’s chin, across his throat, hot and slick.

And then, just as suddenly, the light was gone, and it was like the whole world had gone dark, and the chapel shivered like a ghost, snapping in and out of a shadowy existence, the altar blurred, the floor not quite solid beneath his knees.

Silence settled like a shroud across the bloodied chapel. Lucifer was free. Somewhere. Somewhere that was not this chapel, and that was all Dean could seem to focus on, a strange sense of keening loss bolting through him.

After what felt like hours, and for all he knew, it might as well have been, Sam hauled him upright, hands still twisted in his shirt.

Dean let him, feeling his head loll, shoulders slumping, he felt all this with a detached kind of impotence, but he couldn’t seem to move; there was a magnificent kind of lethargy dragging him down, and oh, he remembered this feeling, it was a feeling that hell had taught him how to feel and that Alastair had taught him how to embrace.

He swore, something even he couldn’t quite make out in the thick muck of the air, and flung an arm cross the small of Sam’s back, and together they tripped and stumbled and struggled their way out.

The rain on Sam’s skin sizzled, evaporating into steam, and Dean could feel the heat dissipating beneath his hands as they walked further and further from the chapel.

They reached something, some point far enough away to satisfy Sam’s bloody-minded march forward, and they fell together, arms twisted, hands scrabbling, Dean’s head buried in the curve of Sam’s neck.

They lay together in the rain, the black dirt moist and crumbling beneath, the sky invisible above.

“This isn’t how it was meant to go.” Sam’s voice was cracked and so small, so desperate, so goddamned confused, and all Dean wanted to do was punch him in the face.

Instead, he reached out a hand, and pretended that the water he wiped off Sam’s cheek was rain.

The rest could wait until morning. Stars shifted like fireflies through mist above them. Sam was breathing, harsh and slow.

It was enough, for now.




--


Title and cut text are from the quotation attributed to Madame de Pompadour: "au reste, après nous, le déluge" which was used to convey the notion of: ruin, if you like, when we are dead and gone, or, when I am dead the deluge may come for aught I care. (Source.)