Okay, so I finally got to watch My Bloody Valentine.

• Oh boy, Dean's little quirked smile after he does the human-heart Valentine thing, in response to Sam's younger-brother eyeroll? Brilliant. I feel this is the encapsulation of their entire dynamic. Morbid, a little creepy, papering over cracks and schisms with jokes, fixated on tying themselves together, and overall just adorable.



• 'I'm there now.'
  'I can see that.'
  '...'
  '...'
  'I'm going to hang up now.'
  
  Hee! Castiel is slowly but surely morphing into the wisecracking, deadpan sidekick angel that he has been in roadtrip fic for months now, hamburger addiction and all.


I love that they show Castiel being the new kid in the gang and having to do all the donkey work. See: Dean and Sam ganging up on him to make him go comfort Cupid. And speaking of, I adore what they've done with the idea of Cupids. I was half-hoping that he had in fact gone off the rails as further world-building in terms of the apocalypse; even the cute heavenly bodies are sliding into chaos. But he was brilliant, and I loved Castiel's long-suffering reaction to him. Cupids are the overenthusiastic wannabe losers in the highschool hierarchy of heaven! Which would make Castiel the cool, creepy loner, Anna the popular, bitchy good girl gone rogue, Uriel the thinking man's jock, and Gabriel the tormented hot boy with a troubled family past. I like this game!


• Heaven has a eugenics program. I find this unutterably amusing. Natural selection my ass.



• They gave Famine a Good Omens-style entourage?! ♥



• When Sam sees the Famine demon, just, the entire way his face changes, down to the animal look in his eyes means that all of a sudden, he's not just Sam anymore, he is the antichrist, scenting an emissary of the devil. Two supernatural entities colliding. The raw power he exudes, that is just phenomenal acting and directing. I especially loved the way this was emphasized by the way Sam reacted when the demon called him 'Winchester', twisting back down into something human, remembering he is Sam for an instant, before the fighting instincts kick back in and he is Boy King once more.
  
  
  



• 'Wait your turn.' Chills, man. Sheer, fucking badassery. And single-handedly pwning Famine, actual, biblical, apocalyptic Famine? SHIT JUST GOT REAL.
  
  See, there is Dean-And-Sam, and who they are when they are with each other, who they need to be, who they remind each other to be, and then there are the Sam and Dean who are exempt from each other, mutually exclusive, the Boy King and the Zombie Martyr, who can never intersect, because if they did, that would be The End.



• Okay, here's my thinking, when it's said that Dean is dead inside, I think it's meant in a way that says: Yes, there is nothing material or mortal left on Earth that he cares for anymore, nothing that makes him feel human or joyous, everything that gives him hope for the future has been stripped away and flayed against the wall of two immovable forces. But there's still Sammy. And pie.



• God, Sam's wailing at the end was just heartrending. I feel like writing fic of Castiel sitting outside the cell all night and day and night again, still as only angels trapped on earth can be, fighting down Jimmy's instincts to flee and finally, finally going into that room and telling the roiling, breaking Sam just what he did and when or if Dean ever comes back down, he will find Castiel sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading a book to Sam - Hemingway maybe, or Harry Potter - in his quiet gravelly voice, because it is the only thing he can do.
  
  
• In that scene at the end, if Dean was truly going through the motions with regard to Sam, he would have been able to stay, would have been able to tolerate that screaming, he would not have stumbled out into a junkyard and begged an absent God for help in a way that almost made me believe he was about to say 'Yes.'
  
  Just typing that makes me realize just how much Dean's narrative at this point parallels that of Jesus. This was the garden, Michael is the crucifixion. I guess I'm not really saying anything that isn't blatantly obvious to most viewers by now, but ... I kind of find this reiteration of Dean=Jesus compelling rather than overdone.
  
  The story is a horror story, from the first season to now it has evolved, but retained that one vital element. And now it is rewriting biblical narratives as horror stories with an irreverent and morbid view to perverting the usual awe for the divine beings into something much more Dogma-esque.

Also, vid rec:

Nowhere to Stop.

My comment was that it brought to the forefront the chilling, but subtle horror of Castiel's situation, trapped in a world he doesn't belong to, in skin that isn't his.
Quite apart from the beautiful, bone-chilling skill with which this is put together, the song is just terrifyingly perfect.