u/tribridcitou

Supernatural has a really heartbreaking parallel that I only noticed by accident when I was looking for some scenes from the show for an edit.

So, in Season 5, Episode 4, Dean travels five years into the future and finds an apocalyptic world where the Croatoan virus has devastated humanity, and Sam has already said yes to Lucifer.

In this episode, Dean also meets his future self and realizes that he has become a cold man, willing to do anything to defeat his enemies, including sacrificing his friends. They have a confrontation scene where 2009 Dean says:

“Oh man, something is broken in you. You’re making decisions I would never make. I wouldn’t sacrifice my friends.”

He hates what he sees. He literally can’t recognize himself in his alternate future self.

But then we get to Season 15, many years later. In Episode 17, Dean is ready to sacrifice Jack, and when Sam confronts him, he says:

“I don’t care if Billie gets what she wants. I don’t, man. I trade it all. I trade them all for Chuck. In a heartbeat.”

Seeing that broke my heart, because despite fighting against his fate, he can’t escape it. He ended up becoming exactly what he had feared all those years before.

Does anyone have any recommendations for dark historical romances on AO3 (or anywhere else that isn’t impossible to find)?

I mean actually dark romances. I’d prefer something set in the 19th century, but I’m fine with earlier periods too.

I read Lemonade and absolutely loved it — it’s the best one I’ve read so far. I tried The Silver Devil, but I didn’t really like it. I’ve also tried a few other historical romances, but I don’t connect with them as much when they’re set in very medieval periods.

I’m looking for something really dark, with an MMC who is genuinely dark and evil.

Then, I need help from more experienced women (and men who want to give their input).

Well, I'm a 19-year-old girl. I lost my virginity this year. Unfortunately, the guy didn't care that it was my first time. In fact, he was pretty rough and not patient at all. I didn't feel any pleasure, and when I got home I cried because I felt like a dirty woman.

I thought of this experience as something complicated, because obviously I wouldn't enjoy sex with someone who didn't understand my boundaries. Some time passed and I had sex again. He was more gentle and it was a nice experience, but I didn't feel any pleasure either. Both times there was stimulation, like oral and masturbation. I got wet, but I didn't even feel a tickle or a spark of pleasure.

Then I had a third experience (all of them happened over the course of several months and with different partners). I didn't feel anything again, and in the middle of it I started staring at the ceiling and wishing I could go home while hating myself for being so bad at something I had spent years romanticizing.

The first two times had something in common. During sex, they restrained me in some way. The first time, we did the "legs-up" position and I was in pain, so I tried to push him away but couldn't. He was stronger than me and I felt powerless, but I blamed myself because I think if I had told him, he would have stopped. I was afraid of disappointing him, though, so I just kept murmuring "calm down" while smiling and touching his stomach, trying to make him understand. The second time, the guy was touching me with his hands between my legs and started penetrating me with his fingers. It started to hurt, and I faced the same dilemma. This time I tried to pull his hand away, but he didn't stop. I couldn't enforce my boundary.

The third time there was none of that, but it was so uneventful that I caught myself reflecting on my life during sex.

I know maybe my partners weren't ideal, but not all of the intimacy was bad. Only part of it was, and even so, I didn't feel anything.

I've touched myself and managed to have orgasms alone, but during sex nothing worked. Please help me, am I broken somehow? Is there anything I can do to fix myself?

Rewatching some episodes, I’ve realized how many storylines were completely wasted. Some of them could have turned into amazing plots, like Jesse’s story or Eve, the Mother of All Monsters.

What storyline do you think should have been explored more?

I'm new here, although I've already made a few posts about Supernatural. I really like Sam, so I tend to talk more about him and also read more about him, but some things have started to become apparent to me, and to some extent, they bother me.

Well, even before downloading this app, I always thought that Sam's traumas were largely overlooked by the plot and by the characters themselves. It didn't seem like there was much room for that in the writing. But whenever we got a glimpse into Sam's feelings (which was rare after season 9, when they started making him seem more like a supporting character in Dean's story), we realized that he still carries an enormous amount of pain that he doesn't really deal with. He just keeps pushing it deeper into the back of his mind.

Whenever one part of the fandom brings this up, another part immediately starts saying that everyone's trauma was ignored, that it wasn't something exclusive to Sam, or even comparing his sadness and emotional burden to those of other characters. So, in a way, they're always trying to make Sam seem less important, like he suffered less, maybe because they still hold onto the idea that he somehow deserved what happened to him.

Maybe I'm just crazy, but that's how I feel.

Well, lately I've been thinking a lot about this. I just finished reading "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King, and ever since then I've been thinking a lot about the author's works. Ironically, I also just joined Reddit, and this community made me obsessed with Supernatural all over again (if I ever stopped being obsessed with it in the first place).

Well, a fanfic writer's mind never stops working, and after being very well fed by AO3, I feel like my imagination is flying way too high and way too far.

Imagine a Supernatural and The Shining crossover? Actually, I was thinking more about the creatures from Doctor Sleep, because let's be honest, Rose is terrifying, and she would get a lot of mileage out of Supernatural.

I have a very strong image in my mind, like a parallel story. In this scenario, the boys are still young, Dean is 15 and Sam is 11. John takes Dean on a hunt and leaves Sam at the house of a trusted acquaintance. In this town, some trailers have just arrived for the season. You can already guess who's staying in those trailers, right?

Well, Sam was a very kind boy and trusted adults who seemed to listen to him and understand him. He would be the perfect victim for the True Knot, especially because after watching Supernatural, I've never had any doubt that if these were shared universes, Sam would definitely be a Shiner. He would have a strong shine, maybe something like Abra, since Sam had that whole connection to Hell and Lucifer.

I think they would try to take him and fail. I still don't know why, since my mind hasn't created the rest of the scenario yet. But I feel like he would lose his memory, and the story would jump to the future, where they would investigate the disappearances of children in another town. There would be a connection to Rose and the others, but they would only discover it after the investigation, and then the truth would be revealed. It would be interesting, because Sam would be an unfinished meal that could satisfy the group's constant hunger for quite a while. On top of that, he would now be an adult and would already have all his emotional and intellectual baggage, and would know much more about his own abilities.

I'm thinking maybe sometime during season six, or around the middle of season three? I don't know, I don't think I've developed that part yet.

What do you guys think? What would you add, if you think the idea is interesting?

I would really love to read something about this, but apparently no one has ever written anything about it, and I don't know if I'd be capable of doing something good with this material.

So, I watched this series a long time ago, but I always end up going back to it. I've never felt anything quite like it since. I tried watching Midnight Mass and Bly Manor, but even then, it wasn't the same.

There's something about the story that really gets to me. I think it's because I'm someone who's extremely attached to family, especially the bond between siblings (considering my favorite show is Supernatural haha), so I immediately connected with their pain. I relate to a lot of it.

But anyway, when we watch it, we see so many visual horror elements, the Bent-Neck Lady, the Hat Man, the woman from the 1920s, things that are genuinely scary. And I know Olivia went insane because of the house, I know it's based on a book and that there are many psychological nuances that make it more complicated than simply being a ghost, but what scared me the most wasn't any of that.

It wasn't even the way they dealt with grief.

I was afraid of time. Of how destructive and fast it is, and how the series shows that it isn't a continuous line. It's an element that falls all around us, in Nell's words, like rain or confetti. It's not parallel, it's messy, like loose pages from a book that can form a great story, but are always out of order.

Is time really like that? Inconsistent?

Once I watched a video on YouTube. It was a channel about supernatural stories, and a woman was telling a story from when she was a child. She was at her grandmother's house and answered a phone call. She talked to a woman who asked about her family and her grandmother. It was a simple phone call, and she didn't recognize the woman's voice. Then life went on and nothing happened. But one day, when she was already an adult, the woman decided to call her grandmother to talk. She dialed the number, and a child answered. A little girl. The woman asked about her family, her grandmother, and got the same answers. She hung up, but then the truth hit her like a slap. She remembered that the girl's words were the same words she had said many years earlier, exactly the same. And later, her grandmother told her that there had been no one else in the house with her, no little girl.

It made me wonder, could time be the greatest haunting in Hill House? Playing with our minds, making so many versions of ourselves coexist?

Is time our haunting? Can we haunt ourselves?

I believe it can.

Recently I remembered a scene from Supernatural that went over my head when I watched it for the first time. I think they were about to open a rift to another universe, and Sam was extremely hesitant because of Lucifer. Castiel then says that he had also been used by Lucifer and that it was one of the worst feelings in the world, but that they had to do it because they both had a responsibility for freeing the devil again.

The thing is, that scene really got to me. I started thinking about how that simple line invalidated years of suffering and psychological terror that the character went through. It was never just about being possessed or even about the cage. What happened to Sam was long and destructive. He had been afraid his entire life, and there were always things lurking over him.

The demons, before his true destiny was revealed, and that followed him everywhere, through hunts, college, probably long before that. Everyone talked about what he would become, the villain he would turn into, what he was supposed to be and what role he was supposed to play. It was exhausting. I think even those of us watching could feel that inevitable pressure, as if they were pushing him toward a predetermined ending.

After his visions, and being a special child, he had the demon blood, then we saw him become corrupted and later free the devil, followed by the spiral of guilt, then Hell and a long journey to get his soul back, and then almost going insane because of the hallucinations. And that was just the stuff that was somehow connected to Lucifer.

For him, it wasn't just about being possessed. This whole story took years of his life and almost destroyed it (sometimes it actually did). He lost everything he had built, he didn't get to decide, and many times he didn't even get to want, another path, another way out.

Cas knew about this suffering. He saw a lot of it. I don't know if his intention was just to encourage him, but it wasn't the same situation, much less the same context. Both situations were terrible, but Castiel didn't go through even a fraction of the persecution Sam went through because of Lucifer.

I think this scene was wasted. They could have given Sam some space to finally talk about his trauma, because it's obvious to everyone how much it affected him.

Hey guys, how is it going?

So, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Whenever we talk about Supernatural, there’s this huge sense of nostalgia for the early seasons, and I’ve heard many people comment on how Sam used to be "softer" or "gentler", but I’ve never agreed with that opinion.

I feel like his character in the first seasons was extremely angry and impulsive (even though he had his reasons, like the demon blood and his inevitable destiny as Lucifer's vessel, or being a special child before that). There were moments when, despite still being the "brains" of the operation, he seemed extremely prone to a type of violence that even Dean wasn't prepared for, often being stubborn about completely radical ideas. He was untrustworthy and paranoid, and he clearly had a lot of issues controlling his anger.As the seasons went on, and I believe this was much more of a natural character growth rather than a writing mistake, Sam seemed to be "softened". His empathy wasn't just directed at humans, kids he identified with, or even animals anymore (poor Amelia's dog), but also toward the monsters they hunted and any sentient being.

His stance seemed much more flexible, considering the dark personality that Dean developed more and more with every trauma they both suffered. In my view, I think he shaped himself into someone calmer, the conscience of the duo who had to keep it together during the toughest situations so his brother, who was now extremely affected by so many losses, wouldn't lose control.

I feel like Sam matured a lot, and that Dean, despite being very experienced, got lost in his own grief and anger.