I cannot believe it's been SIX? MONTHS? Since the finale?? Time is a flat circle, etc.
I've been voraciously into SPN fandom again ever since. I started a full-scale rewatch of the entire series. I have been reading reams of fic. I've been lurking on SPN Tumblr and SPN Twitter. I've amassed dozens of thousands of likes.
I decided today to change my Tumblr url/name from psycholinguistic to balefully, which I've been sitting on for...oh, six years? I finally did it!! And I may start porting all my fics to AO3 as well, if I can pick one to start with and figure out how I want to do it.
I don't really have much to say, I just wanted to Mark the Occasion, and say thanks to everyone for your amazing comments on my reaction post after 15.20, it's been so fun to chat with you here like the good ol' days.
Current Music
Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby - Cigarettes After Sex
It's been almost exactly eight years since I posted a Supernatural episode reaction on this here LJ. I stopped watching the show after that—I got behind, then promised I would catch up and never leave but did neither of those things.
In the intervening years I moved to Tumblr and got deeply into One Direction fandom, but stopped being able to write not long after the band ended. These days I post sporadically on my Tumblr; most of my fannish interaction is about The Untamed and via Discord or just gchats/whatsapps/telegrams with my friends.
Of course I miss the culture of the old LJ days, and I miss being part of something the way I felt with SPN fandom back then. It's so difficult to connect the same way with Tumblr, which isn't really built for the long-form navel-gazing that was my bread and butter as a 20-something, and I always have trouble formulating responses to asks or reaching out via chat.
Anyway. The reason I'm posting now is, of course, because the SPN series finale aired on Thursday.
I cannot believe I've been watching this show for 15 years. lazy_daze and I first started watching together during the mid-season 1 hiatus, so we binged up through Shadow and then watched weekly from Hell House on. I would get up at 4 AM the day after it aired (at uni in London) and torrent the new episode as soon as it was up post-premiering in the US. Sam and I watched them as soon as possible those mornings, before lectures. I still have such vivid memories of that excitement!
I stopped watching early in season 8, as evidenced by my last episode reaction here. I just couldn't slog through it anymore; I was too much a samgirl at heart, among other things. It was a long time before I started again. I tried to catch up after season 9 aired, but I started back at the beginning of season 8 and didn't even make it as far as I had the first time.
Eventually in spring of 2016, when season 11 was finishing up, I tried one more time. There had been some buzz around really great recent episodes with a lot of old-school wincest vibes, and I couldn't resist. I started at the beginning of season 8 again, but that time I watched with valiant which was the motivation I needed to stick with it. We caught all the way up to the end of season 11—the season of Baby and Red Meat, to this day still two of my favourite eps of all time. Part of why it worked was also just that I'd had enough emotional distance from the fandom and from the show that I could enjoy it for what it was. It was awful sometimes (often), ridiculous and goofy...and poorly written. I consistently felt like Sam got shafted (so to speak) as I always used to when I was watching it the first time. But staying away from SPN fandom and just watching it with a friend was a great boundary—otherwise the fandom's obsession with Castiel and specifically with Destiel would've pushed me way, way away again. I had to actively disengage from that to be able to enjoy the show.
How sad, you know, that the SPN fandom which had once been such a font of joy for me was something I bristled so vehemently at. It was like this vocal majority was watching a completely different show than I was, and always had been. To me, it seemed like there were so many fans fundamentally misunderstanding what the show was about, and what it valued. Even if you don't ship Sam/Dean, their relationship is so clearly the point, the third main character...
I've regularly caught up on seasons of SPN after they're over since then. Every time I have I re-learn, by watching the show, that as scared as I am of them throwing away Sam and Dean's relationship as the core of everything, they don't. So many people paint Castiel as a much, much bigger part of the show than he is, and his relationship with Dean as so much more important than it is. And then I'd watch a season and be like, oh right. They're watching a different show than I am, I forgot. None of that is true.
I stalled out for a bit in season 14, I don't even really know why, but eventually caught up in time to be able to watch season 15 episodes in chunks, and then, after the pandemic break, as they aired. So now here we are.
It's over. What a wild, wild ride. I was 19 when I started watching this show, and now I'm 34. Supernatural has been airing my entire adult life. I met so many of my dearest friends through this show, I learned how to write, I grew up. I took the bad with the good. I quit when I needed to, and I came back when I wanted to.
Sorry that's so long, I guess I had a lot of feelings, to put it mildly. What better way to express them than to come back here, though! And I also owe a Sam/Dean fic to kelios which I'm about four or five years late on, and WOW am I full of inspiration to finish it now. Maybe this is what it'll take to get me writing again...
So. Um. Hi? I pretty much live over on Tumblr these days (psycholinguistic!), but. mediaville wrote some One Direction fic because it is physically impossible for me to shut up about Bressie/Niall, and I sort of helped, and yes. This happened.
SPN people, despair not, I'm going to marathon Season 8 real soon and I'll be making ep reaction posts per usual. ^_^
Title: What turns on your lights Authors:balefully and mediaville Pairing: Niall Breslin/Niall Horan Rating: NC-17 Word Count: 9,023
Summary: "Look, this isn't like your band. I want—I want so much more than that." He clenches his jaw, looks down at his hands. "And I know I shouldn't. You're so young, and I'm—not. I'm supposed to be looking out for you, and not—feeling like this."
I am two weeks behind on SPN and it is very unfortunate. :( I am going to catch up this weekend, I promise! I will make reaction posts after! I will never leave you, etc. etc.!
HOWEVER I am posting at the moment to say that er I appear to have gotten a Tumblr and I sort of actually use it and stuff?? I'm psycholinguistic over there, because sadly someone else snapped up balefully and I have failed at attempting to get it off them. I WON'T GIVE UP THOUGH.
Anyway so um I am multi-fannish or whatever and tend to reblog random things and House things and Teen Wolf things and SPN things and Glee things and recently, embarrassing amounts of One Direction things?? I'M NOT SORRY! Okay, I am, I am very sorry. I just can't help it. :( My life has fallen apart, clearly. But there is a blond, left-handed, guitar-playing Irish one. He's my spirit animal. I am a lost cause.
SO YES I am still new to the ways of Tumblr but I like how chill it is so if you are into the jams I'm laying down, you should like follow me or whatever, and if I am into the jams you're laying down, I'll like follow you or whatever. :D! You can also/alternatively drop a comment with what your name is over there if, like me, you are multi-nomial and it's not obvs who you are.
In other news, I just poured a pot of ramen into a too-small bowl because I am a GENIUS and it overflowed all over my kitchen and ugh ugh ugh. Stupid stupidd stupidddddd girl smelly ramen house.
First of all, YAY WE ARE HOME SAFE! lazy_daze and I are, I mean! And of course our first order of business after a grueling 12 hours of driving was to download and watch the SPN episode we missed while camping. I don't think I did a proper reaction for the episode last week either (which I watched at Wincon!) so I will just mention what I remember of that one here, too.
Summary: Every war has casualties, and Sam and Dean are nothing if not warriors. Scarred both mentally and physically, they find themselves settling into civilian life in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia among the charming townspeople, local history, and peaceful mountain views. Sam finds work at an auto shop and Dean stumbles into a job at the occult bookstore on Main Street with a familiar grimmoire in the window. Things are deceptively quiet as they patch each other up and come to terms with domesticity, the only contact with their old life a quest to rebuild Bobby's library -- until a case crosses their path, the kind they thought they were done with forever. They find themselves once again fighting a vengeful spirit as well as their deeper feelings for each other. Only one is a battle they can win.
Notes and Warnings: Written for spn_j2_bigbang. Contains casefile gore and violence. Some mental illness and physical disability. Vague spoilers for Season 7.
Eternal squishy love-filled thanks to salty_catfish, the best artist a girl could ever ask for. She went above and beyond the call of duty and kept me on track and I am still in complete and total awe of her talent. I am not worthyyyy!! Also enormous thanks to beckaandzac and valiant for the traditional last-minute overhauling of a hopeless mess, and to lazy_daze for input and email-loop-hosting! Couldn't do it without you, ladies!
nerdy
tired
exhausted
indescribable
accomplished