That vamp is not the person who should have killed Dean. Listen, if Dean had to die like, 20 minutes in by the hand of an old enemy, there is only one character I can think of who should have done it -- Jacob Pond.
During the episode, they’re not on a hunt at all. It’s all just fluff, lazy days of talking about Cas, Jack, and how they’re missed and doing laundry, cooking, etc. Lots of Sam petting the dog. We’ll know they’re being hunted by something thanks to the first 2 minutes of the episode and maybe a few other small clips here and there.
When Dean gets hit, he doesn’t see it coming -- or maybe he does, but he doesn’t act fast enough. The set up doesn’t really matter, but perhaps it’s outside of the bar that Sam and he were hanging out at. Dean goes outside into an alley for a minute, maybe to take a phone call.
Jacob Pond has been waiting for him there (maybe he set up that call). He shoots him straight in the chest (He has to use a gun, as a statement that he’s more than just a kitsune. He doesn’t want to kill to eat in the same way his mother didn’t, so he keeps the claws - and any instinctual urges that accompany them -- at bay).
Sam, of course, hears the gunshot. He runs out in time to see Dean bleeding out on the ground. He kneels down to start putting pressure on the wound (he has to if Dean is going to have a chance) and looks around frantically for the threat.
Said threat is easily spotted - Jacob. He’s wearing a hoodie so that any security cameras can’t catch his face, but looking up at him from the ground, Sam can recognize the teen easily.
Jacob Pond is clearly about to bolt, but he stops, staring Sam in the eyes. Jacob is all too young to be a killer, and he’s clearly still a little shaken up about what he’d done. Jacob, voice cracking as though in tears, can only choke out one statement: “I had to.”
Jacob runs and Sam lets him go, partially because Sam can’t afford to take pressure off of the wound but partially because Sam knows the truth in Jacob’s words.
Sam knows what it was like to be that kid, broken, angry, and desperate to kill the thing that murdered his mother.
Maybe Dean has time to give a final death speech - starts by saying that he “Probably had that coming.” Maybe he even admits he was wrong in killing Amy, words that Sam had just been waiting to hear but not like this. Maybe Dean gets to have the same, weirdly long speech he had in the finale. Or maybe Dean is silent, and his last words consist of the casual joke that he threw over his shoulder to Sam before he walked out.
None of the details of the proposed scenario really matter, but the point is, if Dean had to die, Jacob Pond should’ve been responsible.
Keep in mind, the finale still likely would have sucked, but hey, at least the Big Bad would have been a bit better.
so uhhhh. yeah. here it is; part of it, anyway. more to come! also I started this months and months ago, so you can kind of see that progression throughout.
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So I got hooked on arrow fic in the last two weeks, god knows why, and like— its great. The whole writing side of this fandom has great ideas and I love them.
But uh. Now I have ideas. Or actually, one idea, singular, but it’s a fucking enormous job and idk if im up for that, so instead imma throw it out here for shits and giggles and see if it can motivate me to actually start it.
Within the initial premise for each of the three core characters lies what I think could be a much better story than canon:
We have one disillusioned son of the one percent who, after five years of hell and survival mode, returns to a life of wealth with a list of other one percenters who use their wealth and influence to put down the rest of the city in order to straight up murder them.
We have one disillusioned veteran who served in the Middle East at the behest of warlords, now forced to provide the same services to one percenters because that’s the sum of his skill set after two tours, even though it’s not the sum of his personhood.
And, we have one ex-hacker who’s underpaid, underappreciated, and who spent their college years trying to start the digital revolution against the capitalist system.
Like. Look at that setup for a second.
All I can think when I look at this is how fucking amazing it would have been if they went ham on the robin hood angle.
A story where Oliver doesn’t murder the body guards and then give the big bosses a “chance to do the right thing,” lol, but instead trusts his father’s list and recognizes that the people working for his targets don’t actually deserve to die most of the time. He just goes straight for the people who failed his city, divests them of their funds in order to compensate their victims, and then kills them instead of their hired help.
A story where when Diggle says Oliver can do more for this city, he doesn’t mean beating on more common criminals than the investment bankers Oliver likes to kill; he means addressing the roots of poverty and crime in the city using the wealth he used to take for granted, but is now so uncomfortable with. Where Diggle wants to help the little people, not just hurt the big ones.
A story where Felicity helps Oliver when he comes to her not just to find Walter, but because his mission, and the stuff he’s been doing—look, its not like she’s comfortable with murder! Murder is bad! But god, all of this reminds her so much of what she and Cooper thought they could accomplish together. If she helps Oliver here and now with his mission against the corrupt one percent of Starling, she can do a lot of good. And she’s come a long way in her coding from the girl who only got caught, mind you, after Cooper had cleared out millions of dollars of debt.
I’m thinking, like, Leverage with murder instead of grifting.
Oliver comes home and he’s visibly uncomfortable with the huge displays of wealth surrounding his family and their entire lifestyle. No, he didn’t actually spend five years on an island, but this is still completely foreign to him, now. Eating regularly and nutritiously sends his system into shock; his bed is too soft; formal wear is stifling and doesn’t provide nearly enough places to stash weapons.
(More than that, I’d be interested in seeing how his PTSD/social anxiety clashes with the lifestyle his family just wants him to slide right back into. People want to stand in peripheral vision and ask his opinions on things and touch his back to get him to move and hug him and sleep with him, wtf no get out don’t touch me. Actually, I would love to write read something where tender physical intimacy feels completely foreign and honestly threatening to Oliver, after years of every touch being dangerous. That to me feels more realistic than him jumping into bed with like twelve different women)
Oliver who would much rather live feral in the rafters of his new hidey hole in the old steel factory, sustaining off protein bars and the salmon ladder and never seeing the light of day again. Instead, he has to pretend to be a normal human being and play off the last five years of horror as “cold,” so he doesn’t upset Thea and Tommy (and his mother, but less her than the first two).
Oliver who tries to use the playboy card to live ferally anyway, just show up for meals at home and then back to the rafters he goes, but then his mother has to go assign him a fucking bodyguard who follows him everywhere. And he’s good at it, too.
Diggle comes into the job expecting basically another rich brat, with maybe some mild PTSD. Instead he gets this scary ass man who looks like he could take Dig in a fight, can turn emotionally on a dime the second someone normal comes up but then goes back to deadpan brooding the second they’re gone, regularly escapes (fucking escapes! What the fuck) from Diggle’s protection to do…god knows what, but definitely not sleep with women, given the way his shoulders tighten every time someone touches him.
He does not get paid enough to deal with this shit.
Felicity catches Adam Hunt’s murder on the nightly news and does a little fist pump; right on, hood guy, eat the rich, because murder in the abstract is easier to support than said murderer asking her to help him murder more people. Just because she works for QC and got a dye job doesn’t mean she supports the system, no siree bob. She just has to live in it.
Oliver seethes as his mother uses him as a pretty prop for photo-ops, nothing to see here our family is picture perfect! Mom, daughter, son, husband (not father, never father). He is—he is so much more than this. Oh, Oliver’s self-worth is shit, but the shallow emptiness of this lifestyle grates. And even thinking his life is worth nothing, Oliver recognizes his skills and tactical ability make him a very valuable asset (fuck you Amanda waller); maybe if his mother had him assassinating her rivals, he’d be happier, because at least then he’d actual be useful.
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@absentlyabbie you liked my tag-blogging about this, so. here it is
