#spn 12.03

[foxthefanboi]

12x03 - The Foundry

[mittensmorgul]

Isn't Death more powerful than god, though? Back with the first Death, he said he's reap god one day... Billie > Chuck, no? I'm so excited for whatever her plan with Jack is!!!

I wouldn’t say Death was “more powerful” than Chuck, exactly. Death has a very specific function, but is also bound by cosmic rules. Billie can’t just... kill Chuck, any more than she could kill Mary back in s12, you know? Even if Mary being alive directly went against the natural order. She can’t just... change the rules, or make up new ones. All she can do is find all the loopholes she can to get the job done, you know? And she’s VERY good at seeing the loopholes.

Just because she’ll someday reap God doesn’t mean she’s more “powerful” than God. Just that reaping him is one of the clauses in her job description. Just like reaping everything else that dies is.

Remember she told Chuck she was about an hour from reaping him back in 11.23? But then everything changed, they found another way, and the universe spun on. I still think she’s at least mildly annoyed about that, considering how much trouble Chuck’s gotten up to in the intervening years. :’D

AND I’M TOTALLY WITH YOU ABOUT THE EXCITE!

Is it just me, or did Billie’s timing seem REALLY SPECIFICALLY PRECISE?!

We know the Empty is outside of Chuck’s purview. We know that he has no power there, and that’s why I was so excited when Jack landed there in 14.20, along with Billie and the Shadow, and Billie’s reaction was “We need to talk.”

Almost as if Billie and the Shadow both had been preparing the way for that moment for a good long while. Perhaps ever since Jack was born and began tearing holes in the cosmic fabric. But DEFINITELY at least since the Shadow attempted to take Jack from Heaven. I’m still convinced that the only reason the Shadow agreed to that deal with Cas was because Jack wasn’t in possession of his grace at the time, and the shadow was willing to wait for him to recover it. Jack wasn’t whole, and for their plans, they needed him whole. Or at least in possession of his power.

Okay, back to my original point. All season TFW has ALSO been trying to “plot” against Chuck, and yet... how do you plot against an omniscient being? They lampshaded this with Donatello in 15.08: (apologies for the rough nature of this transcript... this is the rough copy I’ve used for personal reference, and I haven’t gone back and edited it):

DEAN: Donny, you going crazy again?

DONATELLO/CHUCK: Oh, Donatello's not here any longer. Hey, guys. It's Chuck. Prophets speak the word of God, sometimes indirectly. Sometimes they're my bluetooth. So, here's the thing. Usually, I really love our little... process. I toss something at you guys, and you slam it right back. It's fun, like tennis. With monsters. But this... Let this one go.

DEAN: Or what?

CHUCK: Or I go all-powerful. Maybe not on you. Not right away. But, let's see, there's... Jody, Donna, Eileen. Pretty much everybody on your speed dial. So drop it. 'Kay?

Well, the bunker's warding is intact, but it clearly doesn't withstand God.

How much do you think he heard?

He heard enough.

So... do we... drop it?

DEAN: Donnie, I think it might be safer if you went on home.

DONATELLO: Really? I have to leave? Oh, that's too bad. I'll, uh... I'll just get my stuff.

DEAN: Okay. Like hell we're dropping this. Donna, Jody... They're not safe. They'll never be safe. As long as Chuck is out there, it's only a matter of time... Before he rounds them up and offs 'em. Just to watch us suffer. The only way to keep them safe... to keep everyone safe... is to take Chuck down. Which is exactly what we're gonna do.

***

So they literally waited until Donatello was out of the room, because Donatello was sock puppeted by Chuck, and from that point forward they knew it wasn’t safe to discuss any of their plans with him, because it was a good as broadcasting it directly to Chuck.

What they DIDN’T know was that... Eileen was also Chuck’s plant, Chuck’s “eyes” on everything they were plotting against him.

(and they really didn’t know the full extent of Sam’s connection to Chuck via the wound, even after the events of 15.07, where Sam’s succumbing to the wound via Sergei’s manipulation-- that was a callback to what Rowena did to accelerate Lucifer’s decay in 12.03-- Sam was able to “reverse the polarity” of his connection and see directly into Chuck rather than passively receive the visions (be they memories of other worlds or just alternate stories Chuck likes to plot about) Chuck broadcast to him before that)

Heck that’s a wild sentence. >.>

And isn’t that kind of EXACTLY what Billie’s been doing in the empty all this time? Waiting for Chuck to “leave the room,” i.e. for Sam to break the tether between him and Chuck inflicted by the Equalizer, and then for Chuck’s last remaining plant in the bunker (Eileen) to leave, clearing the way for their plan to move forward? Because that’s what it felt like to me...

BUT WHAT ARE THEY PLANNING?!

[bowleggedean]

Okay, so I rewatched 12.03 "The Foundry" last night, and I noticed that Sam and Mary were both holding identical EMF meters.

When we first saw an EMF meter in the show, it was in 1.04 "Phantom Traveler", and Sam didn't know what Dean was holding in his hands. And we learned that Dean made his EMF meter himself, out of a busted-up Walkman.

So either Dean did a second EMF meter when he did the one he owns in 1.04 or some time after. Or he showed Sam how to make one out of a busted-up Walkman.

Maybe Dean did a second EMF meter for John since he was hunting solo/ without Dean at some point.

Maybe Dean did a second one after John abandoned him, before going to California to see Sam and ask him to find Dad with him, in case he comes back with him, into the family business.

Bonus: Dean being proud of himself because his EMF meter is homemade and he IS the one who made it.

[thebratfarrar]

The Foundry - Robert Singer

[thayerkerbasy]

Always Stuck In Second Gear by @thayerkerbasy [beta reading by @grey2510, illustrated by @dmsilvisart]

Rating: T Archive Warning: No archive warnings apply Category: Gen Relationship: Castiel & Crowley

Characters: Castiel, Crowley, Dean Winchester, Juliet

Additional Tags: Episode: s12e03 The Foundry, Episode: s12e07 Rock Never Dies, Canon Compliant, Road Trips, Frenemies, Past Crowley/Dean Winchester, POV Crowley

Word count: 29025

Summary:  After Wendy Vincente spilled the location of her brother's secret cabin, Agents Beyoncé and Jay-Z had a lead to follow. Tracking Lucifer while confined to a pickup truck wasn't exactly Crowley's preferred modus operandi, but at least he was in good company.

A story covering the time while Crowley and Castiel were on the road hunting down Lucifer, from s12e03 (The Foundry) to s12e07 (Rock Never Dies).  The buddy cop comedy we were promised, filling that missing time.

A story for the @spncanonbigbang

Read it on AO3 * Art Masterpost * Teasers 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

[mittensmorgul]

Cas’s flashback to his time hunting with Mary, as I’ve already pointed out (with the help of Mr. Bobo Berens), happened probably shortly after the events of 12.03. But with that context, please to be remembering this conversation from 12.02, ONE EPISODE BEFORE THAT:

Dean: When Dad disappeared, Sam and I looked around and something became very clear. The only thing we had in this world -- the only thing, aside from this car -- was each other.

*THIS* is the context for Mary’s reply to Cas:

Castiel: I know you know this, Mary, but... Sam and Dean -- they're -- they're glad to have you back. Whatever you still have to deal with and however long it takes, you should know they're happy. I mean, finally, they don't have to be so... so alone. Mary: Castiel. They were never alone.

NOT BECAUSE THEY HAD EACH OTHER. BUT BECAUSE CAS WAS THERE WITH THEM.

If not for Cas, they WOULD have been alone, is what Mary is implying there. That line in 12.02 was depressing as fuck. I think everyone on my dash was actively yelling at the tv.

But even more than the recontextualizing of 12.02 and 12.03 that this line accomplished, when faced with the reality that Mary was most likely dead, and at Jack’s hands, this is the specific memory Cas held on to.

This was a time when both Cas and Mary felt adrift, wondering if they really belonged here at all, let alone could consider themselves “family” to Sam and Dean. This was their shared journey during s12, and they supported each other through it. Even when-- like we learned in 12.06-- Mary was keeping her hunting life secret from Sam and Dean, just as she had with John back in the 70′s and 80′s.

Even though she was still wary (if not outright afraid) of Cas, she still trusted him to hunt with her, and to keep her secret for her.

Which is an interesting thing to keep secret all this time, especially when Things Kept Secret is shaping up to be the actual Big Bad of s14...

[mittensmorgul]

12.03, The Foundry.

Yes, I’ve already written about the connection of this episode bobo gave us in 14.18, via the flashback scene to Cas and Mary hunting together after they both left the bunker in this episode. But there was a lot of other setting up of eventual character arcs in this episode that wouldn’t pay off until s14.

Such as Rowena’s tribulations with Lucifer. Such as Castiel’s feeling of inadequacy with his own limited powers, with attempting to learn to do this whole hunting thing in the “human way,” beginning to truly examine where his loyalties lie and discovering his own self-worth.

Such as Mary facing the ghosts of her own past, Sam and Dean struggling to reconcile resurrected Mary in her fully honest and true to self form with the stories they’d been telling themselves about her their whole lives.

This episode truly was a foundry, in the literal definition sense of the word, metaphorically applied to every character. And we will see the results of their forging by the end of s14 as they’re readied to face their final challenge.

[mittensmorgul]

So, Dean Winchester, after 13.05, changed his fate so severely by ignoring Billie’s advice to stay outta the AU’s.

And Dean Winchester in 14.11 has decided to just ~go along with fate~ and assume that this one nutjob scam is the only fate he can in good conscience accept for himself, when every other ending is the End of the World.

He clearly has not been paying attention to the fact that every box can be broken into. No box, not even at the bottom of the ocean, is safe.

Things that have been retrieved from the deepest part of the ocean to ill effect on this show: The First Blade (after 9.11), Lucifer himself (after Rowena tossed him there in 12.03).

when will he learn

I mean, what do we really know about Dean’s predicted death in that book? That it will be the death of HIM. NOT the death of Michael. Because once he’s dead? The potential for Michael to escape that box and just go right back to murdering the world is even STRONGER, imo. Because there would be no Dean Winchester left in the world to stand in his way.

I hope this is the conclusion they come to in 14.12... because HONESTLY honey, Dean bean, you are not seeing the bigger picture here...