11.17: more thoughts, of the tangential variety
so it's implied that Sam (shot/suffocated/in shock and perceived dead for hours) didn't meet Billie at any point; Dean (in the process of OD'ing/freeze-framed), on the other hand, did. which begs the question, how close to death do you have to be in order to meet your reaper?
a rundown of near-death experiences and actual deaths paired with reaper encounters over the course of SPN:
and there are tons and tons of other times where one or both of the boys is dying/actually dies and no reaper is shown. presumably they were there but it all went fairly straightforward and they didn't remember it afterwards anyway. point being, while it makes sense to only show reaper encounters when they're actually relevant to the plot, it also means I have a lot of questions left unanswered about their operations in general.
when someone dies at the end of their demon deal, does a reaper take their soul to Hell? or do the Hellhounds take over that job? what if an angel smites them? or they are killed by the Colt, or Ruby's knife, or an angel sword or the First Blade?
do reapers only reap human souls, or do they come for monsters as well?
we know that human souls go into Heaven or Hell and monsters go to Purgatory after death, but Tessa claims in 4.15 that she doesn't know where the souls she reaps will end up. so the reapers are basically a filtration system for the dead, is what I'm getting from this.
also wondering what the process is for assigning them to humans, or if it's just a first-come-first-serve sort of thing where the first reaper to reach a dying human gets to reap that soul. if they latch onto someone who is dying (i.e. terminal illness or any other dying process that is drawn out for an extended period of time), if somehow they know beforehand whether a cancer patient (as an example) is going to get worse or if they'll go into remission. how they determine when it's time to make themselves visible to the dying human's soul.
ANYHOW. this post becme very disorganized very quickly.... oops.
yeah, idk, flist. do you have any thoughts/ideas/questions/headcanons re. reapers? or do you just think I'm crazy and morbid and should stop thinking so hard about dead and dying things?
a rundown of near-death experiences and actual deaths paired with reaper encounters over the course of SPN:
- 1.12 - Dean/others - being healed by LeGrange/in the process of dying → misc. reapers
- 2.01 - Dean - comatose in a hospital after car crash → Tessa
- 4.15 - Sam and Dean - astral projection (which I guess counts as NDE since their real bodies were in the motel with Pamela?) → Tessa
- also 4.15 - the ghost kid - asthma attack? → Tessa
- 6.11 - Dean - faked/temporary death; reaper-for-a-day → Death and Tessa (as her understudy)
- 7.10 - Bobby - dying in hospital after getting shot → misc. reaper (or was it the American Gods cab driver dude whose name I don't remember but made a reappearance in 8.19?)
- 9.01 - Sam - comatose in hospital after stopping the Trials → Death
- 10.23 - Sam and Dean - "final" confrontation → Death (as he was planning to finally reap Sam's soul before locking Dean away which I guess is as close to death as you can get when you've got the Mark of Cain and can't actually die)
- 11.17 - Dean - purposely OD's → Billie
and there are tons and tons of other times where one or both of the boys is dying/actually dies and no reaper is shown. presumably they were there but it all went fairly straightforward and they didn't remember it afterwards anyway. point being, while it makes sense to only show reaper encounters when they're actually relevant to the plot, it also means I have a lot of questions left unanswered about their operations in general.
when someone dies at the end of their demon deal, does a reaper take their soul to Hell? or do the Hellhounds take over that job? what if an angel smites them? or they are killed by the Colt, or Ruby's knife, or an angel sword or the First Blade?
do reapers only reap human souls, or do they come for monsters as well?
we know that human souls go into Heaven or Hell and monsters go to Purgatory after death, but Tessa claims in 4.15 that she doesn't know where the souls she reaps will end up. so the reapers are basically a filtration system for the dead, is what I'm getting from this.
also wondering what the process is for assigning them to humans, or if it's just a first-come-first-serve sort of thing where the first reaper to reach a dying human gets to reap that soul. if they latch onto someone who is dying (i.e. terminal illness or any other dying process that is drawn out for an extended period of time), if somehow they know beforehand whether a cancer patient (as an example) is going to get worse or if they'll go into remission. how they determine when it's time to make themselves visible to the dying human's soul.
ANYHOW. this post becme very disorganized very quickly.... oops.
yeah, idk, flist. do you have any thoughts/ideas/questions/headcanons re. reapers? or do you just think I'm crazy and morbid and should stop thinking so hard about dead and dying things?