Wait a second.

[rivkat]

Are you telling me that to get out of suffering eternally for your deal with a crossroads demon, all you have to do is find someone you trust will cremate you?  Also, if they burned John on a pyre, how come he was still around to escape from Hell over half a year later?

Grargh!  (I know, you all realized this way before me.  But Yuletide procrastination does strange things to a person.)

Comments

[sorrel]

I thought that that only applied to demons who still had their bones intact. I don't think that burning the body destroys the soul, just keeps it from hanging around on this plane. Otherwise cremation would deny entrance to Heaven, not just Hell. So souls whose bodies were cremated right after their death and then became demons would still be demons; they just wouldn't have the weakness of being tethered to their bones.

(I think.)

[rivkat]

That still doesn't sit right with me--if someone burns your bones before you're demonized, it does nothing, but if they do it after, it's somehow now a vulnerability? Below, elliemurasaki suggests that the burner has to have some angel juice somehow in order for the burning to work, and while I will accept that as spackle it still feels wrong to me.

[sorrel]

Alternately it maybe has something to do with hellfire? Although I actually think it makes perfect sense to have a different effect on fresh souls than on souls that have gone wrong; maybe it's the same principle as burning the bones of an angry spirit? After all, there've been plenty of times on the show where the spirit's body was cremated right after death and still started haunting.

[rivkat]

Right, and then it turned out that they were still connected to life through some vital object--which doesn't happen if you're a demon? Or if your bones are intact? It is all very bizarre once you start thinking about it, and foregrounding it with Crowley just did that for me.

Edited to fix silly typo.

[alexseanchai]

I'm absolutely confident that demons are angel-ghost hybrids, so to kill a demon requires elements of angel-killing as well as ghost-killing, and salting and burning a demon's bones would be only a myth to anyone without the ability to deploy any weapon of +1 angel-killing. John wasn't and Dean wouldn't have been burned with holy oil. The demon in Bobby's basement probably was, and an angel smiting is surely the equivalent.

[rivkat]

I'm totally impressed by your powers of harmonization. Unconvinced, but quite seriously impressed!

That makes killing a demon at least weirdly homologous with preventing a soul from causing trouble on Earth as a spirit, but ok. That also means that someone whose bones are burned pre-demonizing while still in Hell (or whose bones are burned by someone not so empowered) is less vulnerable than someone whose bones aren't burned, because then a later properly powered bone-burner can't do the job, but ok.

I didn't think Dean was ever burned--I thought Sam buried his body whole in the hopes of a resurrection.

[alexseanchai]

Hadn't occurred to me that burning demonic bones without holy oil would safeguard the demon, though you're right, of course. I think I was preoccupied with how very lucky Bobby is that he found Crowley's bones to begin with.

Bobby wanted to cremate Dean and Sam wouldn't let him.

[eclectic]

Yeah, well, no one's accused Supernatural of having perfectly coherent plot for a long time. Just... pull a Dean, and repress the knowledge.

[erda]

Uh, I actually hadn't thought that through.

*now willfully not thinking about it*