hellerjackline - Tumblr blog

hellerjackline · 23 days ago

Text

someone sent me an ask about soulless sam and in order to successfully answer it i actually have to give my opinions on soulless jack. basically this post is about what being soulless "means" in different episodes and whether it actually matters that jack is soulless.

i'm only going to talk about s14 because i don't have a lot of respect for s15 and also it doesn't super matter that jack is soulless in s15.

so the episodes in which jack is soulless are peace of mind, don't go in the woods, game night, absence, jack in the box, and moriah.

jack's actions in those episodes are

going to see donatello about soullessness, killing the snake to put it out of its misery

playing with the girls from lebanon, trying to show off to win their approval, eventually causing them to get scared but not listening when they tell him to stop, losing control and accidentally injuring one of them, and then healing her

torturing nick to death to keep him from resurrecting lucifer while mary begs him not to, then accidentally killing mary

running away because he's freaking out, trying to resurrect mary, kidnapping and threatening rowena in the process of trying to resurrect mary

trying to be good by doing what the angels tell him without understanding that what they're telling him to do is bad, failing to show sufficient contrition for killing mary, trying to be good by doing what salmondean tell him without understanding that they mean him harm (partly because he's unable to empathize with them well enough to understand that they're angry), busting out of the box because he realizes they lied to him and mean him harm

telling everyone to stop lying, going to see his grandparents in the hope that someone out there still doesn't see him as a monster, telling cas that he can't love him back [because he's soulless], and trying to allow dean to kill him

that's not like every action he took in those episodes but i think it's all the relevant ones and i'm not rewatching that shit again. well, i probably will. but not right now.

the rest under a cut because holy shit 3k words.

so in peace of mind, it definitely matters that jack is soulless, but what that means is kind of an open question. that's the point of the episode. donatello gives this whole speech about being soulless where soullessness is primarily framed as tragic for the soulless, which makes sense, because donatello became soulless in season eleven. in season eleven, soulless characters play a dual role as both victim and problem, and so get to have way more complexity than soulless sam or soulless jack, both of whom exist narratively only as problems. watch 11x05 "thin lizzie" for my favorite example of eleven's distinct handling of soullessness. len the lizzie borden nerd losing his soul and therefore both losing his capacity for fear and his capacity for joy, which is what allows him to be heroic (because he's not afraid and also has nothing to lose), is like a perfect way to take soullessness and turn it both tragic and positive. actually sometimes when i think about spn soullessness i actually think about this hyperbole and a half comic. mostly because thin lizzie and to a lesser extent peace of mind are both playing in kind of a similar space.

so we have this tragic framing of soullessness as primarily about a kind of emptiness. but then also there's this other thing more relevant to the rest of the arc. which is donatello's framing of soullessness as "without moral guidance." this is obviously kind of silly and very spn, but it's also kind of... inherently giving the lie to the premise, isn't it. donatello asking himself "what would mr. rogers do" is in fact a kind of morality. he is able to successfully simulate moral behavior in his mind, which means... he has a sense of morality. just like anyone else's. but it does set up the way in which jack's soullessness causes problems for him later on (not just a lack of an inherent sense of morality, but also because he (maybe?) lacks an internal moral compass, where he gets his guidance becomes very important).

this is also a thing that comes up in 6x09 when dean offers to be soulless sam's jiminy cricket. more on that coming in another post.

also this introduces the concept of "what would the winchesters do" as jack's guiding light. which like. lol. that COULD be thematic. if you wanted it to be.

and then jack kills the snake which is like. totally a thing that's a result of him having a mistaken belief about what's best because he lacks an internal sense of it. which makes sense as an answer to the questions of the episode and the themes of the arc. so him being soulless matters in this one.

so being soulless matters in peace of mind and what it means here is that jack doesn't have enough moral compass to figure out what the Right Thing To Do Is, despite wanting to, so he needs to find an external moral compass to follow. it also means he feels empty and lacks emotion, which is mostly a problem for him.

then there's don't go in the woods. and this one is supposed to be about how him being soulless is Scary. there are several moments in it where we're meant to be scared on the girls' behalf, because Something Is Off With Jack.

but the thing is... jack behaves normally in dgitw. he tries to fit in with and impress some kids who are narratively framed as his own age-peers, normal kids who he would have grown up playing with if he'd lived a normal life. jack trying to fit in with and impress people is normal, he does it all the time. the fact that he does it via tools of violence (throwing knives) is offputting, but that's a result of him being raised in a bunker full of serial killers, not of him being soulless. that's what he knows. jack also loses control of his powers and injures one of the girls. which is in fact totally par for the course with jack. he doesn't have very good control of his powers, and he's very powerful. see tombstone for details. he then panics and tries to fix it. which he succeeds in doing, although the girls don't forgive him.

the only moment in dgitw where him being soulless actually seems to impact his behavior is that there's like a quick moment, just before jack loses control, where the girls from lebanon become nervous and ask him to stop messing around, and jack doesn't pay attention to them. potentially if he had, maybe he wouldn't have lost control. but even this is overstating things - the boy who is their friend remains impressed with jack and encourages him to continue to mess around. jack not immediately stopping because the girls are scared is not exactly outside the range of normal behavior, though it kind of is for jack because he is normally mr. sweetheart goodboy.

so if being soulless matter at all in dgitw, it means that jack can't quickly read, react to, and acquiesce to to emotions of others. he can't, when things are split second, notice and care about the girls' fear, and then react in the most deferent possible manner.

it's also notable that what scares the girls is jack's otherness, his powers, and not his emotional affect. which kind of matters for how all this is framed, and is again, more continuous than discontinuous with things that happen to and around jack when he is ensouled.

alright. now we've come to the big one. game night. man it doesn't matter that jack is soulless in game night at all.

jack tortures nick to death because torturing enemies to death is normal. he JUST did it to michael and everyone clapped and cheered. sam and dean torture people all the time. they love torturing people. they love killing people. they love combining the two things. the only problem here is that it's jack who is doing it. also maybe that nick is human, which means killing him is more bad for some reason.

additionally, jack has tortured a person before, the gas station kid in let the good times roll. (yes what he did was technically torture). (man not really related but you guys should watch that one jacob geller video). torturing is clearly normal and acceptable to jack. i would say this is because he was raised by serial killers who torture people all the time.

also, people freak out when jack tortures that kid too, because the idea that jack isn't capable of correct moral judgement doesn't actually start with him being soulless. jack is frequently framed as the Creepy Threatening Weirdkid Who Can't Be Trusted To Distinguish Right From Wrong throughout season thirteen, except then it's because he's not human. the idea that a soul prevents him from being like that is kind of silly given how often he's framed like that while ensouled.

killing mary is also easily something that could've happened while jack was ensouled. i direct your attention once again to tombstone. jack simply does not have very good control of his powers. he did what teenagers do: he had a moment of "i wish you were dead" type anger toward a parental figure because he was frustrated, but unfortunately, due to his godlike powers, his wish was granted. this has nothing to do with him being soulless (and in fact is kind of. antithetical to soullessness as a concept. since that should mean he shouldn't be able to get that angry).

(man. doesn't really add a lot to my analysis but the two people jack tortures and kills while not soulless are people of color. like come on. this show is so racist.)

the only moment where it MAYBE matters that jack is soulless is that mary freaks out while he's killing nick and begs him to stop and he doesn't listen, just like in dgitw. also like in dgitw, this isn't necessarily like, crazy behavior. salmondean torture people all the time. it's not insane to think that he's just asking himself "what would the winchesters do."

then in absence, jack is framed as menacing but like..... all he does is panic and try to fix what he did to mary. also it's worth it to talk about how all these episodes but ESPECIALLY absence utilize gender in order to make their case that jack is dangerous. like the fact that it's rowena he goes to and not like, cas, is because the show wants you to see him as threatening, wants you to empathize with A Woman Menaced By A Man (even though rowena is certainly in less danger from jack than, say, sam or dean would be), wants you to see threatening a woman as uniquely morally bad. but what he does in absence is just. run away, panic about the fact that he killed mary, be wracked by guilt, kidnap rowena (which, sure, bad, but the winchesters kidnap people and force them to do things for them all the time. jack has SEEN them do this. they have DONE THIS to rowena. more than once!), and try to fix mary being dead. which like. in tombstone when he killed the security guard, he also panicked, tried to get someone to fix it, then ran away. fully consistent with his ensouled actions. it does not matter at all that jack is soulless in absence. the episode frames him as scary and unsettling but his behavior is not at all different from his usual behavior.

then jack in the box. ohhhhhhh jack in the box. stupid episode. genuinely almost everything about it is bad. the buckleming special. honestly season fourteen would genuinely make more sense if you just took jack in the box out because it comes pretty much out of left field, actively contradicts a bunch of shit and is generally inconsistent with the characterization of every single character except maaaaybe cas, and then doesn't end up mattering very much. i guess i could say that i kind of like the sam stuff, in theory, but even that.... like the execution is not great. man i hate jack in the box. like, bottom ten spn episode, easily.

anyway jack being soulless ABSOLUTELY matters in jack in the box and it like...... matters in a way that impacts all of his characterization. we return to the idea of soullessness that peace of mind proposes - lack of emotion, lack of emotionally-guided moral compass, need for guidance. except that what happens in jack in the box is quite explicitly that jack, because he lacks an intrinsic, emotionally guided moral compass, takes guidance from the wrong source and does bad things. that's explicitly the issue.

and then. and then buckleming argue that jack is insufficiently contrite for killing mary. that he does not understand the harm he's caused. which like, okay, that IS consistent with the characterization of soullessness that they've gone with. but it's not consistent with everything that has happened in this arc. like, absence JUST happened. this is just clearly not... accurate. jack clearly does understand the harm he's caused, he's clearly horrified over killing mary, and in general he's been highly emotional while soulless (desperate for approval in dgitw, angry and stressed in game night, panicked and upset in absence). this characterization of soulless jack would make sense if you skipped straight from peace of mind to jack in the box but i didn't, lol.

jack is also genuinely impaired by this emotional emptiness. he is unable to accurately predict the winchesters' actions because he can't comprehend the depth of their hurt, and therefore he can't predict the depth of their anger. he also can't just tell that they're lying, because he can't directly empathize.

which honestly. is actually pretty interesting and cool. for being soulless to be portrayed as having serious personal drawbacks in this way, rather than just making you an Evil Guy. like soulless sam was a "better hunter" for some reason, even though "difficulty empathizing" would obviously cause you problems in a people-facing activity such as hunting. but jack is actually impaired by it. it's not an impairment in morality. it's an impairment in general, and one of the things it affects it the ability to act morally. which is conceptually one of the better ideas of soullessness that's presented in supernatural. joss whedon (the guy who invented soullessness) (this is why soullessness is so stupid in spn. incompetent cribbing of an already bad concept) is rolling in his cancellation-grave. that's what soullessness means in jitb.

but it's still wildly inconsistent with the rest of the arc. and stupid. like there's a different soulless jack arc that could exist that centers on a better version of jack in the box. but in the soulless jack arc we have, jack in the box is an incoherent diversion. a narrative cancer.

alright. okay. moriah. time to talk about moriah.

so the first thing jack does in moriah is run away again, and then he does the no lying thing. which is more about him having bad control over his powers than being soulless.

then the next thing. the next thing is the fake out with his grandparents. we once again get this moment where jack is menacing a female civilian (his grandmother) and we are supposed to be afraid for her. except..... it's a fakeout. maybe jack is harmless after all and we were being unfair, the narrative says.

then we get this:

JACK: And then I tried on my own, but every time I try, it- it never goes right. It never... All I ever wanted was to be good. But now I'm just empty. Even this. I know you're here because you love me, and I want to love you back. It's just, I can't.

so we return to soullessness as emotionlessness as personal tragedy. actually, given that andrew dabb is a consummate trekkie, i would bet you real money that this is an intentional concept-quote of lal's death scene in tng 3x16 "the offspring." jack's soullessness is fully portrayed as a personal tragedy here, not a threatening thing. it matters, but it only matters to him, not how he interfaces with the world. jack wants to be able to feel love, but he can't. he can't feel and this is sad.

his soullessness may impact his decision to let dean kill him, but it may not. jack is routinely suicidal while ensouled, very happy to accept that he deserves to die for various things, starting way back in 13x02. this isn't outside the range of normal for him. but on the other hand, he could be like len in thin lizzie - willing to destroy himself because he has no fear and nothing to lose. it could be the soullessness talking. it's not clear.

so. that's an overview of whether soullessness matters and what it means in every episode of the moriah arc. stay tuned for another post about soullessness coming soon (tonight or tomorrow), this time about sam.

#spn #jack kline #spn meta

22 notes · View notes