#10dean wants to go BACK to purgatory alone because he becomes like mary... it there's nothing there to love and nothing there to live for..

[shallowseeker]

i do think it's interesting that the core of dean's frustration with his mother in season 12 is when she's dishonest with him or sam. like whether or not it's justified, his strongest emotional reaction during mary's deprogramming is when she says "i'll never let anything bad happen to you" to his younger self, while she KNOWS that azazel is coming ("you lied to me. i was a kid"). i just think about his reaction to her words of reassurance a lot.

Oooooohl Okay, I'm putting a pin in this because I can't remember the exact wording. But there was a vintage conversation with Dean and Sam asking if it would have been better if John had lied to them sometimes. Shielded them from the truth, the monsters, etc.

And now I'm thinking about how cool it'd be to compare Mary's soldierly all-encompassing protection and under-prep versus John's guerilla, boots-to-the-ground, neurotic over-prep AHHHhhhhhhh

Part of this is background. Mary is from a hunter-soldier family... the Campbells were overbearing, while John's hunter-prep was largely absent.

John's legacy was hidden from him, and his father wasn't around to show him how to trap the monsters... he wasn't given the chance to even try to protect his family (re: "You made a fool of me" and his behavior in The Song Remains the Same").

This was echoed nicely in SPNwin when Millie's specter taunted young John about how Samuel had trained Mary up, had believed in her, etc etc. (Ep 3 I think?)

Interestingly, John and Jack Kline are similar in that they don't want to be lied to and prefer no sugar-coating in tough situations. Jack's entrance into the world was terrifying enough, and Sam's ducking around the truth was damaging enough that Jack now prefers the ugly, horrible truth above all else.

Unorganized thoughts///

EDIT/// re: Mary. Mary's relationship to cause is so interesting in her BMoL run. On the one hand, she's doing the classic Winchester: I wound up nearly destroying the things I sought to protect.

But Mary HATES her fam being in danger. She's so allergic to losing her loved ones that she prefers being a long wolf hero and reaches for a "total solution to evil" and resorts to lying to keep them out of the fight. Which is exactly what we see SpnWIN Samuel is doing in SpnWIN. "I thought if I took care of all the evil i the world... you'd be safe."

BUT. That said, even later after some healing, Mary is very reluctant to leave Apocalypse-World... This is her "Purgatory" of endless, "easy," 24/7-360 fighting. It's "pure" war; a "poughkeepsie" in SPN. She'd rather serve a cause far from home, where the enemy is CLEARLY defined, her fighting has a utilitarian purpose, and above all... she has little to lose. If her family isn't with her, she doesn't have to actively lose them.

Mary's relationship to Apocalypse-World is a twin to Dean's neuroses that he struggles with in season 10 re: Purgatory. (In season 8, Dean wanted to get out—to get Cas out. But when Dean himself becomes suicidal, he thinks... maybe Purgatory was easier after all. He, in effect, devolves into early season 8 Cas, or late-season 8 Benny, a total giving-up. Dean wonders if he was better off staying there... in a world of limbo/allegorical non-participation of life.

Note: Thematically, it's family that tries to yank you out of these terrible situations. (I think Sam harps on this a lot; that family got him through some horrible times and addictions etc.) But we see it time and time again: Dean tries to get Cas out of Purgatory. He then gets Sam out of Purgatory. Sam tries to get Mary out of Apocalypse-World when Dean is too mentally ill to try. Then Sam and Dean and Jack and Cas GET Mary out of Apocalypse-World. EDIT the 2nd:///

Basically... These are worlds devoid of personal goals or love. They're are punishing, hopeless, anemic, anorexic. It's as Ketch says to AU Charlie in Exodus:

via @spnscripthunt-inactive

It is another kind of running from life. And I think... the lying is tied up with this. It's for another day, but YES Dean gets upset about lying. But also... Dean lies to Sam to save him (Gadreel), and Dean lies by omission at first about the Mark of Cain about his plan to defeat the evil once and for all. (Which runs in parallel with Mary and SPNwin Samuel).

I feel like Dean's arc with Mary terminates in a speech that says, "I love you and a hate you... but I get it because I've made deals to save the ones I love."

Dean gets it.

He gets the lying and the deals and the mistakes... because he's made them. This is why we need a season 16 argh!!!! We need one more to tie up the the Jack-Dean stuff as it relates to Mary and John aghhhhh I'm dying over here