#Alchemy is S15

[incarnateirony]

The section after 14 minutes in particular applies to many things--hence them mentioning flat earthers and other weird ideas. That those who fear data they do not understand, or does not have a very simple resolution, they extremize into things nobody says to train people to laugh at it (oh yeah why doesnt my rabbit turn into a gazelle if evolution is real, etc).

But before that it goes into how people distribute bad narratives. And why. And really, at the end of the day, propaganda is propaganda and tends to function the same. So be real careful about who only has whispers and extremized respins of other people's take they claim other people say-- rather than the complicated realities in play they fear.

Honestly this whole fandom needs to listen to this, around 20 minutes he goes into a section about breaking down the problems in factory set thinking and where educators have failed people, so they tend to have lucked into good answers with bad methods and then carry on bad methods and lack of proper insight or actual dedication through life, and how to avoid falling into those thought traps.

On knowing how to find, explore, proble and challenge, rather than jump into easy comfort answers people can bend around, or making up what "the other side" has said into silly extremes nobody argues. 2po's method, for example. All the things he's claimed I've said that aren't it at all; same method as when creationists argue silly nonpoints and laugh it off for simple comfort answers without challenge, and without even KNOWING how to look for actual answers.

Hell Forrest breaks down that factory set mindset; and again that becomes what people like 2po seek, they just want to be the person people listen to unsourced and unfounded proclamations from, not the person providing extensive material or knowledge or structures by which to UNDERSTAND all events and the moving universe affecting reality. "You would be really dumb to still not believe in the thing we've already proven real." [stares into the camera in Winchesters Pilot.] It's all parallelism, but sit and listen real hard and start figuring out this fandom's misinformation structures I've been warning you all about for years while passing out leak after leak that rang true.

Hell, the years I stood up, first against hellers accusing me of telling them to settle, then S15 of lying about the confession, and the roadhouse, and the pilot. All of it like. I stood to that critique. I weathered and sourced and waited for reality itself to come around, and it always did. But these people, 2po's cultish lies like creationists claiming what evolutionists have said, all from ignorance or pure propaganda--they won't stand to critique. Won't answer the receipts showing their lies. They just migrate them. Bury the failure. They hide. They hide and train others to laugh, and tell them no, don't look at the information shared by the others, listen only to me.

No wonder he was obsessed with cults. Might have a bit of a hard time screamin' about my meta posts on alchemy and tarot when they hired a set guy just for that now who's posting about that patron you call me insane for. Eat our shit.

[drsilverfish]

The Cast of Heroes in 15x11 The Gamblers

So, following straight on from 15x10 The Hero’s Journey, we encounter the Goddess Fortuna in Alaska, who compares Sam and Dean to three mythological heroes.

Heracles/ Hercules and Iolaus (one of his male lovers) fighting the Hydra (one of the twelve labours of Hercules).

Malibu 83.AE.346, Caeretan hydria, c. 525 B.C. Main panel: Hercules slaying the Lernean hydra

Gilgamesh and Enkidu fighting the “Bull of Heaven

The Gilgamesh Cylinder Seal - Assyrian 7thC BC

Cú Chulainn carrying Ferdiad’s body (sculpture in Co Louth. Ireland) 

I’m even later to the party than usual this evening because it’s a particularly hectic work period. 

Looking forward to seeing all your takes on The Gamblers!

Firstly, I am ecstatic, as I’m sure many of you are - THANKYOU Meredith Glynn and Davy Perez - they friggin’ mentioned GILGAMESH. 

We’ve been talking about The Epic of Gilgamesh as the closest model in world literature for the epic-heroic love story between Dean and Cas for years. 

Gilgamesh, Hercules,  Cú Chulainn - those are the heroes Fortuna mentions. 

Three heroes from three different mythologies. What is their significance?

Cú Chulainn (Irish mythology) was a handsome warrior, the lover of many women, but with a true love, the lady Emer. He was the son of the God Lugh, God of the harvest. Tragically he killed his own son, Connla, not knowing who he was. 

He may also have been bisexual. His relationship with Ferdiad, his best friend and foster-brother, is described by Cat Mount in a scholarly article, “The Three Loves of Cúchulainn: The Impact of Warrior Relationships in The Táin” (2012) as follows:

“Cúchulainn’s relationships with Fergus, Laeg, and Ferdia demand attention. Each is different not only because each man is different, but because they depict separate types of relationships. The relationship with Fergus is based in the familial, while the relationship with Laeg is one of friendship. The relationship with Ferdia falls somewhere between the other two and, yet, is neither. Romantic is a term that can be used to describe this friendship.”  

http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/ulsterrising/ulsterrising.pdf 

Tragically,  Cú Chulainn kills Ferdiad in battle. 

Heracles/ Hercules (Greek/ Roman mythology) was also the son of a God, Zeus. In Greek mythology he was also bisexual, taking many male and female lovers. His most well-known male lovers were Iolaus and Hylas.

https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/art/2013/08/14/golden-age-denial-hercules-bisexual-demigod?pg=8 

Hercules also undewent great suffering. His famous twelve labours were penance for having killed his sons whilst in a state of madness induced by Zeus’ wife Hera (jealous as usual of Zeus’ eternal philanderings).  

Gilgamesh, from the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, was, like Cú Chulainn and Hercules, part divine and part human. Enkidu was a “wild man” fashioned by the Gods to be his companion. Gilgamesh’s mother, Ninsun, interpreted her son’s dream which foretold the coming of Enkidu to him thus:

“This star of heaven which descended like a meteor from the sky; which you tried to lift,- but found too heavy, when you tried to move it it would not budge, and so you brought it to my feet; I made it for you, a goad and spur, and you were drawn as though to a woman. This is the strong comrade, the one who brings help to his friend in his need. He is the strongest of wild creatures, the stuff of Anu; born in the grass-lands and the wild hills reared him; when you see him you will be glad; you will love him as a woman and he will never forsake you. This is the meaning of the dream.”

http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.htm

Why Reference These Particular Heroes?

Well, yay for bisexual heroes - the queer subtext of S15 continues apace. 

Also, there are three of them, so we could, perhaps, map them to Sam, Dean and Cas.

But, I think there’s more than that. 

These heroes are part divine and part human. That fits with the alchemical themes of S14 and 15, where alchemy is a symbolic map of the soul’s journey to God, but also represents the recognition of the spark of divinity in man. This fits with the cosmic and earthly planes mirroring one another, which has been a feature of Supernatural (as above, so below) since Chuck tried to make Sam and Dean vehicles for a cosmic show-down between Michael and Lucifer, and, more rescently, the way Chuck and Amara’s break-up mirrored Dean and Cas’ break-up, and Sam’s direct human-divine connection to Chuck via the God-wound.

Chuck, so I think the ending goes, needs to recognise the “divine spark” in his creations (free will) instead of treating them as characters in his story and as “toys” (as Dean said in 15x09 The Trap). In other words, God needs to recognise the “divinity” in our heroes (just like Cú Chulainn and Hercules and Gilgamesh are part divine).   

And that’s the other element that’s interesting - because heroes lead epic but tragic lives in mythology. All these heroes killed people they loved - sons or comrades-in-arms/ lovers. 

That’s the ending Chuck wants for Sam and Dean - one brother kills the other. 

So, in as much as Chuck needs to recognise the “divine spark” in his creations, Sam and Dean need to recognise that they don’t have to be heroic tragic archetypes, they can instead, embrace the gloriousness of their humanity. 

Heroes get tragic endings, humans sometimes get happy ones. 

So there’s an as above, so below symmetry happening through the invocation of these three mythic heroes - God must come to recognise the divinity in his creations, and our heroes must come to recognise they don’t have to be larger-than-life (part divine) heroes forever, but can just, at the end, win their freedom to be free humans.  

I’ll say more about hero paralllels and Jack in another post. Suffice it to say that I don’t think Jack killing Chuck will turn out to the the “correct” doorway to cosmic and earthly freedom.     

[neven-ebrez]

The Matrix of S15

I’m rewatching a lot of old comparative narrative stuff that was popular to discuss when S8 was airing and so I’m rewatching The Matrix on Netflix and Neo’s final words to the AI controllers are a lot like I imagine we’ll get from Sam/Dean/Cas at the end.

“I know you are out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”

I honestly can’t remember if this was something I, myself, wrote or something I just read. But the Matrix and S15 have a lot more in common than the movie and S8 does. In The Matrix Neo must first come to grips with the reality of the world before he can even begin to realize where he goes from there. He struggles with realizing everything he’s ever known has been nothing but a construct, a digital story crafted within the limits of free will, and that he’s been nothing more than a slave to it his whole life. There’s discussions about what qualifies as “real” and what doesn’t. It’s perception. It’s why what physically happens in the Matrix effects the people in the “real world”. It’s all “real” but one world is more rooted in the physical than the other while one hides “the truth”.

Well, Dean and Sam aren’t in the Matrix in the sense that’s there’s one world and a digital “other”, but they are struggling with the same basic thing Neo was. Dean moreso than Sam. Dean is currently having an existential crisis. He thinks none of his choices are real because the world has been designed around him without his best interest in mind. Both Winchesters are then tasked in the role of Neo, where he exists as a check against the machines as “the one”. This makes the Oracle a lot like Billie. That’s looking at the first Matrix movie in stand alone tho. The Oracle and the Architect function closer to Amara and Chuck respectively. Trinity is a lot like Cas in that she has been “woke to reality” a lot longer than the rest. Loosely, Jack is like Morpheus, but he might be closer to being like Neo, depending on how the show decides to work out the details there.

If there was ever a time for an Alice in Wonderland episode, it’s now. The Matrix was rife with this imagery as the question of how your experiences and how you view them craft you absolutely hang over everything. Later Neo learns that humanity has been destroyed over and over again and that it’s a decision the One makes every single time, in order to continue. This is a lot like how Chuck forces worlds to live out the same story over and over. Only Sam and Dean are different, important like Neo. In the Matrix Neo falls in love with someone and doesn’t do what his predecessors do. He changes the game, forcing everyone into the future as Trinity dies. He then shortly follows. There’s also all this imagery involving keys and doors as gateways, with one of my favorite characters being the key maker. Jack is also like him, an opener of doors. Dabb era features, along with alchemy references, a lot of thematic references to this movie trilogy. Gates as doorways to Heaven and Hell in S8, doorways as paths to other whole universes in Dabb era.

Changing the future, destroying the system... in The Matrix this involves a lot of sacrifice. From everyone. With Supernatural it’s a price that’s been paid again and again. So. Who is ultimately going to be “The One”?

[dimples-of-discontent]

“Absence, darkness, death: things which are not”: 14x18 watching notes

“What’s Deal with Catharsis?”

Let’s talk about catharsis. 13x04 has been haunting me since it aired. I couldn’t get over Dean sitting on a therapist’s sofa asking “So what’s the deal with catharsis?”. I know it’s obvious but it is also a dramatic term and we are hardcore missing some catharsis in this show. Essentially, it’s the purging of negative emotions that are typically repressed which, in drama, enables renewal or restoration. One of SPN’s narrative problems, for me, is that it gives us precious little in the way of catharsis. There are notable exceptions (12x22 when Dean confronts Mary in his dream, for instance) but for the most part negative emotions are repressed, sublimated, and remain unaddressed. 

This is especially (haha, autocorrect turned that to “epically,” which is also true) for Dean and Cas. And it’s not sustainable. We need some purgation of their negative emotions, we NEED them to know crucial bits of information that reveal their true feelings instead of repressing them: Cas killed a million Deans but Dean doesn’t know! Dean was nihilistically depressed when Cas died but Cas doesn’t know! Cas sacrificed his soul (and happiness) to save Jack and Dean doesn’t know! The layering of dramatic irony is all very well and good, but we need to stop it at some point.

“A quintessence even from nothingness”: Absence and Negative Space

Do I actually think that will happen soon? No. I was interested in “Absence” being the title of this episode since absence is defined by the things it is not. Cas explains it in terms of Jack--not bad but the absence of good. And that’s kind of where we are with DeanCas too. It’s not definitively one thing (romance) but it’s the absence of any other convincing explanation. If they aren’t these other things--brothers, friends, war buddies--then what are they? “Absence” also refers to Mary, of course, who was absent from their lives once and now is again to be experienced not as a person but a lack. Their whole maternal relationship is defined by feelings of loss and absence so in a sad and terrible way it’s returned to normal. SPN is full of things that are not definitively one thing but which are NOT a bunch of other things and, in all cases, the slipperiness of the definition is itself the narrative problem.

SHAMELESS RENAISSANCE POETRY PLUG please go read this poem by John Donne on the winter solstice, which is all about death and renewal:

Study me then, you who shall lovers be At the next world, that is, at the next spring;        For I am every dead thing,        In whom Love wrought new alchemy.               For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness; He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

It’s called, “A Noctournal upon St. Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day” and I adore it. Also...it (along with a lot of Donne) seems so SPN-appropriate that I think he would have been a fan. (Donne is the preacher who wrote the “no man is an island” sermon and asked “not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”. He had a massive command of rhetoric, yo.)

Anyway, “absence, darkness, death: things which are not” is what the title immediately made me think of. Jack promised a new beginning, forged from the darkness that was Lucifer, and part of me is still convinced that this is what he’ll bring, despite appearances. We all predicted early on that he’d have a moment to go darkside and, yeah, this is it! His choices would also matter--because this is Team Free Will--but it would then be his choice to act evilly. Even if that happens, though, he can choose not to and part of me thinks he will. We don’t have other Big Bads on deck for the end of this season/start of S15 so I’m assuming episodes 19 and 20 will focus on the Jack problem until it reaches a crisis that carries us through to the summer. But how they will resolve it, I hope, has more to do with the power Jack holds to create as well as destroy. Or maybe Chuck’s reappearance will set this balance off? We’ll see.

Also, “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” which I’m going to keep an eye on as the season goes on.

Destiel is Pain

It’s fascinating that the promos were edited to suggest that this was an episode with MAXIMUM DEANCAS DRAMA OMG!! when it kinda...wasn’t. I know @occamshipper​ pointed out that they edited it just like a het romance drama, centering on the “you’re dead to me” and building up the angst and tension. And that was there, but it wasn’t everything. PR isn’t showrunning, yes, but it does mean something; it means they think the GA cares. And that’s kind of a big fucking deal at this point because what the GA cares about determines what we’ll see more of in the show. It’s not definitive at all. But it’s a trend and an important one that some fine folks have been tracking for a while.

The “you’re dead to me” was not not a big deal--and I had hoped very much that we’d get an apology along the lines of, “Cas, I’m sorry. What I said--I put the whole Jack thing on you and that’s not fair. I did the same thing. We all did. You didn’t fail us.” Let’s cross fingers and hope we hear that the next time they talk (since Sam stopped Cas from trying to give comfort in this episode...pray4Sam who was SUCH a brother-in-law/marriage counselor here). But it’s a Buckleming next so I don’t hold out hope. In any case, it’s a big deal because while Sam now knows that Dean doesn’t consider the whole thing Cas’s fault Cas doesn’t know that and will continue to go on thinking that a) he’s only good the Winchesters insofar as he’s “useful” and b) he’s a failure to Dean specifically. THAT’S TERRIBLE AND WE NEED TO CORRECT IT IMMEDIATELY!!

But we won’t correct it immediately because the show is riding DeanCas tension as basically the A plot at this point. Building angst to a breaking point surrounding Jack just emphasizes that. Jack caused our biggest DeanCas rift to date, both by Cas’s unwavering support in him that led to betraying Dean (running off with SOME WOMAN after stealing the colt from under his pillow after the mixtape scene, layering romance trope on romance trope) and by coming into existence the same day Cas died. Jack’s essential good or evil nature has been the biggest disagreement in their relationship for 3 seasons now so it makes sense to center a crisis on it. 

And Dean doesn’t even KNOW about Castiel’s deal with The Empty! He doesn’t know that Cas traded his soul to return Jack’s to earth...only to have it be destroyed. True, The Empty said it would only come when Cas was happy and the thick angst we have now doesn’t suggest he’ll be happy anytime soon, but I think Dean and Sam are about to find out about the deal and Dean’s about to be pissed the fuck off at Cas for doing something SO STUPID (so like a Winchester). Maybe in the same conversation where Dean apologizes we can have Cas tell him the truth about the deal? Like, can they talk please? The real villain was miscommunication all along though, right?

Zombie Moms

Just a little sidebar to tell myself to return to 13x12, “Various and Sundry Villains” (a Yockey ep) and the two witches who were able to get Rowena the Book of the Damned (crucial in this episode, as Rowena unwittingly leaves it with Jack) try to resurrect their mom and bring her back...wrong. Because necromancy is extremely tough (and why didn’t Jack need any victim blood to bring Mary back the way that the Plum sisters did??) what they bring back is just a murderous simulacrum that was, honestly, what I was afraid they were planning to do with Mary. I’m relieved that they didn’t.

Both episodes owe a great debt to the Buffy episode “Forever” (5x17) where SPOILERS FOR BUFFY after their mother’s death her younger sister attempts to bring her back, only to realize at the last second that it’s not possible and the thing outside the door is a horror. It’s a very intense episode about grief, following “The Body” (5x16), one of the most devastating TV episodes to ever air. It was obvious to me that Yockey et al. were using that episode in 13x12, though not totally clear how. They even cast the zombie Mom like Joyce!! 

In any case, in 13x12 the sisters’ refusal to let their mom go was an example of the toxic sibling codependency that Rowena used to kill them (as they beat each other to death, one using a hammer just like demon!Dean). In 14x18 Jack’s desire to bring Mary back is an example of his being unable to cope with the reality of his actions and his fear of losing the Winchesters. That’s not toxic codependency, but it is a refusal to go through the stages of grief. There’s definitely something going on here--and going on about Moms--that I can’t pick apart now but want to (or hope someone else will!!).

On which note, my chemo fatigue has found me so I’m gonna sign off. Apologies for typos or lack of clarity. I have really missed doing episode notes, though, so maybe I’ll be back to it soon. I’m psyched to see how this season wraps up, how about you?

[incarnateirony]

sorta laying on my back thinking. I've ignored 2po's recent wave of attacks until the last few topical answers, but honestly, like. it's so over man. this is. this is so over. it's beyond over. You lost before you ever heard there was a prequel.

You can deny and lash and writhe and flip shit and crap your pants and reinterpret meet and greets all you want but like. when we get to the end of the road. and it happens--not if, but when--when it happens, just like "when" the confession happens in S15 he called me delusional for at the start of the season--just. just remember this.

Remember the final time you clowned yourself, and make it the final time, and leave. Because I've been reminding for the last solid year all the other waves of serious failure on leaks or spec he's had, and he has to be aware by now, clinging to a dim hope that his wishes and denials will be true and THIS TIME, this time I'll be wrong about something I'm this loud about, like I was all the other things he denied, and called delusional, only to prove he was the delusional one.

like... will this be enough? come end of february will it be enough to make him leave? Again I know he'll send trolls to be like WELL U DONT KNOW EITHER but no, dude, I do. I knew it like I knew about it being JohnMary before deadline and about learning from parents and subverting revenge and war and all of the other billion lessons I tweeted out they screamed in denial. And that rug they brush it under is looking pretty mountainous right now.

Seriously dude. For fuck's sake. When we get to the end of the road, delete yourself, wholesale. This is going to be so far past the level of failure you've ever witnessed, which is impressive, because you spent 5K to argue with me before and be wrong. Of other people's money. On a situation so embarassing you lied about it until I dropped the receipts.

Like seriously... what's it gonna take for them to get a clue. I just want to post music, and alchemy, and reblog conveniently activated now meta and shit from days old, and have fun, but the motherfucker insists on treating fandom like a warzone and like. When he's ultimately proven wrong about all his, and gayle and suzanne's, malicious reframing and partial reporting, their agendas, all of it comes out as the wash of GARBAGE it has always been... will he FUCKING leave already? Will all of them? Or will they just find a new way to con people into paying for their gold passes to conventions? Rely on fandom ignorance not knowing the association of scripthunt and winchestersupdates? Like what's the end goal here.

Clearly it isn't the truth, he's never meaningfully showed ability to find it. And for alllll his self convincing he meaningfully invaded my server, he still doesn't know fuck for FUCK of what we got told Dec 2020, and if he did, honestly, the dude would delete his blog *right fucking now*, but he won't. He won't listen until his own lies put him through a meatgrinder again. Only this time, he's tricked multiple lanes of people to influence viewing of a different show. And people are gonna fuckin figure it out.

I'm sorry dude, we're NOT all working on M&G whispers thrice interpreted like you are, or bottom of shit mountain coffee runners who can't read. You are, in fact, like factually, and for real, absolute fucking garbage at interpreting shit, and/or so are your sources. please. for fuck sake. Commit to going away when you're wrong. Call it "if" you're wrong if it makes you feel better, but there's no if, dude, any more than there being an If about the Confession, or the Roadhouse ending, or Omissions. You just want to imagine an If to work with. There's no if. It's When.

Commit, motherfucker. You won't bet money this time. What about betting your socials. Come on, coward, stop running. Where do you think we're going.

Believe it or not, buddy. There's people to talk to in production past paid M&Gs. There's people that know far more than coffee runners with screened content that are literally only there as rubberstamp hires. There's people that I've been able to ask very direct questions to and be, y'know. Right.

The reshoots squealing was, honestly, the funniest, since it was mostly about The Path of 1 and shifting from post-15.18 bubble to Omitted bubble. For magical reasons that has NOTHING to do with something sent *after* the net draft submissions but *before* filming and certainly no association with other charts drawn for restructure. That would be too scary for 2po to think about. It'd be too scary to think about me giving bobo this shit publicly, or at least the late wave of it. Because he wants to scream bobo isn't credited like that stops him from talking to his bff. Spoiler: the ending is still the same, it's rearranging the journey! :)

Dense fuckers. You focused on how to achieve things or know things the absolutely worst ways that have left you unplugged, untrusted, locked out, and clueless on direction, with your best source being a tech consultant in a need to know system where she needs to and knows very little lmfao.

[incarnateirony]

Wait until my doxxy screechy loser haters realize that the same meta they were themselves screaming against for years was, in fact, mutually intertwined with leaks they never perceived, and built upon those leaks by observation and understanding, yes, but from those kinds of conversations. Alchemy. Kabbalah. Spiral narrative that the crew is all tweeting out now. Literally everything that started their shrill evangelical pearl clutching about Cults.

It just. It doesn't fucking compute to them that they are so many years behind on the discourse of creatives that they can't even comprehend where to start fixing it, because they can't allow themselves to admit they've been flat wrong for over half a decade on... basically everything.

I mean hell, despite proven S12 market testing which costs the company money, despite Bobo nearly quitting, re-signing only for One Thing, which he wrote first, these chuds are STILL trying to save their "NOBODY INTENDED ANYTHING UNTIL THAT MOMENT S15" because, well, they refuse to uproot the basic truth that yeah, you guys were clueless clods for years. They'd rather find a way to argue to save their ego and hope anybody else believes the nonsense.

This is WHY they can never parse what people say or mean. They don't care about Robbie or Jensen's intent now any more than they did Bobo's back then, and you know what, it didn't stop Bobo, and now there's nobody to stop ANYONE. They care about THEIR perspective, THEIR egos, and THEIR ways to save image, and will go out self immolating to the very end.

I don't know who's really been HERE all these years of 2po's screaming failures against all the things that came true, or the lies he invented about others to try to smear them on manipulative emotional and ethos appeals without any kind of logos to it. (You know, ohhhh, people are SO SCARED of Aaron, he MIGHT doxx them, they theorize--while they're the ones that actually got caught doxxing people. At least twice. And they're the ones threatening people at cons. But uwu he's not civil enough. No logic, no reality, just attacks on character since they can't actually attack my leak record.)

Like bro. Reality doesn't care if you hate me or not. That's not how reality works. You can attack my character all you want. I could be a goddamn serial killer or some shit but if what I'm saying is true about a particular topic, it remains being true, regardless if by night I do fucked up shit. Reality doesn't bend to ethical appeals, much less completely made up ones designed to manipulate people emotionally like 2po does.

But like. This is literally The Same Picture. It's been The Same Picture for years. When they denied market testing, intent, a pending confession, the roadhouse, omissions, the pilot script, the morals and premise of the Winchesters, all of it. Deny deny deny, because of their egos and what they WANT to believe, rather than what IS. Over and over again, The Same Picture of the Same Chucklefucks stirring the Same Shit they've been stirring for 6 years to zero success.

And the thing is, if they could let go of the narcissism long enough to adjust their methodology and check their biases and ask WHY they keep getting this shit wrong for years on end vs me, their egos would ACTUALLY TAKE LESS HITS. Every single time among the shit I listed, they had an opportunity to inspect their methodology, but never did, and instead doubled down. At any point, they could have accepted, guess I was wrong there, lemme figure out where I messed up so I figure out how to be right. And then boom! They'd stop failing and getting angry. But they can not let themselves admit this shit, so in result, you get them doubling down for years and years on end, deeper and deeper into the hole, further and further from the truth, because now, well, goddamnit they've committed literal years to being wrong, and they'd have to accept their like, entire fandom presence is Being Wrong All The Time And Being A Complete Joke.

So those same egos, the ones that made them refuse to update at earlier junctions, are just going through trash compactors right now. They feel it, and it's what's causing thrashing like on 2po's blog lately. The pancake flip from trying to yell about his sources, to yelling nobody can have sources because NDAs, to whatever else. Just trying to claw his way down the wall while they realize everything THEY ever had was a fuckin' joke, so maybe they can project that at everyone else, and maybe THAT will save them. But it won't.

Just. Jesus guys. It's okay to be fuckin wrong. But once you make as big a mess as 2po and spnscripthunt and their various mods have, there's really no coming back from it. Because now they've committed THEIR ethos into it, doxxed, threatened, harassed, tried to invade and break into security, whatever the fuck they've done. They gave up ethics while trying to appeal to it. All in desperate irrelevant power cloys vs someone that's laughing at them for what they considered Fandom Power to begin with.

[incarnateirony]

Genuinely funny watching my haters realize/panic I put all my years of work into this fandom, on the path I chose, for a reason.

The same people that mocked working with author rapport, just to feel entitled to attack authors, now scream about what is or isn't possible because they didn't think to do the same.

They're still doubling down into delusion that "authors intended nothing till S15" to save their own lies, like WB just paid for deancas market testing For Giggles in S12, and like Bobo almost quit for no reason, and only suddenly decided to re-sign his contract for One Thing like. That moment. It was all magical, it's not that they were fighting corp and I was right, because 2po and scripthunt are screaming into the internet being unable to let go of being wrong.

The same people that mocked the spiral narrative that came from long years of picking certain author brains are now acting like they can't see, read, or perceive anything said about the show and nothing means anything, because boy would that be awkward.

The same people that got shrill calling basic alchemy story study a "cult" in a classic conservative christian panic of pearl clutching have no comment in half the goddamn crew now being alchemists, because boy would that be fucking awkward, much less Jensen wearing gnostic swag now like ouroboros rings, all seeing eyes, and designing this entire show, or his Tower radioco shit.

It's just. It's genuinely funny. They can now see nothing, read nothing, understand nothing, because if they let themselves understand a single thing, their inexcusable behavior for the last several years starts feeling REAL AWKWARD.

Hey buddies. Clocks ticking. You're out of moves.

Learn to think beyond your personal ego pacification within the Present to start actually seeing roads ahead. You can do anything once you think outside yourself, or worse, your mindless group hive identity.

When you know Who You Are and What You Want, a thousand voices in the crowd screaming "stop, now" doesn't do much. And it's not gonna stop Jensen either.

And the best part is? Their support isn't near as huge as they try to project. All it took was blocking 3 old hate nonnies and boom, hate stops. Almost like they DESPERATELY want to try to increase the appearance of their size by hiding on anon, but are too mortally embarrassed to act like this with their name attached, making it all nothing but noise, hate, panic, and crumbling egos. A literal small handful of obsessed losers, people that literally lost, desperately looking for a hole to convince themselves that what's true isn't true. And perceiving gaps where there are none, because they never bothered to Understand before trying to argue.

So allow me to roar in the woods again. Here I am, spnscripthunt. Next time come at me instead of doxxing innocent people around me. Or, better and smarter, start facing reality. (Aside: If 2po screams I don't have sources, can anyone explain, beyond him being a compulsive liar in general, why he would try to doxx out a Misha assistant he simultaneously thinks is telling everything in my midst? So... you ADMIT I have sources, you're just clueless who and want to retaliate like it'll change the end. NEAT.)

But sure, paranormal freemasons aren't real, paranormal freemasons hired on crew for exactly these reasons can't hurt you. Nevermind you're standing in their clubhouse, just as a start. Must not exist I guess. Some loser that failed out at leaking a thousand times and mistakenly attacked a fan as proxy to the crew itself for these topics--that loser can't cope, so it can't possibly be real.

[incarnateirony]

OK, apparently i need to put up a public notice about this.

POLOL discord was made, at first, to escape people screaming cult at us for, you know, the truth. For working on bobo's spiral narrative, for knowing his intentions, for marking down arcana and alchemy use. The people there spoke with the authors and knew what they were doing, like writing the confession at the start of the season, but still got screamed at and called delusional.

One of the key rules in the server is to not wander around whining that you don't understand it all the time while simultaneously refusing to onboard information people took the time and energy to try to give you. Because that's selfish bullshit. People have other things to do with their time and energy than use it on someone that wants temporary pacification, not actual peace and answers.

This is starting to become an issue. Because this fandom can have all its anxiety brainworms it wants, but you've got to understand. I've known the end since I've known the beginning and the arena shape of rough episodes between. Same as I knew S15 confession or original roadhouse ending. It just. It is what it is. It's reality, and it's happening.

So whenever someone insists on coming into my server to doom spiral, you have to understand, from my perspective, you are literally kicking into my livingroom to have a meltdown about the monster in your head, sometimes several times a day, and it literally looks insane to me, because when you know the truth, you can see all these people screaming and shaking and fighting the monster in their head, but then when you try to talk to them to help them with that monster, they only hear the convenient parts they want, move on, then come back with more questions from angles that show they dead ass have not been listening to me.

You wanna figure out what's happening? You gotta admit you suck. That's the first step. Every part of your info gathering process or bias confirmation or what you think Why Not sucks. Get over that first so you stop trying to cling to the preconceptions that made the monster in your head. They suck, stop trying to rehab them, be like elsa and let it go and start over.

I'm not going to spend my time, all these years later, already tolerating people lowkey implying they don't actually believe me, in my own house, for the monsters inside their own head--all these years later, kicking water uphill to argue against the first three bad assumptions you posed your questions on the basis of because you won't let it go. That process sucks, it's why you keep ending up in left field, stop trying to tell yourself you were right or good at this the whole time. You suck and admit you suck and keep moving and learn how not to suck. I hate to break it to you, but this is literally the show plot now.

Yesterday someone exploded because I called them on it, and the server got a mix of messages--half thanking me and apologizing for having to deal with it, other people ~concerned that ~people might leave because ~I'm being too blunt.

Bruh I don't care. It's my space. Don't come into my house and shit on my rug while screaming. If I say, stop shitting on my rug or leave, don't scream back "OH YEAH? IF YOU DONT LET ME SHIT ON THE RUG, I'LL LEAVE", good. Leave until you unpack your shit and are willing to start over. I'm tired of people dragging delusional bullshit inside their own head into my livingroom and spraying their drama and anxiety and doomspirals everywhere then refusing to actually *listen* to what it takes to get rid of the anxiety monster, or expecting me to kick uphill against your own biases you're projecting at shit. Stop.

"I don't get it." Then you don't care. You don't care about me as a person, you don't care about how I communicate, you don't care until it directly influences you in a method of immediate profit on the specifics you personally care about it. And if you don't care, I don't have to care, and I don't have to tolerate you shitting on my rug and breaking the rules.

We gave leniency on those rules because the finale WAS tough to stomach. But you've had two years to process it now and if you're still directing it at others, that's your shit and your shit alone. And again, I hate to break it to you, that, from projection, reflection, and processing your own shit, is in fact THE FUCKING PLOT.

So guys. Respect my space. I don't have to let people into my space. You are not entitled to do what the fuck ever you want in my space or worse TO me as a human being. If only five people were left in the server and I had peace that'd be peak over having 1000 akrida in it shitting up the walls with cockroach poop and doomspiraling and refusing to actually listen or onboard info to stop shitting on the walls.

I know myself. I know the truth. And I have self respect. And I know this drives haters insane that don't have any of these three for themselves. People who just have speculation and theories and years of misinterpretations. They want to do everything they can to destroy that, and it's never worked, and they just get angrier and angrier and further away from the truth. But the end is coming whether they're ready or not. Reality is reality and is going to continue being reality. Wildly. So no. I get to do self care and set basic self respect and exhaustion limits against the most disrespectful people wandering into my space, thinking being Nice(TM) qualifies you to ignore and disrespect people at convenience over literally, definitional delusional bullshit inside your own head. Or use them up for your personal token of comfort over and over without doing what you need on yourself to stop using someone else as a distraction. Stop.

And most of all, buckle up assholes. Cuz if you haven't accepted the truth yet, it's really going to come around the bend for you. And you'll realize, I spoke truth: takes like 2po, destielotp, etc are the definition of delusional agendas and projection; shippers are acting on the definition of irrational fear they're weaving in their own heads and misunderstandings. And that you guys let yourselves be deluded by sociopaths for years, and I do mean years, as even that is about to be part of the plot. Roughly S12-15 primarily with tangible season 10, 8 and other elements (all the way to In The Beginning and Lazarus Rising and old Kripke quotes tbh).

Everyone better look real hard at Kripke's old genderless quote about Dean's perfect match, figure out the original glitchy promo reels, and realize what's about to go down with Roxxy vs the Queen and all perceptions Dean refuses to look past like you guys there.

Long live the queen. Nobody can stop what's coming for humanity through the hole in the body to make it full. It's time for the final exchange. Got diamonds between my thighs where your Ego will find bliss. Meet me at the corner of Advanced Death, I will always find you here. The One. A goddess with a blade, want some honey, you won't stop running. Our box has a name. You can call him queen bee. Okay ladies, now let's get in formation. Superstar, supernova, talk my shit Casanova, Supernatural love up in the air. Gonna find the queen of all your dreams.

S/he's The Trap, one more step and you're dead. And that's okay, you don't have to figure it out right now dean, you just need to open the space vagina through the narnia closet and let it in. Just take one step, we can stick with the mouth for now. Open the door dean, answer the phone. Your goddess awaits.

[incarnateirony]

Everything is so quiet. I thought there'd be more promotion before the midseason finale

Well, I've been quiet because you could say I'm working on my own thing with a deadline. For what it's worth, an hour and twenty of content is exporting right now, at about 24% with just over an hour and a half remaining.

One could say I hit my development project thing out of the park, or more TPTB did because they're shooting straight through, and the only way to really illustrate it is BY updating the spiral narrative project.

I initially thought I'd get one (1) vid done by the time reflections aired and develop the rest over hiatus, the way I did with the first round of the project 4 years ago (I had started on it and released the namesake Lateralus along with episode 300, then finished developing the other 12 songs over hiatus and released them with Ouroboros, For Reasons.).

Instead, I uh. Have what I could call a 1x6 Art of Dying Edition that I'll be streaming in the server tonight and tomorrow for those interested, then once the episode drops and I can get a decent copy, update it for a few final pieces I'm waiting for and drop it Wednesday and everyone can entertain themselves picking at it for the month we're down.

So that's why *I've* been quiet. Basically I silently adjusted my deadline a while back when I realized how SMOOTH the updates went.

For those interested, beyond Grudge and Reflections that were *also* updated on S15 hiatus (and shelved when things smelled funny, before being sent. somewhere.), what mostly worked was actually re-establishing the base premise.

S1-13 spiral narrative

S14 Master Track (including post-Ouroboros updates), and S15 itself becomes a List Of Processes in alchemy, which then tag in over the master tracks of Season 14 and The Winchesters running tandem, trying to find the proper order.

...and you could say some metanarrative framing.

It's. It's a lot. It's 333 episodes shuffled to mythic math and 4 years of video development so. If people like my shit, damn, you about to be entertained af.

[incarnateirony]

how did a post about misha and gk end up being about will and the winchesters? will seems pretty keen for misha to succeed, he even said he’s going to support gk.

Sit down you 2po dicksucker. I don't care. He's a fucking delusional piece of shit. He is, in fact, part of the narrative of lies in discussion. He IS part of those groups and IS one of their loudest ones, convincing people as dumb as you that he's legit instead of the wincel j2 hat motherfucker taking sources from hateful antis lmfao.

Sorry bro. He dug his grave, and y'all wanna lay in it with him to justify random sobbing of He Swears He X Thing. He's part of the psycho mfers sourcing lies used to attack creatives, and is still doing it, and has used his literal delusions to bash on other people and call them delusional for years, just like all his fucking friends do.

Why would he get brought up? Bc people like you are still dumb enough to refuse to connect the dots and I'ma repeat it until you all realize how badly you've been suckered by a man blowing denialist smoke for years he's done nothing but fail through.every time he fails he makes up a story of Someone Else Failed, Too, So Everyone Sucks As Bad As Him. then like. I have receipts I said the opposite.

And you guys never learn and run his NEXT bullshit lie narrative he spins up 4 hours later. Literally fucking hopeless, brainless. The world doesn't care whether you like me or not or like what I'm saying or not, the real world is going to keep real worlding, where I never said the shit 2po claims I say and have disproven it every time with receipts, where he's just a delusional piece of shit crying in denial trying to drag everyone down to his own abysmal failure rate by weaving up fantasies everyone is as SHITTY at this as him, like he has been for years every time he wiped out, and where his fanfiction about me need not apply.

This is your friendly reminder that the following things 2po assigned delusional/schizophrenia/grifter/whatever claims to: Market testing, Berens intent, there being a confession S15, a roadhouse ending, omissions, CW being sold, the relevance of old syndication both to production and plot, the script being real, the morals of the season's episodes, whatever else. alchemy, tarot and spiral narratives, he screamed that shit about that too before we magically hired those exact folks tweeting out those exact things. Extra weird he's so clueless he thinks my song posts are "random junk", not ironic DJ booth tweeting out the plot that's already dickslapped his dumb ass repeatedly without him even realizing it.

*whispers* notice... these are all things that were real that he simply wasn't privy to for years while I was. Even when he confidently misinterpreted M&Gs as sources and reasoning back then, too. So that just means... he and everyone that listened to him were delusional those 3 years, and the 2 years after, and they haven't changed now.

Just like you guys never learned "I don't like it/don't want it/don't believe you" doesn't impact reality no matter how many diapers you fill about it. Refuse to update your bad methodology and sources all you want but don't cry to me when the nasty people you work with send you a pipe bomb or some shit for the amount of smoke you've blown up their ass when the truth hits again at The End Of The Road.

[drsilverfish]

The Absence of the Feminine in 15x19 Inherit the Earth

I’ve been thinking about the fact that Amara’s absence from 15x19 Inherit the Earth felt... really disappointing. And how that deliberately parallels the disappointment the narrative itself creates at Cas’ absence in 15x19 too (Dean running to the door of the bunker, only to be faced with the huge let down that is Lucifer).  

I’ve previously written about the ways in which Amara and Castiel have been paralleled in the SPN narrative here: 

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/133295635934/amara-and-castiel 

and here:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/633588894701682688/amara-and-castiel-parallels-in-15x17

I was hoping Amara would, as an active power, evidently, transform Chuck from the inside in 15x19 Inherit the Earth; i.e. that feminine power in the narrative would come rushing back.

And in one sense, of course, that did play out. Amara did transform Chuck. 

The ineffable power of the Divine, including Amara, moved on from its vessel Chuck (the Demiurge, or lesser God in Gnosticism) who had proved unworthy, and into its new vessel, Jack Kline Novak Winchester; part human and part divine.  

And inside Jack, Amara’s Goddess-power is in harmony, and in balance, with the God-power of the universe; Creation and Destruction, Alpha and Omega, the End and the Beginning, united at last, in an alchemical Sacred Marriage. 

Indeed, the first power Jack exhibited, after he exploded in The Empty and returned to earth, was a power more compatible with The Darkness and with endings (Amara’s traditional function). He kept sucking the life out of vegetation in 15x19:

Still, Amara’s voice and her form were absent in 15x19.

Just as Castiel was absent in 15x19.

The disappointment at their absence, which the narrative itself creates in relation to Cas, fits with the metanarrative feat S15 is attempting to pull off, in which the current SPN writers’ room drags elements of SPN’s own narrative - personified in Bad Writer Chuck (who is partly a writers’ room self-send-up, and, perhaps, partly, no doubt, a stand in for Exec Level at the CW Network).

God (Chuck), as Metatron said, in 8x23 Sacrifice, was always “a bit of sexist.”

And so has the show been, let’s acknowledge that; the writers’ room is :-).  

So, of course, in the final chapter written by Chuck, 15x19, (although, notice, in that episode, that the Winchesters and Jack start to take over as narrators, as they begin to win) the feminine would be absent. 

Chuck has always tried to write the feminine (which is symbolically equated with love in SPN) out of the narrative. He wanted a story about monsters, not love.

Chuck’s removal of the feminine from the SPN narrative on the earthly plane, mirrored his original sin, of locking away his sister, Amara, starting with the original fridgings of Mary Winchester and Jess. Followed by (remember Old Sexist SPN) the “ganking” of such Biblical anti-woman depictions as the Monstrous Eve, The Whore of Babylon and Lilith.    

As a result, of course, of all the dead, or absent, or monstrous women, Chuck accidentally super-charged his story with homo-eroticism (lol) but that wasn’t his intention. Castiel was, in Chuck’s view “broken” because Cas rebelled and wrote his own (queer) love script. 

So, Chuck tried to remove Cas from the story too; his ideal SPN ending being a Winchester Brothers Only Murder-Suicide, another revenge tragedy. We saw that played out on the angelic plane in the final fratricidal killing of Lucifer by Michael in 15x19.

But Chuck didn’t kill Amara, although his sibling rivalry with her was his driving creative force. He thought he’d won, when he absorbed her in 15x17 Unity. But, she simply moved on from him, to a higher plane, united with Jack. 

Now that Chuck’s power over the story has ended, I am hoping the feminine will return to the narrative in 15x20, in the form of Mary Winchester, Donna and Jodie, Charlie, Eileen, and... Castiel. Castiel, who has been symbolically placed: 1) through his parallelling with Amara, and with Eileen; and 2) through Chuck’s repeated attempts to banish him, in the place of “the feminine”.

Let’s hope the narrative can now, fully, take Becky Rosen’s note (from 15x04 Atomic Monsters):

“It’s feeling a little… thin? Low stakes? It’s fun to hear the boys’ voices, but a story is only as good as its villain, and these villains are just not feeling very… dangerous? Not to mention, there’s no classic rock. No one even mentions Cas. The climax is a little stale.”  

[drsilverfish]

The Symbolism of Adam’s Rib in 15x17 Unity

In Genesis, Eve was created by God from Adam’s rib:

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

(King James Bible)

In 15x17, Seraphina takes out Adam’s rib and gives it to Dean in order to provide the final ingredient (apparently) in the cosmic Jack-bomb designed, according to Billie’s plan, to kill God by smushing Jack’s Nephilim grace and his human soul together.

It would seem Chuck wrote that part, however, in order to deliver the rib to Jack as an agent of Jack’s destruction. Chuck has wanted to kill Jack (whose Nephilim power seems to be a genuine threat to him) for some time - remember 14x20 Moriah. 

But, perhaps Adam’s rib, which in Genesis gave rise to the feminine, is another part of the alchemical and Jungian symbology SPN has laterly been drawing on. 

Just as Chuck has absorbed Amara (the feminine God-principle) so Jack has now absorbed Adam’s rib (originally the generative element in the creation of woman). 

The feminine presently seems destroyed, lost, gone from the narrative (as Mary Winchester was apparently killed by Jack in 14x18 Absence) and that’s always been Chuck’s narrative. He locked up his sister, Amara, the feminine God-principle, for aeons previously after all, and the origin story of his Winchester Gospels was the fridging of Mary Winchester, followed by the mirror-murder of Jess. Chuck, as Metatron pointed out in 8x23 Sacrifice (also the writers’ room’s own comment on itself)  is, “A bit of a sexist...”

BUT, I suggest, the feminine principle, which in Jungian, binary terms, as the anima, is the internal, unconcious, feminine psychic element within the male psyche, will return. Within those terms, the feminine principle has been coded, in the SPN narrative, as love. 

It is Amara, the feminine God-principle, whom we see now truly loves and appreciates creation in 15x17, whilst Chuck has become wrathy and destructive.

I noticed that when Amara was trying to get Chuck to appreciate angelic devotion in Heaven, and he snaps the angels out of his way, he says to her: 

“Don’t worry, they’re not gone, just... away..”

Those of you who’ve been following me for a while know I’ve always thought that’s what happened to Mary - she was zapped “away” somewhere, rather than killed:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184131452324/14x18-absence-the-games-continue 

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184458723054/mary-is-watching-over-you-from-a-mirror

and that we will see her again at The End.

Many metas have been written about how Dean has been coded as “feminine” within the SPN narrative, in a variety of ways, e.g. because he had to be a substitute “Mom” to Sam when Mary died, e.g. because in the narrative filmic codes SPN has frequently drawn on, to be queer-coded (for men) is, frequently, to be feminine-coded (Dean’s love for Rhonda Hurley’s pink and satiny panties etc. etc.).  

Chuck saw Dean as his own (”mascline”) mirror, in his 15x17 narrative. And in Chuck’s storied ending, he wanted Dean’s “...sense of duty, his rage, winning out in the end.” The “good son” imploding, and killing his sibling - an earthly mirror for Chuck’s own fantasies, just as Chuck has attempted to banish or absorb his own sibiling, Amara. 

But Dean’s love for Sam won out, and Chuck didn’t get his Winchester murder-suicide finale.

And through these final episodes, the last trials of Team Free Will 2.0, love (coded as the feminine God-principle, the anima etc. in the narrative) will win out again, on the cosmic, as well as an earthly plane. 

Because, out of Adam’s rib, came Eve. 

[drsilverfish]

The Alchemical Sign of the Rose in 15x19 Inherit the Earth

15x19 Inherit the Earth is a very complex episode, because it both has to function, on one level, as a ridiculous shit-show of a miserable, cheesy, “Bros only” “ending” (but plausible enough, for a certain audience fraction) AND, on another level, as a piece of profound synthesis, for many of the symbolic themes which have run through the Dabb era.

For those of you who have been following the alchemical symbolism in Dabb’s S14 and S15, well lookeee here - Rose Street is the name of the street outside the Church of Michael:

And look at this amazing shot, as Sam and Dean and Jack enter the church, which is of Christ’s crown of thorns, from above, shot so it looks like a stone rose:

Rosicrucianism was a Christian mystical order (dating to the 17thC). The Rosicrucian cross at the top of this post (from an 18thC manuscript) is red for the blood of Christ (sacrifice) with a heart hidden inside. The gold cross represents the spiritual gold within human nature.

And gold is the culmination of the “Great Work” of the alchemists; turning lead into gold as an allegory for the soul’s journey to God, which is also symbolic, for Jung, of the psyche’s journey towards self-integration. Dabb’s writers’ room has been drawing on alchemical and Jungian symbolism for a long time now. 

And in this episode, in a profound act of psychic self-integration, Dean finally puts down his father’s revenge quest; John Winchester’s and God the Father’s mirrored revenge quests, on Earth as it is in Heaven. He refuses to kill the monster that is Chuck, although Chuck has tortured them mightily; he refuses to enact bloody revenge; he breaks the cycle of Chuck’s revenge narrative (which, notice, Chuck is still urging him on to complete, even as he is cowering on the floor, demanding that the Winchesters kill him). 

Why does Dean put down the rage of revenge? Because Cas has finally taught him to see who he is, inside; that, at his core, Dean is not rage and violence, but love. 

And Jack-the-Divine-Unity’s message (he who contains both the divine feminine, Amara, and the divine masculine, Chuck, in balance within him) is that divinity is immanent (in-dwelling). Divinity (spiritual gold) is within us:

Jack: “I’ll be in every drop of falling rain, every speck of dust that the wind blows...”

“People don’t need to pray to me, or to sacrifice to me, they just need to know they’re a part of me, and to trust in that.”

The rose, as well as being a symbol of spiritual love and sacrifice, also has an earthly symbolism, of course, as a flower we associate with romantic love. Remember this, from Beren’s 9x06 Heaven Can’t Wait?

The shot shows us Castiel, ready for his “date” with Nora, holding a rose behind his back, but we see it, knowing it’s from Dean’s POV, watching Cas leave from the driver’s seat of the Impala. Castiel’s rose points towards Dean; in visual subtext, the shot tells us, the rose (Castiel’s romantic love) is, and should be, for Dean, not Nora:

The Rose

“A highly complex symbol; it is ambivalent as both heavenly perfection and earthly passion; the flower is both Time and Eternity, life and death, fertility and virginity. In the Occident, the rose and lily occupy the position of the lotus in the Orient. In the symbolism of the heart, the rose occupies the central point of the cross, the point of unity. The red and white rose together represent the union of fire and water, the union of opposite. In Alchemy, the rose is wisdom and the rosarium the Work; it is also the rebirth of the spiritual after the death of the temporal. In Hebrew Qabalism, the center of the rose is the sun and the petals the infinite, but harmonious, diversities of Nature. The rose emanates from the Tree of Life. In Hinduism, the lotus parallels the symbolism of the Mystic Rose as a spiritual center, especially in the chakras. For Rosicrucians, the Rose-cross is the Mystic Rose as wheel and cross; the rose is the divine light of the universe and the cross the temporal world of pain and sacrifice. The rose grows on the Tree of Life which implies regeneration and resurrection. The rose in the center of the cross is the quaternary of the elements and the point of unity.”

J.C. Cooper's Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols (1978), pp. 141-142

Divine love has achieved integration on the Heavenly plane, thanks to Jack’s integration of Chuck and Amara in harmony within him; the Hieros Gamos, the Sacred Marriage, the culmination of the “Great Work”.

Surely now, the narrative symmetry suggests, it must achieve integration on the earthly plane (in 15x20).

As above, so below. 

My usual disclaimer applies; reading this symbology does not promise a rainbow of obviousness. It just hopes for one :-)   

[drsilverfish]

Dean’s 17 Cavities in 15x10 The Hero’s Journey

Seventeen is a pretty specific number, right?

I’ve already written about the way in which the dentist’s chair sequence in 15x10 makes specific, subtextual, reference to Dr. Freud, who wrote, in The Interpretation of Dreams, that dreams about teeth falling out were repressed sexual anxiety dreams.

And why would Dean be suffering from (subtextual) sexual anxiety? 

Because, he’s just confessed more of his feelings, and on his knees no less, to Castiel, than he’s ever confessed before. 

Garth probes Dean’s teeth and finds seventeen cavities.

In subtext, Garth has always had a bit of a crush on Dean. In subtext, Garth the werewolf helps Dean learn to tap-dance in the dentist’s chair dream-sequence as a metaphor for self-acceptance (in part) of Dean’s own “monstrous” side (his queer closeted anxiety). And after that dance sequence, Dean is able, back up out of the dentist’s chair, to admit to Garth that he smells good too (a bit more, subtextual, bisexual self-acceptance), and to look longingly at Garth and Bess dancing, wishing (we can infer) for his own “dance partner”.  He thinks he’d be good at it <3. 

For those of you who’ve been following the Jungian and alchemical symbolism in S14 and S15, the number 17 might ring a bell as the path, on the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, between Tiphareth (Integraton/ Beauty) and Binah (Wisdom/ Understanding):

That pathway is said to be linked to the Tarot card The Lovers (here reproduced from the Crowley-Harris deck):

This card doesn’t simply symbolise the meeting of two lovers on the physical plane, but also the “sacred marriage”, which, in Jungian alchemy (which views alchemical texts as metaphors for psychic forces) it is the meeting of the Self and the Shadow, the integration of “masculine” and “feminine” principles within the self. 

Dean has just been on an underworld journey to Purgatory 2.0 (a metaphor for a journey into the unconscious) and has come face to face with his Shadow-self, in the form of admitting, in his prayer to Cas, to the rage that he inherited from his childhood trauma and which has, up to this point (because it hadn’t been confronted) often controlled him, turning him into someone who acts out like his father did.

So, in subtext, Dean’s seventeen cavities link to The Lovers tarot card, and thus symbolise, a) Dean’s “hero’s journey” towards greater acceptance of his bisexuality, b) Dean’s psychic journey towards greater integration of his self and his Shadow-self, c) Dean’s psychic journey towards greater integration of his “softer” side (the side that wants to dance) with his exterior “hardass” side (the side his father approved of), and d) also symbolises Castiel as Dean’s potential life-partner. All of these are, of course, clearly linked. 

Not only that, but this integration of Self and Shadow on the earthly plane has been, and will again, be mirrored on the cosmic plane. 

Chuck is unbalanced at present, because he has “broken up” with Amara, and he is not facing his own Shadow self (whatever it is he has repressed about himself). Therefore, he is acting out and behaving “monstrously”. Chuck needs to achieve the same kind of psychic growth Dean is in the process of achieving - the creator must learn from his creation. 

N.B: As ever, my reading of the queer subtext in SPN does not promise a rainbow parade of obviousness at the end.  But subtext IS part of narrative.

[drsilverfish]

Rowena’s Symbolic and Alchemical “Return of the Feminine” in 15x08

I’ve been talking for a while about how Chuck keeps trying to write the feminine out of his version of the grim-dark bros murder-suicide conflict narrative he’s writing:

1) Pouffing Becky somewhere unknown (an AU?) in 15x04 Atomic Monsters

2) Mary Winchester’s second (apparent) death in S14

3) Threatening more women Dean and Sam care about, Eileen, Donna and Jodie, in 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t in Heaven

By contrast, we’ve also had the return of the feminine in S15 (contra Chuck):

1) Amara’s triumphant return, clothed in an f-you glorious shade of yellow like the sun (casting off her type-casting as The DarknessTM)

2) Eileen’s return from the dead, thanks to Rowena and Sam’s magic

3) Rowena’s return, after her sacrifice to save the world from Chuck’s rift into Hell, as the new Queen of Hell

The symbolism of Rowena’s attire and throne in 15x08, the episode of her return, is interesting.

She’s dressed in red, which is, in Western culture, a symbol of harlotry (the “scarlet woman”) which feels like a kind of f-you to Chuck’s (and the earlier writers’ room’s) shitty writing of the feminine as monstrous: Ruby as an evil sexual temptress archetype; Eve as monstrous; the Whore of Babylon as monstrous; Abaddon as a bitch femme-fatale - and all “righteously” “ganked” by our male heroes (basically a bunch of Biblical fan-fiction reproducing Chuck’s patriarchal BS). 

Whilst Rowena was likewise killed by one of our heroes, she chose the manner of her death, and Sam acted (reluctantly) on her instructions. The pattern was broken. Just as it was previously and most dramatically broken in S11 when Amara turned out not to be the next evil villainess in need of ganking (hurrah) but a wronged God-entity entitled to an apology from Chuck himself. That was the origin-point for the great turn-to-the-feminine in Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative, which also brought Mary Winchester back from the dead and into the narrative again (whose fridging was the original inciting incident for the Winchesters’ bro-story).

Rowena’s red dress therefore also symbolises a stage (rubedo) in the alchemical process, for those of you who’ve been following my alchemical meta and discussions on S14 and S15, which is the stage which comes before the “great work”, symbolised by the “sacred marriage”. In Jung’s configuration/ reinterpretation of medieval alchemy, the sacred marriage symbolises the integration of the masculine and feminine (the anima and the animus, the self and the Shadow) in the psyche.

The universe needs both Amara and Chuck, for balance (beginnings and endings, dark and light) but Chuck keeps trying to write the feminine out of the story, following his original, Ur-sin, of locking away his God-sister unjustly. 

But despite him, the feminine is returning, filled with power, both on a cosmic level AND in the psyche’s of our heroes, as they encounter their Shadow-selves and achieve (or rather, are in the process of achieving) psychic growth, emotional maturity and wholeness.    

Rowena is sitting on a three-headed serpent throne. 

Firstly, the serpent is the symbol in the Bible of The Fall, which places the blame on the feminine, on Eve, as the original temptress. So we can read this as a reclamation of that symbol in the service of feminine power.

Secondly, three headed serpents or dragons appear in alchemical symbolism:

 The heads are often coloured in three of the colour stages of alchemy (black,white, yellow, red).

Nazari’s “Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals” (1599)

https://www.alchemywebsite.com/Alchemical_Symbolism_Triple_headed_snakes.html

The three-headed dragon/ snake symbolises, in alchemical texts, the integration of the three elements (of the universe and of “man”); of soul, spirit (or mind) and body, symbolised by mercury, sulfur and salt. 

And, as you can see, the three-headed dragon/ snake is sometimes depicted (as in the first image) in conjunction with an Ouroboros (a snake swallowing its own tail) which is a symbol of death and rebirth as the ascendance of the soul to God in the allegorical undertanding of medieval alchemy or, in Jung’s later interpretation, of the integration of the psyche, after the underworld journey to encounter the Shadow. 

Rowena of course has, in dying, returned, transformed and more powerful than before - her own Ouroboros narrative. 

So, cosmically and internally, the SPN narrative, drawing on alchemical themes,  is progressing towards the re-integration of the feminine, both above and below, so Rowena’s powerful return tells us. And thus, towards the union of the earthly and the divine (as currently evident in the God-wound connection between Sam and Chuck), light and dark, self and Shadow, beginning and end.

[drsilverfish]

Nothing Gold Can Stay... (15x04 Atomic Monsters)

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Hey everyone, as ever, I am catching up British-time, so I haven’t jumped into your posts yet, but I’m looking forward to it!

I’m sure there are some great gifs and discussions already out there about Dean and his “man meat” grief-eating. 

But I thought I’d start with Veronica and Robert Frost.

Those of you who’ve been following mine or @occamshipper​ ‘s musings on the use of alchemical themes in Dabb-era SPN will know that gold was highly significant to the medieval alchemists. It was their ultimate goal, to turn “base metal” (lead) into gold, and that was understood as a metaphor (or a mirror on the earthly plane) for the refinement of the soul on its journey to God. 

Next week’s episode, 15x05, is titled  Proverbs 17.3, and in the Bible, Proverbs 17.3 reads (King James version):

The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold:

But the LORD trieth the hearts

Gold is, officially, a theme. As is the symbolic red of the heart.

As Becky tells Chuck, it’s not the monsters (ooh shade at the Leviathan, whom Chuck thinks were “great”, just like he thought the ending of Game of Thrones was “great”) which SPN fans are really interested in, it’s the emotional interactions between the characters - i.e. their hearts. 

Becky, in Perez’ metafictional commentary, is the fan-fiction representative who has come to understand the SPN story better than sucky origin-writer Chuck. She knows it’s about the emotional notes, the heartfelt conversations between the hero characters (including Cas, since she shades his non-mention all too often in Chuck’s MOTW stories) - aka the real “gold” of the story.

Interesting also, in terms of alchemical colour symbolism, are Sam’s God-wound induced “red visions”, which seem to be of an AU in which Sam has succumbed to his old demon-blood addiction (symbolic of his S5 apparent “destiny” of possession by Lucifer):

I was waiting for the Ouroboros (spiral/ circular narrative) reference to 5x04 The End (in its numerical correspondence to 15x04). And here it is, because Sam in the red-vision in 15x04 speaks in a similar voice to Lucifer!Sam in The End. Dean in the 15x04 red vision is a desperate fighter and Sam has said “Yes” to the demonic, just as was the case in 5x04 The End.:

In alchemy, there are four traditional colour-stages along the alchemical transformational road from lead to gold - nigredo (blackening) albedo (whitening) citrinitas (yellowing) and rubedo (reddening). Reddening is the final stage before gold. So Sam’s red-visions, and the gold which becomes a theme in 15x04 by means of the quotation from Robert Frost’s beautiful poem, are linked pieces of alchemical symbolism. 

Their meaning, I think, is that just as Amara’s link to Dean through the Mark of Cain changed Amara for the better (she learned about love through experiencing Dean’s “heart” through the Mark in S11, thus shaking off The DarknessTM to become clothed in yellow, the colour of the sun, at the start of S15), so Sam’s link to Chuck through the God-gun (of equalising/ revenge) will (hopefully, eventually) change Chuck for the better. A balance of powers - the feminine God-principle and the masculine God-principle, both learning compassion and becoming their higher selves (achieving the spiritual synthesis of “gold”) through their links to the (red) hearts of the Winchesters.

That means suffering for the Winchesters along the way, of course, as they too, undergo the alchemical process of self-transformation by (eventually) fully facing their Shadows (their unconscious); Sam’s fear of being permanently “contaminated” by the demon-blood fed to him as a baby, and Dean’s fear of abandonment (stemming from the loss of his mother) which leads him to be over-controlling and to act out and push people (ahem, Cas) away.    

But back to Veronica. Veronica who quotes Robert Frost’s lovely poem in her tribute speech to her “best friend” Suzy (possibly, her lover - that subtextual reading is certainly available).

Veronica is a fascinating character, because she is “read wrong”, by Dean in particular, who thinks she’s the vampire, the one killing her cheerleader rivals in order to get the top spot. And he’s wrong because, as Sam points out, she has braces, a no-no for vamp-teeth. Dean is really sarcastic about the memorial speech Veronica is practising for Suzy, of whom she says, “I’m lost without Suzy, it’s like a piece of my heart is gone.”  

Here is Dean, being a sarcastic little shit about Veronica’s emotive school-girl speech: 

Of course, Veronica’s eulogy for her dead beloved, who was “gold” and thus (in her Frost’s poem analogy) was too beautiful to last in this world, is too painful for Dean to hear. It verbalises what he cannot (he can’t even bear to speak Castiel’s name, all episode):

“My best friend Suzy who I miss like she was a part of me, and in many ways she’s still a part of me.”

In subtext, Dean also reads Veronica “wrong” because he thinks she was Suzy’s rival, when in fact, she was her lover (part of a Veronica-Suzy-Billy love-triangle, the F/F element emphasised by their attendance at a school called “Beaverdale” where “beaver” is of course slang for vagina). 

Look at all those red hearts (symbols of romantic love) on Suzy’s memorial pin-board, Indeed, look at all that red in general. A “match” for Sam’s “red-visions”. If Sam’s rubedo (alchemical reddening) trial is his God-wound, Dean’s is his separation from Cas: 

Veronica, it seems (unbeknownst to the Winchesters) is a neophyte hunter (as well as, in subtext, Suzy’s lover) a sleuth, on the trail of whoever killed Suzy. And it looks like she knows it was a vampire. When Sam and Dean are questioning her (and she’s clearly suspicious of them) we see her with a syringe of what looks like blood behind her back, ready to jab them:

We know, from 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood, that in the SPN universe, a dead person’s blood can temporarily take down a vamp. So it seems that whilst Dean suspects Veronica of being the vampire, she suspects the Winchesters (a recurrence of SPN’s perennial - “Who is really the monster?”/ it’s not black-and-white theme. The reference to Dead Man’s Blood is also interesting, as this was an early episode in which Dean defied his father (stepped out of being John’s “good little solider”, who did see monsters in black-and-white) yet now, we have, Ouroboros-style Dean regressing to old John-learned behaviours (conceal, don’t feel) after the second death of Mary. 

I love this little Veronica detail. It’s an un-explored thread in the story, a piece of fan-fiction catnip begging for further elaboration. More Perez meta-narrative, in fact, in which he suggests that, despite the sinister Chuck and his insistence on a final SPN ending with a gravestone reading “Winchesters”, the story itself is WaywardTM; it is capable of fluidity, of control being wrested from the origin-creator (God). After all, Chuck created free will, and despite his desire for total control, he cannot undo this wild-card element in the narrative, which Veronica’s little secret hunter-identity (in subtext, also, her secret queer identity) just like Becky’s fan-fic, is a mirror for. 

Veronica’s citation of Frost’s melancholic poem becomes a metaphor for (Dean’s) lost love. Just as Sam’s mention in the final Impala scene, of how he still thinks about Jess often, becomes a verbalisation for Dean’s own constant (unspoken) thoughts about his own lost love; Cas.

 Veronica and Billy (who were possibly both Suzy’s lovers; although in text it’s Billy, in subtext Veronica, true to SPN’s ongoing bisexual subtext in relation to Dean) exchange a memorial bracelet to Suzy in front of Suzy’s picture, as Veronica tells Billy a piece of her heart is gone:

Both are mirror images for Dean - Veronica-the-vampire-hunter who mourns excessively, and Billy-the-vampire, who has killed the person he loved (just as Dean has driven Cas away):

Dean is forced by Chuck’s authorial hand to kill Billy, who is both a representation of his own lost son, Jack (Chuck’s cruel re-staging of the scene in which Dean almost kills Jack in 14x20 Moriah) and of Dean himself (symbolising Dean’s present “self-murder” aka his self-punishment and repression re Cas):

Nothing gold can stay....

Frost’s poem is also used by Perez as a metanarrative commentary on the sadness we all feel as SPN draws to a close. Everything beautiful has its time to fade and die, Frost says; even SPN, says Perez.

Frost’s poem also makes reference to Eden, to the Fall, and how that was, in God’s plan, an inevitability; the descent from the Godly to the earthly. 

It’s noticeable how, just as The Fall was presented as Eve’s fault in the Bible, Chuck is, yet again, trying to eliminate the feminine principle from the narrative, just as he has always done throughout SPN (which began with the deaths of Mary Winchester and Jess). Chuck kills Suzy, as the driver of the episode, and he “poufs” Becky (the fan-fic writer) out of existence (possibly into an AU) so he can finish the story the way he wants, just as he has re-murdered Mary Winchester (or possibly also poufed her into an AU) to continue the Winchesters’ suffering. 

But Chuck’s determination to arrive at a tragic ending, an ending in which the feminine principle is still subjugated, Perez suggests, can be subverted, because the seeds of subversion are already there in the story; Veronica’s secret and subversive sleuthing (slash her subtextual queerness), Becky’s emotionally open, subversive, fan-fic, and the continued yearning of the Winchesters for true free will (not yet knowing Chuck is still actively f-ing with them) despite the burden of their grief,  

If gold is the result of the final alchemical synthesis, of “masculine” and “feminine” principles, of the conscious and the unconscious mind, here represented by Chuck-the-author and Becky-the-fan-fic writer (who were once a couple, but are now broken up, just as Chuck and Amara, Dean and Cas, are currently broken up).... Then, the alchemical symbolism suggests, the darkness of the break-up stage (The Abyss, which we are currently in) can be overcome by the red (rubedo) power of the heart - Sam’s God-wound trial, his heart-connection to Chuck, and Dean’s own heart-wound trial, the loss of his (heart) connection to Cas.

Yes, we are still working on the power of love.

Love ultimately confounded Chuck’s apocalypse in S5, when TFW went “off script” and, Ouroboros-style, it can do so again in S15.

Chuck can be overthrown (transformed), Perez tells us, by his own story; and thus the story can find its own (heart-filled) free will ending. 

Perhaps, after all, something gold can stay.*   

*My usual disclaimer applies - none of this suggests or implies an inevitable Dean/ Cas romantic (unequivocal) textualisation. 

Although, I would like to think that Perez, by including the by now all too formulaic Dean-is-bisexual subtext via bisexual (subtextual) mirroring in 15x04, is commenting, meta-fictionally, on Chuck’s (aka TPTB’s) (wearisome) eternal tendency to do this, thereby suggesting that the over-turning of Chuck’s narrative control should, by rights, also include the overturning of this formula into... something new.