#IN DABB WE TRUST

[boykingscourt]

whats ur #1 sam relationship u wanted to see fleshed out more on the show. is that how u say it. fleshed out. u know what i mean

I understand. my first instinct was to say john but the more I thought about it not fleshed out isn't how I'd describe them. I just wanted to see more of them and more of john in general lmao (everyone act shocked)

and the more I thought about it I realized the true answer is mary! and I don't mean this in a 'I wanted mary to be more motherly' or whatever the fuck kind of way I mean in a 'can we get out of dean's asshole for five seconds in the later seasons' kind of way

strangely enough I bitched about this in the notes of my own gifs I have queued but all the storyline baiting they seemed to do with sam and sam and mary in s12... grr grrrr grrrrr

like "he had yellow eyes" oh cool!!! are we going to talk about this??? "what if sam can't forgive me" oh cool!!! are we going to talk about this??? and even that cut line in s14 where sam blamed himself for mary's first death. my point is there are SO many things the writers could've done with sam and mary if they cared to (history with azazel, their shared desire to leave hunting for a safe life, the john mary knew vs. the john sam knew, sam's relationship with mary's fucking dad????) but I guess what was more important was making sure the audience knew mary likes bacon (like dean!) and listening to loud rock music (like dean!)

but of course it has to be said that this might be for the best considering the writing team they had in the dabb era. I might have trusted davy perez or meredith glynn to produce something coherent even if neither of them were around in the early seasons (the foundation if you will) but watching dabb or buckleming attempt it... I shudder at the thought

also thanks for the many asks in my inbox they're all good but it might take me a while because I want to answer them properly you know

[ananke-xiii]

Another dream, always mine (and yes it's still spn s13 related because i have a bone to pick with dabb over that season specifically)

So here it goes. (Part 1)

Spn s13 but kelly doesn't die, cas doesn't die, crowley doesn't die. Lucifer dies for *reasons* but mary, dean and sam are stuck in the AU.

It's still spn so we just have to have mirrors and parallels, okay? Like, this show doesn't care about continuity but damn! They will stick to mirrors and parallels like it's a religion and so we do too.

The thing is that the AU is not the lame-ass AU Dabb or whoever came up with, it's at least an attempt at being an interesting place. So basically the AU is as boring and dumb as our earth, nothing has really changed, people are still trapped in the rat race that capitalism is (see, we have a little bit of critique here too, there is no escape from the capitalist-fascist-heteronormative narrative or isn't it?), the frigging white picket fences are still everywhere like a fucking nightmare BUT! This is an earth without monsters, angels, demons, nothing goes bump in the night but depression, paranoia and suicidal thoughts (now these are the real monsters) and YET this is THE chance for our heroes, this is the promised land, no past, only freedom, the american dream is theirs to grab (but don't worry this place hides a secret, this is still spn everything must be queer, you'll see). Sam, dean and mary are kinda lost cause, surprise surprise! It turns out that's not the things you want that you can't have but that you didn't know what you wanted so how could you have it in the first place? Mary is restless, this was supposed to be her dream, she died for it and now she doesn't want it and she goes through another deep existential crisis (and, really, we all just get mary because seriously? any character named mary who's also a mother has too much fucking weight on her shoulder, just let the woman be). Sam is kinda okay with it, he once again refuses to get in touch with his emotions and flees from them like the plague: they're gonna make it work, they will find a way (i want to convey ross from friends vibes when he's like *in a squeaky voice* i'm fine! Here, that's sam in the AU). The guy lives in his delusion, this is his chance at being normal (and oh boy is he wrong, you'll see). Dean feels just bad, he's supposed to feel happy with his mother and his brother/son (the weird implications of this situation will be explored) but he keeps thinking about that little house by the sea (or was it a lake?) that cas bought as fucking jimmy novak and how the angel spent months there with kelly playing daddy and how the fucking angel played him and dean just went along and repaired his stupid truck as if to thank him for breaking his heart but also, also, dean will never admit it to anyone ever but deep down he knows, he knows, that that was his place, his angel, his chance (we will also have an explorations into the complex theme of mpreg with the due "Junior" references we all deserve and insights into dean's maternal insticts).

Now back to earth.

Kelly gives birth to a baby jack, cas lives with them to protect them from the angels and demons that will sure come for a visit (but once again he will end up being a total agent of chaos, you'll see), the angel is a bit of a mess, though, and his obsession with saving dean winchester is finally making kelly feel quite concerned with her life choices, maybe trusting this guy was a little bit insane, was he always this deranged? (We'll soon see why she thinks that, she might have a point). Meanwhile crowley goes back to hell and we once again have a cheap game of thrones situation (because why not? i can't come up with infinite original ideas to fix this plot, okay? Also this is still spn, i can condone SOME cheap storylines on the side, and anyway mark sheppard makes anything work so we're good) where his varys-like smart brain cells will put him on the throne again (who's this asmodeus guy anyway, prince of hell or not, fuck him, he will not stick around here for a second season while dagon died like after 2 episodes she was in, not gonna happened in my narrative). But, you see, the demon has his own issues, and goes visiting kelly and the angel because why not? He likes kelly she seems interesting enough for a person who birthed satan's son, escaped from a fucking angel of the lord, was kidnapped by a goddamn prince of hell, managed to baby trap said angel of the lord, stole the frigging impala and escaped that menace that the winchesters are. She then proceeded to give birth knowing she might have died. She is something. Something a bit unhinged maybe but crowley digs her, okay? He still also has varys-like smart brain cells so he needs to visit to make sure that baby lucifer is, like, not plotting to take over hell or whatever newborn babies half-made from cosmic entities do these days. Also, also, watching castiel putting baby jack to sleep with those big strong angel gym-bro arms did something to him, his daddy fetish and his mommy issues raised their head and something else too, and he foolishly promises to keep jack safe from hellish attacks and indulges castiel in his winchester obsession. What? He misses the brothers too, those handsome, tall, cruel white boys (we are reminded that, visually, the whole cas/kelly/jack situation is quite similar to the weird crowley/dean/amara thing of s11, mirrors and parallels need to keep happening people, this is spn, we gott have 'em). Castiel is living his tragic destiny yet again, he's seen the AU, has been there, technically knows that dean, sam and mary are safe but he just has to see it for himself, right? Like he has to make sure, it's not like dean not being there is eating him from the inside, it's not like he starts feeling the pang of guilt over the huge betrayal he's forced onto dean,leaving him left behind again and again and playing him that way, no. He copes by sitting in his stupid truck that dean had repaired listening to that damn tape (every time he does that we have a close-up of kelly watching the pathetic scene from her window and sighing as if in "fuck, FUCK, my life"). And oh, yes he also starts researching about archangel resurrection because i may or may not bring back my girls, aka raphael and uriel but this is for part 2, you'll see.

[swordofsun]

Thinking about the samulet today. Because thematically as a prop item it was just *chef's kiss*

Because it does symbolize the brother relationship. Full stop, through the entire run of it's appearances on the show. And the way it's utilized to show the changes in that relationship is where the writers werenreally just going above and beyond with the symbolism. (Thanks Dabb and Robbie!)

The first four seasons it is an anchor for how no matter the odds or the situation Dean trusts Sam. He believes in Sam. The samulet was given to him by Sam in a very clear way to show that Sam understood it was Dean and not their dad who was really taking care of him (something Sam forgets and remembers as is convenient to him over the years) and needed the protection. And Dean holds it as his most precious possession. He believes in Sam and their relationship.

Until he doesn't. It is important that Sam wore the amulet while Dean was dead between s3 and s4. It's a very clear signifier that Sam kept the faith that Dean could be rescued. It was his driving goal in those months with killing Lilith as a means to that goal.

But he gives it back to Dean and loses sight of why he was going after Lilith. In much of s4 he goes after Lilith to go after Lilith. Whereas Dean spends s4 slowly losing his faith and trust in Sam. He knows when Sam is lying to him, almost every time. He knows that Sam is sneaking behind his back and doing stuff he knows Dean wouldn't approve of and that he can't fully justify. Because you don't hide things you can justify doing.

The end of s4 is the complete rupture of their relationship. Sam breaks the trust in a way that it takes years to recover from and never even seems to notice. We start s5 and Dean does not trust Sam. He does not trust that Sam will make the correct choices.

Which makes it so good that it's at the beginning of Good God, Y'All that he gives the amulet to Cas. He's literally putting his faith in Cas' hands because he can't put it anywhere else (Gamble can have some rights). Sam and Dean go their separate ways at the end of the episode because Dean can't trust Sam. The amulet is gone and so is Sam.

It is vital to remember that Dean doesn't call Sam up at the end of The End because he wants to hunt with him again or has rediscovered his trust. He calls him because Zachariah just showed him a future where Sam said yes and the first step to stopping that future is changing how it happened. By reconnecting with Sam.

(Not actually Zachariah's plan, but it's what happened.)

Which brings us to Dark Side of the Moon. The episode about lost faith. In it they, and most importantly Cas, learn that God couldn't give less of a shit and they are on their own. (Cas' loss of faith in this episode and the repercussions deserve their own essay.) For Dean he learned that everything he sacrificed for Sam, everything he gave up and everything he let go weren't enough. Every little bit of goodness he tried to scrap together for Sam when they were kids wasn't enough.

Sam barely even remembers one of Dean's best memories. A perfect moment where he got to make Sam happy and loved. (And to be clear this is not Sam's fault. He had a very different perspective on their childhoods and it takes Dean years to accept this.) But the journey through heaven and seeing Sam's happiest moments drives home that everything he thought their relationship was built on was, not a lie, but a delusion. They don't have that shared foundation to rebuild on. Sam broke them in s4 and they don't have solid ground to rebuild because that solid ground never existed in the first place. (And is part of the reason Sam was able to completely destroy Dean's trust in him.)

Throwing away the samulet at the end of the episode is very clearly saying "We don't have a relationship I can trust in. We don't have something to rebuild." Dean still loves Sam, he will always love Sam, but that blind devotion to their siblingness is gone. And it never comes back, just like Dean never wears the samulet again.

It was theorized from approximately 3 seconds after the episode ended that Sam dug that thing out of the garbage, but it's a long time before we get confirmation.

The next time we see the samulet is in Fan Fiction. I think it's important, symbolically, that what we see is a fake. A bad fake. We know what the samulet actually looks like unlike the kids putting on the play. We know it's as fake as everything else in the show. And it's important that this comes at a time when Dean and Sam are very much faking a healthy relationship dynamic.

They never actually discuss everything that lead to Dean being a demon and Sam forcefully healing him. All of the s9 stuff is swept under the rug and by the time Fan Fiction comes around Dean and Sam are back to playing the roles of brothers who are also bffs. It's as fake as the samulet in the show.

It's not until Don't Call Me Shurley that we see the samulet again. This time we're shown that Sam did pull it out of the garbage and apparently carries it around with him. We can take this to symbolize both that Sam never gave up on gaining back their previous relationship and that he wasn't actually willing to do the work to fix it. He was just going to carry on and hope something happened.

We don't see the samulet again after this. It's purpose has been served. Sam has been shown that what he was hoping for wasn't what he was going to get by having Chuck be so much less than the God Sam's had faith in for so many years. It's important that this is the point where both Dean and Sam allow the other to make sacrifices without much argument. Sam was going to take on the Mark to retrap Amara, Dean with the soul bomb. It's a new stage in their relationship where they're willing to let the other person be fully their own person.

Dean still needs most of s12 to fully accept that Sam having a bad childhood was not his fault and he didn't fail Sam; he was given more than anyone could have succeeded at. But it's not a coincidence that s12-15 see them rebuilding a brotherly relationship on much more healthy grounds. (Still overly codependent, but nowhere near as bad.)

Dean actively embraces being his own person and exploring what will actually make him happy in a way we hadn't seen until them. Similarly Sam finally gets to the point where he can stop pretending that he doesn't like hunting and doesn't want to do more. He finds the BMoL intriguing for a reason. Most importantly they are able to do this without, for the most part, insisting that the other person do the same things.

And thank you for reading my essay.

[ladylightning]

the thing that bothers me most about dabb era supernatural is that he treats the audience like we’re stupid. he makes the brothers caricatures of themselves so this brother is SMART and that brother is STUPID and this brother is RIGHT and that brother is WRONG. the moral lesson of every episode is spelled out for you a hundred times in giant blinking neon letters that you must B E L I E V E in YOURSELF and TRUST your FAMILY. the audience is incapable of reaching any conclusion about what they just saw without being handheld so characters are constantly saying “well what does this mean for us” “what happens now” etc.

like sure kripke thought we were stupid but at least he invented new ways to break the fourth wall and tell us that to our faces. dabb patronized us, which is somehow worse.

[rewatching-sam-and-dean]

The Schrödinger's SPN Revival

So, recently there’s been a lot of talk on here and twitter because a couple articles have been published citing Jared and Jensen (or just Jensen in one POS article) mentioning discussing possibilities for a revival. Does this make it any more likely to happen or closer to being realized? I don’t know, but the guys have been mentioning it off and on for years already, so I’m not sure it’s any more likely now than it ever was. Also, with networks and the whole industry in seeming disarray, even if J2 want to get a revival going, I’m not sure it will happen.

But, let’s speculate anyway. Shall we?

(I CANOT get the link to work for some reason!!)

My thoughts on this, under the cut.

I’m no authority on anything in the TV industry, but I have watched our little show a lot, so I have thoughts. Let’s take look at each person on this poll.

Kripke - Obviously, he understands Sam and Dean. He created them after all. But, would I trust him with the revival? Well, judging by The Boys, he seems more focused on shock value than tight storytelling these days, so I’m not sure I would want to see an SPN on a streamer that he ran. It might become a case of all fireworks and little to no heart. Also, if he had ended the series in Season 5, both Sam and Dean would have been trapped in the cage forever. Not exactly a happy ending. Still, is he capable of manning a revival snd doing a decent job? Yes. Would I totally trust him with it? Maybe. Maybe not. Do I think he even has time to do it? Not really.

Jensen - Come on, people! If you want him to reprise his role as Dean, then he isn’t going to be the showrunner. Also, he’s an actor, not a writer, so it’s not even in his wheelhouse. So, no. This wouldn’t be a good idea. And after The Winchesters, I think it’s extremely unlikely that he’d be put at the helm in this way. The only upside to Jensen being a show runner? We know damn well Destiel would be ignored as vigorously as it deserves.

Robbie Thompson - Exhibit One: The Winchesters. So, no. Also, while he has written some episodes that I like of SPN, he was always trying to make the show something it wasn’t, whether it was Fairytale time with Charlie or trying to shoehorn romance into a platonic brother love story, he’s shown that he shouldn’t be trusted with the OG show in a position of power.

Sera Gamble - Season 6 while having some absolute bangers, was also a bit of a mess in some ways. And Season 7 was more so. How much of this was due to Gamble hersel and how much was due to Singer tugging at the reins, I don’t know. She is a proven showrunner, so I believe she could do it. She actually understands and enjoys Sam, so that would be a huge relief for those of us who actually care about Sam and want to see him get his due on screen. Also, she has never written Dean badly from my observations, despite certain past claims by “some people” on women not writing male dialogue well. In a lot of ways, I think she could be a good choice. But, would she be interested even? I have no clue.

Andrew Dabb - NEXT!!

Jeremy Carver - For reasons relating to Season 11, I would like to see him helm a revival. He can clearly follow through with a connected and coherent arc. However, for reasons relating to Season 8, where he had characters do a few hugely out of character things for the story’s sake? No. For Season 10 snd the bore thst it was for me personally (though that potentially had something to do with pressure that came from Singer)? No. All in all. I think he’d be capable of ruining a revival, but something tells me he isn’t particularly interested and they guys may not be that ready to chose him, either (purely just my gut).

Robert Singer - No. I believe he interfered with Gamble and Carver’s plans; I just don’t know to what extent. And worst of all, he did nothing to help steer Dabb away from the mess that was much of Seasons 12 to 15. Also, he’d probably bring Buck-Lemming with him. And can I just say a big, “Fuck no,” to that.

Again, all of this is just me rambling. I have no real idea how likely any of them would be to come back for a revival. And I also don’t know how much J2 would want any of them to run a revival, or whether they’d want to just get someone new who might be more likely to listen to their ideas. I don’t even know if J2 would have an easy time agreeing on who would make a good show runner from that list because I think they might not even agree on who they considered to be better writers, or be better candidates to showrunner. For example, I think Jared might be more enthusiastic about Gamble than Jensen would. And Jensen would probably welcome Singer more than Jared would. Again, I don’t know any of this for certain, but it just my impression based off of things they’ve said over the years.

If a revival happens what do I want?

First, it sounds to me like if there is one, J2 want to be a big part of it with Sam and Dean as central focus. This is what I would want. I watched the show for them. I stuck it out through the rough seasons for them. The only way I would watch a revival was if it heavily featured both Sam and Dean. Second, I think I would enjoy if they did a revival during the years (according to J2) between Episodes 19 snd 20. I would like this because it would make the likelihood of angel or demon interference minimal. And this would be the more likely scenario for us to get a more old-school creature hunting revival. We could still see Jody and co for those who care about that. There would be no need for Cas or Jack to show up, which I would prefer. Yet, it would be easy enough for them to make a brief appearance if J2 wanted to pander in that way. Also, I’m so very sick of Angel BS, and this seems like the best way to avoid it. Third, I could be interested in a bit of a prequel with John and the boys, if they could find a way to include J2 without making it convoluted and pointless. Finally, if they come back from heaven for some reason, I think it would be hard for the revival to have much in the way of stakes. And I really wouldn’t want a huge dose of Cas, which we’d potentially have in that case.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on the potential revival, thoughts thst no one asked for admittedly. Lol.

If anyone read this far, what are your thoughts on a revival. If it happens, who should run it and what would you want to see happen?

[utensils1]

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[antigonewinchester]

saw this post scrolling thru my dash, and I always have a moment of doubt when I see a post that reads the exact opposite of my interpretation of SPN. because I’d argue that the ending of Jack’s arc (helping to defeat Chuck & becoming God) was about Jack having an innate human goodness. within the show’s structure, Jack’s arc was learning 1) to have emotions/care about people and that therefore 2) he had goodness in him all along, and both of these qualities mean Jack will be a better God than Chuck. the point was that Jack didn’t need to redeem or prove himself, despite feeling like he had to (and NOT only because of how Sam & Dean treated him in early S13), but that tension was a major source of emotional conflict for him as a character.

in an S15 interview, Dabb says Jack's character “has always been whether he is good or is he bad?” which. is a revealing framing because while the show gestures at Jack’s goodness coming from his making the right choices (ala early S13 where the show repeats Sam’s line from S4: “JACK: Sam thinks you were right, that-- that I'm good. He wants me to believe it, and I wanna believe it, too. It's just, I... I've hurt people. I didn't mean to. It was an accident. And I know I should feel bad, and I say I feel bad, but most of the time, I mostly... I don't feel anything. And that's why I think maybe... Maybe I'm a monster. / MIA: Jack. It doesn't matter what you are. It matters what you do. And even monsters can do good in this world.”) that’s really not what the writing shows us, because instead Jack’s problem is framed not as his hurting people—because it was an accident, he didn’t mean to do it, everybody makes mistakes, right?—but Jack not feeling/caring about hurting people, and so once he learns to feel bad/guilty/emotional about it, that feeling makes him an innately good person. it’s not really making the right choices but having good intentions and not meaning to hurt anyone.

it’s interesting this framing also comes up in S7, and particularly around Cas: despite all the shit Cas did in S6, because he feels bad/guilty about it, he should be forgiven / accepted back into the fold. the writing then contrasts Dean and Sam in early S7, with Dean resenting Cas / “giving up” on him vs. Sam’s forgiveness and reaching out. which then leads into the Amy plot, where again the writing looks at how Amy has chosen to be good—she doesn’t want to hurt Sam or humans generally, against how she was raised by her mother to hate & people humans; she kills her mother to save Sam’s life; she goes into a career where she has access to food without killing people—but because we don’t see Amy wrestling with her choices, it seems like Amy as a child just innately came to the decision that killing people is bad and she didn’t want to do it. it’s a mismatch between substance and style, what the writing is saying and then how it’s saying it. imagine the difference if Amy had deliberately led Sam back to her home so she could kill him, and only then decided not to—that would show Amy’s deliberate compassion to the audience in a way that just doesn’t happen in the actual ep. even when we do see Amy as an adult killing people, that’s somewhat a fake out, because she’s only doing it for thee most sympathetic reason possible: it save her son’s life. Sam tries to persuade Dean not go after Amy because he believes she’s made the right choices, only killed people to save her son, and won’t kill again, and while later season 7 eps get a bit more complicated, IMO in 7x03 Dean is framed in the wrong for killing Amy: not only not ‘trusting’ Sam’s judgement but also for judging Amy too harshly and seeing her as a monster who will inevitably end of killing people, instead of someone who’d chosen a non-killing life for herself (“AMY: But he told you. My son – / DEAN: I know. I know. But people... They are who they are. No matter how hard you try, you are what you are. You will kill again. / AMY: I won't. I swear. / DEAN: Trust me, I'm an expert. Maybe in a year, maybe ten. But eventually, the other shoe will drop. It always does.”).

obvs from S13 onward we get the return of the conflict between Dean’s skepticism of Jack and seeing him as innately bad because he’s Lucifer’s son, which ultimately contrasts with Jack being a Good Dude. but again, the incredibly sympathetic framing around Jack paints him as innately good because of his human side: his soul allows him to feel & care for people, which is what allows him to wield his angelic power for good in a way that Lucifer, Michael, and Chuck weren’t able to do, lacking that kind of humanity. (and look at why Cas, despite being an angel, is also different: he cares for and loves people.) the reason Jack was born half-human was because his mother Kelly and her choosing to sacrifice her life so Jack could keep his angelic powers and his human soul, believing that he would be good and could do good in the world… and low and behold he is and does. hooray. great that Jack was born with the ability to make the right choices.

I’m getting a bit wobbly here but last thing: all of this together also reminds me of how goodness is dealt with in Harry Potter (bear with me here). again, it’s ostensibly a story about how the most important thing is moral choice (“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”) and Harry and Voldemort as narrative foils, contrasting Harry’s moral choices with Voldemort’s immoral ones. but when you drill down to it, Harry was an innately good & moral kid from the beginning, with parents who loved him and particularly a mother who loved him so much she was “strong” enough to die trying to save him (which ended up actually saving him), versus Voldemort who was an innately scary little kid, the product of rape, and had a “weak” mother who died out of grief instead of living on to raise him. it leaves the audience with an impression of Voldemort as screwed from his beginnings versus Good Boy Harry Who Was Loved And Therefore Moral. I don’t think that was fully JKR’s intention—IMO she was intending to write about choice/free will—but she didn’t always do a good job of showing it. we see a similar narrative dissonance reflected then in SPN, and even with the same idea of “mother who loves her son so much she has the strength to die for him” and Kelly’s humanity/goodness as passing along to Jack, too.

[bibliophileiz]

I love this and I just want to add:

I think there's also the element of Dean basically raising Sam. There's two sides to parenting: physically protecting your kids, a role Dean has openly (and proudly) shouldered since he was 4 years old, and then there's raising them to be decent people. Sam IS a decent person and I think a lot of that is because of Dean's love as well as Sam's inner strength but we can't ignore the kind of effect that must have had on Dean. Dean DOESN'T claim any particular responsibility for Sam turning out to be a good person so it gets talked about less in fandom but the fact remains that Dean would have been at least somewhat responsible for Sam's decisions from a very young age which goes a lot toward explaining Dean's tendency to "control" Sam.

And of course we can't ignore John's final words to Dean--that Dean would either have to "save" Sam...or kill him.

So you have this situation where Dean is forced from an early age to shoulder this extremely unfair responsibility over Sam's behavior, and the punishment for failure is literally the worst thing Dean could ever imagine having to do.

When you look at it from that perspective, Dean's decisions all make a lot more sense. And as the people who make up Dean's family expands, so does Dean's tendency to take responsibility for their actions. When Mary starts working with the British Men of Letters in Season 12, Sam is reasonably frustrated and disappointed but is willing to hear her out, whereas Dean completely loses his mind. When Cas works with Crowley in Season 6, Dean puts such a heavy guilt trip on him that Cas ends up with the moral high ground despite the fact that the show runners were actively setting up his villain arc.

(As a side note, this also goes pretty far toward explaining why characters so often hide things from Dean. There is no way Dean could have actively stopped Sam or Cas from doing the various things they did that he disapproved of over the years, they just didn't want to deal with his drama.)

This is one of the reasons I dislike Andrew Dabb as a showrunner and why I find the season 15 focus on Dean's "anger issues" so frustrating. Dabb accurately identifies that Dean is short tempered when it comes to decisions his family members are making but he spends the entire season having characters like Amara tell Dean that he needs to "control his anger" like we're in fucking Star Wars or something without ever addressing the more core problem of Dean feeling responsible for the actions of fully grown humans who can and should make their own decisions (even if they're bad sometimes). Basically Season 15 should have been about Dean letting go of that responsibility. That's why the best scene that season (and also Jensen's best performance) is Dean's prayer to Cas in purgatory. That's why Robert Berens' episode "Who We Are"--in which Dean trusts Sam to lead the other hunters without him and then saves his mom, not with violence or judgement, but with love--is stronger than anything else we get from Dean in terms of a character arc at the end of the show.

hi i recently came across your blog and have been reading a lot of your posts about dean - your analysis is incredible. i was wondering... in your opinion, which arc is the worst when it comes to deancrits misunderstanding/critiquing dean unfairly?

so i'm 50/50 on whether this is genuine or bait. if it's not bait, i'm so sorry. you did nothing wrong. it's just that i get a lot of messages that are so very clearly not in good faith. if it is bait, well, joke's on you because i'm about to say a bunch of words and a bunch of people are gonna read them. so.

i think the most obvious answer to your question is the jack situation but i'm not sure it's the correct one. i think by the time we even get to jack (especially to the soulless!jack part of it all) a lot of people have already sort of lost the plot on why dean is ever behaving the way he is. there's this tendency to view his behavior as if he wants to control the people closest to him, not always because he's inherently malicious but often because he wants to keep them safe and keep them close to him to the detriment of himself and everyone around him (see look! it's not deancrit! we know he's not a bad guy. we're just being objective and he's just an abusive asshole who should burn in hell). and i get it. i see how they got there.

but it's frustrating because how they got there is by 1. taking every single thing the characters say at face value despite all evidence to the contrary 2. viewing every single thing dean does or says in a vacuum, removed from any and all context and 3. forgetting that supernatural is a fantasy show, not a family drama or sitcom.

take the demon blood story line for example. what we actually see is:

sam going on a mission for revenge regardless of the costs or consequences (which he's aware exist even if he doesn't know the exact details)

dean trusting his brother until he finds out his brother's been lying to him

sam being told that what he's doing is wrong on multiple occasions by multiple people

dean offering ruby his gratitude for saving sam's life and an apology for the way he's been treating her since he got back from hell

sam continuing to lie and act shady

dean telling sam that he doesn't care about the demon blood/sam's powers, he just cares about sam's behavior

sam draining an entire nurse and killing her

sam almost killing dean on purpose and telling him he's not strong enough, not like sam is

dean still being the one to offer an apology when all is said and done, twice

but all of that gets rewritten into a narrative that dean's just never trusted sam ever and sam was only doing something he thought was right because all he ever wanted to do was save people. how could he have possibly known something bad would happen? and now, even after the fact, even after sam's said he's sorry, dean still won't let it go and holds it against sam forever and ever.

this narrative persists throughout the fandom. why? because sam threw a few tantrums in which he rewrote what was happening and dean didn't protest and the fandom took it at face value. (1)

on top of that, deancrits treat each of dean's actions like they happened in a vacuum. one of the things deancrits fixate on the most regarding the demon blood plot is dean saying, "You walk out that door, don't you ever come back." in 4x21. they treat it as if dean was being controlling and manipulative; abusive, even. they treat it as if, out of nowhere, dean just decided to throw john's words in sam's face because sam simply wouldn't do what dean wanted him to do.

what actually happened, however, was that sam had been lying to dean for twenty-one episodes about what he was doing, despite the continued warnings not to do what he was doing, and now sam had beaten the shit out of dean, left him bruised and bloodied on the floor, to go do something that dean had been told repeatedly, from a source they all thought was the authority on the subject, that sam absolutely should not do. what actually happened was dean made a last-ditch desperate effort to stop his brother from doing something dangerous that would get himself and possibly a lot of other people killed. (2)

the deancrits also tend to magically forget they're watching a genre show, not a family drama, when it comes to analyzing dean. the source of conflict wasn't that dean just didn't like sam's new girlfriend because sam trusted her more than him. it was that sam's new girlfriend was a demon and dean had just gotten back from forty years in hell being tortured... by demons. it was that dean had angels of the lord, before he really knew that the angels couldn't be trusted, telling him he needed to stop sam. it was that the angel that rescued him from an eternity of torture and becoming a demon himself told him that he needed to stop sam. (3)

so the deancrits frame this conflict between sam and dean as if dean just didn't trust sam, for no reason other than sam was hanging out with somebody else, and dean was being irrational about it. after all, sam was only trying to stop lilith, right? dean was being irrational and controlling. and it sounds reasonable when you look at it from their perspective. but their perspective is not anywhere near the reality of what was actually happening.

and that happens over and over and over again. we see it with the idea that dean is the one who is codependent to a toxic degree, despite all evidence to the contrary*. we see it with the idea that dean thinks all monsters should die and sam wants to save/help them. we see it with the conflict in s6 being framed as dean just being angry that cas dared to do something without his permission. we see it with the fractured relationship between the brothers in s8, both regarding dean's return from purgatory and the trials. we see it with the gadreel arc and then the one with cas leading the angels. we see it with the mark of cain and the darkness. we see it with mary's return. and then we see it with jack, and most especially we see it with soulless!jack.

it's all so exhausting. by the time we get to jack, the deancrit has piled up the same way the narrative circumstances weighing on dean have, and so it feels like deancrits are fundamentally misunderstanding the situation more severely than they have anything else but i think in reality it's just the last straw.

so i guess what i'm trying to say is that the misunderstanding isn't necessarily about the individual arcs but about the way a genre story is told in general. they're not just unfairly critiquing an arc. they're mischaracterizing a whole ass dude and fifteen seasons of a show.

*dean dragged sam back into hunting. how do we know that? because sam said it. what did we actually see? dean bringing sam back to stanford for his interview. sam going back to hunting because of the fire that killed jess. dean wanting to take a break from hunting several times while sam kept pushing them to keep going. dean wanting to split up and stay away from each other for awhile after the demon blood thing. sam leaving amelia before he even knew dean was alive/back from purgatory. dean telling sam to go back to amelia. sam choosing, all on his own, not to go back to amelia. sam basically threatening suicide because dean had other friends. sam unleashing the darkness because he didn't want to be alone. etc. etc. etc.

**also i think there is a conversation to be had about dean's coping mechanisms and trauma responses being less palatable though not anymore harmful than both sam's and castiel's but that's a different conversation for a different day

[darknessbound3]

While everyone is off crying in the corner and whining about how bad this episode was and how shitty it was that Dean didn't weep, let me put it to you this way:

1) 99% of Dean Winchester's coping mechanism is alcohol and shovels. He buries shit as deep as he can with alcohol and repeated layers of absolute trauma... and why? So he can keep going. If he lets himself really sit on what happened, really look at it... he'd die. He'd shrivel up in a ball and let the pain swallow him whole.

But he's not going to do that. Because doing that means Cas died for nothing. It means his sacrifice was in vain. So, he buries it deep and he gets up, and he keeps going. He tries to save the world.

2) "There's nothing and no one I'd put above you." - Dean, to Sam, what feels like an eternity ago. 15X18 saw him ignoring Sam's calls in the middle of a world-ending, Thanos-snapping, total rapture apocalypse. He didn't give a shit what was happening with Sam and Jack. He didn't give a shit if Sam knew he was still alive or not. He just lost Cas.

15X19 has Dean telling God that he will kill Sam, he'll give up, he'll wave the white flag if he just puts everything right again. If he just brings Cas back. He's certainly putting someone above Sam now.

3) The last time Dean faced someone he cared about who inherited God-like powers, terrible things happened. (I'm looking at you, God!Cas). He was scared to death. If Jack was truly absorbing all the wasted power around him, then be realistic. He was juiced up by Death, Lucifer, Michael, God and Amara. That's one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, two archangels, and two deities for anyone keeping track. He's an actual toddler.

If Cas, who already loved them all so much he'd do anything for them, could go dark side with that much power, what would someone like Jack do? The two year old son of Lucifer himself, who already killed Mary, who already killed innocents, and who Dean had been berating for months? He was scared. So was Sam. They didn't ask for favors, they laid on the worship thick. "Of course he's coming back. We'll get him (enter bunker fixtures here)". If I were Dean, I wouldn't have uttered the name of a single person I loved in Jack's presence until I was sure he wouldn't end up like every other god-level dickbag he's ever met.

He probably thought he was doing Cas a favor.

4) For the first time in his life, Dean Winchester knows he's more than Daddy's Blunt Instrument. And why does he suddenly know this after years of being told the same thing? Because he saw the truth in Cas' eyes. He saw the facts laid bare, he finally — FINALLY saw in himself what Cas has seen in him all along.

If his angel says it, believes it enough to suffer a fate worse than death for him... the least he can do is listen. To believe. To do everything in his power to not prove him wrong.

So he walked away. After wanting Chuck dead more than anything he's ever wanted in his entire life... he walked away. Weightless. Unincumbered. Without a shred of regret. He walked away with a fucking smile, because he really did win. He won against every demon inside of him that had tried to tear him down since he was 4 years old. He won against every heartbreak he'd ever suffered, every year in Hell he spent being tortured. Every mistake he ever made. He won, because in the end, when it mattered, he chose mercy. He chose to let go of his quest for revenge. He chose to lead with love. "Everything you've ever done, the good and the bad... you've done for love."

And why? Because his angel, his best friend, the love of his life... knew he was capable of it. Held him to a higher standard than he ever held himself, and he'd kill his own brother (see point #2) before he let Cas down ever again.

The path is clear. Dean's arch has come full circle, freeing his path in more ways than one. He now believes himself to be the man that Cas thinks he is, and only now — only after this final turn when he finally believes himself to be a man worthy of love — can he finally accept it.

Dabb gave us a gift in letting BuckLeming wrap up the mythos of this series. He let them write their bronlies ending, let them write the ending they can sell to ignorant countries that won't be happy with what he does in the true finale. And all that's left is 40 minutes... 40 minutes for Dabb to bring this entire, glorious, wonderful, brilliant story to a close.

And it won't be in violence. "Family don't end in blood."

It ends in love.

[supernatur-ally]

also, dabb wrote the finale. he's an advocate for destiel too iirc

he let Buckleming wrap up the plot so he could write the gay. this is good. take a breath. we've got this.

[elyology]

ok if you had to choose one thing to cling to when hoping for a good 15x20, it's this right here:

“...more concerned with Sam, Dean and this family they’ve built around them” - Dabb

[scoobydoodean]

Hmm... I think what mainly bothers me about 4.13 is that there's this incredibly surface-level analysis of Sam and Dean's relationship within that's kind of shoe-horned into it over halfway through the episode, and I think they probably shouldn't have tried to make the episode about that at all because they didn't... do a good job.

Dean is paralleled with two "sympathetic" bullies. The first is a teenage girl who's ostracized from the popular table because she dared to do "the reverse cowgirl" with a boy and now everyone at her usual lunch table is calling her a slut (even while being jealous/wanting to be her or be with her—and envy as a motive for hatred/murder is a big component of the episode). Dean spends the entire episode saying and doing sexy sex guy routine in the past and present, and at the end of the episode, Dean references "the full cowgirl". We don't know what's going on with this girl Dean's been paralleled with exactly, but we know when we see her crying in the bathroom that she must be going through something painful in her personal life. I think if we'd stuck with this parallel, I'd be fine (behated cheerleader line aside).

What bothers me is the awkward attempt to parallel Dean with "Dirk The Jerk" with 10 minutes left in the episode. We learn that Dirk—who was a bully to young Sam and Barry—lost his mother at the age 13 due to cancer. Prior to her death, Dirk's father was stuck working three jobs to make ends meet. So Dirk had to take care of his mother on his own while his father worked, until the day she died. I.e., he's a parentified child like Dean, and that's where his anger came from that he took out on everyone else—including Sam. (The hairs on the back of my neck are raising here remembering 4.06 "Yellow Fever"—their previous—and first—episode).

Then we get this (painfully) pointed dialogue from Sam at the end of the episode:

SAM I'm not evil, Dirk. I'm not. And neither were you. Trust me. I've seen real evil. We were scared and miserable, and we took it out on each other -- us and everybody else. That's high school. But you suffer through that, and it gets better. I'm just sorry you didn't get a chance to see that.

Forgive me if my brain doesn't explode in awe at Loflin and Dabb's big brained script writing here or their clear mastery of canon events that occurred in the show.

"The whistle makes me their god" is a great line though.

…I hate “After School Special”.

[destielvcockles]

Still 24 hours to go and here I am crying over the fact that Dean’s tie looks exactly the same as Cas’ old one

[quearlydeparted]

after 15x18:

[thisbisexualbrainrot]

Alright here we go I'm putting all my chips on 15x20 Destiel please

[hira492]

What the hell is going on anymore!???? AAAAA That sneak peak???? Dean-o????? DABB??????