#Mary Winchester meta

[theboykingsmichaelsword]

it had to be dean who finally killed azazel not john not sam because dean is the family's core mary's ghost may haunt the narrative may have been what propelled this family quest but by virtue of her being dead she can't be home or hearth when john disappears on a hunt and sam's too young to feed himself in this month's crappy motel. when the moment comes john can help because he's the one who made mary's boy into his perfect soldier but john can't do the deed himself can't pull the trigger mary cocked the day her eldest son watched her kiss the demon wearing the father who made her a hunter no not john who wasn't born with killing monsters in his blood john who wasn't bred for it like mary campbell and dean winchester and it can't be sam either. sam can witness but sam has to be immobile relegated to mere voyeur as the demon who polluted his blood dies on the other end of his brother's gun because he's john's son and mary's son and dean's son and this is about him this is about parents righting a wrong against their child this is about a child killing the thing that wore his father before murdering him this is a wife killing what snapped her husband's neck this is a husband killing the demon who burned his wife this is a brother killing the monster whose schemes stabbed his brother in the back. life dragged them broken and bleeding to an eleventh hour where dean is father-son-and-holy spirit(mary) in a way sam is not of course it was dean it could only have ever been dean

[embraceyourdestiny]

I love how it’s obvious that the classic “Winchester sass” actually runs through the Campbell bloodline.

John isn’t sassy. John is just a brash, angry, explosive idiot. His name takes so much claim that is actually his wife’s that it’s almost getting annoying lmao. Mary birthed the greatest heroes of the realms and she’ll always be forgotten, a single pin in a story of endless seas of pins. The first one, sure, but nowhere near monumental to anyone but the Winchesters. She’s just a set piece, a footnote, despite the fact that without her none of this would happen.

[follows-the-bees]

Thinking about how Sam and Dean carved their initials into Baby cause it's their first home. Then the Bunker cause it's their second home. How they carved Cas', Jack's, and Mary's names at the Bunker because it was their home as well, they made that home/family together.

Also thinking about how they put Castiel. They hardly ever use his full name but from a story perspective it's sweet.

From a production side, they probably did it because of the great divide of how to spell Cas.

Thinking about the choice to put Jack and not Jack Kline. About Jack declaring he was a Winchester.

Jack was a product of all his parents, he was both a Kline and a Winchester. But ultimately he was exactly who he wanted to be. Just Jack.

[mrcowboydeanwinchester]

to be fair to jensen ackles he saw the spn finale and how dean died senselessly after years of yearning for a better life and said cool this fucking sucks. i'm gonna make a prequel which is a story of how two young people fight their destinies and successfully escape their horrendously violent fates, creating an alternate universe especially for them in which they survive, and dean is going to do everything he can to help them, all for the sake of proving that living freely IS the most satisfying narrative conclusion and dean himself knows this. you just don't want to watch that show because it hasn't got cas in

[ananke-xiii]

Thinking about how in "Patience" Kelly tells Jack that he has an angel watching over him just like Mary told little Dean and how in "The Big Empty" the dead mother is both Mary and Kelly (Mary's not dead but she might be and anyway she was and that doesn't go away), how Jack is so ATTUNED to Dean's feelings that he feels his grief and that makes him awake Castiel in the Empty...

how "the Trauma Drama of the Gifted Child", the book that Sam reads in "Patience" while he surveils Jack through a monitor, is a book about children who are more emotionally aware and sensitive than others so much so that they they can become so ATTUNED to their parents' needs and expectations that they would do whatever it takes to see their parents' needs and expectations fulfilled while repressing their Self...

How Sam is the one who's actually trying to train Jack because he wants to find and save Mary Winchester...

How John trained Dean to help him in his revenge quest after Mary's death...

How Sam projects onto Dean in "The Big Empty" and tells him that he's acting like their FATHER while Dean replies he's not gonna be his (Jack's) MOTHER...

Yeah, The Gifted Child is totally Dean. Sam is more the John Winchester of it all, although his ways are obviously different and softer. And then Jack is also the Gifted Child and he's specifically too attuned to Dean's feelings to the point that he's willing to perform for him to placate him or see him satisfied (so, in a way, Sam was right just not for the right reasons).

My god, not that I needed more proof but my poor Jack was fucked up from, like, day 0. The amount of trauma he lived since day 1 on earth is. like. WOW. I mean. WOOOAH.

[reallyunluckyrunaway]

Always Keep Trying, Sam.

[farenmaddox]

Supernatural unhinged rambling ahead… be warned.

I have started obsessing over this idea that was a passing thought I had a few weeks ago, which is how much better seasons 6 and 12 would have been if the plots had been swapped. Reasons: the Campbell family plot Did Not Serve the Narrative of season 6 and felt hugely distracting, and the BMoL felt like a silly threat at the point of season 12. They have super-cool weapons to fight monsters. Okay, and? They can incapacitate/go toe-to-toe with an angel? Me, too, bitch, you ain't special. This is well after The Fall and after angels have already been thoroughly nerfed by previous seasons.

So what if the big bad of season 6 was the BMoL and the big bad of season 12 was Sam?

Season 6: The British Men of Letters knew some shit was up in America but left it alone until Crowley leaned on them for resources in some cagey plot of his. They dig into it and realize angels are on earth and fucking things up. This is a big deal, a big problem, and they need as much information and leverage on angels as they can get, immediately. So what do they do? They identify the person who knows the most about them at this point: Dean Winchester.

Sam is in hell, Cas in heaven; Dean is alone (I mean, he has Lisa and Ben but let’s be realistic about how much of a shield they can be). This group who is so ruthless about killing monsters gets to Dean at a point of real vulnerability in this life. They promise him that if he works with them they will find a way to save Sam. And so begins the War. Dean is a ruthless hunter, Ketch and Mick get more screentime to attempt to be interesting people, the Alpha plot is more developed. They capture angels and study them. Cas is too distracted and Dean too sad/angry to realize the threat that the BMoL actually poses to Heaven until it's almost too late.

Dean defects to side with Cas, but only at the last minute. Cas is the one who amasses the power to get to Sam first, and Dean’s grateful. That, plus the fact that the BMoL want to lock up and study Sam and kill Cas. Cas decimates the BMoL and Dean doesn’t mind that at all. Then the Leviathans happen, end season.

Season 12: At the end of season 11, as Amara is trying to gather as much power as possible, Sam is caught in the crossfire and she eats Sam’s soul. Very end of the season, she brings back not just Mary but Grandpa Campbell as well, in an effort to fuck up Chuck's storylines.

Sam is dangerous and running amok, chasing Lucifer all over the globe and leaving a trail of collateral damage, maybe trying to steal the Knights of Hell's loyalty for himself. Cas and Crowley and Dean (hello toxic polycule!) are chasing Sam, and the Campbell family (including Mary) is left to deal with actual hunting as a profession. Dean tries to be around when he can to temper their hunting style and forge a relationship with his mom, but it goes poorly. At the same time, Dean is trying to negotiate with Billie on how to get Sam’s soul back, which of course goes awry when Cas kills Billie to get Dean and Mary out of the deal they made when they got arrested for trying to kill the president.

Big overarching themes/plots related to “blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” type stuff, and the nature of Death and souls. Dean maybe gets caught up in Death politics for a minute, as a way of actually doing something with how much Dean has had a special connection with Death and reapers in previous seasons, and his role as assassin of the old Death and an agent in the ascension of the new Death. Because Sam is like this, Dean ends up sticking with Cas more and ends up siding with him about what to do with Kelly's little nephilim problem.

Season 12 ends similarly to canon, except that Sam is the one who gets sucked into Apocalypse World, Grandpa Campbell is the one who tries to shoot Jack, and Dean is the one who tries to stop him. When they wake up from Jack flinging them away, Mary turfs her dad out and sides with Dean about Jack. Heading into season 13, we are wondering about soulless Sam and whether he's going to find a way back and take Hell for himself, and what Dean and Mary are going to do about the absolute MESS that the Campbells have made of the hunting network and the Winchester reputation.

[deancasforcutie]

Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

[beautysurvives]

On Woman Coding in Supernatural

supernatural is a show where male characters want to become the new God and seek to create a new world that is better than His, by returning to an idealized past, creating an idealized future, or maintaining an idealized present. But in their pursuit of his power, they find that they cannot create anything new, they can only destroy. The first time this happens, it is in the death of Mary Winchester and the goal to create Lucifer’s perfect vessel for the sake of ushering in the apocalypse. Azazel is searching for a woman who will give birth to Lucifer’s perfect vessel. Both Heaven and Hell play a part in engineering things so that both Sam and Dean (Michael’s perfect vessel) are born, but no one can create them out of thin air.

The last time this happens, it is in Chuck (God) attempting to reunite with Amara in order to not only destroy his world (the canon spn universe) but to also leave it behind and create a new one. He tells her that he needs their combined power to achieve the one thing he can’t do on his own — a “reboot” or “reset.” Joining with Amara looks a lot like absorbing her into himself. We can’t see her, but he assures us that she’s “with him.”

Actually, the last time this happens, it’s when we see Sam with his son Dean II, and his blurry wife in the background. Sam has created a Dean who can have a better life than either of them. A reboot. A woman’s worth in this world is not herself or her identity, but the function of her sex organs. Her ability to house and then expel new life.

In season 4, Sam believes that he must kill Lilith to prevent Lucifer from rising / the apocalypse. However, her death is actually the last step in unsealing his cage. In this scene, a blonde Lilith wears a white dress, similar to both Mary and Jess in their deaths. She is the whore to their mother and maiden.

In mythology, Lilith is Adam’s flawed first wife, and the mother of monsters. In spn, she is Lucifer’s first “creation” — an already existent human soul that he himself corrupted. The first demon. Hence, Lilith is, symbolically, both mother and child. And her death at Sam’s hand signifies his role as the unwitting killer of his own mother, and the symbolic killer of the feminine. Similarly, Ruby’s presence at his side, feeding her her own blood (as Azazel did) and encouraging him to drink the blood of others, makes her (like Azazel) a sort of wet nurse or midwife, helping Lilith to birth the apocalypse with Sam as both the symbolic father and son. The man who brings Lucifer into being through violent action, and simultaneously the son who must continue to nurse on demon blood in order to grow into Lucifer.

Though there are many different ways to describe possession in Supernatural, it is clear that Lucifer’s possession of Sam is intended not as an act of violent penetration (in contrast to the language used to describe Michael’s theoretical possession of Dean), but as a literal embodiment. Sam is not just going to be “worn” or “wielded.” He is going to become, and as a matter of fact he always has been. This is illustrated to Sam through the revelation that many of Sam’s closest friends, advisors, and allies throughout his life were, in fact, planted there by Lucifer. And, just as Lucifer plans to take his vengeance and set things right, Sam undoubtedly wishes to do the same. Sam’s ability to cage Lucifer is the one instance in which victory does not require violence from him, but the opposite. Restraint. When he is reminded of his relationship with Dean, when he realizes how badly Lucifer has hurt him and allows himself to feel that pain as if it is his own — when he goes from embodying Lucifer to caging him within himself — from being to being a vessel — he sacrifices himself, discarding any hope of a future in order to protect his brother from any further harm. The same thing that Dean tried to do for him when they were children (informed by his own mother), and the same thing that Mary in her death.

In season 5, Cas takes Claire Novak as a vessel, and tells us that she, like Jimmy, is chosen. Jimmy pleads for Cas to release Claire and take him instead, and Cas, seemingly moved despite having just been forcibly reprogrammed as punishment for his empathy, repossess Jimmy.

In season 6 Cas takes Eve’s (the mother of monsters) children — the souls in purgatory — into himself. In this same season, Dean lives with Lisa and attempts to be a parent to her son Ben. He admits that he has started to feel like Ben is really his son, even though he isn’t. In episode one of s6, Exile on Main St, anticipating ridicule about his new domestic lifestyle by his family, Dean refers to himself as a soccer mom. Samuel Campbell, their resurrected grandfather, sincerely (not tauntingly) tells Dean that he reminds him of Mary. Dean, who, as we learned in s4, is named after Mary’s mother and Samuel’s wife, Deanna. In this world, settling down is always associated with becoming feminine. A man who quits hunting to live with a woman has been symbolically castrated, losing the aspect of his masculinity that is violent and heroic — a version of masculinity that Dean simultaneously rejects and feels compelled (by duty) to return to.

In season 11 we meet Amara, who was (symbolically) caged inside Dean, and who first manifests as a baby that he saves against Sam’s recommendation — as Sam very pragmatically wishes to focus on saving as many people as possible. In doing so, Sam finds himself afflicted with the same monstrous condition that plagues the people in this town. He can only save them and himself by expelling the sickness. In this same season, Crowley, still trying to get over his previous connection with Dean, raises Amara and guides her through her childhood, feeding her demons — which are corrupted human souls. As she matures and breaks free, she seems to prefer human souls, but she is seen eating angel souls/essences/grace as well. One human who had her soul taken describes it as “being with Amara” and seems to feel mainly release and relaxation. This is the same offer she makes to Dean. Though the language and implications are of sexual and romantic union, there is a clear womb-like connotation in her proposition. To be with her is to have ones soul kept safe inside her. The apocalypse she promises to bring is not only destruction, but a return to the state of being inside the womb. The state the universe was in before she and Chuck “split apart.” A state unruined by existence, everything preserved in a state of potential being, reduced to ideas, concepts, feelings, urges. Everything unconscious and unformed — the archetypical feminine. The darkness as ignorance.

Throughout the series, a primary question is whether or not any of the hunters (or Cas or Jack) can retire from hunting and live a normal human life. This is an essential part of Sam’s character journey — can he ever “settle down” and have a family of his own? Answering this is always contingent on the presence or absence of a woman at his side. We are asked, how can he achieve this if every woman who enters his life will inevitably be killed? He does not show the same consistent desire that Dean does to raise a child until s13 when he meets Jack. And then, in the final season, Eileen is reintroduced into his life, and the question comes up again about Sam “settling down.” Resurrecting Eileen is presented as a heroic act for Sam alone to achieve. Dean’s plan was to house her in a crystal — Rowena’s soul bomb — a metaphorical womb that can be repurposed as a weapon (only if enough souls are inside, just as Amara gained strength from consuming souls, as Cas gained power by consuming souls, and Dean was made into a bomb by absorbing the souls into himself). But Sam wants her to live again, and finds an opportunity through the spell that Jack forced Rowena to make in order to bring their mother back to life. The spell that failed, because Mary’s resurrected vessel was not capable of holding a soul within it. Like Mary herself, it fails at being what Amara was, a symbolic womb for the infant soul. It is empty, and incapable of being filled. Infertile.

But Sam is able to achieve it with Eileen, through a scene that mirrors both birth and baptism. Eileen emerges naked from a tub, her soul itself transformed into flesh. Where Dean, Cas, and Amara have all been related to the soul, gaining their power from it, ingesting souls and becoming, themselves, wombs — Sam is only concerned with the physical world. He is a character of action, who constantly leaves and returns to his heroic starting point. His blood drinking arc — in contrast to Cas’s soul eating, or the soul-bomb climax of Dean’s moc arc with Amara — is the physical alternative to the soul. Demon blood is also human blood — it is like the symbolic blood of Christ, the son of God — where Dean and Cas habitually ingest the spirit. This is further symbolized by Dean’s becoming a demon in s10, fulfilling his demonic duty by carrying out soul contracts for Crowley.

But in season 15, a season all about undoing the past and returning to an idealized one — to the beginning of the show itself, when it was just about two brothers hunting monsters, without angels and without God — Sam’s ability to leave hunting and finally accept a “normal life” is put in the spotlight, directly mirroring Chuck’s desire to leave this world behind and start a better one. Concepts like normal, human, Heaven and Paradise in spn, have always been related to the feminine — impossible to achieve for characters who view themselves as soldiers, only accessible through the consensual use and death of a woman and/or sacrifice (Mary, Kelly Kline). Those who seek to create a better world — a world safe from monsters — are not allowed to enjoy that world, because they can only seek it through violence.

For Chuck, a better world can only be achieved by abandoning any attachment he has to these characters and this world — and he can only join forces with Amara on his own terms, otherwise they will be locked in a constant power struggle. He only gets what he wants when Amara loses her own remaining attachment to the world (as before, she was content to passively enjoy it even while it was destroyed before her eyes) — her trust in Dean. She loses her tie to him an episode before he loses Cas, his own reason for existing.

Amara’s willing fusion with Chuck is neither her death, nor a fusion of their identities, but a reabsorption — or, consumption. It is the loss of her identity in favor of his. The final victory of the masculine aspect of God, the final act of submission from the feminine. Not equality or balance, but the continued structural placement of the masculine as higher/holier than the feminine despite her having power he cannot access. It is her becoming an organ, a womb — internal and unseen, but giving him the power to be able to leave this world behind. It’s the strength to be able to release. A paternal strength, both of them lacking emotional attachment to what they once loved. Chuck no longer desires to put himself in this story, just as he wants to end the show, he wants the death of this character — Chuck is the weaker version of God, the one that he wants to escape. He wants to transcend this earthly state, leaving this identity behind to create a new and improved one.

So every death in this final season, including Dean’s, Cas’s, Jack’s, and Eileen’s (as well as her erasure from the narrative), like Mary’s death and Amara’s absorption, are presented as necessary sacrifices. Like Jess. The symbolic death of the motherly/feminine aspect of God, which can nurture but attaches to the point of self destruction. Dean’s death was, I think, a suicide framed as an accident — his sacrifice, in order to force Sam to leave the hunting life behind, but also to ensure that, if one was truly destined to kill the other, he would never have to be the one to do it. Dean’s death is presented to us as the only possible end to the series which can not only scrub clean the sins of the past and return Sam to an idealized state (one of potential that can be fulfilled), but also allow him, like God!Jack (the better, more powerful version of Chuck, still containing the symbolic womb Amara, like the symbolic womb of the blurry wife), to set in motion a better future. A “reboot.” This is only possible in union with the feminine — but this union cannot look like becoming or attempting to replace, embody, be contained within, or contain the feminine, as it has been implied in both Dean and Cas’s past parental / Godlike roles — it must be done through consumption or use of the female as an organ. The womb (and vagina) as tools — a means to an end, but one which does not alter or lose the male identity.

[rainbow-motors]

Dean and Mary | SPN 2.20

Some thoughts about this scene under the break...

There's so much to unpack in this episode. I love how the story progressively reveals clues that this djinn-induced fantasy is not an ideal wish world: John's death, references to Dean being an alcoholic cad, the spectre of the young woman imprisoned by the djinn, Dean and Sam's estrangement, and the deaths of all the people they had saved as hunters.

Dean's seeming alcoholism is a handy plot device to keep others from questioning his odd behavior. And, especially with JDM not guest starring, I understand that John's death is a convenient way to explain his absence, and the story would naturally move on to the other plot points. His death is downplayed since it's natural instead of supernatural.

But while there may have been practical reasons to tell the story this way, as a fan invested heavily in Dean and John's relationship, I do find Dean's (as scripted: "that's great" !!) reaction surprisingly unbothered. Given that till now we've seen Dean wanting the family to be together at all costs, it's interesting to me that here with his Mom alive and presiding over his safe and happy home, he doesn't seem to miss John being present at all, or worried that Mary is alone. It gives me a lot of headcanon fodder, especially since in later seasons they show that Mary and John's relationship was at times rocky. This world was formed by the wish of Dean's inner child, a desire for a time before he lost unconditional love and safety, and how fascinating to find that John isn't in it.

[evie-doesnt-write]

This frame…. This fucking frame…. This is it, this is the Supernatural scene ever…. Supernatural thesis statement, incest thesis statement. The way this ties back to everything. The way every single foundational character is present here, if not physically then in essence. The way this scene is what shaped the Winchesters’ lives, the ultimate act of incest that tainted their blood, that doomed them all, Mary to her death, Sam to his birth, ruining the Winchester family, ruining their blood.

The way this scene happened because Dean saved a girl and brought Azazel’s attention to Mary, dooming her and their family. How this is how it’s always been, the Winchesters saving others and dooming themselves. Mary saves John and dooms herself, but she dooms John too, and startsnthe cycle of making deals to save the one you love, not accepting death as the end (S5 ending, despite its tragedy, breaks that cycle; S15 enforces it)

And just… look at this scene. Azazel possessing the body of Mary’s father just like he will (has? This episode’s use of cyclical time mirrors the cycle the Winchesters are stuck in, the cycle that begins here….) possess John. John himself, dead but present, oblivious yet complicit; this scene is about him, about who he will become, because Azazel is Samuel but also Azazel is Samuel is John. Already his relationship with Mary juxtaposes the one with her father, marriage as a power fantasy, marriage as an escape, John as the vehicle which will take her away, that will save her from the fate of having children who grow up in this life (this is the episode he buys the Impala, the Winchesters’ true home).

Samuel is Azazel is John; This is an act of sexual intercourse and conception, the conception of Sam, the ultimate symbol of incest. Azazel came looking for children to make his, the kiss with Mary is the solidification of Sam as his son, the familial taking physical form of Samuel’s body against the sexual intent and language of Azazel, the familial and the sexual in coexistence (the way Mary will name him Samuel after the father who she kissed). But this is also an act of murder, Mary’s murder (their family’s murder). Sam’s (re)birth is Mary’s death. This sexually charged act with incestuous overtones is the direct cause of another; that of Azazel bleeding into Sam’s mouth, feeding him his fluid, tainting Sam’s blood with his own. The way Mary mistakes Azazel for John and JDM plays Azazel in the Pilot.

The fact that this entire scene is in Dean’s eyes. Dean as a witness, Dean as a voyeur.

[embraceyourdestiny]

Mary both seeing grown Dean Winchester as her 4 year old son and not her son at all. As far as she’s concerned both her kids and her entire life died in that fire with her. The things that came out of it are completely different than the ones she knew.

[castielsparkle]

☆ HELLFIRE !

supernatural 4x01 - lazarus rising | my chemical romance - mama | supernatural 1x01 - pilot

[queerdeans]

mary absolutely deserved the space to process being alive and being a parent to adult men a decade older than her. she deserved to step away from that situation and decide if it's what she wanted.

but and also.

sam and dean deserved the space to be disappointed and frustrated with her choice to distance herself from them.

this is kind of how fucked-up family dynamics work. everyone is both right and wrong. everyone hurts everyone else in a variety of ways. the complexity of that is the point. it's a spiderweb of hurt. you can't touch any part of the web without another vibrating. everything is, unfortunately, a cycle, so we will be eating our own tails.

dean is right to want to be mothered; he's right to say he was never a child. he's right to be frustrated that he took on the mothering role for sam and didn't have a choice, and that mary died and avoided that, and that it was the consequence of a choice she made that set it into motion.

mary's right to not want to take on the mothering role right now, to decide what her place is in this new world and to take that place on her own. she's right to say no, you are adult men regardless of what happened and that i was manipulated just as much by the angels and demons as anyone else was.

and sam's right to forgive her more easily for all of this than dean because sam did have a mother it was dean.

some of you are missing the POINT!!!! of fucked-up families!!!! which is that EVERYONE IS WRONG. AND EVERYONE IS RIGHT.

[thefableddestiel]

This being the original way the hug was scripted in 12x01 is, in my opinion, damning evidence in support of bisexual Dean Winchester.

In every other circumstance, I would say Dean breaking the hug and saying “boundaries” is way out of character but in this very specific instance, it’s in character. Why? Because he only does this after Mary makes a sly comment that implies they’re more than friends.

Her comment “good friend” feels targeted and maybe even like an attack to Dean, who is either in denial about his feelings towards Cas or is aware and doesn’t act on them (for various reasons).

He just got his mother back and he’s on extremely unsure ground. His mother hasn’t been in his life since he was 4 and he doesn’t really know anything about her. He doesn’t know how she feels about gay people and he doesn’t know how she feels about him.

It’s also even more evidence that Dean grew up with a family where men showing affection was uncommon and probably even wrong. That HE was wrong for wanting to show affection. Mary comes from the same kind of family and he knows it. Dean hasn’t been around a family member he loves that believes those kinds of things pretty much since John died. So instinctively, when his mother comes back and makes a comment like that, the affection he’s grown to allow himself to show instinctively gets pulled back inside the second she says something.

So he pushes Cas away and pretends like they’ve ever had “boundaries” past season 4 because the comment catches him off guard and he can’t risk his mother formulating negative opinions about him because she could leave again.

If they had gone this route, I think Dean would’ve felt like shit about it immediately and berated himself for having that reaction. He would’ve made sure to find Cas later when he’s alone to give him a proper hug.

[otheredsam]

Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection (1835)

John 20:18

When the Levee Breaks (4x21)