#The Duality of Man/Sam

[whysamwhy123]

Ugh. I’m struggling to make any real progress on my various WIPs and I’m pretty pissed off about it. So, I’m gonna do The Thing again. Send me a word and if it pops up in any of the monstrosities I’m currently trying to get off the ground, I’ll post a snippet here and maybe that’ll help me get the creative juices flowing again?? *shrugs*

[deathdefyinggarlic]

[tsams-and-co-memes]

Something that I don't think gets talked about enough:

The fact that Ruin is good with kids

Yeah, it kinda comes with the territory of being a daycare attendant, but still. Before he got his current body and was still broken, while pretending to be cured, he was in the daycare’s ballpit as the resident "ballpit shark." He was entertaining the kids and playing with them, and despite how he looked, the kids would've had to like him a decent amount, since he was never asked to leave the daycare at any point during that window of time

I read something before about how, in Ruin's dimension, there's a chance that he (as a carrier of the virus and not someone who was affected by it) may or may not have had to go against his childcare programming and kill kids to blend in with the affected glamrocks, so they wouldn't get suspicious and try to dismantle him or anything

The bit about what he did in his dimension is just a thought that someone had that really stuck with me, and I don't remember who came up with it, unfortunately, but it's still at least relatively legit that despite whatever he had to do or go through in the past, it doesn't affect him anymore, and he's still someone the kids liked being around

Which. Considering some of the things he's said and done, is pretty cool to me

[devilat-thedoor]

sweetest darling boy but also prettiest princess angel.

[completelymindfucked]

[thefalling-sky]

No because there’s no way this is the same guy

[joshsindigostreak]

This is the same person.

[tappedthedavidsassonce]

One of my toxic traits is not only fully believing Sam Winchester has suffered more than Jesus Christo himself, but also Sam Winchester has suffered enough.

An example, his birth flower being lily of the valley.. WHY! It’s pretty but poisonous, are you trying to tell me that not only was he demon blood poisoned but his birth flower is literally poisonous on the inside as well? HAS HE NOT. SUFFERED. ENOUGH?? CAN HE NOT GO ONE DAY WITHOUT BEING REMINDED—

[pollutionbylimpbizkit]

[alina-beana]

the duality of supernatural

supernatural is so funny. sometimes they'll look for God and say things like "try new mexico, I hear he's on a tortilla" "no, he's not on any flatbread" and then you get bangers like "freedom is a length of rope and God wants you to hang yourself with it".

[mercsandmonsters]

Tag Dump #3: Male Muses

Let's get these guys tagged.

[mya-valentine]

What if the league of villains had a S/O who is a petty savage? (Like Jade West from victorias or Sam Puckett from icarly) she's all sweet and nice but if any hero/ other villain, say something about her lover. That person better count their blessings and say their prayers because they're in for a rude awakening.🤣

Headcanon: L.O.V. With a Petty S/O

A/N: Sorry, this took entirely way too long 😭 and if you can't tell, I had so much fun writing this

Kurogiri

Kurogiri appreciates your duality—you're refined and polite, but if someone dares disrespect him, suddenly, you're threatening to shove them into one of his portals permanently.

He never has to raise his voice because you're already doing it for him, standing up for him like a protective attack dog in designer boots.

A hero once called him "Shigaraki’s babysitter"—you made sure they tripped into one of his warps and ended up miles away from where they were supposed to be.

"Oh, I'm sorry, was that your dignity I just threw into the abyss? Oops."

Mr. Compress

You have so much fun verbally wrecking people with him. He’ll roast someone in a classy, theatrical way, and you’ll come in with the finishing blow that leaves them speechless.

Someone insults his mask? Snatch. Now it's your mask, and you'll return it when they apologize.

A hero tried to be snarky about his missing arm—you made sure their boots were suddenly glued to the ground. "Wow, must be hard moving forward with a disadvantage, huh?"

He’s obsessed with how protective you are. He always bows dramatically and goes, "My hero," whenever you absolutely annihilate someone on his behalf.

Tomura Shigaraki

Listen, he’s the one who’s usually petty, but you? You take it to another level. You once spent a whole week making a pro hero’s life hell because they insulted his gaming skills.

"What did you say about my man? No, no, don’t backtrack now, you were talking big a second ago."

You handle the verbal attacks while he just stands there, scratching his neck and watching you go feral. He’s got heart eyes the entire time.

He once complained about Endeavor, and you immediately took it upon yourself to send an anonymous package filled with insults disguised as a fan letter.

Dabi

Dabi lives for the drama. Someone tries to roast him? Oh, babe, go ahead. Cook them.

You’re constantly out-pettying heroes and even other villains. You once used a hero's own catchphrase against them in an argument, and Dabi nearly set the building on fire from laughter.

Hawks made a slick comment about Dabi once—you made sure his next mission was full of unexpected inconveniences. "Wow, Hawks, those wings working slower than usual? Must be karma."

Dabi will 100% instigate. "Babe, did you hear what they said about me?" (They didn’t even say anything, he just wants to watch the chaos.)

Spinner

Spinner is not used to someone going feral on his behalf. At first, he's a little overwhelmed, but deep down? He loves it.

"You—you don’t have to go that hard for me—okay, you’re already doing it."

Someone once made a lizard joke at his expense, and before he could even react, you went, "Oh, I'm sorry, are you a biologist? No? Then shut your damn mouth."

You once fought someone in a GameStop parking lot because they insulted his gaming skills.

Twice

"Babe, you don’t have to—OH, YOU'RE ALREADY SWINGING!"

Twice adores you. Someone calls him unstable? You’re already in their face, asking if they’d like to experience real instability.

You once wrote a detailed list of all the reasons a hero sucked and left it in their locker. Twice kept a copy for fun.

He gets really emotional about how protective you are. "WOW, NO ONE’S EVER FOUGHT FOR ME LIKE THAT BEFORE! MARRY ME! No, seriously, marry me!"

Himiko Toga

You and Toga together? Dangerous. She already loves chaos, but you? You make sure the disrespect is handled properly.

Someone once called her creepy, and you made sure their social media was permanently ruined. "Oops, did I post that embarrassing childhood photo of you? Guess you shouldn’t have run your mouth."

She adores how savage you are. Sometimes she just sics you on people for fun. "Oh no, babe, they said something so mean about me—go get 'em!"

If someone flirts with her in front of you? You stare at them until they leave, and she finds it absolutely hilarious.

.

.

.

Masterlist

[theglamorousferal]

Things I want in one fic:

Redeemed Vlad, Good Fenton Parents, Fentons/Vlad polycule

Liminal Amity Park

Redeemed Dark Danny, weird cousin?

Ellie as part of the family, sorta step sibling?

Defect quartet

The Class as a team deferring to Team Phantom

Jazz is Big Sister

Amity Park knows the secret

The Class moving to Gotham for college

Vlad giving them enough money to purchase Drake Manor

Tim has closed off the tunnel between the Manor and the Batcave

Tim was the one to hand the keys over to Danny, whose name was on the deed, courtesy of his new step-dad

They end up keeping in touch and Tim is a frequent visitor at the manor and befriends the majority of the Class

They all still keep up with their training, Sam and Valerie put together an obstacle course with the help of the jocks and every Saturday is a free-for-all battle royale with ecto guns set to their lowest setting across all of the grounds.

The last one standing gets to pick what restaurant dinner is from that night and the movie for movie night.

Tim does find all of this rather unusual, but mostly he finds that they remind him of all his hero friends.

This, more than anything else they do, makes him very concerned.

Why do these random midwesterners train like heroes? Why do they have a camaraderie he’s only seen forged on the same battlefield? He’s noticed they mostly defer to a group of five individuals. The pair of siblings who now own the Manor and the partners of one of said siblings. More than that, they all defer to Danny, the one he gave the keys to.

Luckily for him, Two Face happened to attack the bank that Danny was at and Danny did something he’d only ever seen Bruce manage to do and talked the villain down from the attack.

When asked, Dent just said that he saw a kinship in the kid, said he’d understood duality in a way that resonated with him.

Later that night Red Robin reopened the tunnels and paid one Daniel Fenton a visit. Tim found him in his father’s old study, using a brand new telescope through the window. He knocked and waited before entering.

“Ah, I expected one of you to show up. It’s why I decided to stay up tonight actually. We have a lot to talk about if you’ll take a seat? I’ll get us some energy drinks. You’ll be able to confirm they’re sealed and not poisoned that way. What’s your favorite flavor? Between the fifteen of us we’ve got to have the right flavor.”

Red Robin stood there for a moment, processing before following the man to his pantry. Once there he opened a new package of his favorite energy drink and opened it himself; not once did Danny make a fuss about him opening a whole new package. He grabbed a second one to bring with him back to the office. Danny grabbed a couple himself.

Once back in the office, they sat in two chairs across from each other. Danny leaned on his elbows with his fingers steepled. “What I am about to tell you is an incredible risk to everyone in this house, and likely yourself included. I need you to promise me to listen to everything I tell you before you start asking questions. I will answer them to the best of my ability after I have gone over the basics. What I am about to tell you is going to sound unbelievable, but I’m banking on the fact that you have likely frequently experienced impossible things and therefore may take me seriously.” Danny stared at the mask. “Now, what do you know about ghosts?”

Tim’s hair trigger was of disbelief, but then he paused and considered. Clark’s an alien, Diana’s a god, Conner’s a clone, at least half the family has come back to life. Why couldn’t ghosts exist? “Not much besides fairy tales.” He braced himself for what was to come.

Danny narrowed his eyes appraisingly. “Hmm. Well. They are, in fact, real. I’ll show evidence in a little bit. A Ghost as we know them is generally formed when a person’s emotions during death produce enough ectoplasm to give their sentience form. They then become residents of a place known by two names; the Ghost Zone, or the Infinite Realms. The Ghost Zone is what it’s known as on Earth, and the residents of the place itself call it the Infinite Realms.” Danny pauses here for a moment and then claps his hands. “Now, all ghosts are members of the Infinite Realms, but not all beings of the Infinite Realms are ghosts. The Realms is a dimension mirroring our own that is entirely made of ectoplasm. It’s where the residue from the emotions of all beings in our universe go and then are given form. There are beings there that are basically gods and are aspects given form. I can go on and on about the Realms later. What’s important is that throughout history there have been unstable naturally occurring portals between the two dimensions, but around five years ago, a pair of scientists managed to open a stable portal to this dimension. A few months later, a former college friend of theirs made a second stable portal, but I’ll get to him in a minute. Once this portal was established, it made it so that ghosts could now freely come into our world. A young hero took up protecting the city, but his first few attempts had quite a bit of misunderstanding to them and so he was villainized for a while. This resulted in the government establishing an agency to combat these threats. All well and good, right?” He raised an eyebrow at Tim. “You would think so. However, the laws passed to make this agency had some clauses that are questionable. I’ll just hand you a copy of the documentation so that you can read it.”

He handed Tim a folder labeled “Anti-Ecto Acts”. He began to peruse them and came upon the clause that declared any being that can process or contains ectoplasm is considered non-sentient or sapient and called for the capture, eradication, or experimentation of all such “ecto-beings”. “This, can’t be right. This is a blatant contradiction to the Meta Protection Acts.”

Danny smirked a sad smile. “You’d think, right?” He gave him a moment to process that. “You can read up more on that later. I have other things to say.” Tim set aside the folder and took a deep chug of his energy drink.

“Alright, hit me.” he said as he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees, giving Danny his full attention.

“Kay, so, you notice the ‘any being that can process ectoplasm’ bit? Yeah, well that can apply to some humans too. Humans that are considered death-touched or Liminal. People who have been surrounded by death, have died even if momentarily on the operating table, but especially people who have been exposed to high levels of ectoplasm. Here’s the thing about living in a town with a stable portal to effectively the afterlife: it kinda does some stuff to you.” He flashed his eyes a Lazerus green as he set his right palm on the desk. He’s quiet for a moment before he leaned back with a sigh, then closed his eyes so they returned to their normal blue. 

“Every individual in my hometown is ecto-contaminated.” He said quietly, like, Tim supposes, he was telling a secret. Tim guesses he was. “Every person there is death-touched. Every person there is Liminal. Every person pings as an ecto-entity to the GIW. We’re all at risk. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the heroes would ping too. I need your help.” Danny turned begging eyes upon Red Robin. “I need your help, and you need this too because I noticed it when we first met, Tim, that you are too.”

Tim reeled, he stood and knocked his chair over. “Wh-what do you mean?” 

“How many times have you been near-death? How many times have you been around the dying? That sort of stuff leaves a mark on people. They begin to metabolize ectoplasm. I reckon that the majority of the Justice League apply. I’d argue that soldiers who have seen active combat would register on some sensors. According to those laws, you can be captured and experimented on. They’re luckily focusing on ghosts and have been ignoring people, but it’s only a matter of time. I need you to bring this to Batman, to the League. I need these Acts removed. They call for the eradication of my People” His eyes flashed a green again as the word resonated. “This calls for the eradication of an entire dimension, they’ve already tried it once, and if they had, it would have torn this universe apart. Luckily the nuke they had was a dud.” 

Tim swallowed at that. “Nuke? They tried to nuke an entire dimension?” Tim picked up the chair and sat heavily in it. “I’m going to guess that this somehow gets worse?”

Danny nodded solemnly. “You see, the Infinite Realms has a council and a king. A good majority of the council rightfully believes that these Acts are calling for the genocide of our people. The king has kept them at bay for now, but they’re calling for war.” 

Tim put his head in his hands and groaned. “And the king?” Danny looked at him, debating something for a moment. Then he stood and there was a flash of bright light. Stood in front of Red Robin could only be the King. Danny now had bright white hair and eyes that glowed with a familiar Lazarus green. He wore a cloak of stars and his crown looked like the Northern Lights. He wore armor that seemed to be a combination of the ancient Norse and Greeks. “I just want my people safe.”

[utilitycaster]

Hope I can phrase this in a way that makes sense but—

What well-known actual-play cast member is your favorite for each of the core D&D class? Not necessarily a specific characters, but I’m interested in which players you think brings the most to each class.

This is a very interesting question! It's a hard one to answer for some classes and very easy for others so bear with me; also there are a couple where I could not pick just one.

I'm sticking to the PHB 12 for, as you said, core classes:

Barbarian: While Travis did give us "I would like to rage," I think Ashley and Taliesin get to share this one for me. I think they both really explore what rage means to someone and while I love a good "I'm a tank because I can take the hits and that's what I do and what I'm good at" story, I also think Yasha's messy relationship with her feelings of guilt and grief, and Ashton's chronic pain, are both incredible ways to play with the barbarian archetype.

Bard: much easier. Sam Riegel and Krystina Arielle. I'm a sucker for someone who actually sings even as I don't think you have to (and have played bard without doing so). It's both clearly a class they each love dearly and it shows, and they're incredibly musically talented performers to boot.

Cleric: Lou Wilson. Especially since I didn't like Fantasy High season 1 Fabian until the end of the season Kingston blew me away. I would love to see him explore cleric again, though it's exciting to see him as a paladin on WBN.

Druid: Emily Axford as Moonshine. Emily as a rule understands D&D classes very well anyway, but I think the culture of the crick and the ways that Moonshine must grow as a character while being a druid take it to the next level. (Also I prefer a caster-heavy druid to a shapechanger-heavy one; that's just me).

Fighter: Back to NADDPod because literally who could I say other than Jake Hurwitz, the man who only plays fighters. People who are new to D&D when they start actual play can be hit or miss imo; some pick it up and some lean harder on being showy to make up for it and it doesn't play well for me personally, but Jake is the greatest hit.

Monk: Marisha Ray; Beau is just generally a great character, and I think Marisha's own experience with martial arts informs the way she plays her; monks can be kind of repetitive in combat even with strong players and she manages to avoid this through her description.

Paladin: This is actually super hard because people don't play straight paladin a lot. This is incorrect of them, but it is an intense class. I think Luis Carazo and Zac Oyama are like...the duality of paladin (and indeed, redemption paladin). The tragedy and the comedy.

Ranger: Laura Bailey, natch; it's funny because Vex is in many ways not the archetypal ranger due to having high charisma, but she is simply my favorite and that's that on that. Sorry the mechanics were so bad; I would love to see more rangers in D&D even though Vex will be hard to dethrone. I promise Tasha's fixed them!

Rogue: I think I'm actually going Murph on this one. I like when rogues are more of the detective/spy type than the assassin/criminal type [obligatory "of course that's what you'd say you stupid paladin stan"] and inquisitive and arcane trickster are probably my two top rogue classes so Riz it is.

Sorcerer: I do consider PF1e cheating here because it's technically a different system that also imo addresses a lot of the weaknesses of sorcerer/makes it way better, but Bryn Monroe of RQG did play a great sorcerer. In D&D? Giving Emily Axford a second spot here for Saccharina. I'm going to talk about this for warlock, but I think sorcerer is a class you don't have to justify but if you don't it's a little unsatisfying. Sorcerer really shines in the Crown of Candy setting, and metamagic often doesn't live up to its reputation but Emily makes it work for her.

Warlock: Travis Willingham. I think there are classes that are kind of self-explanatory, for lack of a better term; you can play a fighter or rogue or even a bard or druid without going super deep into why the character is this class and still be an incredible character (though a good backstory never hurts). But there are others where you really need to be engaging with the class at all times to make it work, and warlock is one of them, and Fjord explores the warlock pact and what it means like few others.

Wizard: Aabria Iyengar. NO ONE gets wizard hubris as a player like Aabria. Knowledge is power and boy do wizards love knowledge. I especially like that most people in 5e play wizards as genuine adventurers because it feels very easy to play them as old guy in robes swept up in events beyond them; Aabria plays wizards who are combat ready with the humanity and backstory to make the difficult decisions sympathetic and meaningful, and I think that's how you have to play it.

Note: I want to specifically call out Liam O'Brien and Siobhan Thompson as "people I trust in basically any class or system and just didn't happen to hit a favorite here due to sky-high competition/personal preferences". They are both very close seconds for wizard.

[wellofdean]

Re: Dean, the MoC, Amara & Mary

Post 4 of ? (post 1, post 2, post 3)

Ok, so… Dean has done time with his Shadow and suffered Shadow-possession (which, yes, is a thing! In the writings of Carl Jung! Supernatural is very on the nose about this!), and then he contended with a manifestation of Anima in the character of Amara, but with a serious mis-match: Amara is not, and cannot be the bearer of Dean’s anima projection; if anything, he is the bearer of HER animus, which is resolved by her reunification with Chuck, who is her actual twin cosmic force. Then, they turn into black and white smoke and twist away, yin/yang style, which is...yeah. VERY on the nose.

Supernatural does something really interesting with Amara, though, because here’s how the Anima normally works: A man or woman, having brought contents their shadow into consciousness, is next confronted with the anima/animus, which is a contrasexual soul image that mediates and stands on the threshold between the conscious self and the contents of the unconscious and collective unconscious. It is an ideal and irresistible image that is projected first onto the parent of the opposite sex, and then, says Jung, onto a lover, obviously of the opposite sex. Only…that never happens with Dean.

If you read Jung on the topic of anima/animus, it comes across to (many and certainly my) modern ears as unacceptably gender essentialist, androcentric and sexist. In Jung’s time, male and female societal roles were fairly defined, homosexuality was viewed as a problem to be solved, and Jung is not immune to this. Jung’s thought and ideas, however, the possibilities they open for thinking about psychological processes, are so often much more expansive, subversive and open to potentialities than his actual conclusions are, because his conclusions are phenomenological and taken from his experience. Post-Jungian, and more modern approaches to his ideas contend that we all have both anima and animus in us, and that the key meaning of the archetype is interrelatedness and the potentialities that exist in relationship, and that the dualities are not gendered, even though the dual concept of gender is one of the dualities.

It’s telling, in Supernatural, that Dean doesn’t REALLY project anima onto any female love interest in 15 years of the show (except maybe Cassie? We can assume so, to some extent at least, but there isn’t much story there, and it's clear that while she's important to Dean, he fairly easily lets it go). And, anima (archetype) engagement is exactly what’s missing when he’s with Lisa, that’s a big reason we all know instinctively that their relationship is doomed. He loves her, he sees her value, and she is about as good to him as she could possibly be, but his soul is not bound up with hers, and its obvious. He’s grieving Sam, and burying himself in a life that isn't his.

When it comes to Amara, engaging with her as anima is very explicitly what Dean cannot do, and it’s why everything about them together is uncomfortable. Amara projects the relatedness and union that she needs onto Dean while he struggles to maintain his autonomy against her insurmountable cosmic force, which is why it feels rapey and scary that she keeps touching him and he keeps being unable to stop himself from responding to her. Elsewhere, the entire season makes it painfully clear that Dean, separated again from Cas by Cas’s decision to say ‘yes’ to Lucifer, is pretty single-mindedly, piningly focused on saving his actual love object, and everyone around him repeatedly microaggresses him and Lucifer openly mocks him about it while wearing Cas's face. Like, fellas, none of that is the remotest bit narratively necessary if Dean is not in love with Cas. Just saying. At this point, Dean's queerness is so integral to the story that literally nothing makes sense without it.

So, Amara projects her need for union onto Dean, but what she really needs is reunion with Chuck, and she knows, by the end that she has been wrong about what Dean wants and feels when he’s with her. When he shows up as the soul bomb, filled with the light of a few hundred-thousand souls and tells her he’s there to give her what she wants (him) she says “well, this is a change,” because the minute he called out for Cas in the previous episode, she knew he did not want/need union with her, and moreover, she now knows who he loves, and maybe even that something is stopping him from following his heart ("I can feel the love you feel, except it's cloaked in shame").

So, Amara gives him Mary, and I’m pretty sure most of us reacted with a collective “Huh?”

Well, as I said, according to Uncle Carl, the mother is always the first site of Anima projection for a little boy, the first feminine imago (idealised, platonic image of the feminine principle). This can, in some cases, end in Oedipal devotion to the mother – and in fact Supernatural plays with this a little bit when Dean travels back in time and says "Mom was hot! I'm going to hell", and also when he goes to his heaven: “I love you mom. I’ll never leave you” which is rightly seen by Sam as another example of Dean doing his father’s job of loving and caring for his mother. Of course, Dean also did his Mother’s job in taking care of baby Sam and partnering his father for better part of the first two decades of his life.

Guys, it’s complicated being Dean! Seriously!

It's arguable that the core wound of all three Winchester men, John, Dean and Sam, is the loss of Mary. John lost his wife, Dean his mother, and Sam lost the very idea of a mother and looked to Dean to nurture him. Dean remembers her in a meaningful way as HIS mother, and her terrifying, traumatic death is the reason for everything that followed. Not only that, but when he time-travelled, he found out that it was Mary who made the deal that led to Sam’s being one of the chosen children! So, her death, John’s subsequent spiral, which is the impetus that made him Sam’s mother, the hunting, and everything that followed? Mary is the origin. Dean is highly identified with Mary, and he holds himself to impossible standards. Mary is the source of so much of Dean's psychology as a character, and  this is important: given that this is true, it would NOT MAKE SENSE in the construction of Dean as a character, if he DID NOT have a complex built up around his mother.

So, what is "a complex", exactly? A complex, in Jungian terms, is a tangle of emotion, thought, imago and desire that is centred on a specific aspect of a person’s psyche at the site of a disturbance or trauma. Reportedly, Jung tested this, with word associations. So, for example, the doctor/psychologist says ‘table’ and where no complex exists, the patient says ‘chair’ immediately without anything cathected around it, but what if the patient has a trauma or disturbance around a table? They might hesitate, and then say something stranger and more cathected, like ‘sadness’.

What do you think Dean would say if free associating about ‘mother’? Would he be able to answer immediately with one word? Would it be something neutral, like ‘father’?

Of course not.

Ok, so. before I go on, here are some things I think about Dean:

He is introspective, and has a high level of self-awareness and intelligence about his own feelings. He knows himself, and he has thought about these things, because…

…he has a developed and active inner life that he does not often share with others, and especially does not share with Sam – in fact, he usually actively protects Sam from his feelings because he is Sam’s de-facto parent, and…

Dean is motivated almost entirely by love, and he takes on far too much responsibility. In fact, the taking on of responsibility is the least self-aware thing Dean does, and he IS (explicitly!) aware of the fact that he does it; he just cannot stop.

The very fact that Dean is confronting his shadow (MoC), and contending with anima (Amara), is evidence that he is a character at an advanced stage of psychological development. If it were not for the points above, he could not do it!

Jungian individuation is the process of making the parts of the personality that are unconscious part of the conscious mind, so that their unconscious influence over the mind is transformed into something that isn't compulsive, but serves the self. First, one must recognize the ego/persona; Dean is very, very aware of this, and arguably, has been to some extent from the start. Then, one must dredge up the shadow, which will contain a mixture of destructive and constructive elements – all the things the persona repressed – and make them conscious. Then, one must confront and integrate the anima, and start the process of making archetypal, collective precepts conscious. Mary is where that process started (as the mother is always the first recipient of the anima projection) and it continued with Amara. All of this is undertaken so that the self can be realised, and reach a fully realised wholeness.

Again, feel free to take issue with these ideas, all I am saying here is that THIS IS WHAT THE NARRATIVE IS DOING, and doing very intentionally.

It has been a long time since Dean has ‘needed his mother’ in any conscious way. Dean is a grown-ass self-sufficient man. He does not consciously idealize her, and he knows she is human and flawed, but she is still at the root of so much of his pain. He still carries a numinous imago with her face, and he is strongly identified with her throughout the narrative. Most importantly, he carries an idealised image of who he might have been, and what his life might have been if they had not lost her.

The crux of what I want to say about this, and this is the essential TL;DR of all these posts: Mary’s return is not about his doing justice to MARY, it’s about his understanding himself, and giving himself some fucking grace, and to do that, he needs to become consciously aware of what he is carrying where she is concerned, and what he is doing with it TO HIMSELF in his own psyche because of it.

(…to be continued! This is long enough!)

[yournowheregirl]

love how two of ben whishaw’s 2024 projects could not be more opposite: on one hand, the sweet and curious paddington, and other the other hand, ruthless, sarcastic, gay assassin, sam, in black doves. the true duality of man.