#and dean's issues with cas have been framed by the narrative all season as this sort of level of issue so...

[antigonewinchester]

🔥 jack

I quite enjoy him as a character and dislike the majority of fandom discourse around him.

Jack is clearly favored by the writers & story in his seasons: he’s given the sympathetic cute white guy treatment in casting AlCal, he’s an entirely new character who becomes arguably the 3rd lead, he a part of major plots and has narrative focus**. given all that, I can very much see why some ppl dislike him, his role in the story, etc. hate away! but the other side of it, fandom’s woobification of him, making him literally a child, or downplaying his choices / agency / incredibly strong powers, is also incredibly boring. despite his narrative focus there’s room for a lot more fandom explorations of Jack.

Jack’s ending of becoming God was foreshadowed from S13 and I think the writers had something like it in mind from early on.

Kelly's death & sacrificing her life so Jack could live influenced him from Day 1 and Jack was going to have major guilt issues and feel like he had to do good / live a good life even if he hadn't been raised by Sam, Dean, Cas. some of Jack's issues are all his own.

S14 is by far the best Jack season and the tragedy of it doesn’t work unless Jack is actively making choices and has agency within his story—choosing to sacrifice his soul to save his family, choosing not to tell Sam & Dean (or Cas) about almost killing Stacy, choosing to brutally kill Nick, etc. 14x16 – 14x20 from Jack’s perspective is excruciating and that’s what makes it so good! put that guy through the horrors!! as messed up as 14x20 is, the fandom framing of Evil Abusive Dean going to kill Poor Sweet Jack misses 1) the deliberate narrative reversal of the beginning of the season w/ Jack saying they'd have to kill Michael!Dean to protect the world, and the season climax in Dean believing he has to kill Jack [and himself] to protect the world, What Could It Mean, and 2) Jack actively choosing mercy instead of fighting. Jack could’ve run or easily incapacitated / killed Dean with his powers but decides he'd rather die than risk hurting or killing someone else. which is a fucked up but compelling & interesting character choice!

speaking of 14x20, I’m surprised I’ve never seen a comparison between 4x20/4x21 and 14x19/14x20. [there’s… a very cynical meta-through-line I’ve thought about here, but I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into it.]

reveal of Sam drinking demon blood & his ‘monstrousness’ > Dean & Bobby lock Sam in the panic room > Sam breaks out thru angelic power > Dean goes to confront Sam

reveal of Jack killing Mary and his soullessness > Dean & Sam lock Jack in Ma’lak box > Jack breaks out using his angelic powers > Dean goes to confront Jack

**Dabb & his writers wanted to keep exploring generational traumas & familial cycles and brought in Jack to continue that thread as Sam & Dean had mostly worked thru their issues, but there’s a feel of warped or forced character development to make it all fit—say, Dean as Jack’s “cool uncle” is arguably more realistic given Dean’s understandable distrust of Jack and resistance to parenting him from early S13, but the writers wanted to explore the conflict of Dean as Jack’s father figure and so that’s what the dynamic had to become. so it's less that the characters are OOC but the way the writers approach it & the narrative framing of it all that's overly simplistic.

Send me a “ 🔥 ” for an unpopular opinion.

[autisticandroids]

anyway this is mostly @restlesshush's point because she's the one who has complained about this to me for many hours in dms BUT the way buckleming treat soulless jack is super crazy. like they 100% believe that the problem with soulless jack is he doesn't feel enough. and in particular the fact that he feels insufficiently guilty. so 14x19 and 15x13 are EXTREMELY strange episodes because they are totally disjointed with everything around them. like, 14x19 is way more egregious, because 14x18 is so focused on jack's guilt over mary. like he accidentally kills her (something which has already happened once in the show (13x06) and no one cared; him killing mary was pretty unrelated to him being soulless but let's not beat a dead horse), and then he goes absolutely crazy with guilt trying to get her back! and then in 14x19 it's this:

Dean: Yeah. Us too. Right, Sammy? Tell Jack how, uh -- how we want to clear things up, you know, between us. Jack: I know -- I know things have been bad. A-And, if it helps, I regret it. The accident. Sam: The -- The accident? Jack: What happened to Mary. She kept talking about my soul, t-that I didn't have a soul, and she kept pushing. Dean: Oh, so she made you do it. Jack: No, it -- it was me, but I didn't want this no-soul thing to become an issue between us. I guess I snapped. Before I knew it, it was all over. Dean: "It" being the accident.

the problem clearly outlined here is that jack is insufficiently contrite, insufficiently guilty, not taking enough responsibility for his actions. which makes no sense after 14x18.

and then in 15x13 we get more terrible moments. first, this:

JACK: I want to be. But I don't... feel things the way I used to. Before I lost my... CASTIEL: Your soul. JACK: I used to feel things. In my bones. It was glorious, and sometimes unbearable. But I felt them. Now, I understand joy or sadness, but... I know those things aren't in me. I understand why Sam and Dean were angered by what happened to Mary... CASTIEL: By what you did to Mary. JACK: Yes. I see that I've caused them pain. And it's clear that things have changed. Especially with – with Dean. Will he ever forgive me? CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on. JACK: How long will that take? CASTIEL: I don't know.

which is like. the reason it was changed from the earlier script draft ("i know what it's like to disappoint dean"), which is more in character, is that "dean feels things more deeply than anyone else" serves the thesis of the episode, which is that jack doesn't feel enough. and there's also cas reminding jack about "what he did to mary" - again, buckleming think this is about insufficient guilt.

there's also the fact that jack's affect is not coherent with his affect in the surrounding episodes.

then at the end when he gets his soul back jack breaks down like so:

JACK: Why didn't I get it? I mean, my mother died, too. Why didn't I understand? It was my fault.

which is again about insufficient guilt and jack not feeling correctly. and then no one comforts him as he breaks down! because according to the narrative this is a deserved punishment.

and like i want to be clear that all this stuff is absolutely not consistent with the events of 14x17 and 14x18, and it's ALSO not consistent with the framing of those events presented in 14x20, where jack's loss of his emotions is primarily presented as a tragedy for jack, as it is in 14x15. season fifteen is a lot less interested in jack as a character so i don't have as many direct contradictions in the surrounding episodes for 15x13, but like. come on man.

i guess in conclusion i would say that buckleming jack episodes probably should not be taken seriously by anyone.

[shallowseeker]

On your season 8 comments, wdym about the cupid scene with the paired versus not paired couples?

So, firstly. I'm sorry my commentary turned into me skipping through season 8 and rambling like a wildman.

(It will happen again.)

What I meant when I talked about that scene, is that we see Dean's TV scene, it’s narratively solitary. Then, it's followed by the happy couple's TV scene showing them paired up. (I'll zoom in on it below.)

I'd seen the symbolism of Cupid discussed before, and even the arrows in Dean's trunk, but I hadn't seen the mated TV Dwight-Rod scene pointed out in comparison to Dean's "empty, incomplete" TV scene.

Soooo…. I thought it could be fun!

Dean drinks and looks surly. Then, he gets visually "shot" by Love. Cas enters.

DEAN SCENE: Aim. Fire. Boom. Straight at Dean, who looks to Cas as he enters the room. It's not that Dean was "hit" by Cupid and is being controlled by Heaven...it's symbolic of the situation. It's Dean's own free will.

He loves Cas. He clung to him in Purgatory and tried to tell him in the Crypt.

DEAN: "Anything? You've been gone long enough." CAS: "No. Anything here?"

Cas tells Dean he might die. They stare at one another, regretful but choosing to hold onto their respective duties and familial obligations. (It's how they tick. They know this about each other. They like this about each other, just as much as it frustrates them.)

When Dean asks Cas if he's sure about leaving, Cas gives him a sad, watery little smile. Dean was hopeful, but now he's trying to accept their fate to be apart. "So this is it?" Dean says, then pivots to an E.T. joke in the midst of his emotional pain.

///

DWIGHT & ROD CUPID SCENE:

I tried to zoom in, but it's still hard -> On the TV scene, we get this on the screen, a red-shirted "Rod" image and the tan-shirted "Dwight" image.

This is what Dean's TV scene lacks, symbolizing that Dean feels alone--that he and Cas are not on the same page about their Big Feelings.

//

The Cupid enters. When Dwight asks where the usual deliveryman Ed is, she says, "Flu. I'm Gail." (Dean has been telling everything that Sam has the flu, btw, to explain away the Hell Trial symptoms. While Ed is away, Gail strikes. And while Sam is away..."Joy" strikes.) Rod ("island of reeds, phallic symbol;" also, his hat has blue wings "American Natural Freight & Transport") and Dwight ("white, smile, laughter;" giver of beer and safe harbor) are both enamored by the weapon on TV.

The TV scene is in a forested area, not unlike the wooded nightmare of Purgatory, where Dean realized his commitment to Cas and extended his hand. He told Cas that he wanted him to "come home." Cas and Dean have the same issue with suicidality/worthlessness /duty, but narratively, they're trying to escape together. (That's a comrade theme in SPN; trying to heal over that looming feeling of suicidality.)

Below the TV is a small oval frame of a twin waterfall/bluff, meeting and overflowing. It's reminiscent of the cliff near where Cas let go of Dean's hand, in Purgatory.

///

Anyway, Rod and Dwight have a traditionally masculine interest in common here, like how Dean and Cas are both warriors, and they like that about each other. The screen shows the two men, walking side by side in camaraderie, and then it changes to a firing bow. The music emphasizes that, not only do they fall in love, but they like each other first. As friends. Weird quirks n' all.

[GAIL places a hand each man’s shoulders and smiles.] GAIL: I'll be seeing you both. [GAIL smiles and gathers her clip board and begins to leave.] Thanks for the help. DWIGHT: No problem. [GAIL leaves the bar and DEAN stares at the scene confused thinking GAIL was going to be the person DWIGHT was to have a match with. DWIGHT and ROD stare at the hunter on TV as he displays the use of his bow.] BOTH MEN [at the same time]: Damn, that's sweet. [After the men say the same thing at the same time, they stare into each other’s eyes and music plays.] ♪ Oh, it's so nice to be with you ♪ I love all the things you say and do ♪ DWIGHT: How about the next one's on me? ♪ And it's so nice to hear you say ♪ you're gonna please me in every way ♪

///

"My love is violence."

CAS CUPID SCENE:

Castiel's cupid scene is darker. This is the bookend mate to Dean's scene, the bow is now aimed at Cas, who stands in close proximity to Dean, on the precipice of decision. An open palm is extended to Cas, representing love freely given...and forgiveness.

Dean forgave him for taking the souls, something that led to Bobby's death, and for breaking Sam's wall. Dean looked for him, then told him, "Hang on!" and clung to his hand in Purgatory. In the crypt, Dean said he loved needed him.

Now, Cas cuts off the bow, just like how he threw off Dean's hand in Purgatory. Cas rejects love. And Supernatural is about love...and love. Tremendous familial love and fidelity...and this. We see his blade come up in response to being symbolically "hit" by romantic love. It's ominous.

(Perhaps, he doesn't know how to respond? He's been a soldier for bajillions of years.)

The next scene shows his rejection, as Cas walks with the cut-off heart of the Nephilim in place of his kitchen stores, and Dean's hand is out of shot (he's on the phone).

But visually, Dean's hand is "cut off," just like Cupid's was. Season 8 is all about Cas rejecting love due to the heavy weight of shame and guilt. He may not recognize it, or he may not feel deserving. To deserve it, he has to do penance, and he has to "fix" things first. It's a fatal mistake.

Cas holds a bag containing bloody, innocent human-angel remains, and the cut-off hand of human love.

[chiisana-sukima]

And if you're a being of heaven then why would you be designed to need growth.

I can't answer this about real life, since I'm not Jewish or Christian, but in spn the answer is "because God is an abusive father". God is John, and Michael is Dean, and Lucifer is Sam, and Heaven is a series of hotel rooms where you're trained to be a killer and expected to faithfully profess that your only purpose is to serve in the eternal war against Evil, and the Cage is the panic room.

Everything else in spn is secondary to that metaphor, but even beyond that, we know that Heaven is a Kingdom of Torture and Hell is a Kingdom of Torture and one is not better than the other. The angels are all consigned to either rebel and be hunted and punished, like Anna and Cas and Uriel, or be part of the dictatorial line of succession, like Michael and Raphael and Zachariah. In real life, solitary confinement is torture. Heaven is vindictive and practices torture. Lucifer is the leader of the rebellion against the dictatorship that is Heaven. QED.

Later in canon there are a couple episodes where tptb directly acknowledge they know that solitary confinement alone and in the absence of any other form of aversive conditions is torture, but you don't really need that direct acknowledgement to know that in the early years, before the writing got flat, you were supposed to have sympathy for Lucifer, even though he is the enemy.

It's basically just a skill issue on Lucifer's part.

Is it?

This is, I think, the place where it's especially hard to be a Dean girl (gn). Sam fans could choose to carry this belief through to the finale if they wanted to and still have a coherent story to love, because Sam is relatively well-protected by the narrative from becoming a primary perpetrator of family violence (although by no means perfectly) or its metaphorical correlates.

But Dean very much is not. If Lucifer has no excuse, then Dean also has no excuse. Dean hasn't been even marginally okay since he went to Hell, was subjected to torture and succumbed. (I mean, he wasn't okay beforehand either, but he's really not okay afterwards). He'll never shake his status as a victim/perpetrator. He has arguably been more harmful to his loved ones already by s4 than John ever was, and by the end of spn it's not even arguable. You'll be to season 9 soon and be faced with the fact that spn has compared possession to rape many times and will continue to do so, and then the question of whether Lucifer should have been expected to do better will be even more acute.

I want to be clear here that I love Dean with all my heart. I don't particularly care for later canon's version of Lucifer, but I love OP's version of Lucifer, and I do love canon Dean straight through to the end even though he's unambiguously abusive, just as Lucifer is. My rl family sucks and I love them and am not ashamed of it, and spn is one of the very few places you can go to see that reflected in a story and not framed as weakness. (I've been no contact with my father for 45 years, but he's still my father. I love him. I talk daily to my mom, who was also abusive, and I adore her. She was a shit parent, but she's a good friend.)

I think for me in the end the whole thing comes down to how much you're willing and/or able to ignore about the text as a whole in order to get what you want/need out of the individual parts. If there's a line that starts with "I don't feel comfortable ignoring any of it" on one side and "I can ignore anything I don't like" on the other, you'll get the most incisive--but also the most angering/depressing--meta from the people closest to the "won't/can't ignore any of it" point on the line.

OP has an incredible talent in that he is both far towards the "won't ignore anything" side of the line and yet can also make something positive and joyous of that perspective. This particular piece of meta isn't a happy one, but I think it has its own kind of joy in it because it's full of radical acceptance of both the self and others. OP knows that there are conditions under which he would not do better than Lucifer and he accepts it and himself. There are conditions under which I would not do better too. There are conditions under which you would not do better as well. No one is exempt.

we’re putting you in a featureless empty room, no windows, no doors, and never taking you out again. actually, this is your second time in there, you got to leave for a few minutes, but you’re back and you don’t get to leave again. for certain, this time. there’s nothing in this room. there is only you and this mouse. the mouse has done nothing wrong to you, except maybe bite you because you scared it one time. but it’s the only other thing in the room. how long do you think you would last.

and you know, maybe you think you’re a good person. and maybe you don’t like mice specifically, but this mouse, you like this one, it bit you but you like it.

it’s the only other thing in the room. you don’t get to leave.

so let’s say five minutes. five months. five years. fifty. five hundred. five thousand. how long do you think you can last. maybe you talk to the mouse. maybe you pet the mouse. maybe you try to be kind to the mouse.

it’s the only other thing in the room. you don’t get to leave.

it’s the mouse’s fault you’re in here, by the way. if it hadn’t bit you, maybe you’d still be free. you don’t blame it. it’s a mouse, and it was scared, and it didn’t understand, not really, you wanted it to but it didn’t. it hurt you, but you forgave it.

it’s the only other thing in the room. you don’t get to leave.

maybe you don’t think of yourself as a good person. maybe you know you are something broken and that’s why you’re in this room. and the mouse is the reason you’re in this room. it knows what you are. it knows better than anyone. it knows, and it put you in this room. you wanted to be kind to the mouse.

how long do you think you could last. you don’t actually get to know how much time has passed. you could count, but that’s not how it works. for you, or for the mouse.

it’s the only other thing in the room. you don’t get to leave.

how long until you hurt the mouse. you apologize. you didn’t mean to. but it squeaks and screams. that’s new. it has been so long since you had anything new. because there’s nothing but you and the mouse and you have been kind to the mouse but it has run out of things to tell you and games to play and ways to react to you.

you hurt the mouse again.

it’s the only other thing in the room. you don’t get to leave.

you are not a good person. you know this. and you don’t like mice, anyway. you don’t like this one. you never have. you never have. you need to hurt it. it put you in this room. everything wrong with you is the mouse’s fault. it has to be. because it can’t be your fault. if it’s your fault, there’s nothing you can do, there’s nothing you can change, but if the mouse is the problem? you can hurt the mouse.

you feel like you have been in this room your entire life. the mouse only just got here. it has no idea how good it has it.

you torture the mouse. you break its bones. and you tear its tail off. and you skin it. and you eat it. and it comes back, good as new.

because it’s the only other thing in the room. and it doesn’t get to leave you.

and you’re going to run out of things to do again. you will. you don’t get to leave and there’s only so much pain that can be novelly inflicted. but right now, you can hurt the mouse.

you never liked the mouse. you were only kind to it to trick it into trusting you, so that you could hurt it. you can tell yourself this forever. you and the mouse. because it’s the only other thing in the room. and neither of you get to leave. so one day, you’ll both believe it.

you were kind to the mouse, though. you loved it.

you keep killing the mouse.

and then someone takes the mouse away from you.

you are alone in the room. and you don’t get to leave.

you think this is your punishment for hurting the mouse. you accept it.

time passes. time passes. time passes. you don’t get to leave. there’s nothing in the room but you.

the mouse deserved it. the mouse put you here, and it abandoned you, and you can’t accept a punishment that won’t end. not that you can do anything about it. you don’t get to leave.

you were supposed to be trapped here together, and instead, it’s free and you aren’t and it’s a mouse. all you ever did was what was expected of you. it’s a mouse, and it bit you, and broke the rules, and it doesn’t have to be punished anymore. but you do. there’s something wrong with you. you’re worse than the mouse ever could be, no matter what you do, and you always will be, and you always have, and that’s why all you feel like you’ve ever known is this fucking room.

you hate the mouse. and when you get your hands on it again, you’re going to make it pay for every second you had to be alone.

but you won’t. you know that. because you don’t get to leave.

(until you do)

[mittensmorgul]

what makes me sad though is that if you read what jensen said and the direction the nerrative is going so far, we will be seeing sam's mental health being dealt with but not deans. i'm worried that the thing with cas will also be resolved by dean apologising and being painted as repressed-emotions-so-he-lashes-out kinda guy again that suddenly gets better but we won't actually get him dealing with all this

Yeah, I did read what Jensen said. Which is what he said before they started filming s15. Before he’d seen a single other script, or knew any of the other plot points of the season. He was told what the planned ending would be, and it... shocked him.

Now this article in question was published by TVGuide on November 7. We don’t know when Jensen gave this interview, but from the sounds of the sorts of “upcoming issues” they’re going to be facing, it feels like at the VERY earliest, this interview was from during the filming in 15.05, since the “spoilers” he talks about a situation we have not yet seen happen in canon:

"We start seeing Chuck slowly disable the Winchesters' mojo and it's heavy. It's hard for them to operate in that world because they're so not used to having to live in a normal world. Is it because Chuck has written them as the hero and so they don't deal with that kind of small stuff, or is it just then we just have never seen it?" Ackles added. "All of that cool is kind of gone now and they're trying to figure out how to deal in a world where they need that mojo. They need to be able to know that they can go up against a nest of vampires and be able to take out six or seven each, but if they can't even take out one, then that's gonna be a big problem."

I think being sad about any of this is inventing problems for yourself. I’m curious though about your interpretation of “the direction the narrative is going so far.” Because it’s clearly laying out that both Sam and Dean’s mental health is under scrutiny here. Sam’s “visions” that are a direct result of the Equalizer wound seem to be more immediately affecting them physically, in reality, though, but assuming that because the focus is on that right now means they are not going to address Dean’s situation (or Cas’s situation) is inventing problems that do not exist, you know? The narrative has pretty blatantly stated that This Is A Problem, and outlined that problem with crime scene tape. They’re not gonna just... do nothing or brush it off with a contrived apology. They can’t, because of how the narrative has consistently framed this problem.

Since we don’t know *when* Jensen actually gave this interview, yet we believe he hasn’t really spoilered us for anything beyond 15.05, as far as we know, we don’t even know if *HE* knew what was coming up after that at the time he answered these questions. So really, truly, I am begging people, please don’t keep reading more into what is said in interviews (and framed by the questions asked AND the journalist’s interpretations and framing of quotes we don’t have that sort of context for).

Because it’s pointless to get all hopeless and sad over a 20 chapter novel when it seems like things are kinda dismal after chapter FOUR. Don’t assume that the main characters’ issues will be completely ignored for the next 16 chapters, just because they haven’t been specifically addressed it yet. That’s not how stories work.

I mean, please, think back to, for example, s13. The beginning of the season HEAVILY focused on Dean’s mental issues, right? And only tangentially focused on Sam’s issues (sure, Sam’s issues were poked at a bit in 13.04, but even his feelings of loss for Mary were framed as secondary to Dean’s “yelling in Sam’s face” feelings about Cas’s death) until what... 13.09, when they got proof that Mary might be alive in the AU? I mean... do you feel that Sam’s feelings were given short shrift because the bulk of the early part of the season dealt more directly with Dean’s feelings? Not that Sam’s feelings were dismissed (just as Dean’s feelings are not being dismissed in s15), but Sam’s feelings *now* and his mental health issues *now* are literally connected directly to the A Plot. They are The Urgent Thing they need to realize, which will put all the rest of their thoughts and feelings into an entirely new light. Chuck is NOT gone, Dean’s currently holding himself together based entirely on the believe that he IS gone. So do you see how coming to this realization will COMPLETELY shift Dean’s entire perspective on his own issues?

I am so not worried that it will be dealt with in due time. Dean’s “backburnered” his own issues for the time being, because he HAS to, because that’s the only thing getting him through life right now, and it’s obviously an untenable situation, you know? And when he crashes back into reality, he’s in for a SUPER bumpy landing, right? THEN and only then will he actually be able to see his issues clearly, and gain a proper perspective to even begin addressing them.

And since we’ve already been told that he’s gonna be having this sort of metaphorical come to Jesus moment in 15.09, I’m perfectly content with the direction the narrative is taking, and will patiently await future developments.

[astudyinfreewill]

“it all comes down to the soul(s) in the end”: or, characters make the story work, and not the other way around

outing myself yet again as a dabb era critical blog here but. i just think the difference between carver era and dabb era is that carver era was character-arc driven while dabb era was overarching-main-plot driven with some good character moments thrown in (which may be to do with the fact that - iirc - during carver era for a while they didn’t know if they’d get renewed so they couldn’t plan too far ahead and just progressed the story by increments, as opposed to dabb era knowing they had a longer time frame to work with and deciding the plot beforehand). 

the thing is, i think most of us can agree that after the kripke era - which, for all its flaws and setbacks (hello writers’ strike), had a self-contained myth arc involving both an internally coherent narrative and certain well-defined character beats - and going into the gamble “hot girl summer but make it angst” era, the appeal of supernatural relies largely on the characters. it has to, because for a show to keep running after 6-7 seasons, you have to be invested not just in the story/stories being told, but in the people driving the story forward. it simply won’t work otherwise.

and - to my perception at least - the carver era (perhaps largely due to ben edlund’s imprint in s8, lbr) knew that. some examples of what i mean:

it gave dean an arc about dealing with the toxicity of his upbringing and his unhealthy attachment to sam, as well as starting to explore other meaningful relationships for himself (benny, charlie, and of course him continuously reaching out to cas) - essentially it allowed dean to confront that he wanted things. 

it gave sam an arc about dealing with his trauma re: demon blood, and having to confront what it means to be good, how he always felt impure through no fault of his own - and it shifted him over into accepting that his calling in life is as a keeper of lore and mentor to other people, by contrasting the failure of the sam/amelia relationship with him finding the bunker and discovering a different part of the hunting world

it forced cas to confront what he wants for himself, by making him deal with his own changing nature (being human, then an angel again, and the whole arc about living on borrowed grace), and with the other angels falling and what that meant for him; he got the chance to be on his own and be with the winchesters, to both make mistakes and be a leader to other angels - and then give up that leadership by choice because he prioritised his human family to his reputation in heaven (which should have been a clear indication of endgame human cas but i digress)

it brought in compelling new characters - primarily charlie and kevin, though they were both horrendously mistreated by bucklemming writing them off - claire novak as an angry teenager, aaron and his golem, metatron as a fascinatingly meta (ha) antagonist, rowena as a frenemy, and gave old characters compelling story beats (crowley and his “humanity addiction”). also, it had writers like robbie thompson who were attuned to the fan community in an unprecedented way.

with the dabb era, i feel like because they’d set their mind on where the story was going (e.g.: killing dean, having a new and “better” god in place, giving sam a white picket fence ending) they didn’t really care if they had to break the protagonists’ characterisation to get us there. we still had moments of great characterisation - steve yockey episodes first and foremost, and of course robert berens carrying the dean/castiel beats - but mostly, characterisation came second to what the story would need. this is how we get dean winchester, friend and protector to kids everywhere, being A-Okay with sacrificing a kid he supposedly cares about, not once but several times over, because the plot needed Emotional Stakes™️.

(and this, by and large, is my issue with jack as a character too, because he spends so much of his time on the show so clearly being a plot device - a literal deus ex machina - that he ends up being not very compelling to me. “but baby jack!” i hear you say. and yes, yes, he’s cute and i like him, but listen -- his characterisation reads as a blank slate because ultimately that’s what the narrative needs from him - and there’s a whole separate post i could make on that, really). 

but i think the main problem is that the endgame the dabb era had in mind conflicted openly with the stakes they had set up in the carver era - and that the most attuned writers kept up with even in seasons 12-15, which is why the finale felt as stridently wrong as it did (other than being ridiculously badly written). by which i mean:

dean was set up as wanting something more for himself, more than hunting and violence, and we see that in moments - but it’s not what he ends up getting. additionally, he spends so much of seasons 8-10 breaking down his toxic traits, and then bam - suddenly, he’s turned into john 2.0, because the story demands it. 

sam was set up to become a new kind of hunter, one with a men of letters background, and find happiness in the life - so you get a side plot where he successfully organises and leads a group of hunters - but ultimately he leaves all that behind and abandons the bunker (and eileen, his natural companion going forward). 

cas was set up as choosing humanity over heaven because that’s where he wants to be, and choosing to become a hunter because he wants to be useful and do good - but that gets boiled down to “cas is still an angel but now he’s Also A Dad and that’s his one purpose in life now” (i’m sorry, i am not here for the hot take of “jack is good for cas because he can’t just revolve around dean”. first of all, that’s a disservice to cas’s character over the seasons, and second of all-- oh but it’s ok for cas to just revolve around jack? it don’t make no cents luv!)

i don’t think story-driven eras are inherently bad. i enjoyed seasons 1-5, but they take place when we’re still getting to know the characters; and there is a certain evolution for them there that you may like or dislike, but it makes narrative sense for them. but if you decide to go forward into a new era with well-established and beloved characters, you have to know who the characters are and what they want or your story will always ring hollow. the main problem i have with the dabb era is that it decided the story it wanted to tell - and didn’t stop to consider whether the characters living it out would actually organically fit into it. and isn’t that chuck’s whole mistake?

[i-make-fun-of-spn-characters]

No idea if you're still willing to be serious for 5 seconds, but do you have some big fleshed out takes about Dabb era ? I agree 100% with you about the lack of emotional weight many things had in it - I liked a lot of the themes it explored but watching the show for the characters and their relationships, that era was almost never really pleasant to watch for me ? I didn't really care about Jack, I understand what they were doing with him but they just never got me to really care about this whole new character and his storyline - they had cool side characters they could have brought back more instead (Jody, Donna, Claire, Linda Tran, Garth, Aaron Bass, Krissy), and honestly new characters like the Banes twins or Lily Sunder were much more interesting imo than Jack ever was - I did LOVE what they did with Rowena, and loved the idea to bring Mary back, but at some point they just didn't do any meaningful shit with her and it was so frustrating ? I think the only episode that was truly fully pleasant to watch for me was Mint Condition... there's just a lot of heart missing in that era (and it was plagued with constant boring Nick/lucifer shit), that funnily enough I felt was more present in Carver era despite all the continuous angst. Got some thoughts you want to share on all this ?

TL;DR my big fleshed out take on the Dabb era:

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Seasons 13-15 are easily my least favorite of the entire show. They are a mess narratively imo, with a real feel to them like things were just being thrown at a wall each episode to see what would stick, and anything that didn’t was just wooshed away as if it never existed... except it had, and this was happening right up to the final episodes with seemingly dropped plots with The Empty, Kevin, whatever the hell happened to Adam in the end, etc. I lost a lot of interest in actively watching current episodes over that time and no lie I didn't even want to finish the show after watching 15.17 despite there being only 3 episodes left to air, because I was so fed up and done with everything that had been written by that point. I was disappointed with the writing choices that had been made with Sam, Dean, and Cas. I absolutely felt a huge decline in quality over Dabb's run, I hated how Lucifer seemed to pop up everywhere, I hated how many characters were brought back as shadows of their former selves for cheap fan service (there was no understanding of what people actually liked about the original Bobby or Charlie for example), writing of Sam and Dean seemed to change drastically from one episode to the next, continuity issues seemed to get much worse, there were some plot moments that were too contrived even for the campiness of SPN. I felt that the leader plot line for Sam really fell short of actually framing him as an actual good leader, his reactions to things in some episodes felt extremely lifeless and off to me (god bless Jarpad it wasn’t his fault he didn’t get any LINES when things happened), Dean by contrast in some episodes was reduced to to an irrationally angry person who was constantly being told he was irrationally angry both when he was and was not being irrationally angry, who was made to throw far too many lamps, and I am still bitter about how Castiel's tendency to run off to lone wolf/fall on a sword/ghost everyone/sideline Sam and Dean was never really addressed in a way that lead to any sort of resolution and change and catharsis for his character but just went on for his entire run on the show. I was excited for Mary, I enjoyed the storyline with her in season 12 but I didn't feel they showed much growth after that and it just felt like rehashing the same things, and again, just kind of directionless until they killed her off again and did a tribute episode that made me feel nothing, stuffed with scenes it was far too late to show me (not Samantha’s fault, and while I didn’t always think she was a strong actor, she acted her socks off toward the end). Completely agreed that Rowena's characterization is the one shining beacon of the last few seasons, though I would have liked to see her again after the "Queen of Hell" reveal, in the final Chuck confrontation that lives in my head.

...That said, I hate the “Chuck is the final villain” reveal as a concept. It really feels like it spits on the work of previous showrunners. It tramples on the concept of Team Free Will as the underdog group who stood up to beings far more powerful than them and came out on top by making it the machinations of puppet master Chuck. “The Heroes Journey” pisses all over Sam and Dean’s characters and the show for a cheap laugh. Then the whole meta-ness of the writer of the story being evil and trying to ruin it and killing Becky for disliking what’s being written makes me wanna tear my hair out. 

Jack... *sigh* I like Jack as a character. I really do. I think he is extremely good hearted, and I find him sympathetic, and he's a cute lil' nougat dude. In many ways he reflects Sam, Dean, and Cas (though I never see the Dean part acknowledged—their feelings about good and evil, the treatment of others emotional boundaries, and sacrifice are very closely aligned imo). I think that having a character like Jack brought into the fold could have been a great move... but it didn't work out as one overall. What I feel happened is that the thing people loved and watched all these years for, the relationships between the original Team Free Will, started to warp and distort around Jack after he was introduced. I don't like how much drama between Sam, Dean, and Cas came from this need to make them continuously circle around the concept of Jack's powers and volatility and upbringing and his place in the family and whether or not he could be saved, and whether Dean could bring himself to love him as part of the family and in what way (there’s a whole separate essay there). Significant screen time was also seeded away from Sam, Dean, and Cas and their relationships with one another for Jack's development, and then more time was also taken away for conversations between AU characters amongst each other that no one cared about and felt pointless as they didn’t do anything meaningful with these side characters anyway. These made the dramatic conflicts among TFW and TFW 2.0 even more dragged out and frustrating, and sucked more of the show’s heart out. Tbh everything felt so inconsistent at times it felt like Dabb just handed everyone a couple episodes and said, “write whatever the hell you want. I don’t care” and made no attempts to form a cohesive storyline. 

[ananke-xiii]

i got carried away while replying to @aliasl comment :D

yes, I didn't write it in my first post so you're right in pointing it out, but in my rb I clarified the jack/nick parallel(and this is another reason why I think Nick's definitely an interesting narrative choice but I personally don't agree with the way it's used or, at least, with my interpretation of it, ofc ).I'm not so sure about Sam, I think he's the one who says Nick deserves a second chance.Iirc he's the most understanding about Nick's situation untill he's not anymore.And he's not anymore because the narrative frames Nick as evil-evil because of Lucifer.And here's my problem.

The "all roads lead back to Lucifer" could be a "all roads lead back to Nick's abuser". And Nick's abuser could've been a random demon or angel and he could've ended up the same.Random demon or archangel doesn't matter because what matters is the abuse. So the focus, to me at least, is not so much where on the Evil Scale the "colonizer" is. When Nick calls Cas out and says he's a bodysnatcher just like Lucifer I think he has a point. But the show pounds on the fact that Lucifer is super evil.

In s14 Lucifer is the Supreme Evil but they don't show any alternative. As you've said: is there even an alternative when we find out that God is the Supreme Evil himself?So what about Lucifer now? He's his son. And what about Jack? He's his grandson.They're all still all related, you know, the apple and the tree (and I'm going with S14 theme of "nurture vs nature" here).

The feeling I personally get from S14 is a weird manichean view of the world where the "good" side is only supposed to be there, somewhere, go and find it yourself while the "evil" side is sure and they've got receipts to prove it. And I think it's extremely unfair??? Unfair even for the evil side, lol.

Previously Jack's "problem" was that he was a Nephilim, that was his nature and what people were scared of. Now it's not only that but, more importantly, he's Lucifer's son. At the beginning of the season he doesn't have his grace anymore and this is a problem because grace is necessary to balance his duality: both human and angel.

This is important because in s12 Sam and Dean wanted to extract Jack's grace so that he could be "just" human. We know now that it wouldn't have worked anyway but "Byzantium" rinforces the idea that, with or without grace, Jack's half (arch)angel. So much so The Empty wants to take him as he dies because he belongs there.

Therefore, the issue is no longer his power, S12- maybe 13's main concern about Jack (without his grace he doesn't have any, i.e. here's the narrative shift from Nephlim to Lucifer's son) but his being half archangel, half Lucifer. He still has a "bad" gene inside himself and this "bad" gene is mirrored in Nick's story. The show starts framing Jack as evil because he's the son of Evil Lucifer via Nick (while I think it'd be way cooler if they explored the "nature vs nurture" without any moral lenses, aka Jack's half angel and angels are crazy lol). The "good" side is supposedly his soul connected to his human side and when he starts losing it people are extremely concerned, which fair, but ultimately why? They seem to reason in terms of "either/or" and think that his soul acts as a dam without which evilness will erupt. Where do they think this evilness come from? From his angel side, perhaps?

I'm gonna call it like it is, the guy had issues even when he had his soul. Not blaming him but they were scared of him even with his soul. Mind you that by now Jack doesn't even have his original paternal grace but Michael's. He's without his OG grace and without (most of) his soul. By mid-season the situation is reversed but nothing has really changed. So what I get from the show is that the problem is not about his grace or his being or not being a Nephilim anymore, or even having or not having a soul: it's about Jack having a je ne sais quoi of evil inside himself, that angel side of him that's not dependent on anything but his genealogy.

Nick's story is used to suggest (or even endorse tbh) the idea that there's something left in Jack (re Lucifer) that's just pure evil. If, hypothetically, Michael had decided to have himself a nephilim baby instead of creating monsters(a perversion of his symbolic repressed sexual desires) would this nephilim be considered evil too or not? S12 seemed to suggest yes because the issue back then was the power of a Nephilim's grace but S14 is very much focused on Lucifer as the Evilest of Evils so much so that it doesn't matter if Jack's got grace or not, or whose grace he's got, the problem is that he has a dual nature: angel and human. It's not about the power of grace+soul or soul-grace anymore.

Jack kills Nick and symbolically kills his supposedly evil, angel side, the one connected to Lucifer and it's still not enough. Because he's still God's grandson as he says in "Jack in the box".(Dumah manipulating Jack sort of proves the original point of my post, aka that Jack's "otherness" would have been waaay more interesting if it were explored in terms of "all angels are deranged" rather than the morally boring "lucifer's evil" angle but this is just my wishful thinking).

So we're back to square one. Ofc, we know that in S15 Jack will symbolically embrace his paternal lineage (no mention is made of his maternal lineage in s15 or maybe I just don't remember what happened to his maternal grandparents) by incorporating Chuck, his grandfather inside himself (rather than killing him, i.e. rejecting it). In a way, his journey is complete. But is it really? Because Jack's inclination to self-sacrifice is very very concerning to me (and very angel-like). The show sees Jack's nature as "either/or" to the point that Jack's not allowed to just be himself, just be both angel and human, eventually he even must become God if he wants to prove that he's good. That's like...a lot.

So ultimately, and to wrap this up, Nick's story doesn't captivate me precisely because he's ad hoc used to prove the "Jack's got something evil inside himself" point in a narrative that sees good and evil as sealed off compartments and where the "good" compartment is totally absent from the board. In other words, the game's rigged: Jack's left with literally no choice, whatever he does is wrong (because, the narrative implies, he's inherently wrong), so he dangerously tends towards (self-)destructive solutions that deny him the possibility of being both/and.

I don't know if I made myself clear but I swear I've tried. I'm a person with a very convoluted mind :D

One of the reasons why Nick's story in s14 doesn't work form me is because of the show's insistence to pigeonhole Lucifer as "the supreme agent of evil". Of course, this is considered true in our real world (lol), specifically Christian world, but in-universe it just... doesn't work? If we want to go full-on dichotomy (and S14 very much goes there) if Lucifer's evil, who's the primary agent of good? No one, exactly. Definitely not Heaven.

Because there are, like, TEN seasons of angels going total batshit crazy, I mean we know that angels=good isn't a view the show supports since Cas appears in "Lazarus Rising". And we know that ALL angels downright lie, manipulate and coerce humans to get their "consent". We also know that the main issue with "the devil's spawn" in s12 was not so much "the devil" but the fact that "a Nephilim came into being".

The problem is NOT that who'll later be Jack is Lucifer's son, the problem is that he's a Nephilim. Lucifer has weight in the discourse merely because he's an archangel, NOT because he's the primary agent of evil. The issue is that "grace+soul"=a fucking lot of power. And a fucking lot of power means a fucking lot of problems.

We also know that humans get severely depressed after a possession, they have to face many struggles and sometimes society alienates them (see: "Repo Man"). So the argument that Nick's psyche is damaged because Lucifer's so evil his influence's still there even after he's departed is just... weak? A random demon can possess a random Jeffrey and the damages on the human psyche are still IMMENSE. From the human perspective random demon or most powerful archangel in the world are the same thing: they can carry out the same violence, abuse and trauma.

I might be wrong but what I get from the season is that the "primary agent of good" is the soul. And this is ALSO not true? Because shit gets real when Jack starts losing it, sort of implying that without the soul, his luciferian grace will make him become evil or will make him do evil things ("the devil made me do it" mentality). But we literally have a character such as Castiel, Angel of the Lord and Maker of Huge Mistakes but also Not in Possess of a Human Soul who actively strives to do good things (and he fails miserably so maybe he's not a good example but HE IS JACK'S CHOSEN FATHER, it MUST mean something ffs).

I think, maybe, I don't find the shift from "Nephilim" to "Lucifer's son" compelling because Jack's real "problem" (if we want to call it so) is that he's half (arch)angel and half human. Like, being an angel is a fucking issue in this show because these creatures are a bit deranged okay? LOL. On the other hand, being human is ALSO a fucking issue because it 100% doesn't warrant inherent goodness. Humans can be deranged creatures, too, okay? :D Both species can definitely just make mistakes, do bad things wanting to do bad things or ending up doing bad things without intention to do so. Ultimately, Jack's dilemma is being Other, just like his chosen father and just like Kripke-era Sam.

I still stand by my idea that all angels are a little bit like Lucifer. And there are episodes such as "Of Gods and Monsters" that sort of confirm it. When Nick calls Cas out and tells him "Castiel, you’re just a stone cold body snatcher. You’re no different than Lucifer" he's exactly pointing out the hypocrisy. Hell, the whole episode seems to question the season's main theme because Michael is literally possessing Dean, he conned him, he tells him that he owns him, he's creating an army of monsters as they speak, he's brutally torturing them but the primary agent of evil is still little ol' Lucifer.

Although, truth be told, I didn't particularly feel the need to learn more about Nick (sorry Nick, I know you're there so that Mark Pellegrimo could stay on payroll, I don't hold it against you), I can't deny that it had great potential as a narrative choice (let's not even go into the Sam/Nick parallels). But, to me, it didn't deliver because the show's murky on where it stands: on paper it wants to show the fallacies of "black and white" thinking but it effectively supports the same "black and white" view of the world that it seeks to question.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

So I watched 10.09 recently, and it has that part where Dean tells a story about him basically being almost roofied as a teen, but somehow it ends up framed as the funny joke and yet another proof that John "did what he could", and I kind of hate this? And it's the same episode in which MoC!Dean killed guys that kidnapped and tried to rape Claire, and you'd think writers would've addressed the parallels and acknowledge that Dean could've been triggered by this situation. 1/2

2/2 But in the end, it's never addressed, and the whole situation is framed as the proof that Dean is evil now. And I'm not even sure what I am trying to say, but with that being the show's approach back in s10, I'm not surprised about the finale anymore. Guess we should've known?

That’s an excellent angle to look at the issue because the Mark of Cain arc is a clear example of how people with different experiences will see the same thing in wildly different ways. There’s this phase of season 10 where everyone is like “oh no Dean is Getting Worse” and when you look at what Dean is doing... you actually go “...good for him”.

Let’s give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It’s not “the writers” in this case, it’s Dabb. Plenty of other writers don’t fall into this John apologism thing. Just look at how the episode before Lebanon, written by Buckner and Ross Leming, says that sometimes John would temporarily kick Dean out because he was “pissed at him” despite Dean always taking his side to mantain the peace. It almost seems like a statement to sprinkle some salt given what Dabb does in Lebanon, you know? Maybe not, but there is a tension between “John was shitty” writers and “John did his best” writers.

In hindsight, we gave Dabb too much of the benefit of the doubt. We were like, weeell, that’s supposed to be way the characters perceive the truth, which is distorted by the trauma... But now it’s obvious that he truly believed in the John-did-his-best version. He brought him back and got Mary back with him. No matter what happened to the finale, the network didn’t print those pictures of John and Mary to hang on Sam’s wall. He never took Dean’s abuse seriously and it shows.

The “anedocte” of Dean getting drugged and “saved” by John from being raped is obviously there to parallel him with Claire. Which works! It’s so weird because it’s like. You are soooo close to getting the point. Younger Dean was assaulted just like this teenage girl is assaulted and Dean saves her... but apparently John yelling at those people is a good way of dealing with the issue, while murdering child traffickers is an overraction thus bad.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? That Dean’s murder spree is framed as an overreaction. Sam is like “tell me you had to do this! tell me it was you or them!” - the answer to which (by the narrative) is obviously no, it wasn’t self defense, he just killed them because he could. He just murdered those men for no reason except he felt like being murdery. And the audience is supposed to be like “oh no! Dean is murdery for no reason except for murderiness! That’s bad!”.

But it’s a power fantasy, isn’t it? Going on a murder spree on rapists and traffickers. I bet any people who’s been violated like that has fantasized of doing the exact thing Dean does here. Killing them all.

Dean had the physical strength and skill to kill them all, why shouldn’t he kill them? (I mean, in real life I’m against private justice because I’m a fan of the state of law, but the Supernatural universe obviously works on different principles than the state of law. Again, it’s a fictional narrative that plays out as a fantasy for the audience, so.)

So what was Dabb’s intention? I’m afraid it’s the worst one. “John Winchester’s not going to win any Number One Dad awards, you know? But, you know, damn if he wasn’t there when we needed him”. What the fuck, Dabb? It’s been established since season 1 that John WASN’T there when they needed him. Which... I’m afraid... leads us to the Cas-Claire plot in the episode. Cas has fucked off with Jimmy’s body leaving Claire on her own. Parallels how John wasn’t going to win wny Number One Dad awards. But! Cas is there when Claire Really Needs Him i.e. when she’s about to be raped by older men. Parallels how John was there when Dean Really Needed Him i.e. when he was about to be raped by older men.

I think the point is to say, Cas kinda sucked because he took Claire’s dad away but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Claire because he gets there in time to prevent her from being raped. Just like (ew) John kinda sucked as a father because hunting and stuff, but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Dean because he got there in time to prevent him from being raped.

It’s pretty yucky. Literally NOBODY wanted a parallel between Cas and John. But he made one. And he made one to absolve Cas from the guilt he carried for what he did to Claire (Claire’s mother is a mother so who fucking cares about her. She’s basically a Blurry Wife(TM), she’s only a tool for Claire’s arc, Cas apparently only cares about the harm he did the child, not the wife, for some reason.) and to absolve Cas from his guilt it absolves John too. Don’t worry, being a parent is hard. You often screw up. But you can *looks at smudged writing on hand* prevent the kid from being raped by predatory adults and everything’s fine now.

It’s not really important if the child suffered hunger or whatever, the only important thing is that they don’t get raped, because that’s bad, everything else is just a little detail.

All Dabb got with that scene was to paint Sam as extremely unsympathetic because he’s no longer a child, he’s a full adult now and still thinks of that episode at the CBGB as a funny story. That’s not a good look. It almost makes you think that the writer himself saw it as a funny story. Lol teenage boy biting more than he can chew. But then why the Claire parallel? The Claire scene onviously is not supposed to be anything but horrific. I'll give Dabb the benefit of the doubt on this specific thing.

It’s weird, yes, because Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon where he establishes that John was a bad husband/father even before tragedy hit the family. But apparently that’s the “not going to win any Number One Dad awards” part, I suppose? I guess he intended to write John as this flawed, ~complex~ figure who was imperfect but still brave and whatever blah blah did his best blah blah. I’m all for flawed complicated characters but a horrible father is a horrible father. A rose by any other name... parental abuse is still parental abuse even if the poor guy was complicated and traumatized and did what he thought he had to do to prepare his sons for a violent world.

Also, the story frames Dean’s escapade as a teenager being stupid. “You know what he got for that? Me whining about how much he embarrassed me. Me telling him that I hated him. But then he stopped and turned around looked at me and said, Son, you don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked.” “It’s my job to raise you right.” This seems straight from a novel about teenagers doing something stupid that they’re too young to realize that their parents are right to be against them doing. But this isn’t just... a parent walking into a bar to stop their child to drink alcohol. Dean literally describes feeling sick from something that was inside the alcohol.

Sure, it makes sense that he’d lash out to John because of the shame and shock. But the scene is... off. Are we supposed to see this as a typical teenage mistake? Are we supposed to read it as something as horrific as what happened to Claire, literally sold into rape? Or, worse, are we supposed to see what happened to Claire as a teenage mistake, ah silly teenager, blindly trusting shady people, no wonder you end up in a situation where you’d get raped if a father figure didn’t sweep in and save you. I hope that wasn’t the intent.

To get back to Dean’s Mark-of-Cain violence, the writers clearly didn’t intend it to come from the Darkness up to a certain point. It was supposed to an arc about your own inner darkness (consider the Charlie episode, a couple episodes later). Then they came up with the idea of The(TM) Darkness, the suppressed cosmic feminine. While it caused a bit of dissonance in the subtext, it doesn’t really change Dean’s narrative, because his inner darkness is the trauma, and his trauma is inherebtly tied to the “feminine” i.e. the parts of him that don’t fit seamlessly into the scheme of toxic masculinity values. That the violence that comes from the Mark of Cain comes from Dean himself and that’s it, or is connected to the Darkness, it doesn’t change what it means for Dean. Dean and Amara have parallel histories, the feminine principle locked away, the trauma the anger stems from.

In 10x09 we’re still in the Before The (TM) Darkness era, before the suppressed cosmic feminine. The Mark of Cain arc is still about... well, Cain. But the shift is the signal that someone looked at Dean’s arc and said... you know what? “Lucifer gave me this curse so now I’m demonic and murdery” is meh. “Toxic masculinity suppresses the feminine and it creates trauma which rage and violence comes from” is more interesting. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good idea, and surely the idea came from seeing how Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding.

Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding in a certain way, in fact, because of a pretty simple reason. There’s a fundamental tension in Dean’s MoC arc. We want him to go murdery, but it’s also our main character, so we don’t want him to do really horrible things because he still needs to be relatable. The audience cannot hate him, so he must NOT do something entirely unforgivable. He still needs to be somewhat relatable, even when demonic or demonic-adjacent.

So he goes on a murder spree... but it’s rapists and child traffickers. He’s demon, but he kills a misogynistic dude that wanted his wife dead for cheating on him. He’s a demon, but beats up dudes that harass women. He does a slaughter, but they’re nazi. He’s off the deep end, but works a case of kidnapped and abused young women...

Speaking of which. 10x23, written by Jeremy Carver. Dean works a case where a girl was killed while dressed scantily and Dean makes some slut-shaming remarks, and we’re supposed to think “whoa Dean, that’s bad”. But later he confronts the girl’s father and what does he say?

I’m just doing my job, Mr. McKinley.

By suggesting my daughter was a slut?

I’ll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home.

You shut your face right now.

And you know what? I don’t blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

Back then the episode was super controversial and everyone hated the case because of the apparent slut-shaming but I loved it! Because it’s not about the girl. It’s about Dean. Dean doesn’t think that a girl gets killed because she dresses in a miniskirt so it’s her fault. Dean is projecting on himself and he’s not actually victim blaming the girl, he’s victim blaming himself. And when he absolves the girl by putting the blame on the father... well, subtextually he’s absolving himself by putting the blame on his father. On the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervaded his own home. He’s textually not ready to absolve himself, of course, he summons Death to ask him to kill him later, but subtextually he’s on the right path.

Rose McKinley basically did the same mistake Dean did at the CBGB when he trusted some older people who offered him drinks and the same mistake Claire did when she trusted a man who sold her for money because he offered him a place and stability. She trusted the wrong people (in this case, vampires, which adds the whole subtext of vampires and sexuality) who took advantage of her. Except Rose had no one to save her. (Her friend, Crystal, gets rescued by Dean, even if he causes the other hunter Rudy to die in the process.)

Carver’s writing is pretty brutal. The girl made that mistake because was abused at home, so she was desperate for validation and that desperation drove her into the wrong hands. (Rose even has a brother who blames himself for bringing her sister to her future murderers, destructive sibling relationship check.) It doesn’t actually even matter if Dean guessed right about Rose’s family situation, because what matters is what it tells us about Dean. He basically relates to a dead abused girl. Actually all through the season Dean is paralleled to “skanks” “sluts” and sex workers. Obviously this happens kinda all through the show, the whole “the business is based on absent fathers” thing happened much earlier in the story, so it’s not new. But s10 draws a picture of female suffering - abuse, manipulation and death. Season 10 was difficult to go through. In hindsight, it was probably on purpose because it was supposed to be darkest hour of the feminine. Summed with some good old fashioned misogyny, but hey.

The Carver era was wonky but Carver wanted to free the feminine. (I believe that Mary’s comeback, while written by Dabb because of the showrunner shift, was planned before the showrunner shift.) We thought the Dabb era wanted the same, with Mary choosing life and Amara being independent and so on, but it evidently wasn’t the case. Not a single woman arrives at end of the story. It’s hardly ~Bucklemming or ~the network or ~covid because it starts before the very end.

I’m not saying that dead sluts are more feminist than living women, but if the women die or disappear anyway (and they did) I’d rather have an exploration of trauma than nothing. And I definitely prefer a dead slut narrative that calls out parental abuse than a narrative where women live but abuse gets the you-did-your-best treatment.

Whoops! I digressed! But feel free to ask for any clarification or send me any observation or thought.

[according-to-the-laura]

StackedNatural Day 126: 13x14

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

March 1, 2022

13x14: Good Intentions

Written by: Meredith Gylnn

Directed by: P. J. Pesce

Original air date: March 1, 2018

Plot Synopsis:

Jack and Mary escape Michael's clutches and end up finding an ally in Bobby Singer; Sam, Dean, and Castiel continue to search for a way to open a breach; one of their own may be working against them and costing them precious time.

Features:

Jack’s dreamscape, Mary and Jack meeting, Gog and Magog, apocalypse Bobby, Cas scrambling Donatello’s brains.

My Thoughts:

I know I’ve complained in the past about the writers finding excuses to put nearly meaningless monster of the week plots in the middle of an overarching plot about the apocalypse, but I’m finding the structure and pacing of a lot of later seasons episodes really weak without the framing of their standard episodes. A fair amount happens in this episode, but it’s really piecemeal and the A and B plots could be happening in completely separate episodes without affecting each other at all. In an isolated the sense the scene with Gog and Magog is fun because of how married Dean and Cas act, and there are funny lines, but in the context of the episode it makes no sense stylistically. If the episode had built up to that scene and then had them realize they had been betrayed at the very end with with the hearts not existing, it could have been a really interesting reveal.

I unfortunately find Apocalypse World as a setting extremely boring. It’s a dull colour palette that completely lacks the charm of the earlier seasons and the style of the angels that we know. Why have them using soldiers as vessels? Why can’t we have the same smarmy actor for Zachariah that we know and love? The new Zachariah’s only thing in common with the one that we already know is his name. Why do angels physically fly through the air instead of teleporting and smiting? Why are women all gone except some of them are still there except it’s weird to run into one? Why is Jim Beaver suddenly a bad actor when he’s in apocalypse world? He barely emotes all episode, even when he’s supposed to be flirting or raging mad. Side note, I don’t care for the weird romance between Mary and Bobby. It’s not even really an age issue I just don’t find it compelling at all. The scene where they run into Bobby could have been super tense or it could have been super exciting but instead it was completely neutral.

The saving grace of this episode is Jack. He gets to be smart and realize what’s going on when he’s being manipulated in his dreamscape and he gets to bust himself and Mary out of captivity. I like that he gets to be sunshiney one moment and dissolving angels in the next. I like that he plays with the other kids at the refugee camp.

Donatello is possibly the character I hate the most in all of Supernatural, and I mean that in a meta sense. You know how the other day I was saying that I like that John Winchester exists even though within the narrative I hate him, because he makes all the other characters more interesting by being around them? Donatello is the opposite of that. I hate him in the narrative because he’s extremely annoying and badly acted, and I also have him in a meta sense because he brings nothing to the table and he replaced Kevin, a character that actually forced emotional changes in the others and who was much more interesting within the narrative. The fact that his character sucks so much makes me not give a shit about this moral conundrum that they’re trying to set up here with Cas stripping the spell from him. It’s extremely rich to watch Sam and Dean talk about Cas not having the right to make that choice when the entire show pivots on them making that choice for every creature that they come across, even ones who try desperately to do the right thing. I wish Cas would straight up kill him so we could find a cooler prophet to have hanging around.

Notable Lines:

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let you or anyone hurt the people I love. Not again.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 3.9

IMdB Rating: 8.3

In Conclusion: I would have been happy for 42 minutes of Jack doing shadow puppets, but alas.

<< Previous Day  |  Next Day >>

[virginwhoredichotomy]

alright here’s the wikihow article i’ve been threatening to write on how to brainwash yourself into not entirely hating 15x20, or: castiel’s absence is a good thing, actually.

disclaimers:

- i do not claim that this is the intended interpretation

- i am watching the show with my destiel/dean coded cas girl goggles stapled on

- i do not enjoy being bitter about things i like and therefore probably jumped through a lot of hoops to arrive at this conclusion

i know there were a LOT of things people hated about the episode and this will not address all of them. my main issues with the finale were 1) the manner of dean’s death, 2) the unresolved dean/cas arc, 3) sam’s extremely emotionally hollow happy ending, and 4) cas’ complete absence. the production quality/editing/pacing was terrible as well but that’s nothing out of the ordinary on supernatural rip

1. the bad guy (spn writers room) won

my correct opinion is that this was, in fact, one of chuck’s endings (though i don’t think they made it bad on purpose). on a meta level it makes a lot of sense for this to have been chuck’s ending since he is the meta stand-in for the writers. as long as they are the ones telling this story, EVERY ending will be a chuck ending.

some supporting evidence:

from 14x20 moriah

chuck loves circular storytelling: sam and dean as cain and abel as michael and lucifer, or dean and jack as sam and john as abraham and isaac. we know that chuck’s ideal ending would have the brothers regress back to their brodependent s1 selves and then have them meet a tragic end (15x04 atomic monsters). and something that really stood out about 15x20 is the way it just... completely erased 15 years of sam and dean’s character development. someone said you could watch the pilot and then the finale and understand everything and that’s completely true and extremely frustrating to any viewer with a brain. it’s also a trademark of chuck’s writing.

if you watch it with that in mind, 15x20 is so reminiscent of season 1 that if you pulled jarpad’s hairline back across his forehead and slapped on a grunge filter it might actually be the walmart version of an alternate s1 ending:

- jenny the vampire returns

- complete absence of any characters that aren’t sam and dean

- motw, specifically working one of john’s unfinished jobs

- sam happily leaving his hunter’s life behind and living a normal picket fence life with his blurry spouse, the way he dreamed in s1 and has repeatedly stated is not what he wants for himself anymore

- dean dying as daddy’s blunt instrument

- i hate to say it but the borderline romantic framing of dean’s death scene also counts as a kripke era callback considering how many romantic tropes sam and dean played into during the earlier seasons. erotically codependet etc etc

- probably more but i watched the finale exactly once and am not planning on doing it ever again in my life

tl;dr the 15x20/s1 parallels aren’t just parallels, it’s sam and dean actually regressing to their past selves because they are once again living chuck’s story (or on a meta level: still living the writers’ story). they don’t notice it and neither does the viewer because the framing of the episode suggests that god is defeated and sam and dean are living life the way they want. and yet their endgames are anything but what they would choose for themselves.

(if you watch the back half of s15 through this lense you can also suddenly excuse dean’s character assassination in 15x17/dean failing to break the cycle and being a bad father to jack just as john was a bad father to dean. running in circles is kind of chuck's Thing. god made them do it is a god tier coping mechanism for everything i’m mad at supernatural about.)

it all comes down to what cas said: freedom is a length of rope and sam and dean hung themselves with it. imo it’s still a dissatisfying ending after fifteen years of character development but it is narratively sound. the reason the story set up all these endgames and then didn’t pull through is that the antagonist won. 15x20 is a depressing tale on the dangers of hubris.

OR IS IT.

2. castiel’s absence is a good thing, actually

alright so this is where i’m probably REALLY going against authorial intent. here’s the thing about cas: he is the only character in the show that possesses true free will, both within the story (”you never did what you were told”, god himself in 15x17 unity) and outside the story (the showrunners kept trying to kill him and he kept coming back, cas falling in love with dean despite writers, actors and network actively trying to prohibit it). so if cas as the representative of free will had been in 15x20 my whole argument would collapse because his presence would mean it either WAS the ending sam and dean chose for themselves, or that cas no longer possessed free will.

but what did cas do instead? he rebuilt heaven for them. heaven is now a paradise of his own making, a place free of chuck’s influence and it’s where sam and dean will finally get to choose their ending. off-screen. post canon. across 50 ao3 pages. dean and cas are shyly linking pinkie fingers as we speak. because the ending the characters choose for themselves is not the writer’s ending to tell.

3. on destiel

i've already talked about my feelings on deancas in dabbnatural/15x20 so i'll just link those posts:

- i think they handled dean and cas’ relationship very well given the circumstances (my post and another very good analysis)

- textual reciprocation or not, destihellers won

- supernatural = queerbait is discussed with like zero nuance on this website and it's annoying as hell

i wrote this at 2 am, i hope i've managed to make my point. again, i'm not saying that this is what the writers were going for. but i do think it's a valid interpretation for the most part and i hope it helped someone feel a little less bitter about the finale!

[ayankun]

Ok so let’s talk about this

In 10x3, Soul Survivor, Sam is trying to cure Demon!Dean while DwindlingGrace!Cas is painstakingly driving cross-country to assist.  Cas is being escorted by Hannah, an angel who is loyal to his cause but is also an angel’s angel, celestially aloof and lacking all the weird emotions he’s picked up from hanging out with humanity too much.

Hannah is also importantly perceived female (foil to Castiel’s perceived male) and is playing the narrative function of Damned Temptress.  It’s lampshaded in this ep, but it’s a recurring theme that Hannah, in one way or another, even if only as an allegory for Heaven’s collective business, stands between Castiel and his need to be close to the Winchesters (read: Dean).

So in this ep, Hannah (Heaven, et al) needs Cas, and Sam (Dean) needs Cas, and Cas explicitly prioritizes Same (Dean).  Sensing that Hannah does not agree with this prioritization, he attempts to clarify the situation:

The textual subtext here is that he’s using his acquired human communication skills to say one thing while meaning two things, an unnecessary subterfuge which Hannah calls him out on.  He’s talking literally about “no detours,” referencing a literal wrong turn Hannah made previously while at the wheel.  What he means, though, is that Dean (and whatever Heaven needs after that issue is resolved) takes priority over whatever “distraction” Hannah may prove to be to Cas because she’s female.

He’s trying to let her down easy, my guy.

And that’s text, that’s canon.  That’s non-negotiable.  The character of Hannah boils down to a threat of distraction that will keep him from his goals.  And in this episode, his goal is literally and only Dean.

So what got me thinking, at 4:30 AM, was, now that we have the chance to go back and reinterpret canon events through the filter of canon!Destiel (by which I mean, Cas’ confirmed romantic feelings for Dean), does his “no detours” (no human-style romantic entanglements) policy hold water?  Wouldn’t Dean, at this point in time, also be counted among the possible distractions?

Let’s go back to the start of the episode, where Cas gets to have a teachable moment with Hannah:

(sorry these caps are so dark, geez Ackles, turn on a light next time)

And now let’s go to the end of the episode, and maybe you can see what the difference is:

You see what he did there, right?  He went ahead and said what he felt, rather than trying to play by the rules of human conversation etiquette.  It’s an acknowledgement that his relationship with Dean is inherently different to his relationship with Hannah.

And then he straight up lies to Dean’s face, to try to protect him, just like a good emotionally-compromised human would:

(also, the second he says this, this fucking cue starts up, and it choked me up the first time and it’s choking me right now)

If you’re watching this for the first time in 2014, the current canon is that Dean and Cas share a “profound bond,” Cas is family to the Winchesters, and he is currently acting out of this loyalty and compassion towards them to put their needs before the needs of Heaven.

If you’re also a Destiel shipper, then you’re willfully reading into this the additional nuance that Cas is making a point to dissuade Hannah’s advances specifically because he’s already involved (to some extent) romantically with Dean.  I think that’s a fair subtext for this time frame!  Given that the angel character who represents Castiel’s responsibilities to Heaven was written as female, and how that responsibility is explicitly conflated with romantic "distraction” in this episode, the intent to directly contrast Castiel’s interactions with her and Dean is pretty evident.

But here in the year of our Chuck 2020, knowing what we know now, in terms of “canon,” this second interpretation, which for SIX YEARS has been optional -- up for debate, even -- is now retroactively confirmed canon.  But it was there all along, ready to be recontextualized in the event somebody happened to make a deathbed confession.

Like, at this exact moment in time, 9:24 AM Thursday morning, hours before the season’s penultimate episode airs, I’m 100% sure, canonically speaking, Castiel’s feelings are (and always have been) unrequited.  I believe this is the way the text was written, the way the explicit story beats have been presented.  BUT if somehow in the remaining minutes of showtime Dean’s reciprocal feelings are explicitly expressed (either in dialogue or some unambiguous use of cinematic language) I would be completely convinced and satisfied with that reveal.

What a wild ride, you guys.  I can’t wait to rewatch this whole freaking thing end to end.

[wakanda-flocka-flame-blog]

The 15x08 episode Preview is the Reason I’m Drunk.

Firstly, I must mention that the episode that airs tonight was written by Bucklemming and directed by Speight, so... get ready for pain and cheap jokes. :)

Alright here’s where we’re starting out. The kitchen.

This scene being shot in the kitchen is so important. This kitchen is regarded as the emotional hub of the Winchester family. It’s been a common place of gathering for the boys and their closest of kin. It served as Castiel’s happy place when he was being used by Lucifer in season 11 episode 18 “Hell’s Angel”. This kitchen was where they mourned the passing of their son, celebrated his return, and fought about how to handle his downfall -- which led to the “break up” between Dean and Castiel. 

Even though the kitchen is just one of many rooms in the bunker, the conversations that happen in this room are usually about the boys’ relationship with each other, the people they love, and the struggles they have with their emotional bonds. From Sam telling Dean he would have let him die if Dean had been the one to undergo the Trials in season 9 episode 13 “The Purge” to Jack asking Castiel why he can’t tell Dean and Sam about Cas’s Empty deal in season 14 episode 8 “Byzantium”. Unlike the strategy-bound plot points they tackle in their war room, the sickeningly violent threats in their dungeon, and the deafeningly long silences in their respective bedrooms, the kitchen is for family. 

The kitchen is the room in the bunker in which Castiel feels the most comfortable. In there, he is pictured seated lethargically or leaning on a table or wall whereas in any other room in the SPN!verse, he stands or sits stiffly at attention for the most part. I

It is also the place where Dean feeds his family. Dean is known to see food as a type of love language; he cooks and eats emotionally. He has been known to consistently prepare meals for and feed Cas who has slowly stopped reminding Dean that angels don’t eat. Like at the end of “Byzantium” when Dean, Sam, Jack, and Cas all shared a burger and a beer after Jack’s rebirth. 

Now, that that’s out of the way, let’s jump into the meat and potatoes of this meta study on the 15x08 midseason finale preview scene.

We open with Castiel sitting on his usual side of the kitchen table brooding, pensive, and alone. Immediately after, Dean appears by the door, peeking in before walking tentatively into the kitchen.

Something intense just happened between Castiel and Michael!Adam.

Cas glances up and they lock eyes for a second. The only time they give each other eye contact for the duration of the scene. Dean immediately heads to the fridge for a beer and opens it. He grabs this beer for show. He doesn’t seem to take a sip from it.

Note: This scene has running for 14 seconds in complete silence. Not even music. Just footsteps and breathing and Dean opening the fridge and popping a beer, so clearly that’s what the show is trying to get us to focus on. ITS QUIET. It’s tense. It’s strange. It sticks out to you as uncomfortable. This is on purpose.

Dean leans in the frame as though he’s standing at the table where he usually sits. The angle is staged in a way where they are both in the shot, but cannot be in focus at the same time.

For most of s15 a table has been between them whenever they were in a scene alone. There is intentional space here. They’re usually standing so close, a Bible couldn’t get through them. Dean has openly told Castiel to back up. This is weird for them, and it speaks volumes. They’re not as close as they used to be.

Dean says the first line, “Maybe you went too far.”

We can safely assume Dean is talking about what just happened with Cas and Michael!Adam, but there’s another strong layer to consider here.

Cas broke it off five episodes ago in season 15 episode 3 “The Rupture”. After that episode, Cas hopped in his car, stopped answering calls, and basically disappeared. He made himself unreachable. 

Hmm. Speaking of going too far...

If anyone has “gone too far” in Dean’s mind, it’s Cas. Remember, y’all, Dean is the type of man to blow up Cas’s phone if he can’t find him. And, if he’s missing Castiel so much so often that he’s doing that, anywhere that isn’t right beside him is too damn far away. I don’t know what went on in the scene with Michael!Adam yet because this is just the preview scene we were given. 

This episode airs tonight. 

Cas does not look at him and eventually grumbles out, “………maybe.”

Cas noticed how loaded Dean’s opening line was. It had a double meaning for them. The only reason they are in the bunker together is because of Michael!Adam, Sam’s wound, and… well, because the plot demands it. They’re refusing to talk about why they’re so upset with each other, and that communication issue is manifesting through one long, continuous, never-ending fight. In past seasons, things get icy when Dean and Cas fight. They’re known to ignore each other, stare coldly in silence, bicker about how hurt they are, talk to each other through their family (Sam and Jack), and throw in a diss whenever they can slide it smoothly into the conversation. All that stuff your Grandma and Grandpa do at the Thanksgiving table after their 60 year anniversary. So, Cas clearly knows what Dean was getting at when he suggests Cas went too far. Because they’re fighting. And they’ve fought off and on for eleven years. Dean stabbed him the second he met him, this behavior is nothing new.  

So, when Dean accuses Castiel, the angel answers, “Maybe.” instead of “you’re right”, which means there’s a fundamental disagreement here. They disagree when it comes to the episode’s textual issue of dealing with Michael!Adam and the subtextual issue of these two refusing to confess something to each other.

All in all, Castiel doesn’t think that he went too far in either situation, especially when it comes to Dean. Dean treated Castiel like a verbal punching bag, so he left and he did some stuff that Dean didn’t like, yeah, but he didn’t go too far. Not from Cas’s perspective. And, so Castiel’s answer to both questions is a passive aggressive “maybe”. Oof.

Dean speaks again, refusing to meet Cas’s eye, “I mean he’s been on lock down for quite a while, you know? Maybe you just, uh…………….. went too fast.”

Being locked in Chuck’s narrative has been like a trap for Dean. This narrative is something he can’t seem to get out of, much like a prison. Not knowing what’s scripted and what isn’t is getting to him. Freedom and free will is the paramount of Dean’s moral compass. But, in this situation, he doesn’t know how to be free, so he’s going through an existential crisis. And when he lashed out, it came from that locked up mentality being forced to do whatever someone else wants for the rest of his life, confined into a box, fighting the same fight over and over again. Dean can’t even trust his own friends, because they’re in this trap too and may be used to hurt him, which they have been before. 

(i.e. Castiel being used by Heaven to hurt/betray him in s4, Castiel being used by Crowley to hurt/betray him in s6, Castiel being used by the Leviathan to hurt/betray him in s7, Castiel being used by Naomi to hurt/betray him in s8, Castiel being used by Metatron to hurt/betray him in s9, Castiel being used by Rowena to hurt/betray him in s10, Castiel being used by Lucifer to hurt/betray him in s11, Castiel being used by fetus!Jack to hurt/betray him in s12...... they need the best counseling money can buy.)

So, when Dean says that he’s been locked up for a while and Castiel went too fast, he means he needed Castiel to stay --  to put up with his attitude for just a little while longer, but Cas...

He went.

Too fast.

After hitting Cas with cruel words in the face of what seemed to be endless, brutal rounds of family tragedy after family tragedy, Cas peaced out. He’s done being treated this way. He wanted to leave, so he left. And when he left….

He left before Dean could figure out the right words to say to make him stay. He left before Dean could take it all back. He left before Dean could fix it.

He went.

Too fast.

That being said, what makes Castiel "Cas” is that he confidently writes his own stories. Dean was who he decided to follow while he lived this chapter of his own angelic life, but if Cas wants to stop following Dean, he can and he will. With barely a moment’s notice. Just like he did with Heaven. Castiel is his own singular being. He is self-sufficient, independent, and strong as a ox. Castiel is a creature of the sky, he can fly far away and it will feel natural to him. But because he is his own man, he will do so when he chooses. Chuck’s involvement in their lives bothers Cas, but not in a way that prohibits him from living his life and being himself.

That is not the case for Dean.

There is another long pause. Cas is waiting for Dean to keep talking. Castiel’s silence is loud, but not striking. Dean looks down at himself like he said too much. In a way he did. He starts again, “What’s he doing now?”

“No idea. He was very distraught.” Cas answers with curt and measured statements, hands folded on the table, hair... flawless.

Cas knows what it means to be imprisoned and trapped. He knows what it means to feel pain. But what he doesn’t understand is why Dean internalizes his pain, lets it boil into toxic emotions of self-hatred, and uses it as an excuse to hurt others -- even as an excuse to hurt Cas. Why Dean would do that… Cas has “no idea.” 

He knows how he wants to be treated by Dean and he now refuses to accept any less. Thing is... Cas hasn’t told Dean how he wants to be treated. He just takes it and frowns. That doesn’t in any way mean he deserves to put up with Dean’s sourpuss attitude, but he is also expecting Dean to read his mind. They’re both at fault for the rift between them.

Dean presses the task at hand, wanting to cut through their fighting and solve the problem, “Yeah, but what exactly did he say?”

Cas, not getting the memo (which is very on brand for him), replies with words Dean has said to him unapologetically, “Leave. Get out. I want you dead.”

Cas looks like he’s about to cry.

There’s a long pause where Dean takes in his answer, knowing Cas is shoving his words back in his face. Dean nods and looks even further away from Castiel. 

Somehow, this can also translate to the dramatic scene that will soon happen between Michael!Adam and Castiel. 

It is important to note that Michael!Adam was the archangel who ran Heaven alongside Chuck for most of existence. He was every angel’s boss, including Castiel’s. There is no doubt that everything in Castiel’s life happened because Michael gave an order, and “Cas of the past” did it without question. Fast forward to 2008, Michael gives the order to rescue his true vessel and Cas fucking falls in love with it. Then, Cas rejects Heaven, teams up with his true vessel to fight him, and tricks him into The Cage for a very. long. time. Mind you, this happened after millions of years of basically being the most powerful being in creation with no enemies that could possibly be a threat. 

I bet Michael hates Cas, and if those two were in a room together, he’d see Cas as a traitor against his own kind -- against him. Without Castiel, he wouldn’t have been locked away. Whatever words Michael!Adam had for Cas couldn’t have been kind. And when Cas said this, he was telling Dean that nothing Michael!Adam said to him cut worse than what Dean had said to him over the last few weeks.

Then, Castiel adds, “We didn’t bond.”

When Cas said the word “bond”, Dean Broke Down. It’s all over his face, his eyes go glassy, he looks up with an emotional blush. He’s clutching that beer like a lifeline. The words hanging here are:

               We [Michael!Adam and I] didn’t bond. But, Dean, you and I did.

The thing about Michael and Adam is that they’re both Dean mirrors. They’re both final results of the two paths that Chuck’s script offered Dean, and they’re both not AT ALL who he is.

In every known universe, Michael is shown as this war hungry, super strong, ultimately immortal sociopath with unfettered power and no regard for humankind or monsters. If the supernatural world and Chuck had gotten their way, Dean would have literally become Michael. A villian. Dean does not consider himself a villian. 

Adam on the other hand is a Dean mirror in a universe where John has little to no influence on his life. Adam is “pure!Dean without John and Sam”, raised by Mary as Mary wanted to be (not a hunter, living an apple pie life). Untouched by the supernatural, Adam’s happiest memories are of his prom and playing at the park with his mom. He liked sports, he dated girls, he planned for college and a career in his future. His life is what Dean missed out on when he was raised by John. Yet, what happened to Adam at the end of his life would have happened to Dean if he wasn’t trained and ready to fight the supernatural (which happened when he was raised by John). If the mortal world and Chuck had gotten another variation of his way, he would have ended up killed and possessed without the proper tools to defend himself from a tragic fate. A victim. Dean does not consider himself a victim.

Neither Michael nor Adam are versions of Dean that Cas could have bonded with, and these are the versions of Dean that Chuck kept pressing into his narrative throughout his life. 

So when Cas said “We [Michael!Adam and I] didn’t bond” he was telling Dean that he always came back to him because he likes Dean for who he is, not for the narrative Chuck forces on his life. He doesn’t follow Dean because he’s the Righteous Man or because he’s Mary Winchester’s son. He follows Dean because they bonded. They have a connection, they’ve fought for each other, they know each other, they have history, they’ve coparented, and it is unlikely anything can break that bond between them.

He doesn’t understand Dean’s self hatred and cruel words which is why he left. Cas has come to a point where he knows Dean is a lil butthead sometimes, but because Dean and Cas are who they are, that connection between them is still there. Their bond hasn’t been severed, and it likely never will be. And a bond like that means that they love each other and will make it through this. But, Dean better not get it TWISTED. Their bond may not be broken, but it’s been beat down and slapped around. He needs to say sorry. Give a hug. Talk it out. Be a grown up.

Dean felt that pain Castiel felt when he heard his words repeated back to him. 

He knows he hasn’t apologized. And everyone (Cas, Sam, Eileen, even the viewers) are waiting for an apology and Dean’s not doing it.

Why is Dean not apologizing?

Why won’t Dean say sorry for the things he said to Cas? Why can’t he find the words? Why is this so hard for him? What is he afraid he’ll accidentally say?

Dean doesn’t respond, so Cas sighs and asks where Sam is.

Relieved to have a break from being confronted with his previous actions, Dean struggles out his next line, but his voice wavers like he’s trying to sound casual even though he’s definitely about to cry. Sam has always been an easy topic for Dean to talk about, and while Cas isn’t done fighting, he still wants to be able talk to Dean while they’re together.

Dean says, “Eileen hit a snag on a case. So… he won’t be gone long.”

LET’S TALK ABOUT KITCHENS TWICE MORE AND WE’RE DONE I PROMISE LOL

Kitchen Point #1: Eileen and Sam are quickly becoming a package deal. Just last episode, they were cooking and flirting and smiling after a long night of having fun together. And, here, we see Dean and Castiel having the complete opposite of a good time in the exact same space. There is a notable mirror between the scenes of “Eileen and Sam in the kitchen” while Dean goes off to let them build up their bond, and “Dean and Cas in the kitchen” while Sam let's them repair their bond.

Kitchen Point #2: The kitchen shakes in a way reminiscent of when their son Jack escaped from the Malak box in season 14 episode 19 “Jack in The Box”. Then the first time kitchen shook, it was the final catalyst to break their family. Mary had just recently been killed, Jack was soulless, Dean and Sam went behind Castiel’s back to lock Jack in the Malak box, and Jack was soon to run away and get murdered. The end result of the previous shaken kitchen was Jack’s murder, Chuck’s reveal, and Dean and Castiel’s split.

Now the kitchen shakes again.

Cas looks at Dean for a second time as the scene closes and gets up pointing out the culprit as he says Michael’s name.

We don’t know if Dean looks back.

We get a harrowing shot of Michael!Adam.

The screen fades to black.

I can’t believe there was so much to read from that one small lil tiny preview scene. Safe to say I’m strapped in for the episode. Bring it on.

Just gotta say, I’ve loved all y’all work for a while :) I wanna be a meta-writer too and finally got to do one :) I will be doing more throughout the final season :) your meta work gives me life :) so glad you are writing too :) 

@amwritingmeta @drsilverfish @naruhearts @mittensmorgul @bluestar86 @tinkdw @legendary-destiel @elizabethrobertajones @dotthings @dimples-of-discontent​

[naruhearts]

14x18 First Watch Thoughts: Mary Winchester the Mirror, TFW and Destiel

**FLAILS**

My thoughts are practically incoherent because I’m having BIG FEELS right now...VERY big feels re: TFW/Destiel narratives.

I am SUPER glad Berens was the one who penned Mary’s death!! The episode was just well-done all around from start to finish and intensely executed, with the proper solid balance of angst, emotional insight from the characters placed inside Mary’s cathartic contextual role, and the consistent reiteration of Mary as TFW’s overall Parental Catharsis in 14x18′s storytelling (and S12-14′s whole parental premise in conjunction with John Winchester’s ghost). 

Mary was portrayed as the singular contrasting foil to TFW’s individual and combined arcs. Absence was, obviously, a core theme, with Mary’s absence -- her death -- playing out as A. familial purpose (accountability and her death as the impetus to work together --> forgive each other, forgive yourself), B. self-purpose (self-realization via Jack: what did I do? Why did I do it? Why do we do things?), and C. romantic purpose on the Dean/Cas front. 

Let me explain C. -- well, WE BEEN KNEW. The metasphere wrote about this (my post x).

x

Dean was HEAVILY subtextually framed as the angry spouse undergoing a rough patch with Cas over Mary’s death  (the tension, juxtaposed by sad orchestral strings and soft lighting, Dean lashing out at Cas, romantic framing via Dean’s back turned to Cas, their interactions holding frustration yet still underpinned by certain tenderness etc *sighhhhh*) and Dean continuing down the route of giving Cas, not Sam, frosty shoulders -- emphasized by the romantic visual framing of space between them e.g. Sam preventing Cas from comforting Dean during Mary’s funeral, backs again facing each other, Dean and Cas interacting sparsely, Dean bitter and disengaged, Cas longing for forgiveness from Dean, Sam as the overt brother caught in the middle as he embodies the role of mediator and stable thinker for both of them etc -- just strengthens my belief that Destiel is going to experience another (hopefully) intense romance-coded confrontation as intense as the one they had in the cabin -- one that leads up to a lover’s make-up or some kind of emotional breakthrough/realization which has Cas happy enough to be taken by the Empty (remember, DEAN STILL DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT CAS’ DEAL. Cas’ life to save his son’s life, harking back to Dean’s own fatherly self-sacrificial deal by saying Yes to Michael. He is utterly unaware that he’ll lose Cas) and it’s a double punch here, because Dean will realize how stupid he is for not appreciating Cas -- more accurately, trying to be mutually transparent and honest with him (he has, though, and he’s made leaps and bounds) before it’s too late but failing (final regression before progression). He does appreciate Cas, and Cas means more to him than anyone could ever describe *points at his Mind!Bar 14x10* yet their love languages still don’t align. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, DEAN! 14x19 is written by BL so I additionally hope the D/C subtext from this point onwards works in our favour!!

As I said in above and in my liveblog posts, a summary: 

The differences in Dean’s grieving are a COMPLETE visual comparison to 12x23, complete with overhead 📸 shots and differing funeral pyre scenes: when he grieved over Cas, he was alone, kneeling on the ground, and was blatantly numb/emotionally incapacitated – Dean mourned the loss of his lover. When he’s grieving Mary, Sam is by his side. Brothers mourning the loss of their mother. Romantic vs familial.

Overt romance-coded parallels with Sam/Rowena keeping constant contact just like Dean/Cas do both offscreen and onscreen

Sam telling Dean IT WASN’T JUST CAS and his own emotional pull in this ep as expressing accountability for TFW’s actions in general – besides internalizing/talking about the self-guilt, shame, and the inevitable pain of losing people despite saving people (also re: the 🔑 theme of doing the wrong, stupid thing for the right reasons) -- was character development on a marvelous scale. Dean was enlightened and began to admit it himself. Honest, open words. Dean and Cas should learn from him!!

 Cas was absolutely humanized, subsuming the Winchester Way of Bringing Family Back, and he additionally evoked honesty/an emotional justification while admitting his mistakes and again representing FAITH: faith in Jack narratively linked to FAITH IN HIMSELF and the season-long theme of believing there’s another way -- in believing that good things shall come. As he appropriately told Anael last episode -- loneliness is a construct misconstrued by her; not being in one’s physical presence doesn’t mean they aren’t there -- they are there. They are there for you. Narrative symmetry with 14x17′s presence of emotional acknowledgement despite physical absence re: God (and TFW; just because Cas wasn’t with the Winchesters did not mean he loved them any less) vs 14x18′s absence of full-frontal communication despite physical presence re: Dean and Cas/TFW (being physically present also entails being emotionally present through HONESTY). Berens interlinked the subtext. Negative spaces are being filled. And there’s also an Evil/dark dimension added to this Presence vs Absence commentary: Lucifer’s a visage in Jack’s mind, just like Sam. Jack’s soullessness has come to a psychological crux. He’s teeter-tottering – tried desperately to bring Mary back, and now he might have fucked up the natural order (if BTS pics of zombies in 14x20 is linked to this).  Furthermore:

(*clutches chest* There’s the heartbreaking spousal-coded visual narrative.)

Oh, Cas...Jack is BOTH good and evil. This is the intrinsic dualism of human nature. It’s what makes Jack human. And goodness involves badness. 

CAS: [Jack] was good for us. Indeed, we know he was. The unhealthily-codependent-abusive notion of family TFW used to possess (where their overarching parental issues -- Chuck’s absence, John’s abuse and Mary’s absence -- crippled their early formative growth, extending into decades) was deconstructed and rebuilt in healthier ways. Being a parent to Jack offset their true capabilities/qualities: FAITH (Cas), HOPE (Sam), and LOVE (Dean), alongside all the stickiness that came with his birth. By direct association, Cas learned (is learning) how to believe in himself. Sam learned (is learning) how to hope in himself. Dean learned (is learning) how to love himself. Mental/emotional release from their internal chains took place (will come to its final culmination in S15). In other words, Jack the Unifying TFW Mirror -- like Mary -- was the great interpersonal conduit for (a Jesus-figure-representation) honesty, appreciation (spending time with your loved ones), positive vs negative self-process, and self-awareness. Keep in mind that Jack has characteristically taken the place of Dean, Cas and Sam’s own dark arcs (Soulless!Sam, in particular) with what looks like a Godstiel mirror in 14x19 -- he’s literally becoming textualized as TFW’s mirror -- and, like his parents, he is going to make his independent (wayward) choices and question the primacy of human nature: good, evil, and the grey in-between. Will he listen to his head or his heart?  Most of all, Jack taught them that HuntingTM is filled with pain, horror, and death, but genuine purpose lies beyond it. The lives they live are also innumerably interlinked with joy and happiness. These positive things aren’t as sparse as they think: they have each other.

Mary Winchester is ⚰️ and resides in Heaven (her death successfully made me emotional and packed a deep personal punch; the black and white flashbacks interspersed throughout 14x18 relative to Mary’s influence on TFW was A++). She disappeared right when TFW’s arcs came together to display character progression. Her purpose – pushing TFW to engage in self-introspection, personal growth, and honesty with the Self and others – is done.

Mary, the Cas mirror, carved M.W. into the table with S.W and D.W. You know who should be next, right? CASTIEL W. (and Jack W.) (recall that in 14x17, Mary relayed to Dean that she treasured and enjoyed her time with him and Sam -- channeling Cas’ 14x12 farewell speech. Mary has always embodied LOVE, both romantic and familial, with the great virtue of honesty, and Dean, by proxy, has been telling his family he loves them. Again, who is the next family member he’ll say I LOVE YOU to? What do Dean and Cas WANT? Time to answer this question!!)

WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. Narrative cyclism, y’all. Mary and John Winchester are finally at ✌️, and by so doing, TFW will experience emotional/personal/psychological ✌️ as they leave their past behind to create their own optimistic self-actualized future. THERE’LL BE GENUINE PEACE WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

TFW MUST TALK

I mean, I’ll probably reblog this with new thoughts during the next few days, but yes, ENDGAME’S UPON US, and all the extensive meta regarding Dabb Era Love and...Love, Unity, Family, Honesty, the centrality of interpersonal relationships and Reconciliation of the Past & Future since Season New Beginnings 12/13 over Season Who Am I 14 should be realized in the final two ANGST-filled eps. TL;DR a gigantic multilayered soup of character-positive/relationship growth-positive meta coming to fruition for the main plot.

Berens has killed us all. 14x18 is one of my favourite Emotion-centric episodes yet!

RATING: 10/10

Thank you for reading my sloppier-than-usual word-vomit!

[amwritingmeta]

14x14: The Chicken and the Snake

Lots of snakes in this episode. Well, the episode is named for a snake symbol, isn’t it, so it makes sense, but the symbolism of the snake is all over the narrative. Like, everywhere. And it’s pretty. It’s just so pretty.

There’s the rattler in the painting, visible over Cas’ shoulder at El Sabroso, there’s the gorgon - Noah - of course, and Felix the Snake, shedding his skin, which to Rowena is a bit too on the nose *heart eyes* and then there’s the fable of the Chicken and the Snake, leading into Michael shedding his skin, as it were, but as the title of the post suggests, I’d like to frame this around the tale the gorgon tells Jack.

It goes as follows:

Once there was a crafty black snake who kept eating this poor chicken’s eggs. She couldn’t watch them all the time, you see. The black snake would wait until she was gone and then slide one of the eggs into his mouth and crush it in his throat. Now this went on until there was only one egg left, but when the chicken left that egg - just for a moment - the snake swallowed it up. But for some reason he couldn’t crush it in his throat. The chicken had hardboiled her final egg just to choke the snake. And the snake died. 

What does it mean?

Yes, that is the question.

Cas asks Noah why he’s telling Jack this story, and Noah says it’s because he can’t quite tell if Jack’s the chicken or the snake.

The chicken is willing to sacrifice her last egg because she realises there’s no way she can protect it with the snake alive. Rather than go through the pain of losing what she loves and watching the killer go free, she takes the preemptive measure, letting go of what she loves in order to put a stop to any more killing. Is it revenge for her previously lost offspring? There’s a tinge of it there, right? But as one might assume that the chicken can lay more eggs, her choice actually means that, by killing the snake, she’s protecting her next batch of eggs from being eaten. 

The snake is greedy, but, to be fair, he’s also a snake. Snakes eat eggs. The gorgon clarifies this as he says it’s not like he enjoys eating people, it’s a lonely way to live, but it’s his fate, or rather it’s the condition for his survival. (granted he’s a sadistic little prick, but that’s beside this point) Now look at the snake, which is acting according to its nature. There’s no malice to the snake’s actions. He’s crafty, sure, but he’s not stealing the eggs for fun or in order to torture the chicken. He’s stealing the eggs and eating them for sustenance. Not ideal for the chicken, and she has every right to find a way to protect her young, but also the two are natural enemies, so the scenario is to be expected.

Which one is Jack?

Well, there’s one more interpretation to be had out of this fable. Not just the two Cas offered: greed and sacrifice. This third interpretation can be had when taking into account that this fable isn’t just about the chicken and the snake.

What about the egg?

The egg that is helpless and without a say in the matter, even without a choice in its own fate to act as saviour or tool for vengeance or what have you. 

The fable then becomes a very stark comment on many aspects of life, where the crafty find ways to feed off the weak and exposed, and suffer all the little children. (I may be having issues with the political landscape atm) (irl bleed)

There’s also the Jungian point to be made of how the chicken represents life, the snake represents death and the egg represents the point where they meet. Highly symbolically, of course. 

Any way you look at it, you can’t ignore the egg in the equation.

Greed/selfishness vs. sacrifice = lost innocence.

And considering how the episode ends, Jack steps up to protect those he loves and (possibly) sacrifices his soul in order to stop Michael, leaving himself very much exposed to the danger of moving from protector, into threat. If this reading is correct, of course.

Chicken -> egg -> snake.

At the end of the episode, Jack could be seen to encompass all of them. 

I mean, just look at him spread those wings, stating that he’s himself again, while the entire episode is outlining the internal conflict he’s under, where he doesn’t consider himself an angel, but he’s burning off his soul to act as protector and shield, and through that choice leaving himself increasingly exposed to the darker side of his parentage, because without a soul to tie him to Kelly, there might not be anything to stop him from feeling all the influence of Lucifer that he so feared at the start of S13.

I’m not saying that I think he’ll necessarily be turning into Lucifer ie go absolutely eviiiilllll, I doubt that he will, because, to my mind, it doesn’t line up with the character progression of TFW, but Jack losing sight of what’s right and what’s wrong? Letting his powers go to his head, thinking he can protect the world? Possibly even isolating himself because he feels his father figures don’t actually understand him or, even, that they’re holding him back from making his own choices? That he’s outgrown them and he knows better than they do how to protect those he loves, including them?

Yup. Could be.

And what about Lucifer, awake in the Empty? Will Jack be able to bring him back now (canon would say yes) and will he? Well, he just declared himself the son of Lucifer. If he begins to feel isolated or controlled by TFW and he doesn’t have the humanity to understand the love they’re showing him - that is if his soul is actually burned away, but I can’t imagine the writers would let the possibility for this conflict just slip by, even if it’s not entirely gone just yet - then why not? Imagine the season ending on that moment? Eh?

(not saying it will) (just saying eh?) 

Now, the serpent is a very visual tie to the devil, if you want to make it Biblical, and see foreshadowing for Lucifer’s possible return. It holds up.

To my mind the most important meaning of the symbol of the snake is tied to what the title of the episode refers to: the Ouroboros.

The Ouroboros is one of humanity’s oldest symbols, and since its inception it has represented renewal, the cyclical nature of the universe, life out of death. For the alchemist, the Ouroboros also represented the harmony of opposites, and the reason I bring alchemy into it is because of Carl Jung.

Yes, that old fellow again, mentioned above and now once more. I’ve grown very fond of him since 14x08, let me tell you. 

Carl Jung studied alchemy with enthusiasm. He was always searching for correlations between his own thoughts on the human psyche, and the work done by great thinkers in fields outside his own. He believed in connectivity, and felt that like-mindedness was a strength, not a weakness. In alchemy he found many such correlations and even ways that helped him properly formulate his own ideas of individuation in a more approachable way.

He says about the Ouroboros: 

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. 

Alchemy is most famous for extremely clever women and men striving to turn basic metal into gold, but the true spirit of the teachings of alchemy is all about a refinement of the alchemist as a human being. To strive for internal balance. This is what drew Jung to it and kept him engrossed in its teachings for a good chunk of his life.

One could also see the snake (crafty) and chicken (nurturing) as the internally imbalanced shadow-self/ego, striving for dominance and neglecting to actually care for the egg (inner child). 

The thing, to my Jungian-laden brain, is this: internal balance won’t be struck by killing the shadow-self, because the shadow-self can’t be killed. It’s a part of the Self and needs to be integrated. The fact that the shadow-self can’t be killed was supported, one might say, by the visual narrative of 14x14, as part of Michael (representative of Dean’s shadow-self) was absorbed into not the ego, because that’s Dean himself, but into Jack (representative of Dean’s inner child).

So, yes, my first reaction was that there might be a bit of turbulence up ahead. Because the inner child declaring its very clear identity confusion as though it’s not aware of this confusion, before swallowing up the shadow-self in order to protect the ego is symbolically very, very unhealthy. 

Or maybe there won’t be turbulence up ahead because who knows what other curve ball might be thrown into the mix! I’ve no solid idea where this is headed. Maybe Jack gobbled Mikey up and is completely healed and now Jack will go fix Heaven and stabilise the shit out Hell and all will be right with the entire world.

Yeah, okay, I sincerely doubt it. :)

Oh, and to clarify, when I talk about Jack representing Dean’s inner child etc. is not me saying that Jack isn’t also his own character, because he is, but he serves Dean’s progression, yeah? Jack can’t progress if Dean doesn’t, because Dean is the narrative axis around which all else pivots. Dean’s choices largely inform the trajectory of the narrative. 

And wouldn’t it be great if Dean’s on track to getting out of that position soon? It would be! Because that position makes it so much easier for him to believe it’s all on him, when it really doesn’t have to be. 

Now, let’s take into account that Jack’s new pet snake’s name is Felix. Felix means “lucky”, but it also has its roots in “happy”. 

Meaning that Jack now has happiness for a pet, in the shape of a being that traditionally represents resurrection, as it sheds its skin and through that act is proverbially reborn. And perhaps this is visual foreshadowing that Lucifer is about to rise again, or perhaps it’s a visual plant of how Jack may need to reach a point where he’s faced with those old questions of Who am I? and Who do I want to be?

What do you want, Jack? I think you gotta whole lotta growing up to do before you can actually answer that question. 

I hope he gets to learn the lessons, and be happy, but them narrative chips will fall where they may. I am so here for this ride.

[mittensmorgul]

Since the finale aired, I’ve been yammering on about how it would’ve only worked as a finale to s2, and now that I’m actually rewatching s2, I stand by that even more staunchly. The finale doesn’t work in a post-s2 supernatural universe.

This is the version of Dean we saw in the finale-- the one whose only mission in life was to Save Sammy, to help him get his revenge and allow him to go out and live a Normal Safe Life pretending that hunting and monsters don’t exist. The one who just wanted some pie, to drive his car, and had no real connections beyond Sam in the world outside of Bobby. Even Dean’s characterization in the finale is this far younger Dean who’d never allowed himself to crack open and truly understand love. It would take me years to plow through everything I’ve ever written about him as a character and his long struggle to emotional maturity we saw evolve over the next 13 years beyond this episode, but the tl;dr will always be “this s2 Dean is the same as the Dean in the finale.”

The goal of s2 was saving SAM from his “destiny,” too. In this era of the show, Dean didn’t have a “destiny” the same way Sam did. The ONLY thing that mattered was freeing Sam from “becoming evil,” and being manipulated into terrible things. What Dean wanted, what he was “destined” for by the narrative was irrelevant, because all of his choices and emotional burdens were tied only to saving Sam. To freeing Sam so he could safely return to his “normal life.” Go back to college, have a family and the white picket fence life.

This was before Dean truly began fighting for HIMSELF. Which only really and truly began after he sells his soul to resurrect Sam. That’s when Dean truly begins fighting for himself. Sure, he’s angry with John during s2 for trading his own life for Dean’s, for putting the burden of “if you can’t save Sam, you’ll have to kill him” on his shoulders with his dying breath, but Dean is still fighting against John’s authority and the complicated tangle of feelings of his own childhood and not actually coming to terms with his own wants and needs and wishes out beyond that yet. He’s still unwittingly confronting the “destiny” John had set up for him, and hasn’t moved beyond that yet. It’s only trading his soul for Sam’s that finally brings Dean into the cosmic narrative that will fuel his introspection and personal growth for the rest of the series.

And out beyond that point, his entire character arc explodes into orbit.

Dean’s entire character arc in s3 is confronting this very basic fact: he doesn’t deserve to have been sacrificed just to save Sam. He doesn’t deserve that burden, and he does deserve to live. This is the realization he comes to before eventually being dragged to Hell and then rescued by an angel, who literally tells him, “you don’t think you deserve to be saved” in the aftermath of that. From that point on, we have TWELVE SEASONS of Dean struggling with what he “deserves” versus what is “fate” and “destiny” and eventually confronting what he WANTS if he truly could choose his own destiny.

Plus, out beyond that point, he has Cas. And nothing changes Dean, pushes him to grow and understand himself, and accept himself-- all of himself, from the good to the horrific-- than the pure and unflinching acceptance of Castiel. Cas never looked at him and said “you are evil,” or “you are worthless.” (well, they’ve both said some pretty awful stuff to each other over the years, but there was either brainwashing or other deeper issues pushing those things on them, and they have ALWAYS eventually come back to one another, and the awful stuff was dealt with). Point is, Dean and Cas both began running these parallel arcs of duty versus desire, and for Dean, the duty was always framed around “taking care of Sam” versus pursuing any sort of ambition or goals for himself. They would fight for this for most of the rest of the series, until eventually the goal for ALL of them would be about discovering what they would want for themselves.

The show explicitly dealt with this, repeatedly, over later seasons, asking all of the characters the big questions: is this what you would choose for yourself? What WOULD you choose for yourself if you could?

And then they made the narrative of the final season, of the final Big Bad, the fact that they had NEVER had real freedom, and that their entire lives (and the entire history of not only this universe but every parallel universe) had been Chuck’s Puppet Theater, and true free will had been a lie all this time. Pushing all of the characters to confront their own choices and understand what about who they were as people was separate from what Chuck pushed them into choosing and doing all these years. The main thing that Dean (and also Cas, and to the extent she was included in the narrative this was Eileen’s issue as well) were being pushed to come to terms with what really was real, and were their feelings and choices their own or imposed on them for the furtherance of Chuck’s story.

At the end of the road, finally free and out from under Chuck’s control, they knew what was real. For Sam and Eileen, they had chosen each other. Cas had chosen Dean, but Dean hadn’t yet had a chance to reply, but anyone with two eyes and a brain knows what he would’ve said in return. It’s what Cas stopped him from saying even back in Purgatory in 15.09. And yet, for some reason Sam and Dean forgot all of that, as if none of it had ever even really happened at all, and we went right back to who they were right after they finally defeated the YED, before we even knew Azazel had a name, let alone the fact that the ultimate boogeyman of their entire lives to that point had been nothing more than a fanatic pawn in a much larger destiny for both of them.

The end of s2 was the last time Dean sacrificing himself so Sam could have a normal life, where Dean really felt there was nothing more for himself than fulfilling his father’s orders to save Sammy, even feels remotely plausible. It’s the last time we can feel like Dean might find peace and contentment in a Heaven where John is nearby to be proud of him, and where Dean would actually feel like that validation was even relevant to his own life.

And that finally brings me back to s2, where that was actually addressed through John’s self-sacrifice to save Dean, to serve Dean up to the narrative and provide a stage for this self-transformative journey INTO being a version of John himself. Only... Dean DOESN’T choose that. He fights to save Sam at all costs, even when it seems clear that the right answer would probably be to KILL Sam instead. When not only the ghost of John Winchester plaguing Dean’s mind would make him doubt his own drive to save his brother, but the John Winchester Insert Character of s2-- Gordon Walker-- basically put Dean’s own doubts out there in plain words in 2.10:

GORDON: I'm surprised at you, Dean. Getting all emotional. I'd heard you were more of a professional than this. Look, let's say you were cruising around in that car of yours and, uh, you had little Hitler riding shotgun, right? Back when he was just some goofy, crappy artist. But you knew what he was going to turn into someday. You'd take him out, no questions, am I right?

DEAN: That's not Sam.

GORDON: Yes it is. You just can't see it yet. Dean, it's his destiny. Look, I'm sympathetic. He's your brother, you love the guy. This has got to hurt like hell for you. But here's the thing. It would wreck him. But your dad? If it really came right down to it, he would have had the stones to do the right thing here. But you're telling me you're not the man he is?

This, the episode where Dean finally confesses John’s final orders to Sam, where Dean has decided that saving Sam is all that matters, even when circumstance and everyone else is practically screaming at him that this could all be over if only he gave in-- be it his own self-sacrifice OR killing Sam. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, the universe doesn’t care (and neither does Chuck... especially at this point... and the proof of that is Sam’s s15 nightmares where one of Chuck’s alternate universe endings for Sam and Dean was Sam actually going Darkside on demon blood and killing Dean... any iteration of the old drama, Chuck has explored all potential endings-- oh, except the ending where TFW gets to just be happy and live... that’s the one ending they never get and the only one they deserved in the end).

also from 2.10... loads of chat about “destiny” and one of Dean’s first “we should just lay all this shit down and take a vacation” moments when he suggests they go to Amsterdam and enjoy some of the not-coffee-coffee-shops, which Sam counters by doubling down on the fact that Dean has a destiny in all this as much as Sam does:

SAM: Well, come on, dude, you're a hunter. I mean, it's what you were meant to do.

DEAN: Ah, I wasn't meant to do anything, I don't believe in that destiny crap.

SAM: You mean you don't believe in my destiny.

DEAN: Yeah, whatever.

SAM: Look, Dean, I've tried running before. I mean, I ran all the way to California and look what happened. You can't run from this. And you can't protect me.

DEAN: I can try.

And that’s it, right there. This is the “neither of you can try for a normal life outside of the other while the other is still alive.” This is Sam pinning a destiny to Dean that’s just as inescapable within Chuck’s narrative as Sam’s demon blood and psychic powers. 

This is the core essence of Chuck’s story about them. The sibling dynamic that Chuck failed to free himself from, and that Sam and Dean failed to free themselves from after Chuck’s demise in 15.19.

Destiny. One must die so the other can live.

And considering the next 13 seasons of the show and the long and emotionally grueling character arcs Sam and Dean proceed through where they truly confront the core of who they are as people-- as individuals outside of their duty and destiny-- the finale ceases to make any sense outside of Chuck’s narrative for them. If 15.20 really happened exactly as we saw it on screen, then Chuck still won.

And they had to loop Sam and Dean all the way back to where they were emotionally at the end of s2 in order to make it seem plausible. Which, for those of us who actually care about what they endured after s2, makes the finale entirely implausible as a whole.