#funeralia

[winchestress]

they should've been at the club

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean Winchester every day -- 283/326

Supernatural 13x19//Funeralia

[samsrowena]

when you're so down bad that you think burning someone to death sounds like a totally reasonable thing to do

[magnificent-winged-beast]

Funeralia 13x19  ∞ SPN 13x19

[ananke-xiii]

Rowena and the thick, bloody umbilical cord between choices and faults.

In a previous post of mine I’ve explored a little bit how Mary and Kelly represent a sort of “missed opportunity” for, respectively, Sam and Jack.

At the beginning of s13 Sam resents the fact that he hasn’t been proactive in seeking to create a relationship with his mother and now that she’s (presumably) gone he doesn’t want to deal with that reality. He had wasted his second chance. Jack, on the other hand, never even had a first opportunity to begin with but, unlike Sam, has experienced a sense of unity with his mother so extreme that one of the first things that he tells Sam is that he was his mother(!!!).

S13 reinforces the Mother-Son symbolism because, after Jack’s birth, a rift is opened in space (apparently not in time?): Kelly stays (dead, rip girl I love you) on one side of it while Mary crosses it and finds herself in Apocalypse World. To make things even more clear, this is no random parallel universe: this is the alternate reality where Mary didn’t deal with Azazel. So mothers and their choices/faults are a central theme in this season. Or, well, more or less.

To complete the mothers’ trimurti or, better, tridevi we’re missing the final mother, the destroyer who is, of course, Rowena. It’s therefore quite apt that Rowena reaches her highest potential this season and even confronts Death. What motivates her in an interesting blend of (missing)love and (lacking)power. Lucifer is as part of her story as Kelly’s and Mary’s. Unlike these two, though, she doesn’t have a son who resurrects her, nor a turned-benefactor cosmic being who offers her resurrection as a gift to her son. Rowena has to resurrect herself. Not once but twice. She is, perhaps, the loneliest character in the whole series.

This is actually quite ironic because, if we look back on previous seasons, her “choice” to kill Oskar, her putative son, was what triggered the whole chain of events (the freeing of Amara first and Lucifer second) that directly link Rowena with Mary and Kelly.

It’s only natural, then, that s13 Rowena keeps representing the reversal of the Mary and Sam/ Kelly and Jack relationships because there is no son who’s looking for her, rather she is the mother who’s looking for her (dead) child. Like Sam, she also needs someone who can access another dimension to bring Crowley back but, unlike him, she’s not successful. Now, ngl, this pisses me off to no end, like of course I can understand the real reasons why Crowley couldn’t be brought back, still I kinda hate how it was narratively framed.

When, in "Funeralia", Rowena says that life is unfair she is right but not in the general, pessimistic sense of the phrase: she's right because in-universe some deaths are more important than others and people get back on board depending on whether or not they're still a role to play for them. Rowena's faith in magic is actually justified because magic is the only thing that can help her. And the tragic thing is that it's also what damns her in the process because it's the only form of power she can have access to. There are no angels or cosmic entities looking out for her. She's just... alone.

So, perhaps, it's not that I necessarily hate how her failure to bring Crowley back is described, I just see it as further proof that Rowena is the best example to show how in Supernatural the game is rigged from the beginning and we didn’t even need an interfering and pervy God to realize it. That's all we've been seeing it since S1. All those infinite, booooring talks about being good/evil or doing good/bad actually mean nothing because, at the end of the day, in this show what really matters is how useful you can be, to whom and why (and this is way less booooring, you learn a lot of interesting things about these characters if you go down this road, it's grim but it's more rewarding).

S13 is also when the final connection between Rowena and the Winchesters, Sam to be more precise, is established which is indicative of the fact that she will inevitably die. Before S13 her story was her own, after “Funeralia” it cannot be extricated from Sam’s. To some degree, it’s quite similar to what happened with Crowley and Dean. What’s more, just like Crowley’s powers and shrewdness are what really carry the plot from s6 to s12, magic and spells (and therefore Rowena’s role in the story) will be the key for many plot points from s13 to s15. But there is a big difference.

Both Crowley and Rowena’s sacrifices are described as heroic but, let’s be honest, only Rowena’s was. Crowley’s demise was a clean-up after his own mess at best. It also proved to be unnecessary. Rowena and that awful MBOL’s egg thingy would have managed to confine Lucifer, like, they actually did it. It was Crowley who perverted the spell for reasons that I personally find OOC. I would’ve liked the Crowley vs Lucifer power struggle but not the way it was done in s12 because it felt very nonsensical to me. As in: I can see you need a reason to keep Lucifer around and this is what you’ve come up with but it’s still quite illogical.

At its hidden and secret core S13 is the season of the “let’s reframe the sons’ stories and blame it on the mothers”. Just like Kelly is blamed for Castiel’s ideal vision of Jack and Mary’s "choice" is established as the most important point in the whole show, Rowena-as-Mother must face the same fate: it was her fault if Crowley, Fergus!, ended the way he ended. It’s a naaaaaaaaaaaaaah for me.

This is what we’re told in “Funeralia”:

Rowena: Oh, but it is. Death has something I want. Sam: What’s that? Rowena: My son. After you told me he was gone, how he died, I had an unexpected reaction. We had our differences, but it’s my fault he went down the path he did. I left him. Dean: We’re talking about Crowley-- demon, King of Hell? Rowena: We’re talking about Fergus-- a man abandoned and loveless, tricked by a demon, died in a gutter. He deserved better from the world. From me.

Now, just to be clear: yes, Rowena had the responsibility to do better; yes, she was the absolute worst; yes, she played no small role in her son’s story. However, I personally don’t like all these negative associations between “worlds” and “mothers” as if every fucking thing in the universe is dependent solely on them. How did we end up here? It’s almost as if absent fathers are, like, not THAT bad after all (and the show, as far as I'm concerned, ultimately approves of and absolves absent fathers). So I’m very suspicious of the way motherhood is portrayed specifically in s13 and Rowena’s attempt at redemption well demonstrates that there is reason to be so.

This dialogue in “Funeralia” confirms my gut feeling:

Sam: You know, what happened with Crowley? That wasn’t your fault. Rowena: He never had a chance. Dean: He made his choices, just like we all do. Look, every one of us has done something that we have to live with, that were trying to make up for. Every one of us. Sam: Even without all that extra juice, you’re still the deadliest witch around [Sam's flattering Rowena. He's gonna ask for her help in 3,2,1...]. Rowena: Flatterer. Sam: Yeah, well, we, um... we may need your help [Here we go!]. To save our family. To… hell, to save the world. Dean: You wanna be redeemed? This would be a pretty big step. Rowena: And do you think I still can be? Dean: Yeah, I do.

I mean, not to be rude, but who the fuck cares if Dean Winchester thinks that Rowena can be redeemed? Like, how is Rowena’s redemption (which is strictly connected to her being a bad mother and not, among other things, a zero-regret murderer, which she also happens to be, for instance) connected to saving the Winchester’s family? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that this is SPN and that Sam and Dean’s problems are Apocalypse-level problems (lol, they really did that, when I say that their story is like a cosmogony maybe I’m not that wrong) but, as I’ve said, I cannot help but notice the similarities between Rowena’s arc this season with Mary’s and Jack’s, i.e. you can be redeemed if you either do something useful for the Winchesters or... realize that it's not your "fault" that your sons suffered terribily because "choosing" to deal with Azazel was actually the right choice... for the world. How come fathers saving the world are framed as heroic while mothers actively creating worlds by making hard choices that benefit the greater good need redemption?

So to sum up: while fathers invade S13’s main storyline as solvers, restorers and fixers, mothers are the bones of the story, they carry its weight and its sins but get little if nothing in return: Kelly stays dead, Mary ends up helping out a world that absolves her of her Original Sin but that’s nevertheless a mess (you can never win lol) and Rowena can’t get her son back (but she can save Sam and Dean's family the world!). Looks good, right? Hurray mommy!

[marril96]

Supernatural 13.19 | Funeralia | bloopers

[littlebluejaydraws]

All A Girl Needs (1942)- Haddon Sundblom (Study)

ID: Three images showing a digital drawing of Billie and Rowena from episode 13x19 of Supernatural. They are sitting on the ground and embracing with Billie kneeling, and Rowena tipped over into their arms. Rowena's face is turned away from the viewer and buried in Billie's shoulder. Billie's face is visible, with their head resting against Rowena's. They are in the room from the final scene of 13x19, with an empty fireplace behind them and the red candles from Rowena's ritual scattered about. The first image shows the full drawing and beneath are two close ups of Billie and Rowena. End ID.

ID: The painting 'All A Girl Needs' by Haddon Sundblom. The pose is the same as the top image, however in this case the figures are not Billie and Rowena, and they are on a bed in a bedroom, rather than on the floor. There is a shelf with books behind them and a side table with a lamp to the right. End ID.

[bloodydeanwinchester]

🩸Bloody Dean Every Episode🩸- 13x19 Funeralia

[samepisodebracket]

Round 1; Group 4

[lavenderleahy]

wow i'm so sorry samwena shippers, I was WRONG. they're in love.

[amaranthhiding]

The Mentalists & Funeralia

I just rewatched episode 7x07 "The Mentalists"... and I kept hearing echoes of 13x19 "Funeralia" through the entire thing!

Even the damn body count mentioned is the same!

Apparently, four is the magic number in SPN to show someone has gone really off the rails?

7x07 The Mentalists 13x19 Funeralia

[winchestress]

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean and Cas every day not often enough -- 78/?

Supernatural 13x19//Funeralia

[dessertbird]

Daily Destiel 💙💚

You know, I have to admit I was… I was relieved to hear you were dead. We never did see eye to eye. No, no we didn’t, because you stole my memories, and you threatened to "tear me apart," and you made me repeatedly act out Dean Winchester’s murder… 😠🥺💔

[soullessjack]

Okay, you HAVE to talk to me about what you found out about Sam's DVD stuff now.

well, for the first one: Red Sonja is a comic book series about a warrior woman who’s essentially the original “chainmail-bikini clad female warrior” archetype and was inspired by Red Sonya from The Shadow Of The Vulture

To be as brief as possible, both Sonja and Sonya are redheaded female warrior archetypes. Sonja’s more of a tomboy/swashbuckler type, but Sonya herself is the original “chainmail-bikini clad female warrior” to kickstart the entire archetype. IK I linked them both for your own reading but Sonya’s backstory is just so insane to me, both in general and in the sense that this is some of Jack’s first formative medias :

“Red Sonja lives with her family in a humble house in the Western Hyrkanian steppes. When she is 21, a group of mercenaries kills her family and burns down their house. Sonja attempts to defend herself, but cannot lift her brother's sword. She is raped by the leader of the group. Answering her cry for revenge, the red goddess Scáthach appears to her and gives her incredible fighting skills, on the condition that she never lie with a man unless he defeats her in fair combat.”

Then the second one is BeastMaster/BM2,

which is basically a story about a last surviving tribesman named Dar who can magically communicate with animals and forms a found family of other last survivors on his own quest to find Kyra, his lost lover. there’s more meat and themes to this series than the Sonja one, especially in the sense of how these medias could have influenced Jack or any of his personality:

“The general story arc of the series is that the world is changing, civilization is advancing, technology is gaining ground slowly, the old orders of magic and sorcery are fading, and the world is threatened by the supernatural being Balcifer, the Dark One, played by Jeremy Callaghan. Dar is the son of King Eldar, who was destroyed by Balcifer. To defeat Balcifer Dar must locate and reunite his family, who have been turned into animals to hide them from Balcifer, in the Crystal Arc.”

(I’m sure there’s no parallels to be made whatsoever between Jack and a main hero who’s personally tied to a dark supernatural threat with the name ending in –LCIFER).

It’s also stated that despite being an action show, BM did come to have more pacifist/naturalist tones overall (probably a good indicator as to what influences Jack’s good-boy routine).

Honestly, with this knowledge in mind now, my biggest takeaway is just how much more relatable Jack’s own experience is to mine, as a formerly sheltered child whose influential medias were largely distanced from the mainstream. I can’t seem to think of a way to apply Red Sonja as an influence on Jack, so I’ll toss the ring to you if you have something!

[221btardisimpalawithloki]

why did they foley in tearing fabric. that is very clearly a pearl snap