#i honestly think we’ll see more of Nuwa

[fluffypotatey]

We spent all of S4 talking about Wukong crying and us getting an eventual breakdown and now we got it literally the next season, how we feelin’? Also was anyone expecting Nuwa to be half snake lol. I didn’t think any of the lego set set was going to be real, it generally isn’t so, sorry to everyone’s chaotic adhd milf in a suit they were drawing…she is a bit silly tho if you squint.

swk: *crying his eyes out bc he believes he failed in keeping MK safe* me: *giggling and kicking my feet like an excited puppy*

NO BECAUSE LIKE LOOK AT HIM

THIS IS CANON NOW AND I AM LIVING FOR IT

it would have been even better if we just has a minute or two more of Wukong slamming himself into the pillar :) just for my own satisfaction

also no way is Wukong ever letting MK get away with that again :3 he doesn’t want MK throwing his life away like that because unlike Wukong, MK is not immortal (not yet 👀) which makes him more vulnerable to self sacrifices. and Wukong is not above throwing his own life in the fire if that means ensuring MK will never repeat it (see SWK’s plan for the rings of Samadhi)

i actually wasn’t surprised by Nuwa being part snake but i think that’s mostly bc i am recently familiar with their creation story (i like being prepared 💅) but yeah it’s a shame her dressed in a suit did not happen 😔 maybe next time

[dreamofasupernaturalchamber]

Dabb's Dream of a Red Chamber: Dean, Sam, Cas, Jack, and the roles they play

In my last post, I explored how Dean starts off as Qin Keqing in S14 but becomes Lin Daiyu later on in the season. The transition point is 14x13-- the 300th episode. I always found it funny that Dabb chooses the Ruyi Baozhu to start this episode. It's a Buddhist item, and of course, SPN becomes very Buddhist toward the end (which is why everyone hates the finale). What I want to talk about today is Baozhu as both a pearl and a name.

This name appears in Dream of a Red Chamber. Who is Baozhu? One of Qin Keqing's maids who volunteers to be adopted by her after her death so she can play the role of the daughter during the funeral. She then becomes a nun after the funeral-- fitting, no, considering her name? Let me tell you this: a monk (and this gets interesting, but I'll get to that later) arrives at Lin Daiyu's home when she's young and says the only way she'll live a long life is if she becomes a nun. Obviously she doesn't choose this route. But going back to SPN--Dabb twists the Baozhu into another Buddhist message-- so why not use some other artifact from Buddhist lore? Why Baozhu?

I think it's because Baozhu is the combination of the Bao from Baoyu's name, and Zhu, which means pearl. The emphasis is on the pearl, which makes sense-- Dabb isn't going to involve yu, or jade, when Cas (the character corresponding to Baoyu) is secondary in this episode. Dean is the one who makes the wish, and so the treasure is going to represent him.

So who is associated with pearls in Red Chamber? Qin Keqing, for one-- she has maids who carry "pearl" in their names. And Lin Daiyu, who is the reincarnation of the Jiangzhu (Crimson Pearl) Fairy. She's also associated with the Jiling Pearls, which foreshadow the Jia family getting dragged into the royal family's power struggle.

But Dean is nothing like Lin Daiyu, readers might say! He's not sickly. We'll get to the sickly part later-- let's first talk about Lin Daiyu and what she represents.

First and foremost-- Lin Daiyu represents rebellion. Not literal rebellion (although if I'm not wrong, the Jia family gets into huge trouble for aligning themselves with the wrong princes), but rebellion against societal conventions and patriarchal feudalism. The last thing Baoyu wants to do is take the imperial exams and become an imperial bureaucrat-- but this is exactly what his family wants him to do. This is what Baochai, Shi Xiangyun, Xi Ren, and all the girls want him to do-- except for Daiyu. Daiyu tells him, "You should do what you want." And so they think of each other as zhiji, which I suppose can be translated as soulmate, but really means "a friend who knows me." A zhiji is a friend who knows your soul.

And this fits Dean and Cas-- Dean is the one who encourages Cas to rebel against Heaven. Dean is the one who asks Cas what he wants. Dean is the one who bucks convention; he's the subversive one, the one who represents free will.

(And as a side note, Qin Zhong, the younger brother of Qin Keqing, is another one of Baoyu's more subversive loves-- he dies just as Baoyu's oldest sister is made the highest ranking imperial concubine, which indicates that Baoyu's attempts to buck against feudalism are destined to fail and foreshadows Lin Daiyu's death. Qin Zhong, Qing Zhong-- his name tells us that Baoyu is a lover.)

Dean doesn't die from what looks suspiciously like TB, which is how Lin Daiyu dies in the last forty chapters of Red Chamber-- however, we know that those chapters are ghostwritten and doesn't fit her panci, or the poem that foretells her fate, the hints that she's married off for political purposes, or Zhiyanzhai's footnotes which indicate that she dies of a broken heart. Zhiyanzhai is very likely the coauthor of Red Chamber, and their notes indicate they were there for most of the events of the story (Red Chamber is thought to be a retelling of how the author's family fell upon hard times-- of course, there are other interpretations too, which I will talk about in a separate post). Dean dies from a broken heart two times. The second time takes.

Now let's talk about Cas and Baoyu. Baoyu is usually considered the reincarnation of Shen Ying Shi Zhe, who is a heavenly monk in another dimension. He waters the Crimson Pearl Grass every day, and she becomes a fairy as a result; it's hinted that he falls in love with her, which threatens his cultivation/enlightenment, so he runs off to the human world to gain more enlightenment, and she follows him and decides to repay her debt by crying all of her tears for him (the lyric "don't you cry no more" comes to mind). Yes, Lin Daiyu is the fairy this blade of grass becomes. Yes, Shen Ying Shi Zhe is responsible for giving her life, much as Cas is responsible for lifting Dean from perdition.

Cas also falls from Heaven to experience love, but up until Dabb took over, this was usually framed as a positive thing. I'm-- not quite sure Dabb actually frames it as a positive thing. Cas's ending calls to mind the endings of the gods/fairies who fall from grace because they fall in love in Chinese folklore-- they either become human, or they become enlightened and regain their standing in the heavens. Baoyu's real ending is unknown, but it's not hard to guess that he becomes enlightened and goes back to being Shen Ying Shi Zhe-- which would match nicely with Cas's ending.

There's another version of Red Chamber (there are multiple versions-- again, remember, this is a work of metafiction, and this will come into play later) where he's considered to be one of the rocks Nuwa was going to use to patch a hole in the sky, but was discarded. We usually interpret this rock as the piece of jade Baoyu was born with, but I do want to point out this version, because Cas, given his performance in the later seasons, also fits this description.

Then there's Sam-- he contains shades of Baoyu (he marries someone after Dean dies, but he's never happy, which is what happens to Baoyu; this is foretold in a song Baoyu hears in Bo Ming Si), but I'm going to argue that he is Baochai. Who is Baochai? The other girl in the love triangle-- Baoyu loves Daiyu, but marries Baochai instead (this plays out differently here). What does she represent? She represents money (there's the gold radical in chai, and it's often said that her union with Baoyu is a marriage of gold and jade, and her family is exceedingly wealthy). She represents adherence to tradition. She and Daiyu are like "sisters" at one point, but that falls apart because Lady Wang hates Daiyu and wants Baochai as her daughter-in-law instead. And even though Baochai and Daiyu top the first volume of the beauties, they share a poem that foretells their fate; all the other women get their own poems. And what's Baochai's fate?

It's a one liner-- a gold hairpin (chai) buried in snow. I've seen all sorts of theories flying around that she's supposed to die in the snow, but honestly, I think the ending in the ghostwritten chapters is probably close to what was planned for her. She marries Baoyu, but he leaves to become a monk and she lives alone in the Jia family. In the ghostwritten ending, she also has a son. Her room at the Jia's mansion (she lives with them)? It's compared to a Snow Hole; she's a minimalist when it comes to interior decoration.

And let's look at Sam's ending. He basically lives in a shrine to the dead with his one son, and it's clear his marriage was short-lived (no pictures of the wife). His ending is a perfect match for Baochai's.

And then there's Jack. I compared Jack to Baoyu in the previous post, and again, if you look at the stories of Shen Ying Shi Zhe and the rock (especially when you consider that Jack was born to stop the apocalypse/make the world a better place), you can see the similarities. But he also represents other characters-- Daiyu and most likely Prince Beijing, who's the head of the four princes, or the old guard; those two characters are connected through Baoyu, which makes for a nice trio of characters.

How does Jack represent Daiyu? There's the way he's not entirely welcome in his own home (Lin Daiyu lives with the Jia family, and Lady Wang dislikes her immensely.) There's the way he dies in 14x08-- from what looks suspiciously like TB, just as Daiyu dies in all the TV adaptations and in the ghostwritten chapters. He changes identities after this death -- he becomes the prince.

Let's finally talk about Prince Beijing. He's young-- under twenty. The Jia family is close to him. He clearly plays a role in the power struggle-- if we're going off the real prince he's based on, then he should be in the faction against the dowager emperor, which means he's loyal to the emperor, but most analyses claim that he's not loyal to the emperor. One piece of evidence for the latter viewpoint: he attends Qin Keqing's funeral in full regalia, which is considered disrespectful, and hands Baoyu a bracelet of Jiling pearls that the king gave him to symbolize their brotherhood. That's-- not what you do with what the emperor gives you. It's just not done. (That being said, I can see the real prince getting away with that, because he was the real emperor's favorite brother.) Baoyu then hands Daiyu those pearls, and she throws them away. Later on, Baoyu will hand Daiyu the prince's straw coat and she tosses it away again. She doesn't accept anything from Beijing until she's forced to. We can interpret this as Daiyu disapproving of Baoyu's alliance with Beijing (and there are other interpretations that assert Beijing is responsible for marrying off to distant lands, but since the last forty chapters were never written...).

This fits Jack. He's TFW's only hope against Chuck, who is both the emperor and the dowager emperor in this story. Cas has faith in him, just like Baoyu likes Prince Beijing. Dean doesn't have faith in him, just as it's implied that Daiyu doesn't have much faith in the prince either. This is where the meta gets very interesting, because who is Chuck? The writers? The network? What does it mean if he's both the emperor and the dowager emperor? I'm going to talk about this next in a post on the meta structure of SPN and Red Chamber.

What I want to point out before I end this post is that it's very likely Dabb planned these very controversial endings for Dean, Cas, and Sam-- I doubt censorship had anything to do with it. SPN may have been a story about a fight between the writers and the network, or it may have been a Buddhist story, but either way, I'm pretty sure SPN ended exactly as Dabb meant it to end.