#i'm fascinated by lucifer and amara

[ananke-xiii]

There's a line from s11e20 "Don't call me Shurley" that got stuck into my little nogging and it's when Chuck tells Metatron "You were just the closest angel to the door when I walked into the room".

Now assuming that Chuck is a lying liar who lies I still like this line because it says way more about Chuck than about Metatron. Then Chuck goes on and delivers his cheap shot: "There's nothing special about you, Metatron. Not then… not now".

(Little aside: AND THEN Amara comes in a few episodes later and calls Metatron "The secretary"?! I mean, how can people not love her? Yes, she might have eaten a few souls so what? Sue her! He brother has eliminated WORLDS because Dean wouldn't bend the knee to him, who's the crazy sibling, huh? *insert a meta about Dean only willing to bend the knee to Cas in Purgatory and all the entendres intended*).

Anyway, for all his pettiness and shrewdness (Metatron is a great villain and I will die on this hill), Metatron replies with surprising grace:

"And I don't care if I was just the angel nearest the door. You picked me. Your light shined on me – Me! Oh, and the warmth. But then you left me. You left all of us."

My little fragile heart trembled a little to these words because... well, it's like the OG trauma, isn't it? To be chosen by your parents, to be loved unconditionally, to be somebody's favorite person... Oh, the warmth.

And so it hit me, I finally saw why I love SPN's angels so much. They are ALL (Cas included) a bunch of children screaming and kicking their feet because they want to be loved, thinking that if they follow their orders, if they fulfill their duties they will be loved.

They are all Lucifer minus the action and the mark.

These are Chuck's words to soothe Lucifer in "We Happy Few": I did. I was supposed to love all creation equally. I wasn’t supposed to have favorites. But you… You were mine. I gave you the Mark because I loved you the most, because I thought you were strong enough to bear it. And when I saw that I was wrong… When I watched my choice devour my most cherished son, I hated myself, and so I punished you. And I am so sorry."

Yes, Chuck is a lying liar who lies. Maybe he chose Lucifer because he was the one closest to the door. Who knows? Chuck doesn't care. Every angel's deepest desire is to be loved by God, to be the chosen one, to be his favorite. Which is both sad and... human? I guess it's a tragedy from the human perspective but maybe the human perspective is limited.

I don't really like the finale with Jack as God for a variety of reasons but, conceptually, the idea of a half-angel and half-human (Kelly Kline you will NOT be forgotten) becoming god is not that bad (Hello Jesus!). Especially if the half-angel part is theoretically (well in pratice too but I mean biology what amirite?)Lucifer's. Because, as Sam says in "We Happy Few": I-I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this, but… um. Lucifer is right.

At the end of the day, SPN as a narrative, did, in a very convoluted and maybe unintentional way, agree with Lucifer.

Like, Lucifer was right. And I know that if we put on our morality glasses Lucifer is evil incarnate etc but honestly? By the same lensens, the whole heavenly host is kinda evil. They ALL (Cas included) did a lot of pretty horrible stuff. All the horror and the pain for a God that doesn't care.

So I guess what should have been explored in Dabb's era was not so much nurture vs nature but more "what does it mean to be half-angel?" 'Cause really, ALL angels are a little bit like Lucifer. And if no angel really represents "good" what are we, humans, left with? Does the question "nurture vs nature" even make sense?

There's really nothing SPECIAL about any of us, humans, angels, demons, monsters. We ALL want to just be chosen and loved unconditionally. It turns out angels are not that different from humans, aren't they?

[13x02]

Picking your brain about Jack stuff (1 of 2)!

Thoughts on the little girl in the Occultum re:Jack regaining his soul? I've been so fascinated by her. First, she reminds me a little bit of young Kelly when Jack first visits Kelly in Heaven.

(Kelly in Byzantium)

But overall, she's something that niggles me and I can't quite pin down. She chirpily tells Jack, "Oh, you must not be human. Humans cannot enter here," and then she asks, "Are you an angel?" She seems so excited!

Since the Occultum houses the Garden, the obvious answer could be something symbolic of Eve as the snake that appears is symbolic of Lucifer. But her words to Jack seem to imply she's not human, so she's not a perfect fit for a human Eve.

(My immediate thought was of an entity called Chokmah/Hokmah, who sometimes gets reimagined as an ancient mother-goddess but more appropriately translates to a personification of wisdom, or Lady Wisdom. Peter Penchansky even argues for Hokmah as God's daughter who played in the garden as Yahweh created the world.)

(The Girl from Destiny's Child, hidden away in the safest place in the world)

On the other hand, she also looks a bit like the primordial Leviathan!Eve in manner of her dress, so perhaps she is meant to be another Eve. A different symbolic Eve, as well as a callback to Kelly.

(Primordial Eve and the sacrifice she inhabited)

///

She also could be something of an off-key parallel to the growing Amara and Lillith?

(Amara & Lillith in her original incarnation)

///

But I'm not sure. Do you favor any of these? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Here's the script in which she appears. :-)

i truly love the interpretation of that little girl being chokmah, especially with the whole thing being that questioning is what kicked humanity out of the garden.

i have a lot of thoughts about angels and humans, especially with all of what lucifer says throughout show. even the simple lines between lucifer and michael in swan song get to me in some way. the angels, as we see, are programmed to follow a set of orders that god (chuck) had given out a long time ago. several angels throughout the series break free of these orders and gain the idea of free will.

i think if this little girl truly is representing chokmah, her looking like a younger eve was also intentional. eve ate the apple. lucifer let the snake in. gadreel trusted lucifer. etc etc.

maybe in a way she decided to appear in that form to jack because angels and humans intermingling? not really seen. nephilim are always killed and while every angel says it's for their power, i do think there's another factor.

it's the fact that nephilim being human and angel means they cannot be programmed to fully follow the command of heaven. they can't become a weapon of god so he tossed them all aside. the angels are meant to follow orders and whenever an angel does rebel it.. goes so poorly for them

lucifer is stuck in the cage for. ages. anna has a Lot going on and ends up killed for what she does. castiel is never actually happy and the minute he is happy he dies. michael loses the One human who changed his outlook on everything.

i gotta answer your second ask still but my whole point maybe she's happy seeing an angel in jack because maybe jack is the one angel she knows who Could rebel and still be happy after (we're ignoring the finale).

[shallowseeker]

I watched s13 for the first time this past summer and these Lucifer metas are super fascinating to me. As I was watching I was very much the opinion that Lucifer only wanted a "relationship" with Jack because of how powerful Jack was and how Lucifer could use him for his own goals (whatever those may have been), with maybe a bit of spite towards God/Chuck of "I'm better because I won't be a deadbeat dad" if that makes sense? I'll admit that post Kripke era Lucifer has always been hard for me to really understand, so these metas on Lucifer (and Jack!) are super interesting to me!

Ah, yes. For me, I get the most mileage out of how joyful Lucifer seems to be of use in the war against Amara. He was so happy, so in his element, you know? He had Cas, a stable brother who "gray rock" tolerated him, so he wasn't alone. He even had Dean, Sam, Crowley, Rowena as "war companions." Pairing that with Rock Never Dies and Lucifer's resulting nihilism is delicious to me.

LUCIFER: I'm not especially interested in his opinion. Dear old dad, he finally apologized for abandoning me. And what's the very next thing he does? [Voice breaks] He ditches me. [Laughs] And you, too, by the way.

Don't you get it? This is all meaningless. Heaven, Hell, this world. If it ever meant anything, that moment is past. Nothing down here but a bunch of hopeless distraction addicts, so filled with emptiness, so desperate to fill up the void… they don't mind being served another stale rerun of a rerun of a rerun. You know what my plan is? I don't have one.

But post-Jack's conception? He doesn't "need" them anymore. It's like he's looking for Jack to fill his own void.

Lucifer's cognitive empathy is definitely on display in these seasons, but there's also...this childlike need to fix his core wound with such self-centered family-building, you know?

And I mean, so many many people find purpose in family-building (for example, Cas too found purpose in raising Jack), but Lucifer's world is so small and shallow. It's just interesting to me...

There are glimmers in 12x08 of what he wanted from God:

LUCIFER (in a speech): And yet, we need "our Father"...to...be there when we fall.

And after Jack is created, Lucifer focuses all of his energy on getting to Jack, on impressing Jack. He doesn't need them anymore—not the family of his childhood, or the family of his soldierhood. Jack represents a fresh start.

in 13x02, May says, noticing Lucifer's desperation to get to Jack:

LUCIFER: I’m gonna exchange you for my son. MARY: You can’t possibly care about raising a child. LUCIFER: Oh, you have no idea what I care about.

He cares to a degree that he wants Jack to pump himself up, I think. Power is a big part of it, but Jack is also a narcissistic supply, I think. It's when Jack rejects Lucifer that he goes after his power. But Lucifer wants Jack's locus of morality to be angelic. Humans are to angels as the hunted-monsters are to humans, so to speak.

And I can't seem to find the meta today, but even in INHERIT THE EARTH, Lucifer is STILL making a play for Jack to be "on the winning team" with himself and Chuck. Even after taking Jack's grace, he still seems to want to have him.

[zorelle]

Open letter to: @ilarual

Subject: secret good spn in my head on God, Amara, Castiel and Death

Hi! so I wanted to say.... I read this post and this other post that you made and I was screaming while reading them bc they contain a lot of what I've been thinking around my own mental secret good spn rewrite (I dont write Idk what Im gonna do with it but I feel the need to imagine it so, anyway) and I am in awe at how many simmilarities I share with you, like my thoughts are in a notebook and some post-its but there are a lot on the same issues with the same ideas and arriving at very much the same conclusions as what you posted but you actually wrote them coherently D: and I'm so excited and a little freaked out. But anyway I wanted to share some related stuff I had on my notes to see if they interest you.

This is, ok im so sorry I attacked you with this huge thing, this is a very long post, but I´m truly like truuuuly excited and I´ve been thinking all afternoon if I should talk to you if you´d be interested or annoyed and I decided to message you but couldn´t so im posting it. If nothing comes from this, just know I really loved your posts and theories and I´m... a fan. lol Ok.

So in my version of spn I know it would end with the same villain, like they would end up going against God. So I’m at the worldbuilding to make sense of first, how we get there, wanting to go against God and second, how to face literally GOD.

So as Ive thought of it is GOD/Chuck as an energy of influence and controlled/authored creation and S/the darkness/Amara as a representation of the entropy and balance in chaos/multiple possibilities. Gods would be the beginning, S would be the end. Both energies are necessary for a universe to exist, and gods are like the ones that mostly create and control, while "S/darknesses" come to be the chaos, points of equilibrium and endings of it. A universe then, is a conversation between energies and the media for that conversation to happen is like... the mathematics. The space/time fabric of a universe, In my head I name it the mathematics. Anyway.

So I'm thinking about "Chuck" as a God who becomes fascinated by stories. Who notices how stories are in microlevel almost the same exercise of creation as universes, but with imagination/ideas as the media, there's less input from chaos or chance, and so I think of a God that, as Lucifer puts it, is obsessed with humans, specifically bc he wants to replicate this curated way of creation, so he understands he no longer wants a conversation with other energies, he wants full creative control. But as he needs S to start and fuel some very necessary parts of the mathematics, he needs to trap that S energy on a liminal level that's both inside and outside of the universe. That’s how Amara gets trapped after they set and start this particular universe, we dont know for how long bc in my version of things the archangel encasing is a story by Chuck not as a programmer (like the videogames analogy you use) but as a writer, and writers lie. I have another thing about how Lucifer (as a couple other villains) is a character based on his own relationship with S/Amara.

What I´ve thought about God, concerning the loopholes where S can interfere is that he wakes her up when he inserts himself in the story, and that's his first mistake. In my version he takes hold of the original Chuck Shurley in Lucifer Rising and ok this is where our ideas diverge a little, he thinks he resurrects Cas along with entering his former prophet's body, bc he has been thinking about it like you said, like he was wondering if he should bring him back at any point, so when it turns out Cas is alive is like "huh guess I did it when I became Chuck" like he thought of that as his own glitch but in my reality, he wakes up the S and this yang energy is immediately up to date and understands this fallen angel is an oportunity, an agent of chaos needed to start taking control from God.

So in my take, S wakes up when Lucifer rises and God gets himself inside the mathematic as Chuck. S begins to crack the code on the universe created, and starts making glitches of freedom in the set characters the story has that either have a code peculiar enough to crack or write bugs in, or by the characters that are channels to her energy (or at some point served as a replacement of hers while she's been trapped and asleep/unable to move). Castiel would be the first case, an opening for a glitch to freedom, he would also be the first crack of the code and by having that little glitch inside he would eventually become a recognized creator of free will and something Chuck needs to eliminate. Death, on the other hand, would be the second case, a channel for that necessary entropy that as you put it, is not under God´s control, but is also not completely free.

So in my version that glitch stays with Cas but Death is also recognizing Gods influence and despotism, while also sensing Cas as a rogue element with an energy Death resonates with and senses inside him so he doesn't fix it he doesnt kill him he disobeys God, pays attention, lets the feeling grow and begins to understand. So ok this is what I wanted to share with you as a canon compliant idea: God decides to kill death and make this new rule to make a reaper the new death, so he can in his mind, reset the code, regain control and kill Cas for good, bc he feels something shifting too and wants to stop it before something concerning happens, but Death knows things at this point, one of the things he knows is he has to die there and so he goes to his own demise playing along with the two Winchester boys, as the only way allowed by this tainted universe mathematics to release the true S, like Lilith was the last seal to release Lucifer, is for Death to die, which gives the necessary world-crack to release Amara.

S/Amara on her part, has to play by the games in this story/universe and so to break the in-universe wall she has to also be in the mathematic, she clings to that baby and takes humanoid form and is named Amara. But since it's a double trap (the liminal space both inside and outside) she now can affect the in-universe but still cant escape it. She can only be free once that universe ends, and there are rules to that ending so thats the set up to make her a goddes villain dealing with human perception as soon as she´s out and then an ally that´s not as powerfull as God himself in the final fight. It also sets the logic on why Jack could definitely defy God and eventually overpower him, bc he contains enough of both energies and therefore is the promise both of a future and of an end.

[roublardise]

9 and 14 for the sapphicnatural ask game? 👀

thank you!! 😊

9. post or link me your favourite spn femslash creation made by you

ok so you're the one who's gonna have the real answer 👀 my ultimate fav femslash i've made is my mary/amara fic. i will promote it better for one sapphicnatural prompt, but i can never talk about it enough, so!

it's called amidst ashes and feathers, it's about mary getting back from the dead (again) and trying to know herself, and find a place where she can be herself. it's almost an all-women cast, the only exception being Jack making a quick appearance. it's about helping each others out, the long recovery time, and like... the spaces between alive & dead, human & monster, hurt & healed. the title is a phoenix reference bc the fire imagery is very mary, it's about the in-between but also about the way everything isn't even a clear line, it's a mess, it's everything at once.

it's 6.7k, and rated M for language, death, and suggestive lesbian sex.

14. favourite female character you wish we'd seen more of?

MEG!!! the more i work on vids with her the more i realize how little we've actually seen of her? yet she was sooo interesting. she's a strong dean mirror, and all in all meg, cas, and dean's stories are very similar! the way it's suggested Azazel was a father figure to her makes me go insane ☠️ i'm fascinated by their dynamic. literally i wrote some megstiel some time ago, and i ended up drawing parallels between the trio bc... it's right there. they're my everything.

back to Meg specifically, she could have done SO much more, and i wish we'd seen more of her dvpt. especially following Lucifer's fall, her being against Crowley etc. like she ended up being excluded from hell, with no place nowhere, when hell used to be HER HOME but it was still an unwelcoming home she knew that and wanted to get away from it but what can she do! anyway. i love thinking of her when she was alive in my head she ended up in hell bc she made a deal, sounds obvs to me bc of the Cas & Dean mirror of it all

also she should have met demon Bela

sapphicnatural ask

[rewatching-supernatural]

s11e10

what the fuck is going on

what the fuck

*****

Lucifer is such a cool character

Thanks for bringing him back even though it ruins the story

He's criticising Sam's daddy issues and bringing him back to one of his good(?) childhood memories

*****

When Dean learns Sam's back in the cage he's gonna be pissed

*****

Ah yes, Rowena's been seduced by the devil

I get it, look at Mark

*****

I'm a fan of Crowley's answering message

Dean's not okay

CAS!

Dean, accept the help for once

*****

Lucifer's so invested in these Sam memories 😂

*****

Dean's not happy

*****

Assbutt! 😂

Sam did have balls, he was bold and decisive

*****

Why do we always get these weird underneath shots of Cas?

Nothing weird, uh? it's the middle of the afternoon... and it's pitch dark

*****

The fucking password to Hell 😂

Ohhhh Billie the Reaper

*****

The worst thing Sam has ever done is give up on Dean when he went to Purgatory

that's LUCIFER's opinion

wow, Lucifer really is fascinating

and I fucking agree with Luci here, Sam has gone soft

he went 180° from "we gotta save the world, no matter what", to "i gotta protect Dean, no matter what" and that fucking ruined tbe dynamic

*****

Awwww don't say that, poor Castiel! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 you're not expendable love, you volunteered to go because Dean was dying, you're not expendable

*****

Ooh Amara sucked her, uhhh, angel grace? but more than that, she took everything

*****

Cas reeks of fear and self-loathing?? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

*****

so, Michael's singing tunes and jerking off?

that's what he's been doing this whole time?

*****

wow Sam, what a long speech

all to say "I'm not ready to be your bitch"

*****

Oh, Lucifer, Castiel, Sam and Dean, uh

that's a party

hahahaha love the choice of tune there, Luci

oh welp,

Lucifer left the chat

*****

Castiel isn't doing alright 😭

*****

HOLY SHIT

LUCIFER!CAS

or CAS!LUCIFER

oh my god

THIS IS AMAZING

storywise, I mean

not for Cas of course

HE KILLED ROWENA

that's fucking awesome

thank you Lucifer, my bro

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hi. Since you are famous for analysing SPN/ Meta writing, I wanted to ask you, if you ever felt like the spark went missing because you approached the show from an analytical/objective standpoint/view or rather the opposite, because you started to appreciate the details behind the bis picture more? Cuz I'm scared that an analysis of anything I like will make the special feeling go away & make it seem rationally boring.

Hiii! :) I love the idea I’m “famous” for anything, but thanks :’D

I definitely feel like this is something a lot of people are concerned with especially when complaining about doing Literature classes at school, where they’re made to pull apart a book and find it very dull... I think for me it’s always been, that only sucks if you actually find the book boring, and if you’re interested, getting more of an explanation or suggestions on how to read it actually opens it up in a really interesting way. As someone who ended up doing Literature and analysis all the way to university level I have a habit of consuming all media like that. Another way that’s more popular for this has been TV Tropes but this has also lead to people making up “cinema sins” etc and other ways of complaining that a movie has tropes in it. Which is very much like complaining that a house is made of bricks. Once again, it’s really meant to be a method for understanding and not one for turning anything into deconstructed meaningless chunks. 

I do think in SPN’s case it can be pretty tropey so there’s things I’ve felt a lot of resistance to and one of those would be the fact that the show has had like 3 antichrist and multiple evil magic baby figures, and the Son of Satan is a particularly well-worn horror trope and it didn’t help I’d seen multiple movies with that kid in, AND grown up adoring Good Omens which was a wild subversion of the whole thing (now streaming on Amazon Prime, go watch :P). 

So when Jack was conceived, literally and figuratively, into the show, I was full eye roll and deeply deeply distrustful and bored specifically based on the trope and the well-worn paths that this trope can go down, and that was very much a resistance to the story based on over-analysis and fatigue with the show’s handling of such things under Buckleming and their frankly disturbing obsession with the trope. 

But being me I withheld judgement on the giant naked manbaby for the hiatus, and was determined to go into season 13 with an open mind, and of course Dabb got first shot at Jack, not Buckleming, and as a result he made Jack instantly compelling and the overall season story of Jack was fascinating, especially in the ways he was used for the other main characters’ stories... He even is still doing it in season 14 like winning Auntie Rowena over. Those are new and fresh tropes to apply to the old character type, in the same way that back when I first read Good Omens I’d never seen anything like it. But I had definitely taken over-analysis to the point that the last part of season 12 was pretty much a bunch of grimacing in horror that they were really going to go there... 

Even though I knew the show has a habit of subverting things and there was a pretty much 0 chance it would have been done straight up Rosemary’s Baby, the potential for it to be twee, gross, cringey, or wildly off the mark in some other way was all laid out, and the fact it was a white male baby, Lucifer was turned into such a godawful character, and they’d already done similar with Amara in just a previous season or so all really made very very rocky territory to navigate through. 

For sure, Alex and his acting nuance saved Jack in the initial episodes as much as the writing. And over-analysing THAT as I watched helped me to immediately start to root for the kid and fall in love with him by the nougat line, exactly as I was supposed to, because that was Dabb telling us to relax and go along with him. 13x01 was a trust-building exercise, which is why it was so slow on the action and finely tuned emotionally. Being able to instantly recognise HOW the writer wanted to twist my heartstrings didn’t make me feel manipulated - it actually made me more trusting and easy about the story I was being told, because I could see that he and I understood things on the same level and I knew why he was writing what he was, and that a lot of the writing choices, such as the comedy beats in between the angst, were very much about trying to take our hand and lead us through. Having an instinctive layer of media analysis running through my veins as I watched was deeply soothing :P 

...

On the other hand it does mean that for something I’m heavily invested in like SPN, by this point I need 100% brain capacity to absorb it, and I KNOW that my normal magic power of remembering everything I watch failed me on SPN before because I lost almost all memory of watching season 7 & 8 as they aired to a similar patch of bad health as this one, so struggling to get to the end of season 14 is a mountainous task because I’m catching 5 minute glimpses of the episodes before the effort of understanding 14 seasons of storytelling all in one go completely overwhelms me and gives me a blinding migraine as if I’d tried to do complicated maths equations >.> There’s only TWICE the amount of canon as the last time I was flailing around this badly at watching stuff. But that’s all just me personally... Unless you also have chronic fatigue and migraines I don’t think analysis will actually physically harm you :’D

[fractalobsessed]

@ramseynatural's tags

hm, i know this post is kinda old now and this gets at a new conversation but i am very curious about what you're saying here! replacements rather than mirrors. like,,,are we talking about dean as amara replacement because he too represents destruction? because what fascinates me about that is that,,,chuck made him that way. chuck basically defined dean as "the ultimate killer" and dean is chuck's favorite. it's actually a lot like how he made lucifer, his first favorite, into such a destructive force. idk what i'm getting at exactly but something something chuck has always been / favored destruction is kinda 👀

thinking about which of john's sons is his "favorite" (in any capacity) i think necessitates expanding to ask which of chuck's sons (the archangels) is his "favorite" like,,, in this show, the parallels run too deep, are too reflective.

i do see what people mean when they say that sam is more like john than dean is, as counterintuitive as that is at the surface. sam is the kind of person john would (in any other circumstances) be proud to call his son, but dean parrots john so thoroughly he's exactly the kind of person john needs in the circumstances.

but sam and dean are lucifer and michael, and chuck is john. chuck's "favorite" sons, i think, really are lucifer and gabriel. lucifer -- the creator who wants his own story, his own satisfaction. gabriel -- the creator who desperately wants out. it's impossible to not see the similarities. michael and raphael, in contrast, don't make their own narratives, don't create. they're tools that chuck needs, obedient soldiers, "good" sons.

there's something to be said here about recognition of the self in the other. yes chuck and john need the "good" sons who parrot them and do as they're told (michael and dean) but it's their other sons, the sons who break out and forge their own paths (lucifer and sam) that remind chuck and john so much of themselves, of what they value,,,like, beyond necessity, value as ideals.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I'm behind on meta so please feel free to ignore this if it's been already talked about, but I thought it was interesting how - as weird or sort of unusual that fight scene was with dean and the demon, or at least i don't recall anything like it - by making it look sexual and obviously violent, it kinda parallelled Mary's struggle with that asshole hunter. What weirds me out is that it puts Sam & Lucifer in the same role of saviour which is never good, but maybe they just wanted to connect them

like that bc they both want a connection w/ Jack, maybe even see themselves in Jack, who knows lucifer;s side, since they were unable to provide dialogue 4 him besides repeating how Mary is weak bc she gets tired & is all humany and they need to get out and he might need her. ANYWAY, shitty writing aside, do u think it was a parallel and if so what are they trying to say? Was it to show that maybe Sam’s intentions aren’t the purest either, not in an evil way but like bc he’s so intent on gettingMary back that he might be blind - for different reasons than Dean - to Jack as a person? He’s trying so hard & almost doesn’t even entertain the thought that Jack might be corrupted by his power at some point, or by Hell which we see almost happens bc of lack of info. Sam seems to hold on to as much hope as he can, while Dean is at the opposite end of the spectrum (hmm I wonder who could balance it out?). But what do you think of Sam having been weirdly aligned w/ Hell like, he even unwittinglygave the info to Amodeous about how powerful Jack is, while Dean, without even trying, seems to be Jack’s role model for Good (& I love how Jack has a Dean decoder built in) and he even throws him a Bible to read (which, if presented without commentary can be risky, he’s better off reading the Supernatural books, but still, it’s the Holy Book).

Hi! What an ask :D Also I am ALSO so behind on meta so I’m just going to answer this like it’s all new to us, sorry everyone who has already been over this, me and anon are going through this together ;)

To go through chronologically because I’m super tired so I need to break this down…

Yeah, awesome weird fight scene. I loved it - Tink said something about them having a new fight coordinator? There’s been 2 incredible fights back to back for Dean so far and I’m loving it. This one was great I think with the director as well - I feel like he of all of them takes liberties with BL scripts and puts in extra nuance and missing implications that their writing didn’t pick up… He’s 99% responsible for the crypt scenes for example, and in 11x21 included ALL the nuance that made the longing retcon magic happen between Amara, Cas and Dean, just by visual implications. He also super digs the prison imagery and bunker porn and generally using the locations really well… I don’t know much about all the different directors but I’ve learned that seeing his name means it’s time to get excited and nerdy about what I’m going to SEE :D

So yeah, good combo. It made a great parallel with Mary’s fight which I liked first of all just for the Mary and Dean paralleling, especially as she needs connections back to the main storyline just for asserting she still exists, because as you say it was pretty bad writing especially around Mary in that episode, where she just dragged herself around after Lucifer and needed saving. Putting Dean in a parallel situation somewhat defuses it in overall handling of the nonsense, even if I don’t like that it was written this way in the first place. I have still not had time to explore my dash much but I hope people have been making posts about the parallels to female fight scenes, especially Black Widow in the marvel movies… In my notes I just commented he was straddling people to death and left it at that (even though that obviously wasn’t what he was doing - it was a shorthand for the fight style :P) but really it also mirrored 10x15 and Dean in that weirdly charged scenario with whatisface, where he got straddled and had the worm coming out Cole’s throat while leaning over him etc and it put Dean in a very submissive role to all that. In the same way, having Dean fight back by getting his legs around the guy and ending the fight literally *cowering* on a bed with the demon standing over him with the phallic knife, was a fascinating staging of power dynamics where he actually looked more vulnerable than Mary did.

I think Lucifer nice guy’d it - he said he needed Mary and when she wouldn’t go along with him, immediately started whining more and hurt Mary just to make her complacent and remind her that he was still in charge and more powerful than her. Sam of course has no such dynamic with Dean, but I think overall he’s going to be more assertive this season and carrying on - according to the PR - with having more of a leadership role in the dynamic. He’s definitely making the better choices right now while Dean urgently needs a personal day or six. So I think first and foremost it’s a compare and contrast rather than a direct parallel. There’s a great gifset I reblogged somewhere or other about Lucifer in 12x23 saying hurr blurr I can’t raise my son from a prison cell, and then Sam in the cell with Jack just captioned “HOLD MY BEER”, and Sam currently is the only positive father figure - and actually the ONLY father figure *on the board* for Jack, since the pool is Cas - dead, Lucifer - in the AU, Dean - not interested right now… Meaning Jack is pretty much Sam’s sole responsibility and the Lucifer vs Sam stuff may be being played as an oppositional thing. So Lucifer being a dick to Mary after saving her but doing it conditionally and in an attempt to make her go along with him (and that he only wants her to trade for Jack anyway) vs Sam just saving Dean because they love and trust each other already forevers and there being no terms and conditions except for not wanting his brother dead for well duh reasons is… nice. 

But yeah it does also put Sam in a weird place where he’s being paralleled to Lucifer in any way and he has that long history with him. And I think by and large this is supposed to be positive for Sam and all but I agree with you that Sam can and maybe will fuck it up, and being oblivious to the dangers is the main way. In the “Donatello” conversation he doesn’t notice that Donatello switched from “Jack’s nature wins” to “let’s try moulding him” which was Asmodeus’s idea (and Sam’s) - but because Asmodeus was AGREEING with Sam and Sam was assuming he meant for the better, then he didn’t notice that Donatello was suddenly agreeing with him.

I think it’s pretty inevitable Jack’s going to have some sort of wobble - we’ve seen Lucifer is a tiny bit in his head even if he already picked Cas as his father and it’s clear he has a good heart, Asmodeus showed how easily some trickery and the path of good intentions can open a portal to hell (aww season 4 Sam) and that is something Sam himself has to deal with and his his hugest character thing overall - his arc led to that, and then on the other side of it has been about repenting for it and feeling awful that this was what he was basically raised to do >.> He should hopefully be a good influence on Jack to guide him away from repeating his mistakes but only if he can see the problem in the first place.

(Also yeah I love Sam and I’m excited and positive for his relationship with Jack but like you I think we do need to think about the problems, Sam’s lack of experience, this being a complicated time for him to take charge of a thing when historically almost every time he has been in a position of responsibility or strength he’s fucked it up when handling things himself, or else gone down some really dark paths… I think he CAN help Jack and ultimately WILL but that doesn’t mean it might not be rough along the way and I think people need to be prepared for that if they’re getting invested in it… Maybe even more so than the people who want Dean to be good with Jack and are getting upset about how hard it is because in a way that is a much more obvious problem and we were warned about it from the start, while Sam and Jack seems like such a good and pure thing it might be easy to let your guard down that the show can easily insert trouble and darkness into it…)

I wonder if there will be some tension to come between Sam and Dean about Jack kinda latching onto Dean though? Because I’ve wondered before that he is the moral centre of the show and Jack was mimicking him because he’s sort of needing Dean’s approval too, not just in a survival way but because Dean is so SURE of what is right, so being like Dean is default being right. (I think Sam has said something similar in 3x07 about always following Dean around trying to be like him when he was young? In that “i know when you’re scared” argument) And of course Dean being so sure of what is right and Jack not meeting that standard by default has been a massive part of why Jack levelled up in Winchester self-doubt and self-hatred in just a few days. Took less than a week to ruin him and Dean’s standards are probably a large part of it >.> So yeah, I hope Sam understands all the nuance of why Jack might have been mimicking/idolising Dean when Sam is the one trying to be the positive role model to Jack, just because he knows the force of Dean’s personality. I hope he doesn’t take it as a bad reflection on himself, ESPECIALLY if/when Jack fucks up as I feel will inevitably happen. 

I think it does sort of reflect Sam and Dean’s long-standing alignments though… I just remember the season 6 poster where Sam has the snake and Dean has a literal freakin’ halo because subtlety? What is that? :P