#if you're curious it's the 'weird rewatching' tag - sort if by chrono/page 2 and start from the start XD

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey 😊 What are your thoughts on not!Lucille being included in 12x15? I feel like I'm the only one (unpopular opinion coming) but I hated the way they did it? The fact that Dean ENJOYED using the bat (or at least seemed to), and was looking at it/handling it with REVERENCE creeped me out? It just drew parallels with Negan that I didn't want drawn? I mean I get that it's JDM, but Dean should never be paralleled with Negan 😭😭, it betrays who he is as a character just to get a cool reference in😭

Heya! Funnily enough I ended up in the same place, kind of. At least, being totally horrified by it, after I had a very good laugh on first impressions. I don’t think they shouldn’t have done it though because it was a great joke on first impression and then the fridge horror of it all actually works really well for me thematically with exactly what was going on in that scene ANYWAY so it was actually an incredibly clever and layered joke that I think happened to just fit in with something they were trying to tell anyway.

I actually talked out everything I had to say about it in my watching notes, so I hope you don’t mind me C&P-ing them to save time, after I already C&P’d a conversation with @mittensmorgul to save time on writing these, so really this is incredibly incredibly lazy :D Laziness squared.

Pfft some extras from the Walking Dead wander into the Bunker making obvious pop culture references. Do we even analyse that mention of Dad or do we just laugh hysterically and move on?

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Wait so that time when they seemed to have it on set they weren’t just fucking around with the baseball bat because they felt like making one but it was actually going to be in an episode oh my god

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I wonder if Mary has been watching The Walking Dead or if she hasn’t had time.

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Being distracted by Mittens:

elizabethrobertajonesWait - Sam is clean… is this meta or are we still in the pop culture reference?

mittensmorgulThe things on Dean, “ghoul, wraith, siren.”

elizabethrobertajonesyeahThey fought a SIRENWHAT HAPPENI want to know everything

mittensmorgulI DON’T KNOW?!

elizabethrobertajonesI bet if it was “back to back to back” they didn’t have time for it to be complicated

mittensmorgulI mean, DEAN fought the siren, Sam is completely clean

elizabethrobertajonesWHY IS SAM CLEAN

mittensmorgulAnd Dean’s been wearing his underpants for four daysPeople are screaming OOC

elizabethrobertajonesoh god

mittensmorgulI have no idea

elizabethrobertajonesAhahahahah  "Frodo"

mittensmorgulSort of reminded me of how he looked after he killed the stynes

elizabethrobertajonesIs that a thing

mittensmorgul:D

elizabethrobertajonesmaybe they intentionally USE those code namesmaybe Mary talked to Samwait if Mick is telling Sam where to gohas he given them “back to back to back”

mittensmorgulyes…

elizabethrobertajonesand Dean did all the killingand Sam was cleanOkay THERE’S the symbolism I was looking for :P

mittensmorguldo go on…:D

elizabethrobertajonesI am literally paused just at “Frodo” and his missing campers message so idk what happens nextbut yeah :PDean’s being used as the weapon here and Sam’s coordinatingAka trying to turn him into Ketchor Mark!DeanSam doesn’t have any blood on his hands for these huntsand they’re coming too fast for Dean to process them and work out shades of grey….

mittensmorgulYep

elizabethrobertajoneswhich means the Negan thing is probably a reference to how bloody it has all beenand not just a joke >.>

mittensmorgulnope

elizabethrobertajonesthey’re trying to turn him back into a bloody single minded hunter like Johnthis is awfulI LAUGHEDnow I feel horrible about it all :P

elizabethrobertajonesAlso Dean not being a germ freak about it all is probably a bad sign >.>

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elizabethrobertajonesOh no Sam lyingepically

mittensmorgulyep

elizabethrobertajonesreminds me of 8x01 when he tells Dean how he found Kevinbut he actually did thatDean like Purgatory DeanWait fuck that baseball bat is his purgatory weapon*slides under the table* Go away NeganThis is worse than the Eliot Ness thing

To clarify that last reference, it’s when they get to the uni campus and Sam explains in great detail how he tracked Kevin via his IP address and router and stuff, while Dean sits there unimpressed eating his first burger back from Purgatory. Despite actually being shown as the better HACKER (thanks, “Strictly into Dick” moment) Sam’s got a broader computer knowledge while Dean seems to have just intuitively picked up the software Frank and Charlie taught him better than Sam, probably because Dean learns the tools of the trade while Sam is, really broadly, more aligned with lore and research (this is a gross oversimplification for both but all these moments play into it) 

I think it was also that Dean forgot computers while he was in Purgatory and had to sort of re-learn being in the modern world and showing him not following computer babble was a good way to show how his mind was working right then… he re-learns it off-screen and within a few episodes was perfectly competent again. Dean making silly comments about computers only being good for monsters and porn also echoes that sentiment while he’s in a sort of over-hunted exhaustion because I think the point was to show him in a very particular state where all the Dean danger signs are flaring up, from not being precious about keeping his home tidy and initially rejecting the shower, to almost… tempting him with the high of killing monsters endlessly, and making him channel the darker part of himself that gets involved in killing. The attack dog imagery wasn’t spelled out for once, but Sam being completely clean showed the imbalance even before we see he’s getting all the cases…

Anyway Dean channelling Negan is awful and I haven’t even seen TWD but the meta links are brilliant even with a casual outside eye on what’s going on there, because the shadow of John is over everything all the time, and Negan is like… a worst case scenario or something, a way to really explore the idea of John as the boogeyman he is in the narrative because there’s a fresh reminder out there of Negan being like… a pop culture renowned worst villain ever contender because he’s really horrifying people and making big pop culture waves as far as I can tell sitting over here really not caring what JDM or TWD are up to and hearing all about it from multiple sources anyway :P I was wondering if they’d sneak a reference in but that was extremely blatant. It would be for someone who’s actually watched TWD to comment in-depth, but anyway linking John and Negan in the narrative is CLEARLY pulling pop culture strings to make a point, and one that works in the story… 

Not to say John was that bad, but to remind us that he was a dark, ruthless hunter, for example in 2x03 he was compared to Gordon, and we’ve always known he was falling out with mainstream hunters, and clearly with a black and white revenge-y approach to monsters that would fit well with the BMoL’s goals. He instilled “saving people, hunting things” in Dean (who passed it onto Sam) but 1x01 and 1x02 are a lot about taking up the mantle of that job because John’s moved on, abandoning everything to do with working regular cases and saving people, to work on the revenge mission. It’s clear that Dean especially in season 1 and both of them in general are much more focused on saving people, and Sam in 1x22 has his huge moment at the end of picking family over revenge, after which in 2x02 he clearly gets onto the same path Dean was on in 1x02 of focusing on the job and saving people… Anyway that’s all in contrast of what we learn about John while he’s around, which is mostly that he’s running around doing plot stuff and throwing cases their way to deal with, and not behaving as a regular hunter who’d work those cases himself. He’s on a quest to get revenge where that darkness has consumed him, and we see all season through Sam, what that means with the danger it could consume him too, until Sam rejects it at the last moment. But in many cases revenge makes Sam reckless and impatient and he leaves or argues with Dean about why they’re following orders and working regular cases, so if you parallel them together, you see through Sam that John had no interest in “saving people hunting things” any more, and that it had probably only been something he did on the side to his revenge mission anyway, emotionally. Like, he starts the family business, but out of necessity, while his sons are raised in it and as a life, changing the way they relate to saving people…

Sorry, this is really rambly but I get the feeling no one ever reads my long rewatches where I write very long essays about this sort of thing, so I’m trying to summarise in a few paragraphs something I’ve written like maybe 100k words on at least after wandering through season 1 and 2 getting really invested in the early Winchester family drama :P

Anyway! tl;dr John is still haunting them, especially when Dean is in a bad way, ESPECIALLY when he’s being made to prioritise “hunting things” over “saving people” because there’s a REALLY fragile balance and Dean only functions well when he’s over on the “saving people” side, and if he’s not, angst follows :P Even just being made to hunt monsters non-stop immediately wears down on Dean’s humanity, and so you get a parallel like this, and to Purgatory, Mark!Dean, and generally showing all sorts of the good parts of Dean stripped away. >.> I think it’s a warning we should be WORRIED about Dean, NOT a direct comparison between Dean and Negan, especially as he makes the comparison himself between John and not!Lucile, and therefore the parallel is between John and Negan, and Dean’s just caught up in that as an incidental part of his characterisation, but probably isn’t going to go around braining people willy nilly.