#obviously there's the azazel-as-samuel kissing mary

[charlottenewtons]

Gothic incest: Gender, sexuality and transgression by Jenny DiPlacidi // Supernatural - 4.03 In the Beginning

[incesthemes]

this is such an interesting little tidbit of information. obviously azazel wasn't possessing john at the time he fed sam his blood and JDM was only acting as a stand-in, but from a meta perspective i think it's interesting that sam is again victimized by his family. the incestuous kiss between mary and azazel (samuel) that sealed sam's fate leads to an incestuous exchange of fluids between sam and azazel (john). azazel exploits the family ties of the winchesters like psychological warfare, always blurring the lines between familial and sexual: compare azazel possessing john in devil's trap and using his body to harm dean, everything he says laced with a sexual undertone. again and again, azazel acts in a way that destroys boundaries in irreparable ways and in the end creates the conditions under which the winchesters develop their incestuous relationships with each other.

so yeah great casting choice there. fucked up from day one 💖

[twochildreninamoteldemo]

Hi Maven!! Same q to everyone this week: what are your top 3 wincest episodes, and why?

ok im gonna cheat and do this in 2 ways hehe

a) top 3 sam/dean episodes

3. A Very Supernatural Christmas: has the samulet (their engagement ring, obviously!), you can palpably feel the isolation, the neglect, it's very two-children-in-a-motel-esque. and of course, the final scene, where i think, if there was any point in the series aside from the barn scene in which they would have said "i love you," it would have been there. the deep long stare, the watery eyes, the fact that they both know dean will be gone within the year, and then... "do you feel like watching the game?" ahhhhhhh drives me nuts

2. Swan Song: their love literally!!!!! saves the world, i mean come on. it has the whole wincest montage that you could literally set a richard siken poem to, or a taylor swift song to (look i know those are vastly different things but. bear with me), and it would just feel right. dean finally lets sam do things on his own. he lives because sam tells him to. sam manages to revoke his possession consent because of how much he's in love with dean, even as his fist is smashing dean's face into a pulp. ok i have to stop or i'm going to start crying in this goddamn airport.

Playthings: obviously. gothic horror episode of all time. picture-perfect family in the outside, secret sibling hidden upstairs. the way sam and dean's codependency is paired with that of the grandmother and her ghostly sister. the face-stroking. the almost kiss. god i swear it always looks like they're gonna kiss. sam writhing on the bed. dean staring at him like that. the subtext was about to bust through the screen, what with the acting and the way the plot and the meta-plot fit together perfectly. catherine tosenberger said it much better than i can, go read her article in TWC about wincest if you haven't!

b) top 3 family-horror-what-the-incestuous-freudian-fuck-is-going-on-here episodes

2. Devil's Trap: azazel uses john's body in a sexual manner against both sam and dean--primarily the latter but sam gets it, too. it's a chilling scene and really cements that this is what spn is about: never being able to escape the family. sam learns partly of azazel's plot, dean gets his daddy issues flayed onto him, and all through the eyes of the father. it's so well done.

3. Skin: imo the most damning thing the shifter says is, "i will be sorry to lose this skin. your brother's got a lot of great qualities. you should appreciate him more than you do." uh...what? the way he ties up sam and plans on torturing him also aligns with the shifter's pattern of turning into the husband and beating up the wife. another HMM moment actually comes from dean himself, when he tells sam that none of his friends will ever understand him and that dean's the only one who can...it's very isolating, kind of abuser tactics, and just. whew. this was episode SIX!!

In the Beginning: come on you knew i was gonna say this. aside from the obvious moments of "mom is a babe" (and remember, dean invokes sam into this moment as well..."sammy, wherever you are..."), samuel!azazel leaning over dean and smelling him, and samuel!azazel kissing mary--passionately returned(?), may i add, the plot itself sets up the winchester family as this enclosed, inbred unit. mary's kiss with her possessed father seal's sam's fate as part of azazel's army. the sexuality she shares with her father makes her son's blood diseased and cursed. the family line is tainted by incest. her kiss is what allows sam and dean to grow up that way, to become so codependent, what allows the moments of avsc, swan song, and playthings to happen! in the beginning. this begins the cycle of selling and saving souls--mary for john, john for dean, dean for sam. it's literally THEE spn episode, perhaps even more than playthings. even though sam's barely in it, his fate hangs over the whole episode, and this is full house of wincest at its finest.

[mittensmorgul]

6.10: The things we do out of personal greed and grief in the name of family...

mittensmorgul: 6.10... I also feel like we've recently discussed this one to death... elizabethrobertajones: and yet Mary still has no idea baout Samuel :P mittensmorgul: I know... I REALLY need Dean to tell her. I think if anything is gonna convey the horror of what she's done to her, it'll be knowing what Samuel did in s6 all in the name of bringing her back... He was willing to murder her children to bring her back. Because in a metaphorical way, even if she doesn't get it on this level, that's sort of what she's been doing too... not "murdering" Sam and Dean, but sacrificing the people they actually are in the name of metaphorically resurrecting the little boys she lost.

Meanwhile, Sam and Dean:

They get it. They really do. But it’s just not real.

And that’s the biggest parallel between s6 and s12 here, but there are others:

Crowley torturing himself, or at least the Alpha Shapeshifter who’s taken his form. But he’s at least a few steps ahead. He’s done some research, but he’s not quite ten steps ahead, because he ends up killing the alpha anyway without getting the info he wanted on Purgatory.

Heck, I forgot there was a rugaru in this episode. Sam and Dean have captured one alive and brought it in for questioning by Crowley’s demons.

And here’s one place where Sam’s lack of human empathy actually HELPS instead of hurts them:

SAM: Look at her, Dean. She’s furious. If she could kill you, she’d’ve done it by now. She’s running. MEG: Am I? SAM: Judging by the level of flop sweat on all of you, yeah. Which means you’re running from Crowley. Which makes sense. Crowley would want to hunt down all the Lucifer loyalists now that he’s the big man on campus. MEG: How would you know? SAM: It’s what I’d do. [to Dean] She can’t kill us. She needs us to get her to Crowley so she can stick that knife in his neck. It’s him or her. DEAN: Well, I hope you both lose. But good luck.

Sam calls on Cas, luring him in with the lie that they have another Heavenly Weapon, and then threatens and guilts Cas into helping him...

They all break into Samuel’s office to hunt down Crowley’s location, pleading with Samuel to help them, because they’re working on getting Sam’s soul back. HIS GRANDSON’S SOUL. But Samuel refuses, explaining that he can’t betray Crowley because he’s been promised that Mary will be returned to him in exchange for working for Crowley.

DEAN: I’m saying, stop trying. It’s gonna go nowhere good. Samuel, I know we’ve had our differences, but I’m your grandson and I’m telling you that this is wrong for so many reasons. SAMUEL: You hypocrite! DEAN: I’m asking you to learn from our mistakes! Doing this, this is how the bad guy gets us every time. It’s our Achilles' heel. Apparently it runs in the family. We will figure something else out. Okay? SAMUEL: I’m sorry Dean, but I – DEAN: Fine. Bring her back. But what are you gonna tell her? You gonna tell her you made a deal with a demon? That you wouldn’t help out her sons?

(and by the end of the episode, after Samuel actively tries to KILL Mary’s sons by feeding them to a ghoul, that really is the end of the line for whatever family loyalty they ever could’ve felt toward Samuel)

(I feel like we’ve discussed the Cas Watching Porn scene from here to the ends of the earth, so...)

Meanwhile Samuel shows up with the location of Crowley’s monster prison, but it turns out to be a trap...

Cas expresses doubts to Dean about what sort of state Sam’s soul might be in if they try to retrieve it now. It sounds horrifying, but Sam unfortunately overhears him...

Cas is such a Debbie Downer here... just more of the regrettable things required of him while he’s at war.

Inside the monster prison, Dean sees the djinn waitress from 6.01, and she’s in chains and begging for his help. Dean’s considering helping her when suddenly the prison guards shows up, aka Hellhounds.

Meg kisses Cas just to pickpocket his angel blade, and Dean looks on perplexed when Cas kisses her back... (again, talked this to death and back at least twice now)

*Samuel blasts Cas away with a weirdo angel banishing sigil*

The fact this sigil is DIFFERENT than any other we’ve ever seen makes me wonder if its effects were different, as well. Because we don’t know it yet, but Crowley and Cas were already working together at this point...

But here we have the BIG “What is Family” talk between Samuel and Dean”

SAMUEL: I just want you to understand. DEAN: Oh, I understand… that you’re a liar. You talk about putting blood first, which is funny ’cause you sound just like my dad. The difference is, he actually did. SAMUEL: I am putting blood first. DEAN: Oh, gimme a break! SAMUEL: Mary’s my blood! My daughter! Don’t come at me like I sold you out, Dean. You sold out your own mother. It was her or Sam, and you chose Sam, plain and simple. DEAN: Oh, that is such crap! You wanna know what really happened? You chose a demon over your own grandsons! SAMUEL: See it how you want. I don’t even know what Sam is. And you want me to protect him? And you? You’re a stranger. No, really, tell me: what exactly are you supposed to be to me? DEAN: I’ll tell you who I am. I’m the guy you never wanna see again. ’Cause I’ll make it out of here, trust me. And the next time you see me, I’ll be there to kill you.

RIGHT HERE we get a critical piece of information, or MISinformation, as it were:   You sold out your own mother. It was her or Sam, and you chose Sam, plain and simple.

Samuel actually believes this is the truth. That it wasn’t MARY’s deal with Azazel (while he was wearing Samuel, even!) that started everything in motion. When the hell did Dean ever have a choice in any of this? Mary chose to sell out everything else to save John back in 1973. Including SAMUEL.

But that was the lie Samuel chose to believe, because it would result in him getting what he wanted. Mary, alive at any cost.

Meanwhile Sam uses his soullessness and ruthlessness to enact another plan while Dean’s dragged off to become ghoul chow... Dean fights off two ghouls without a weapon until Sam comes in to finish them both off. They trap Crowley...

CROWLEY: I said ‘can’t’. I meant ‘can’t’, you mop-headed lumberjack. I was lucky to get this much of you out. Going back in there for the sloppy bits? No way. I’m good, but those two in there? Forget it. SAM: How do I know you’re not lying? CROWLEY: You don’t. But it doesn’t change anything. I’m telling you. Sam, why do you want the thing back? Satan’s got one juicy source of entertainment in there. I’d swallow a rag off a bathhouse floor before I took that soul. Unless you want to be a drooling mess.

And because of this, I’ve always suspected that Crowley DID help Cas retrieve Sam from the Cage after 5.22. That it wasn’t JUST Cas on his own.

And obviously we know that when Cas turns up with Crowley’s bones, they aren’t really Crowley’s bones, but Crowley puts on a show of burning himself up anyway...

It may not have stopped everything ELSE going on behind the scenes between Cas and Crowley and their insane plan to crack Purgatory for power, but it did free Sam and Dean from working for Crowley. Obviously they were getting too close, and could potentially have REALLY killed Crowley, which would in turn have borked Cas’s chances of beating Raphael.

Basically things have just reached Complete And Utter Clusterfuck levels for Cas here. If he hadn’t still been trying to “protect” Sam and Dean from being dragged into the war (or if he hadn’t known that Dean would’ve inevitably tried to talk him out of going through with his insane plan), this is where Cas could’ve chosen to come clean with them.

But he didn’t. Because he was still sure he was doing the right thing.

Like he’s sure he’s doing the right thing in going back to Heaven to gather information to help in the hunt for the nephilim... Just, in s12 he’s approaching this “problem” from an entirely different place. In s6 he felt responsible to HEAVEN, and in s12, he feels responsible to the WINCHESTERS.

It might look similar on the surface, but peel back the surface-level trappings, and EVERYTHING is entirely different.

I keep reading theories that we’re going to be due for another 6.20 scene... but CAS IS NOT IN THAT PLACE ANYMORE. And he hasn’t been for AGES. That scene was predicated on the fact he’d been HIDING EVERYTHING from Dean all season long, that he’d been deceiving Dean about his mission, about his involvement in this plan with Crowley, that he’d been behind stirring up the monsters and capturing the alphas, and looking for purgatory.

BUT CAS IS NOT LYING TO THEM ABOUT ANYTHING now in s12. Dean’s not mad at him, he’s WORRIED about him. Cas isn’t loyal to heaven, he’s accepted his place in the Winchester family.

Why would there be another 6.20 scene FOR CAS?

I can think of at least three characters who’d merit being in that spot in s12, but it’s definitely not Cas...

CASTIEL: Crowley was right. It’s not going well for me upstairs. DEAN: If there’s anything we can do – CASTIEL: There isn’t. I wish circumstances were different. Much of the time I’d rather be here. DEAN: Look, Cas, we know you got a steaming pile on your plate. There’s no need for apologies. We’re your friends.

Oh, Cas. Circumstances are what you make of them. You just don’t want to put Dean in that position to help you. You won’t put him in danger...

But Sam’s soul? He’s decided he doesn’t even want it back now. Dean has decided otherwise.

DEAN: You don’t even know what you’re saying. SAM: No, I’m saying something you don’t like. You obviously care, a lot. But I think maybe I’m better off without it. DEAN: You’re wrong. You don’t know how wrong you are.

Yeah, it was painful and terrible and traumatic, but dammit Sam, you were wrong. Without your soul, you were ~wrong~ and /////WRONG/////. Just like nine kinds of all wrong.