#purgatory is poughkeepsie
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
anon i agree with you and don’t have much to add to it except the latter paragraph is mostly what i mean sans my own hyperbole… i have a dialogue breakdown of it somewhere for andrea that gets into the nuances of how (regardless of how sympathetic i feel and how understandable i find it), that interaction for me personally comes off as: “i beat my devastating and difficult addiction and now you have two seconds to beat your own and if you don’t make the right decision and i am not enough for you to decide to try to change now (as i use somewhat antagonistic/dehumanizing/rigid language) hasta la vista bby!” 🫡❤️
i certainly agree no one was in a good place post-purgatory and everyone who battled there was prone to giving into that sense of hopelessness!
#i’ve known plenty of ppl who struggled they no fault of their own#but the struggle is still the same#unfortunately the genesis of an addiction and this idea that sam’s was by *choice* alone misses for me#complex thoughts mmmm good#i guess this could get into how some addicts are viewed as innocent and some as choice is…complicated for me#which this stretching the narrative beyond it constraints maybe#but in my head it gets into this whole idea of the deserving poor#or the deserving ill#blameless addicts vs by-choice addicts etc etc#and it is a very cool idea…one i think dean tends to come down more on the rigid side of tbh#many characters in the series get manipulated and i think hmmmm if i had to put it into words i think manipukatiin attenuates choice#*manipulation#dean’s willingness to function as a sacred executioner is like a window into his psychological health#it’s the depression maestro!#it’s the rigid moral code that makes it easier not to think#in a world of monsters the rules are easy cause everyone’s the enemy#the temptation of total war is checking out of life#misc thoughts#asks#purgatory is poughkeepsie#all of tfw gets into a trap of not-thinking in diff ways…kinda cool if you think about it#i guess we all struggle w this…choice is hard
1 note
·
View note
Text
This is the funniest thing you've ever said @ananke-xiii:
[Maybe] John wasn't a Led Zeppelin fan, he knew a few of their songs just fine and used his knowledge to court Mary (good move, king) and then went home, listened to all of their songs, learnt all their lyrics and shaped his personality so that she would like him. Here, I've said it.
And actually, that's pretty damn cute. Mary was so impressed with his passing knowledge that he rushed home to study his crush's interests so the date would go even better next time.
That's so John-coded (overpreparation).
///
But also. I love how this theme reminds me of some of the stuff I write about Harper Sayles and the ghost of "imaginary lovers that never let me down."
Perhaps even John couldn't live up to the idea of John, like Vance could never be the Vance of Harper's expectations (which is, incidentally, why Harper kills him, forever crystallizing him in a Purgatorial "black-and-white," where he could never disappoint her).
This is also tangential to Cas and The Empty: "Come on, Castiel. Wouldn't you rather be a fond memory than a festering disappointment?" In the world of SPN, to live, to be REAL, is to be a disappointment. (Also see: All of Mary's arc.)
#harper sayles#purgatorial purity and pure as a spn poughkeepsie words#john winchester#complex john#lily sunders voice: i thought he was PERFECT#mary as natural born *pure* killer was a purgatory concept of her own but in the british MOL style etc etc#but the truth was that Mary was neither the mary of memory nor the super-soldier
14 notes
·
View notes
Note
any chance for more what if emma doesn't die thoughts from you? I am filled with sorrow for her and Dean once more
ooh....you know for someone who has an obscenely long ghost emma wip I've never really considered if she just survived from the beginning hmm...
well obviously when sam barges in the room dean either manages to put himself in front of emma and talk him down, or, the sexier option, he shoots the gun out of sam's hand. sam still argues but dean is invoking oldest rule here lmao. I don't know if 'poughkeepsie' would apply here but I want him to drop a code word to guilt sam into letting emma come along
between his attitude and the whole 'pulling a gun on her' thing emma reasonably does not like sam right off the bat, so she's practically glued to dean like a shadow for the first couple weeks
(personally I think emma truly wanted to escape and didn't want to hurt anyone, I think she only pulled the knife bc she couldn't read dean and thought he wasn't gonna help her. so obviously that's. less of an issue here)
idk I just really like the idea of emma knowing How to fight but having more of a pacifistic nature, not really blending well with either sides of her family. like she didn't ask dean to protect her from the amazons so she could be a hunter. dean may not be able to give her a normal life while they're busy hiding from leviathans, amazons, and the us government, but he'll be damned if he's gonna force her into a fight or give her a gun. sam tries to convince emma to work as bait for the pennywhistle case and dean goes Nuclear
so once dean's comfortable letting her out of his sight for longer than half an hour she's usually on research or like, the get away driver lol
dean's 'never had enough money to get nice things for sammy' childhood guilt is manifesting aggressively he's buying stuff for emma every time he goes anywhere. whole back seat of the car is decked out with fluffy blankets and pillows, she's got her own collection of music, clothes, stuff like that. she definitely has more stuff than she should have considering they're living on the run but that's not gonna stop dean
sorry I just love the idea of sam constantly picking fights with her and dean being like. Why Do You Have Beef With My Newborn.
like I definitely think sam would warm up to her before the end of the season, especially after cas fixes his mind, but between the amy situation and his personal trauma about feeling like a monster his family should have hunted, I think he'd just. have a rough time with her at first. plus in no world does sam know how to communicate with teenage girls lmao
HOWEVER I don't think she'd stay with him while dean is trapped in purgatory. I think lowkey sam doesn't even really. Consider being her guardian or whatever bc he sees her as grown and capable, but also he's immediately trying to find a place to settle down and emma is like. what the fuck are you talking about none of this is finished???
so she takes off. she wants to find kevin to 1) make sure he's okay and 2) see if his prophet powers can help her figure out what happened to dean and cas. I think she should meet up with charlie!!! she figures if anyone can track down a missing person it'd be her, and we all know charlie's not gonna turn away kid wanting to save her parent.
they do find kevin (and linda!) and get them situated and do what they can to hide them from crowley. dean and cas eventually get out of purgatory the same way as in canon bc they couldn't really figure that out, but at least kevin wasn't abandoned all year and had a decent head start on figuring out the tablet. the four of them have a little clubhouse set up and charlie makes buffy the vampire slayer references or room of requirement jokes literally every day
this is pretty much all I've got right now, but I'm always filled with sorrow on emma's (and deans) behalf omg. someone please save her already
103 notes
·
View notes
Text
I was tagged my my lovely tumblr wife @letsgobethegoodguys—thank you, darling!! 💛
dean winchester or sam winchester // colt or ruby’s knife // leviathans or hell hounds // meg or ruby // dean’s favorite gun or dean’s purgatory weapon // lucifer or au!michael // chuck or amara // season 1 or season 5 // kevin tran or charlie bradbury // angels or demons // mary winchester or jody mills // human!cas or crazy!cas // motel rooms or bunker // pie or beef jerky // classic rock or celine dion // dean’s mixtape or dean’s family pictures // werewolf or vampire // leather jacket or flannel // jo harvelle or claire novak // silly episodes or emotional episodes // jess and sam or eileen and sam // changing channels or mystery spot // nurturing dean or badass dean // the born-again identity or heaven can’t wait // a single man tear or the road so far (the songs)
I’ll tag @flightoftheseraph, @poughkeepsies, @thelegendofwinchester, @sealionsam, @dreamsfrozenincandyland, @wendibird, and anyone else who feels like doing this!
#tag game#supernatural#the born-again identity is one if the best sam episodes this show has how is this even a question#i don’t even remember the other episode#some of these were ridiculously easy to choose#some i have absolutely no preference for#how come i don’t get a sam choice? was this game made by a deancas person?#😒
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
I was tagged by @prayedtoyou - thank you!!! 🤗
dean winchester or sam winchester // colt or ruby’s knife // leviathans or hell hounds // meg or ruby // dean’s favorite gun or dean’s purgatory weapon // lucifer or au!michael // chuck or amara // season 1 or season 5 // kevin tran or charlie bradbury // angels or demons // mary winchester or jodi mills // human!cas or crazy!cas // motel rooms or bunker // pie or beef jerky // classic rock or celine dion // dean’s mixtape or dean’s family pictures // werewolf or vampire // leather jacket or flannel // jo harvelle or claire novak // silly episodes or emotional episodes // jess and sam or eileen and sam // changing channels or mystery spot // nurturing dean or badass dean // the born-again identity or heaven can’t wait // a single man tear or the road so far (the songs)
I'll tag @kylermalloy, @poughkeepsies, and @aihoshiduo
#i couldn't figure out why i was picking between those two specific episodes and then i realized those must be deancas episodes lol#also don't tell dean but i don't really like pie#steph talks#tag games#i also want to clarify that i mean season 5 lucifer only
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
ABCs, Supernatural Style
A- Amara and Azazel and Abaddon (we forgot about Adam) B- Baby and Benny and "Bitch" and Bobby C- Cas and Crowley and Claire and Charlie and Chuck and Cain D- Dean and Demons and Demon!Dean E- Ellen Harvelle F- Frank DeVoure (or however u spell it) G- Gabriel and god!Cas and guns H- Heaven, Hell, and Hellhounds I- Impala and "I lost my shoe" and "I'm proud of us" J- Jody (John doesn't deserve it) and Jo and "Jerk" K- Ketch and Kevin and Kline (Jack and Kelly) L- Leviathan and Lebanon and Lucifer M- Mary and Metallica and Michael and Machetes and the Mark N- No Chick Flick Moments O- Orange is The New Black (For Cas' Netflix binges) P- Purgatory and Pamela Barns and Poughkeepsie Q- Queer? R- Rock Music and Rowena S- Sam and Souls and Souless!Sam T- Toni Bevell (man I hate her) and Talbot (as in Bela) U- Uriel V- Vessels and Vamps W- Winchester X- X-Files Y- Yellow Eyes Z- Zachariah
Thanks to @i-think-2-much and @chasingluminescentdreams for helping me brainstorm!
#idk how this happened#abcs#supernatural#angels#demons#dean winchester#sam winchester#mary winchester#funny#kind of#random thoughts#spnfamily#spn lists
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Emarosa Announce Headlining Tour Dates
Emarosa have announced a headlining tour with Chapel. The tour will be taking place on off-days during their upcoming tour opening for Pierce the Veil and Sum 41.
Check out all of those upcoming tour dates below.
4/17 - Lansing, MI @ The Loft 4/19 - St. Louis, MO @ Fubar 4/21 - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre ** 4/22 - Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre ** 4/24 - El Paso, TX @ Tricky Falls ** 4/25 - Austin, TX @ ACL Live At The Moody Theater ** 4/27 - New Orleans, LA @ House Of Blues ** 4/29 - Jacksonville, FL @ Nighthawks 4/30 - Atlanta, GA @ Purgatory, Masquerade 5/01 - Knoxville, TN @ The International ** 5/02 - Lancaster, PA @ Lancaster Convention Center ** 5/03 - Silver Springs, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Springs ** 5/06 - Poughkeepsie, NY @ The Loft at the Chance 5/07 - Huntington, NY @ The Paramount ** 5/08 - Buffalo, NY @ Waiting Room 5/09 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE ** 5/10 - Toms River, NJ @ Pine Belt Arena ** 5/11 - Columbus, OH @ Double Happiness 5/13 - Lakewood, OH @ Mahall's 5/14 - Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room/Old National Centre ** 5/16 - Portland, ME @ Aura ** 5/17 - Hampton Beach, NH @ Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom ** 5/18 - Philadelphia, PA @ Voltage Lounge 5/22 - Houston, TX @ House Of Blues ** 5/23 - Pharr, TX @ Pharr Event Center ** 5/24 - San Antonio, TX @ Jack's Patio Bar 5/25 - Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom **** - Tour w/ Sum 41 and Pierce The Veil
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sulfur Town, USA
My first day out of Poughkeepsie was a slow cruise through an afternoon of sulfurous towns and an evening of night-blue Virginia forest. We finally rolled into the station at Manassas just as the sun really went into hiding and the clouds really began to bleed. Snow lilted down out of the sky with the kind of lazy malevolence that turns people equally giddy and terrified. The kind of bad weather everybody loves to hate, because it gives them something to talk about.
But anyway, the thing that caught my eye the most was this one place we saw sometime in the early evening. The train punched through this town just north of Baltimore called Harrowsport. Everything in Harrowsport was steel and brick and the buildings that weren’t half-burnt shrugged self-consciously out of the dirt. There was a small graveyard of broken stones tucked into a scraggly patch of trees, just beyond the lonely, pale bones of a church-in-progress. There was a sign there that said something about raising money by a certain date, so the church could be fully rebuilt. But the date was three years ago and some of the lettering had fallen off. Somebody had spray-painted these hopeful little balloons along the side of a tenement building a little further on. They floated ever upward from the limestone and junk and broken glass. Pulsing toward the clouds. A big black fence surrounded the whole town, keeping it jammed inside one lonely patch of earth and blocking it from the promise of the world. The very trees seemed to claw their way toward the train tracks, groping against the sky for some, for any, sense of beauty and purpose. For anything other than the purgatory inside the fence.
On top of all that, the town stank up the train as we went by. Like passing through the fumes issuing from an open wound in the surface of the world.
On a hill on one side of the town, rising higher than any other structure there, was a sign. A beacon of absolutely pristine red and blue: TRUMP 2016. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
The train ducked into a tunnel and Harrowsport imploded into darkness. But I just kept thinking. About the town. The sign. I just kept thinking, “Oh. There it is.”
***
The woman sitting next to me on the train was about sixty. She was nice, and we talked some during the five or so hours we were together. Mostly about places to eat in Manassas, her daughter, trains.
The damn weather.
It seemed like the polite thing to do these days to just avoid talking about politics altogether, because everyone was so divided and no matter what, it wouldn’t end well anyway. Nobody would feel better by the end of it. But we were close to Manassas and I thought I would just see. So I told her, you know, I don’t even watch the news that closely anymore, because it’s just another horrible thing every day. Who can keep up? She rolled her eyes agreeably, and gave some vague response about how tired she was of it all.
Her eyes got very sad and far away. “It just gets worse every day.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. I looked out the window, figuring this was good enough. I didn’t need to push it.
“You know,” she said. “My nephew was on TV at one of the last rallies.”
“Really?”
“They got a shot of him chanting. Very exciting.” She chuckled. “He almost didn’t go, because he didn’t have his hat.”
“His hat.”
“You know. His hat. You have to have the hat. Everybody who goes to the rallies has the hats.”
“Of course,” I said. I turned back to the window.
I figure felt the same way about the whole thing because she was quiet for a long while.
As we got off the train, she said, “I never actually got your name.”
I told her.
“I’m Hope,” she said. “Well, it was nice to meet you.”
And she was gone.
Hope.
Hope...
I couldn’t tell if it was a sick joke. Or something else. So I told myself to stop thinking about it, as the snow continued to fall. Getting worse every second.
(Manassas, VA)
0 notes
Note
so sorry, what does "nbk mary" mean
It's Natural Born Killer! Mary, referencing 12x21:
TONI: I have sources, Mary. Everywhere. After you died, your beloved John was a man slowly going mad, searching for revenge. What? Your boys didn't tell you? The drunken rages? The weeks of abandonment? Child abuse, really. It's no wonder they're damaged. So enough with the fairy tale. We are returning you to a more pure version of yourself – Mary Campbell, natural born killer. MARY: No. TONI: The American Hunters haven't fallen into line as we'd hoped, so they're being eliminated, repealed, and replaced by our people, and you, Mary, you play a key role in that. MARY: I won't. TONI: Or maybe you already have. MARY WALKS FORWARD AS IF TO ATTACK AND IS PUNCHED BY TONI. TONI: Interesting choice. Soon you won't be making any.
#the loss of free well#pure as a poughkeepsie word in spn#natural born killer mary#mary stuff#this is a purgatory-style of mary
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sloshing through the muck of purgatory
They should've done this (14x19) x via @spnscripthunt
Season 16 could do this. SPNwin could've done this. Forever shaking my hands at the sky.
#i know jdm is expensive#but all my organs for a john mary drama in purgatory#mary's lies lies lies at the forefront!!!#and john's failure and cruelty as a father too ofc#john stuff#mary stuff#here they overcome the black and white views of each other#purgatory of the black-and-white simpler morality#purity as poughkeepsie
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
I guess the truth is we’re all a little bit in purgatory, a world where work is a redundant, rote, day-to-day grind.
Black-and-white. Unthinking. Uncomplicated. Just survival. “Pure,” so we can philosophize to our heart’s content and meditate on our own emotions.
Assigned task, completed task.
We don’t emerge whole into the real world except in glimpses, seeing the damage our careers and commerce do or the horror the govt we serve has wrought.
So we retreat again—into the metaphysical purgatory of the day-to-day. “We’ve got work to do.” If we have to do it to survive, it lessens the moral wound of it.
#purgatory isn’t pure#it’s poughkeepsie#pure is a poughkeepsie word#purgatory is the specter of giving up#playing along#the unthinking plan#penance as servitude to a black-and-white system#ultimate workaholism bc you don’t deserve better#purgatory is not healing#it’s not purifying#it is one of the heaviest horrors#it’s on the nose as a metaphor for suicide#happy place is a euphemism for death and giving up#i think sometimes we get so caught up naval-gazing queer allegory we miss the deeper concepts#the horror of simple rules#the horror of war etc etc#and yet work is important for purpose#anti-capitalism#meaning vs nihilism
1 note
·
View note
Note
i do think it's interesting that the core of dean's frustration with his mother in season 12 is when she's dishonest with him or sam. like whether or not it's justified, his strongest emotional reaction during mary's deprogramming is when she says "i'll never let anything bad happen to you" to his younger self, while she KNOWS that azazel is coming ("you lied to me. i was a kid"). i just think about his reaction to her words of reassurance a lot.
Oooooohl Okay, I'm putting a pin in this because I can't remember the exact wording. But there was a vintage conversation with Dean and Sam asking if it would have been better if John had lied to them sometimes. Shielded them from the truth, the monsters, etc.
And now I'm thinking about how cool it'd be to compare Mary's soldierly all-encompassing protection and under-prep versus John's guerilla, boots-to-the-ground, neurotic over-prep AHHHhhhhhhh
Part of this is background. Mary is from a hunter-soldier family... the Campbells were overbearing, while John's hunter-prep was largely absent.
John's legacy was hidden from him, and his father wasn't around to show him how to trap the monsters... he wasn't given the chance to even try to protect his family (re: "You made a fool of me" and his behavior in The Song Remains the Same").
This was echoed nicely in SPNwin when Millie's specter taunted young John about how Samuel had trained Mary up, had believed in her, etc etc. (Ep 3 I think?)
Interestingly, John and Jack Kline are similar in that they don't want to be lied to and prefer no sugar-coating in tough situations. Jack's entrance into the world was terrifying enough, and Sam's ducking around the truth was damaging enough that Jack now prefers the ugly, horrible truth above all else.
Unorganized thoughts///
EDIT/// re: Mary. Mary's relationship to cause is so interesting in her BMoL run. On the one hand, she's doing the classic Winchester: I wound up nearly destroying the things I sought to protect.
But Mary HATES her fam being in danger. She's so allergic to losing her loved ones that she prefers being a long wolf hero and reaches for a "total solution to evil" and resorts to lying to keep them out of the fight. Which is exactly what we see SpnWIN Samuel is doing in SpnWIN. "I thought if I took care of all the evil i the world... you'd be safe."
BUT. That said, even later after some healing, Mary is very reluctant to leave Apocalypse-World... This is her "Purgatory" of endless, "easy," 24/7-360 fighting. It's "pure" war; a "poughkeepsie" in SPN. She'd rather serve a cause far from home, where the enemy is CLEARLY defined, her fighting has a utilitarian purpose, and above all... she has little to lose. If her family isn't with her, she doesn't have to actively lose them.
Mary's relationship to Apocalypse-World is a twin to Dean's neuroses that he struggles with in season 10 re: Purgatory. (In season 8, Dean wanted to get out—to get Cas out. But when Dean himself becomes suicidal, he thinks... maybe Purgatory was easier after all. He, in effect, devolves into early season 8 Cas, or late-season 8 Benny, a total giving-up. Dean wonders if he was better off staying there... in a world of limbo/allegorical non-participation of life.
Note: Thematically, it's family that tries to yank you out of these terrible situations. (I think Sam harps on this a lot; that family got him through some horrible times and addictions etc.) But we see it time and time again: Dean tries to get Cas out of Purgatory. He then gets Sam out of Purgatory. Sam tries to get Mary out of Apocalypse-World when Dean is too mentally ill to try. Then Sam and Dean and Jack and Cas GET Mary out of Apocalypse-World. EDIT the 2nd:///
Basically... These are worlds devoid of personal goals or love. They're are punishing, hopeless, anemic, anorexic. It's as Ketch says to AU Charlie in Exodus:
via @spnscripthunt-inactive
It is another kind of running from life. And I think... the lying is tied up with this. It's for another day, but YES Dean gets upset about lying. But also... Dean lies to Sam to save him (Gadreel), and Dean lies by omission at first about the Mark of Cain about his plan to defeat the evil once and for all. (Which runs in parallel with Mary and SPNwin Samuel).
I feel like Dean's arc with Mary terminates in a speech that says, "I love you and a hate you... but I get it because I've made deals to save the ones I love."
Dean gets it.
He gets the lying and the deals and the mistakes... because he's made them. This is why we need a season 16 argh!!!! We need one more to tie up the the Jack-Dean stuff as it relates to Mary and John aghhhhh I'm dying over here
#asks#thoughts#john stuff#mary stuff#jack stuff#mary's lying is...complicated and tied up with suicidality#dean's lying also re: the mark was echoing similar things is what I'm thinking#and what is it that “stays” in purgatory? in mary's apocalypse world? it's the bloodlust and the addiction to war#that's the thing they're struggling against#a meaningless fight with a pretty lampshade over it... if its' 24-7 warfare then there's no TIME to worry about the world of gray!#it's simply kill or be killed too.#it's much easier not to make big earth-shattering mistakes!#10dean wants to go BACK to purgatory alone because he becomes like mary... it there's nothing there to love and nothing there to live for..#it becomes an easy suicide of non-existence
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
5x21 freeform rambling; that old "purity" complex again...
Pure = poughkeepsie
There's something jarring in Pestilence and the camera sort-of implying that Dean is driven by simple rules. Pestilence even steps on his fingers in a way similar to the image of cutting of the fingers off the Four Horsemen.
Dean is always fighting for and against becoming the "pure, good righteous soldier." (Despite the widespread applause of Dean being "a righteous man," for me RIGHTEOUS is also one of those Poughkeepsie terms, and almost never associated with good, not truly.)
Whether or not Dean succeeds in casting off the good soldier label and casting off the soothing feelings of "pure places" depends on his psychological wounds of the moment, really.
And yet...despite AIMING for the cold perfection of angels and Purgatory, he can't help but embody humanity.
Dean is fallible. He's wrong. He's weak.
He's violent and hypocritical at turns throughout the duration of the series, taking hard lines against loved ones: locking them away for their own good/detox, and hard stances against only the demons they choose to trust. Then getting mad when they later do the same to him. (Yes, even Sam in season 8-10; when you get down to it objectively, he's doing to Dean as Dean and Bobby did to him. Helping his family as he learned from his family helping him.)
As audience, we get really mad at Sam, because we just "trust Dean's judgment" more than we do Sam's. Uncomfortably though, the bones of it--that is, the structural components are indeed Sam going through the same motions of "not trusting your monster friend even though he/she saved your life and earned your trust in The War (hi Ruby)" AND "locking you up/detoxing you for your own good." That's just skeletal. IMHO, Dean made his own bed a little bit here, TBH.
In season 15, he even says: "I'm working with a demon. Again. You'd think I'd learn." (It's frustrating to watch him not learn. And yet, he's blown up over Sam and Cas repeatedly for doing the same thing. It's Different (TM) when it's Dean choosing to trust demons. It’s Different when Dean is the one running away/abandoning the Cause.
Dean's demons are lovable and trustworthy (even when they ofc they aren't; we see Crowley kill a crowd of innocent queer lovers as late as season 11, just to make a phone call; we see him let Lucifer out for the sole purpose of having a personal WMD).
Anyway, Dean is messy. He's human. He makes the wrong choices as often as any of the other characters. And he can be righteously self-destructive about it.
The "testing" characters like Pestilence, Lucifer want to tempt our mains to fall into despair and hopelessness.
But some of us keep the hope burning, even when the character has messed up really, really bad and made a bunch of wrong choices. And that's what I like the best!
I feel like Cas embodies this resilience so well!
Dean does keep trying. So does the rest of TFW.
#humanity#tbh i still think sam was wrong and i don't blame dean for running away in the later seasons#but the fact stands that sam learned from his family and dean not to trust demons#the fact that he defaults to it *under duress* is not unlike how dean defaulted to it *under his own duress* post-cas death with amelia pon#sam's *trying not to choke*#he's trying to be strong#and he's following the example that bobby AND dean made for him about how to proceed when the going gets tough#i want to shake them both#of note///the detoxes aren't presented as *all bad* in either case#and the narrative certainly doesn't give the macleods a pass as *good people*#it's so complicated dude#in s8-9 dean likes being *needed* so being a blood bank and being the moc/chosen one to end abbadon were very attractive for him at first#sam's attraction to his addiction/demon/chosen one was rooted in being special and STRONG and RELIABLE enough to not be at the kids' table#they had similar journeys tho structurally#sam's coming from the position of the covert narcissist wanting to be grand and special etc - sam is a failed gifted kid#dean's coming fr the position of the borderline idealizing ppl he can keep at arms' length & ensure they need him - dean's a failed everyma#anyway i have better thoughts but neither is THE RIGHTEOUS one most of the time yknow? they each got their own probs
1 note
·
View note
Text
Purgatory isn't pure in the good sense; it's a suicide trap and a black-and-white, unthinking world
(where difficult decisions don't have to be made and relationships don't have to be worked at because they exist only as soldiers-in-arms)
Purgatory is total war.
==Simpler morality==
Because the enemies aren’t human, Purgatory is like a zombie game, and you don’t have to think about your enemy as an actual entity. You defend yourself against the enemy, and that's it. It’s an easy morality. Black-and-white. It’s a place where your killing has no consequences. Purity and happiness and queer allegory? That’s mostly a red herring.
It’s not a happy place. That it is ever referred to as such is a taunt. It's always almost, at the core of its theme, a coded reference to dying and suicide, or checking out of life. That's why it is so present in season 8, where all three mains are heavy with suicidal ideation. It also appears in season 10, when Dean wants to kill himself because of the Mark of Cain. It reappears in season 15's The Trap when Cas is effectively "killing himself" via a complementary Mark of Cain.
Purgatory is a place of holy, god-sanctioned killing and self-annihilation. It’s self-flagellation.
They feel purified. It's an "angelic mission" carried to its extreme.
///
==The concept of penance==
[I]f they die truly repentant in charity before they have made satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for (sins) committed and omitted, their souls are cleansed after death by purgatorical or purifying punishments, as Brother John has explained to us.
And to relieve punishments of this kind, the offerings of the living faithful are of advantage to these, namely, the sacrifices of Masses, prayers, alms, and other duties of piety, which have customarily been performed by the faithful for the other faithful according to the regulations of the Church.
Second Council of Lyon (1274, Catholic)
///
==Purity is a "poughkeepsie word"==
Purity is a reference to this tragic notion of purification by suffering (a theme which Sam also reckons with during the Hell trials).
Cas reinforces the morif, as the Seraph with the burning hands. He turns bodies to ashes. He attracts all the desperate abominations who, deep down, long to be killed. It is a purification rite of burning. A rite of holy absolution.
What Purgatory is about is Cas giving himself whole-heartedly to angelic, unthinking war as penance. To be nothing more than a weapon. Because it’s all he thinks he deserves. That's why Naomi and her angels swoop in and brainwash him so easily.
///
==Dean and Cas==
But that's not what Dean initially wants. When it comes to Cas, he wants to rip Cas away from that life. Because, "Cas, we're going home." Because, "Cas, you're more than a weapon--"
(13x14 Good Intentions draft)
No one could be more trapped by god than the 400+ million year old soldier. But even though Dean struggles with the same thing, Dean wants to save Cas, oh how he wants to SAVE him. Through caring about Cas, a doomed soldier, Dean has to care about himself.
///
==Why Sam "should've" looked for them in Purgatory==
From a religious reading of the communion of saints:
Because of the communion of saints, the faithful who are still pilgrims on earth are able to help the souls in purgatory by offering prayers in suffrage for them, especially the Eucharistic sacrifice. They also help them by almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
///
==The burden of war==
Dean prayed to Cas. Every night. Not because of romance per se, but to relieve the holy psychiatric burden of war.
He wants to help him heal, too. In healing Cas, a corrupted soldier, Dean heals himself.
“I’m at war. Certain regrettable things are now required of me.” -Castiel
///
==Married to your work==
Season 8 is also about being Sam and Dean being "married" to Hunting. And Cas is married to Heaven. They can't seem to escape their political marriages to duty, sanctioned by God. They are prisoners.
In purgatory, you are nothing more than a god-blessed weapon. It’s just more holy war propaganda.
//////
(Text Attributions// Supernatural scripts here via @spnscripthunt. Transcripts are located here via SPNWiki. Visit their Tumblr to donate.)
#it’s agony it's the mission it's the one-track mind#cas stuff#dean's self worth#cas's self worth#spn season 8#shal meta#spn + total war#24/7 360 degree war#dean + worth#dean/cas + self worth#dean/cas + the meaning of purgatory#suicidal ideation#tfw + soldier mentality#spn + duty#spn + motifs#purgatory#spn + moral injury#spn good intentions#spn 13x14#spn season 13#spn meredith glynn
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
I still see purgatory framed as “pure” like that’s a good thing.
Purgatory is not a good thing. It’s Poughkeepsie.
Dean realized this during Sam’s suicidal trials and obsessions with “becoming pure”…this was at the end of that very season and underlined and bolded that whole concept as a Bad Thing.
#purgatory is my toxic opinion trait thing#purgatory IS suicide#later it’s still framed in terms of abandonment#and it remains a suicide parallel for cas#dismissing Dean’s confession#I thought it’d be safer to give myself up#it’s fine to see purgatory how you wanna#but I feel like it’s not often as connected to Sam’s trials as I would like!#purgatory is a purifying religious concept#and in spn world it’s toxic penance#suicide#cw suicide#tw suicide#it’s being addicted to simplicity#it’s the bookend for cas checking out of life all together in the previous season#from spectator to self torture#it’s morality flattened and it should scare you#the purifying fires of purgatory
0 notes