#sam winchester vs the narrative

[wendibird]

These tags by @books-space-things though!

Just, ALL of this!

I will say it is fascinating how much screen time that spn puts into convincing everyone in and out of the show that Sam is this absolute freak of nature to the humans AND monsters when they absolutely never follow through on it. Boy king of hell? Never happened. Lucifer’s vessel? He’s that for like. 40 minutes. And it was never about him anyway just some vague thing about bloodlines. Return from hell? That’s just not even Sam look we can get his soul back. Season 7? Trauma baybeee. Season 8? That was just Gadreel camped in there. And so on and so on.

Even the demon blood. He gets some powers and releases Lucifer but that’s not so freaky in comparison to everything else the show’s got going on. It’s like the very project of the narrative wants to convince him and us of the freakishness but it is all utterly manufactured and never challenged. And everyone in the narrative is like yeah. Sounds about right.

Wild stuff about the power of the narrator etc etc, this is why Sam’s victory is escaping the story & the assigned role the narrative gives him just for the vibes

[ladylightning]

the way the absence of john winchester haunt sam and dean in ways that are more real than any ghost they have ever faced. the way john echoes so loudly in the narrative even in episodes he’s not mentioned, in seasons where he never appears. the way john possesses dean when he’s angry and sam when he’s grieving. the way john is the one true god of the narrative, the absent father who does not answer prayers or phone calls. the righteous man who does not break in hell but breaks down and hands his child a gun. john and the memory of his holy mary. john the prophet and his sacred text. john and his prodigal son that he knows has to die. 

[aliusfrater]

similar cinematographic choices to portray the same imagery with insanely different circumstantial contexts

[gothicrepetitions]

5x22//12x23

[loving-family-poll]

2nd Ultimate Incest Tournament - Round 1

Propaganda under the cut:

Sam/John:

Overprotective controlling dad, bratty rebellious confrontational Sam, the eventual realization of what John was trying to protect him from, the sad dad puppy eyes

Often overlooked in the Winchester family incest dynamics which is sad because it fucks so hard; John has such complex feelings regarding Sam because his birth indirectly causes the death of Sam and Dean’s mother and leads to the Winchesters becoming like that. John sees the sweet boy he loves and the monster Sam is fated to become, and is torn between saving or killing him. Keeping Sam safe and innocent is one of the main motivations behind John’s terrible, desperate actions; however through the extreme countermeasures he takes, he only manages to push Sam further away and closer to his fate. It’s only after John’s death that Sam begins to understand his actions but also believes John was right to ‘want to kill him’. John may be absent for most of Supernatural but he forever haunts the narrative and his sons, the One True FatherGod of Supernatural

Dirk/Dave:

Can you imagine being so intrinsically tied to someone you will never not be in their lives? So intrinsically tied you are them but never will be?

Dave and Dirk both grew up as themselves and essentially raising the other. Where Dirk grew up with his timeline's Bro ( Alpha Timeline Dave )—a Bro who was absent, yet such an impacting influence to Dirk as someone who /couldn't/ be there: Dave was massively way too in the past ( literally ) to be around for Dirk in the future, yet made sure to keep a secure place for him that would be protected enough FOR Dirk to be able to survive. Dirk watched all of his movies. He wanted to be everything Dave was. He wanted to meet him, know him, be with him. More than anything.

Dave grew up differently in the Beta Timeline. Dave's Bro, who was far too involved in his life. Constantly sparring him, or really calling him to strifes were he'd get his shit kicked in major, bullying him, picking fun at him, all to "train" him for the Game. Where Dave has to deal with how terrified he is of Bro and play it off—a sign of weakness was weakness after all. Beta Dirk, Bro, dies protecting Dave. Alpha Dave, Bro, dies in protecting the world so Dirk could live.

And they meet together. Years later Dirk and Dave, kids who never got to be close with their Bros who grew up scared or intimidated or inspired, meet the other one. And it is everything and none of what they could have ever hoped for.

There is something about seeing the ghost of someone and instead of haunting you like a demon infested house wanting to kill you, it haunts you like a memory. Where that hair, those shades, you know them. Where you don’t know someone yet you hate them for being everything you wanted. But still being on top of a rooftop, being vulnerable for once. Sharing a hug. "This is fucked up." "Yeah. Fucked up." Where the focal point is a form of masculinity that helps them survive or keeps them apart from others. How long can you keep swinging the blade you wielded since you were a baby? How long can you keep pretending your heart doesn't ache when you see him? How long can you keep away when you love him and hate him and want him dead but *God you want him?

What if you grew up idolizing your absent older brother who was the only connection you had to the world that had existed before the apocalypse for a long time. What if you grew up idolizing and emulating a present older brother who raised you only to realize as a teenager, after he’s dead, that your relationship was kind of fucked up and he was abusive and also he gave you a lot of sexuality hangups. Now imagine you both meet an alternate version of this brother. He’s a teenager. You’re around the same age. He was influenced in ways you can’t control by a version of you you’ve never been. And you’re literally both queer. Lots of things can happen here. Your abusive brother’s teenage self is trying so hard to be better than the worst possibility and isn’t to blame for what his alternate version did. Your absent brother’s teenage self is so present and real and not a larger of life mythological figure but you have a design he created tattooed on your arm which you did out of a desperate desire for connection. WOW.

[soullessjack]

okay but like. cogs turning .. last holiday truthing cwt maxxing… the sheer difference in dialogue between the script and the episode is killing me. the deliberate choices made to change said dialogue and even the ending…

like am I alone in thinking that this whole exchange in the dungeon was very oddly disjointed? very “nobody fucking talks like that” core. they just say shit but it doesn’t land with the other’s response.

and especially when you compare it to the draft:

for some reason or another, the writers deliberately cut out jack’s lamentation that he is still dangerous, that mrs butters is right to be doing what she’s doing, and that nothing has been the same between him and the Winchesters since he’s come back. they deliberately cut out dean saying “you’re one of us, and you have a chance to make it right.”

there’s also the glaring difference between how sam and dean defend jack in the episode vs the draft. in the draft, they say this:

D: “You said you didn’t want to destroy this family, but Jack is our family.”

S: “You hurt him, you hurt us.”

Mrs B: “No, he’s infected you. I have to keep you safe.”

D: “By trying to kill the people we care about?”

Mrs B: “No, he’s a monster!”

D: “Aren’t we all?”

•••

not only do sam and dean say that jack is their family and someone they care about, but they also explicitly hold themselves on the same monster totem mrs butters holds jack to (much like what dean said in tombstone, “we’ve all done things, so if you’re a monster then we are too,”

…which all then gets cut and turned into “He can save the world.” no, don’t kill jack, he’s our family and we care about him and he is good despite his mistakes -> no, don’t kill jack, he can save the world.

the explicit choice to center jack’s worth on his usefulness rather than his inherent value as the winchesters’ family and even just as a person, rlly speaks so much to the way he’s essentially narratively doomed to be dehumanized as a tool/weapon/device.

and the fact that this is all eventually preceded by Cas saying “you never needed absolution from sam or dean or me. we don’t care about you because you’re useful or because you fit into some grand design. we care about you because you’re you,” (which in turn is preceded by jack fitting into a grand design and fucking off to the raindrops forever), makes it seem either a painful inconsistency or some weird twisted inside joke between the writers (cough season 16 cough cough puke).

I haven’t posted about it a lot but I truly think there’s some vast trapped-in-the-narrative horror working around jack constantly being dehumanized both within the show as a living weapon and by the writers themselves as a plot device.

shits wack I guess

[ananke-xiii]

More on the power of resurrection as the "apple of discord": Chuck vs Billie.

In Chuck's mind Death is not a problem because he controls space and time... he's actually right. I mean, he's definitely shitting his pants at this point but he has never respected Death enough to be worried about her (and his narrative shows just that since Death dies four times in SPN lol).

Chuck manipulates space and time and he's clearly pro resurrection. In his world people can resurrect either through demon deals or magic. Or if he says so, obvs. There always seems to be a price to pay for this, though, because Chuck is obviously the type of god that likes human suffering "for the plot".

Amara in all her "evillness" has a different point of view on the matter, for her resurrection is a gift. Which is still problematic ("what you are regarding as a gift is a problem for you to solve") but offers a new perspective: no deal, no magic, you need it? You get it.

Then there's Jack whose command of the power is still wobbly but shows all the potential to disrupt Chuck's narrative. His take on resurrection is closer to Amara: he doesn't know it but it's his desire to see Dean getting what he wants that sparkled life back into Castiel. You want it? You get it. Dangerous.

Billie, on the other hand, is NOT part of Chuck's family, so to speak. She's very ambivalent about rules: she doesn't like it when others bend them but she really enjoys being the one who bends them. Her initial affiliation and perhaps romantic connection with Crowley while many reapers "sided" with Castiel in s9 tells us that she has her own specific ideas about basically everything.

When she becomes Death, she doesn't want humans performing resurrection spells because she wants to be the one who decides who lives and who dies, thus taking on a role that is not hers to take.

S14 shows us her hypocrisy brillantly: Dean wants to die but she says that he will live; Rowena wants Crowley back (to which she should have, perhaps, been amenable as per above) but she says NO. She hides herself behind the "death books" or whatever they're called and the "natural order" for whatever it means in SPN but Rowena calls her out: it isn't fair.

And she's right. Billie ignores Rowena, doesn't care about reapers dying (she even kills one herself) and only shows up because Rowena held Sam hostage and planned on killing him.

What Billie wants, though, is very much in tune with her role as Death: she wants things "as they were", heaven and hell, humans back on the "normal" timeline, "everything in its place and a place for everything" type of mentality. She wants something she can't have in a world where God, who controls time and space, keeps changing the plot.

A mentality that clearly contrasts with her s11 rebellious streak where she would have loved to toss a Winchester into the Empty, reap God and ultimately fucking harvest the Veil for souls! THAT girl had 99 problems but being conservative was not one of them.

So why does she change? Well, becoming Death would do that to a girl but I don't think that's it. I think she kinda likes it, to be honest.

No, my conclusion is based on what she can't stop repeating at least once per season: Castiel stabbed her in the back. Billie is holding a massive grudge that she very wrongly takes on Dean. Well, maybe not so "wrongly" per se since we know why Cas acts like he does, but when she blames Dean for being chaos incarnate and a disruptor of order she's sooo off target.

If there is one character who wants order and "everything in its place and a place for everything" is Dean Winchester.

No, there is one disruptor in SPN and it's Castiel. And HE stabbed her in the back.

And his resurrection (via Jack) is what should have tipped Chuck off (as I've been trying to demonstrate with all these yappings about cas and resurrection).

Basically Chuck's mortal enemy is Jack who bestows or revokes resurrections as he pleases. But he doesn't see him. Billie's mortal enemy is Castiel, creator of cosmic consequences that dismantle the coveted "balance". And she doesn't see him. Like snakes in the grass.

[scoobydoodean]

I saw (I think through you) something about Lucifer not letting cas die after the swan song battle but just exploding him and keeping him near

I ALSO keep thinking about how the empty says nobody has pull there, nobody has the ability to bring back anyone from there (except jack on accident)

This implies to me that chuck never let cas truly die at all because he was brought back several times

I think it makes some sense because chuck was supposedly watching the Winchester's closely and would've known what would happen if cas was truly gone and he couldn't let that happen (yet)

It's interesting that cas dies finally only after chuck abandoned the world (not watching his favorite show, feeling no obligation to help) and I can't help but wonder if Dean asking for Chucks help made him so mad (it was rude and didn't appeal to chuck like he would've needed, Sam would've done a better job asking for help because he can suck up) that he flung cas into the empty.

What are your thoughts?

I don't remember reading a post like that, so it must have been someone else—but that's interesting! Chuck's alleged lack of power in The Empty vs. Castiel's resurrections is definitely another one of those tricky little bits introduced in the Dabb run that's difficult to make sense of. I mean to be real I think the guy is a fuck up of a showrunner with ineffective communication with his writing team who therefore ends up creating continuity errors and dropped plots left and right... but I think when reviewing the previous seasons through the lens that Dabb's run requires, Chuck kind of keeping Cas in his back pocket and not allowing him to drop into The Empty is still genuinely sensible (unless you want to theorize something like "The Prestige" is going on and... meh). The speed of Cas's resurrections in 5.01 and 5.22 show God was paying very close attention to Cas and that at that time, he wanted Cas around, doing exactly what he was doing—helping defy the narrative.

We see in 5.22 that despite what happens not fulfilling what God had prophesied, Chuck is pleased with the outcome. Some may take this as a sign that he intended things to go exactly how it went, but I don't think that's true. I think Chuck was just genuinely entertained by Dean and Cas leaping out of his writing at that time. Leaping out of causality is something Dean and Cas do together in 4.18, 4.22, and 5.22.

In 4.18, Dean pleads with Cas to help him save Sam, even though Cas thinks what's going to happen is fate and can't be subverted. Cas doesn't personally act, but he gives Dean the idea that Dean then executes, leading Chuck to say "What are you doing here? I didn't write this."

In 4.22, Dean pleads with Cas again. They again fight about the inescapability of destiny. This time, it's Dean's pleading but Cas's actions—flying Dean out of the green room (somewhere Dean is incapable of escaping from on his own). Chuck says when they pop into his house, "Wait. T-t-this isn't supposed to happen" and then "Yeah, but you guys aren't supposed to be there. You're not in this story".

In 5.22, after Lucifer takes Sam over (something that was foretold to happen in Detroit), Cas and Bobby despair, but Dean refuses to give up and calls Chuck, who says, "Oh, uh, Dean. Uh, wow. I, uh, I didn't know that you'd call." Then Dean goes to Stull Cemetery alone. However, the moment that Michael begins to walk up on Dean and says, "You little maggot. You are no longer a part of this story!" Guess who suddenly appears with a holy oil Molotov cocktail?

So these moments where they defy "fate" (i.e., prophecy foretold to the archangels) seem to require Dean and Cas working together in order to be pulled off, and Chuck likes this. Viewing through the Dabb lens—it excites him maybe for the first time in years. So he keeps Cas around. He resurrects Cas twice. He doesn't mind "losing"—he wants more of these things he can't anticipate to occur.

But at some point, Chuck snaps, and he isn't enjoying his creations having free will anymore. At a certain point, he turns on Castiel, because by season 15, he's complaining about Cas the exact way Naomi did in season 8: Cas is the angel with a crack in his chassis who never does what he's told. Chuck also isn't enjoying Dean's defiance anymore, but is still (as Lilith tells us) "creepily obsessed" with Dean.

The thing is, if my theory about the devil baby brainwashing is correct, then Chuck begins to sow his Moriah finale in season 12, which means Dean's prayer probably isn't what makes Chuck mad. Something has to happen between season 11 and season 12 that acts as the catalyst for Chuck to begin his most psychologically complicated, painstakingly crafted attack on Dean's mental state ever. What my brain is currently theorizing, is that the catalyst for Chuck snapping and finally trying to force Dean to act out his fratricide fantasies once and for all... is Amara.

Chuck didn't want Amara standing in his way and didn't want to share authority, so he locked her away, but then she got out and there was nothing Chuck could do about it. He lost control. That's... one theory I am thinking of anyway. (It's possible I've been watching too much true crime).

Now—Chuck had lost control before (during the first apocalypse) but never to a degree that was life threatening for him. Team free will can do things Chuck doesn't anticipate, utilizing free will... but Amara is his equal and can literally kill him. What's more—who saved his ass from Amara? Dean—and of all things—with the power of love—with his pesky, bleeding heart—the number one thing that always seems to stand in the way of the repeated fratricide plot! Dean gets Chuck and Amara to make nice, and then they go away together, but... Amara isn't that interested in Chuck. He begins to annoy her. This is another way that Chuck loses control—control of how his equally powerful sister perceives him (This is something that's also sent Sam over the edge in the past, and Chuck&Amara and Sam&Dean are mirrors).

So Chuck loses control in this major way, and in his desperation to reassert control in the aftermath, because he can't control his sister, he focuses on trying to control his "toys". He doesn't want them defying his writing anymore. It enrages instead of entertains now. So he begins this plot, and a major component of that plot needs to be separating Dean and Cas, either through death or through emotional distance or both, because 1) his experience is that they defy his writing together, and 2) it will hurt and isolate Dean.

[lillybearrie]

I have thoughts

Specifically the contrast in how supernatural treats free will regarding Castiel vs Sam.

Because while Castiel is allowed and encouraged to express the free will he discovered being the only version of himself to do so he is often praised for forging his own path, Sam on the other hand is actively discouraged from expressing any sort of agency of his own.

Sam's entire story is him learning to defer to others and when he trys to make his own choices he is punished by the narrative. Sam for most of the series is constantly being unwilling forced into fulfilling rolls for the sake of the story. Sam Winchester never had a choice in anything his entire existence has been orcastrated by others and when he tried to be his own person outside of what heaven and hell forged him to be outside of what John and Dean raised him to be outside of what Chuck wrote him to be he is punished cosmicly. seriously, think back when was the last time Sam made a decision for himself that didn't backfire and lead to other people getting hurt because I literally cannot think of a single instance where he made a decision for himself and his life went well except for when he decided to play his part as sammy winchester a part of the dynamic deadly duo/trio that ignores at least 5 cosmic laws for breakfast sammy winchester one of the best hunters to ever live sammy winchester the boy who let the devil in and lived to tell the tale he's never just Sam. He's the kind of guy to always be introduced as "this is Sam winchester, he's so and so's [insert conection]" and not just "this is Sam" he's always Dean's brother, Mary's son, Lucifer's vessel ect ect and never just Sam.

Cas is allowed to explore his will he is encouraged to write his own story because he's interesting to watch an Angel of the lord who was made to follow orders rebelling for the sake of one human man and choosing to learn how to make his own choices from there is a compelling and unexpected turn of events and at the end of the day he'll always circle back to the winchesters

While Sam was made to fulfill a narrative role and when he tries to do anything outside of that the universe course corrects and ends up convincing him that he can't ever make the right choice because every choice he makes has horrible consequences for those around him

[laufire]

Sam Winchester

How I feel about this character: I think about Supernatural very little these days (#imfree añdlfkjaf), and when that happens for any given canon, I only retain ~intensity of feeling for the things I really loved or really hated. And Sam isn't included on either list. I liked his character, and enjoyed following and analysing and nitpicking about his storyline through the show, but it's a cerebral kind of enjoyment, not an emotional, passionate one, tbh.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Ruby, and you know, I'm going to stop counting LOL. I still retain fondness for some rare ships, like Samwena or Sambela or Sastiel, but Samruby was and remains THE ship for me, in this show.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: the WInchester family as a whole, when written well, was fascinating to follow.

My unpopular opinion about this character: he's the main character, guys. Though tbf I think there were people behind the scenes that also disagreed with this (the way Sam's vs Dean's narratives were often in conflict, arguably from the very beginning, is one of the most interesting aspects of the show, as a narrative).

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. I could give a more general answer ("better writing") or a specific and slightly glib answer ("he and Rowena should've hooked up")... hmm. Idk. At the moment I'm thinking about how I would've done Dean's death differently. A little earlier, with Plot still happening, showing Sam fighting without him and Sam vs. God/The Authority/The Father being featured in the last few episodes. Though there are parts I enjoy of Dean's canon death on a meta-level as well (senseless, in a frankly ridiculous case, once the brothers had stopped matering in a metatextual level to The Writer), piss-poor execution aside. Idk, I'm just playing around with the concepts here LOL.

[ashtraythief]

Supernatural is depressing as a rewatch. It has its fun moments, but that show hurts. It wasn’t depressing when I first watched it, but over time…. The rewatches are especially depressing. You just know they aren’t going to get their happy ever after since the life of a hunter is absolute hell. Well, I guess no happy ever after in their actual life, they do get to enjoy heaven together. So yeah, I get you there. What shows do you usually rewatch instead? Have you seen Parks & Recs? It seems like you would like it! Such a comfort show.

Yeah, the Supernatural rewatch can be hard. I have to say though, I’ve rewatched the show more since it ended, because I liked the end and knowing the show ended in a way that made me happy (well, it was obviously a fucking tragedy, but like, narratively speaking, it was a good ending because this entire show is a horror/tragedy), it made it way easier to enjoy the rewatches. The knowledge that in the end, they get an ending that honors the life they led and that they got a period of happiness on earth without apocalyptic disasters and then happiness in heaven. Occasionally, like every few years, I get the bug and start a rewatch from the start, and then at some point, which can vary, I start skipping eps 😅 Mostly though I have a few… thematic rewatches I do.

I either do a Fun Episode rewatch, including eps like Hell House, Monster Movie, Bad Day at Black Rock, The French Mistake (controversial, I know, I know), Mint Condition etc. Then there’s the Extreme Brothering rewatch, which is Sam and Dean being codependent little soulmates and just brothering all over the place, like Scarecrow, The Usual Suspects, Red Meat, Safe House, etc. Sometimes I also rewatch early season Winchesters vs Law Enforcement, which is fun and some really good episodes. So there’s room for rewatches, but except for the Fun Episodes, it’s not really comforting.

I do enjoy Parks and Recs, mostly. Tom is a lot, especially in the early seasons; I don’t do well with that particular brand of womanizing character, and I had to fight my way through season one, but then they really hit their stride. I love Leslie’s and Ron’s friendship, and generally a lot of th friendships and romances in the show are just really well done. I really disliked Andy in season one, but he got good with April. Ron and April is adorable and of course, Ben is just a gem in whatever combo.

I do rewatch Leverage a lot, Sophie is a queen, I loooove the OT3 and watching evil rich people get what they deserve is just very cathartic right now. Plus, I love a good heist and the new characters in the reboot are actually great. Maybe I should rewatch White Collar next...

Recently, I rewatched the Good Place and Schitt’s Creek, though I do have to fast forward through the more annoying scenes with Roland and Moira, sometimes they get a little much 😅

Sometimes, I rewatch old Crime shows, the early seasons of Bones and Castle, before they went too far off the rails lol. Like all procedural shows, they somehow think they need to go bigger every season, with bigger and badder villains, and it just gets ridiculous when an NYPD homicide detective needs to save New York from a bomb and Homeland only sends someone to liaison. Well, you know, more ridiculous than it is anyway. There’s a sweet spot, and small procedural shows saving cities/states/the world ain’t it.

I do also rewatch movies a lot, old romcoms, old action movies, Star Wars and Marvel when it was still good. Easy viewing. And now I just sound really old and crotchety…

I also like new stuff! And sometimes, when I have enough spoons or the right company, I even watch more serious and heavy stuff. It depends a little on whatever is available on streaming, I don't have all services all the time, so sometimes I'm limited in my choices.

(If someone’s interested, I guess I could make a rec list? For whatever?)

Nonnie, I’m not sure, but I think you might have sent me several asks, so if you want, just message me! No pressure, obviously, but the door’s open. Or, well, the inbox is. Seems we're kinda on the same wavelength, entertainment wise. Otherwise, feel free to keep sending me asks!

[aliusfrater]

i've said it before and i'll say it again: sam winchester as a character is what happens when you've created a character that doesn't fit the standard of masculinity you've set within the narrative of the show but said show remains heteronormative enough for it not to be able to create a 'role' for this character (who is now also Othered for said weird masculinity) that isn't just another traditionally gendered role. sam falls into the position of the woman — the smart and endearing hero who cannot achieve victory on his own in most cases or the damsel in distress in others. eric kripke always talks about sam and dean as characters inspired by luke skywalker and han solo respectively but i think he failed to account for the genre change: the sci-fi political critique that is star wars vs the horror americana critique that is supernatural. sci-fi was able to account for luke's emasculation and the narrative remained nuanced enough to not push him into a feminine role, one was created for him but in the mid-2000s horror that is supernatural, that nuance does not exist; this horror is inherently prejudice in a way that cannot account for the nuance in sam's masculinity. he misses being luke skywalker by a gap the size of a sewing needle and falls into the role of leia skywalker. for what it's worth i am beating and will continue to beat this horse (the patriarchal structure allegory) dead.

(also i was talking about this in some tags earlier but sam also seems to adopt misogyny or uses misogynist quips as a defense mechanism for proving the masculinity that's constantly being questioned by the narrative. he shuns the role of scully, not because of scully herself but because of the fact that he's labeled as scully by dean)

[comshipbracket]

Antis DNI

Remember, you are voting for the ship you prefer, not the ship you find more problematic

Propaganda for both ships under the cut.

DirkRose Propaganda (Incest - Dirk is genetically Rose's father)

"Your honor, these characters are victims of fanon-as-canon widespreading! There are antis out there who will raise hell if you say Dirk is anything other than gay when it's literally canon that Dirk Strider states he doesn't like the label gay. Meanwhile, Rose Lalonde also dates both men and women in canon and has never outright stated what her sexuality is, yet antis will also raise hell if you say she is anything but a lesbian.

Their dynamics are complex and nuanced throughout the webcomic. They are both clever and self important, and their banter is delicious. They both share the vice of wanting to control the narrative of the lives they are stuck in, and this ties them together far tighter than any blood ties.

Also, in Homestuck 2 (which is dubiously canon), Rose Lalonde quite literally leaves her wife to join Dirk in creating a new universe with him. This then blossoms into a passionate rivalry where they both see who could create the ideal universe. They're always pushing each other to greater heights.

Also, the fact that Dirk wanted Rose to come with him-- even choosing her over his own pseudo-brother who he looked up to to an extreme degree-- goes to show that he values her mind above all others.

Dirk is a hard person to impress or to crack the impersonal shell of, but I strongly feel that Rose Lalonde (especially with her penchant for psychology which ties well with his interests in philosophy) is exactly the right person to crack his shell."

Wincest Propaganda (Incest)

"They are parelled to in show couples, and people within the show have likened them with real life couples"

Also! More Propaganda provided by @kingofthewilds Here!

[loving-family-poll]

2nd Ultimate Incest Tournament - Round 2

Propaganda under the cut

Sam/John:

Overprotective controlling dad, bratty rebellious confrontational Sam, the eventual realization of what John was trying to protect him from, the sad dad puppy eyes

Often overlooked in the Winchester family incest dynamics which is sad because it fucks so hard; John has such complex feelings regarding Sam because his birth indirectly causes the death of Sam and Dean’s mother and leads to the Winchesters becoming like that. John sees the sweet boy he loves and the monster Sam is fated to become, and is torn between saving or killing him. Keeping Sam safe and innocent is one of the main motivations behind John’s terrible, desperate actions; however through the extreme countermeasures he takes, he only manages to push Sam further away and closer to his fate. It’s only after John’s death that Sam begins to understand his actions but also believes John was right to ‘want to kill him’. John may be absent for most of Supernatural but he forever haunts the narrative and his sons, the One True FatherGod of Supernatural

Shauna/Callie:

Shauna is an insane woman with a psychology stuck in her late teens due to the huge trauma central to the show and the loss of her homoerotic friendship Jackie. Callie is her daughter who reminds her a lot of said homoerotic friendship a lot.

The first scene we see of adult Shauna is her masturbating on her daughter's bed looking at a pic of her and her boyfriend which tied back to how Shauna stole Jackie's boyfriend because she couldn't have Jackie.

Callie starts the show as a normal snarky teenager who might look down on her mom a bit, until she catches her cheating on her dad (the boyfriend she stole). Also, Callie is wearing Jackie's old uniform at this point (thinking it was her mom's). They have a talk about the affair and Jackie and it's one of the first times we see how much she wants to learn about her mom and her crazier sides.

Shauna is completely incapable of acting like a normal mother and doesn't know how to give Callie proper displays of affection.

As season 2 rolls in Callie wants nothing more than help her mom escape prison after killing her new boyfriend and for her mom to show her dangerous side to her and to include her in everything even if it's illegal.

At this point, we're at a point where Callie is just as into the freaky headrush of survival-type situations and that probably will keep entangling her with her mom more and more.

Shauna also had an arc about remembering her first baby she lost and how that and so many other things get in the way of her to show proper love to Callie even if she wants to protect her more than anything.

Shauna inadvertently got her best friend, Jackie, killed and is haunted by her memory. She attempts to replicate that dynamic with her daughter Callie but also refuses to let herself love her because of the pain of losing Jackie

mom who masturbates in her daughters room looking at photos of her daughters boyfriend. daughter happens to be an exact replica attitude-wise of the mother's childhood best friend who she killed (accidentally) and ate (not so accidentally) and still has romantic hallucinations of. The daughter dresses up in the dead situationship's uniform and mom mentally can't tell them apart….the good stuff

[deanstudies101]

1x09, Home

Critical theory: The symbolic mother figure and her role in the home. ‘Home’ as a place vs. a concept, and the theme of ‘you can never go home.’

Discussion question(s): Does Mary need to be present in this episode to be ‘present’? What do we know about Mary at this point beyond motherhood? Do we, for the boys’ narrative, need to know more? Is it fair to reduce Mary simply to ‘mother’ in order to further these plots? [we will return to these questions much, much later]. Compare the impact of Mary (deceased) and John (alive, hidden) on both the episode + the boys’ narrative.

Key Quotes: Missouri, "...all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes, wounds get infected."

Discussion: Mary has been turned into a symbol of motherhood, protection, and compassion. The family (mum, no dad) parallels the Winchesters—what would their childhood have been like that way round? We know nothing about Mary, she is denied personhood, and dialogue (she says very little). Even though Mary is dead, she had more impact on this episode + was more present than John, which could say a lot about how she haunts the narrative and John’s absence. Wounds do get infected; 1) places can feel ‘wrong’, and 2) Dean and Sam’s trauma has never been healed, so is also infected. 

[ananke-xiii]

I’ve ended my post about Mary as a symbolic gift by saying that there wasn’t real space in the show for a Mary who was “not just a mom” but, truth be told, I think there wasn’t real space in the show for any character whose story wasn’t connected to Sam and Dean. As far as I’ve understood the show, the obsessive focus on Sam and Dean is both its main strength and its main weakness and I think that the finale showed it.

It’s not news that in SPN every side character who stops being useful to the plot dies. Or they die because their death is instrumental to the plot and/or the emotional arc of either Sam or Dean. Or both. This is true of every era and, I believe, it’s a rather foundational aspect of the show. This is the reason why, from a general narrative pov, I often compare the brothers to two cosmogonic forces because they are the ones creating their world which is THE world where everything and everyone depend on their story. There’s even an episode, “Weekend at Bobby’s”, where Sam and Dean sort of get called out because they only seem to care about themselves. Which isn’t true (well, more or less I'd argue, lol) but it is true that the show is exceedingly concerned with them and them alone. This extreme focus on the main character(s) is something that I haven’t found in any other show, to be quite frank with you.

Partial exceptions are Jody, Donna and the rest of the Wayward Sisters but that’s just because they wanted to use those characters for a spin-off. In reality we never know what happens to them after “Inherit the Earth”, what happens to Eileen, to AU!Bobby, to AU!Charlie, hell even to human Chuck. A good opportunity to show them one last time and tell us what happened to them would’ve been at Dean’s funeral. A funeral where nobody shows up. I know it was because of COVID restrictions but they still filmed and left that scene. So they wanted to tell us something with that, wanted us to see it. And we saw it, which I take as a way for the show to tell us that the story was really over and Dean’s death was final. I don’t want to go into the big “family is hell” vs “found family” debate but wherever you are on the two sides of the argument you kinda have to admit that it was very sad and quite cruel to show us that nobody attended Dean’s funeral.

The other exceptions are Crowley, Rowena and Castiel, three characters that have their own individual storylines that, to the surprise of no one, end when they get inextricably linked with that of the Winchesters. Crowley dies slowly and painfully of the Winchester Derangement Syndrome, whereas Rowena is revealed to be united with Sam in death. Her death. Castiel is the only character who escapes this narrative destiny right until 15x18 where he says that the reason he cared about the world was because of Dean. And then he also dies.

Perhaps the association between “worlds” and the “brothers” is at its most blatant in S13 where the Alternate Universe is a universe without Sam and Dean and, therefore, a boring universe, imo. And when I say “without Sam and Dean” I don’t mean in the sense that they were never born there but that they never even stepped foot there until, like, the last three episodes (and, by the way, they made them act like total dicks bossing around people in a war-zone.). This is not to say that, for example, Original Bobby (since I’ve mentioned him before) doesn’t have his own story, quite something else. This is to say that the vast majority of side characters in SPN have their own stories but their own stories only serve to “mirror and parallel” Sam and Dean’s. In other words, other characters’ stories are, apart from the above exceptions, always functional to the cosmogonic brothers. Case in point is that episode in S15 where Chuck eliminates all other worlds/drafts because what he cares about are “our” Sam and Dean. Sure, that was a jab at all the failed SPN spin-off but, again, this proves my point: people, much like Chuck, are interested in Sam and Dean and Sam and Dean alone (Big hello to those two Sam and Dean hopefully living a good life in Brazil, cheers! Or did Jack fix that as well? Who knows!).

The reason why Sam and Dean are absent in the Alternate Universe is not because they’re dead or were never supposed to be there but because Mary didn’t deal with Azazel. This interests me a lot because the cosmogonic aspect here is Mary’s choice: Mary is, de facto, a creator of worlds. Two to be precise but still, not bad. Now this would actually be an interesting spin-off, right? A series where Mary is one of the main characters and we get to focus on her? Oh wait, there is a spin-off about that. Or at least I think this is partly what “The Winchesters” is about because I haven’t watched it yet. It was, sadly, canceled and I don’t know why (these days they cancel shows according to the mood of the day apparently) but I’ll have to go with the current obscure ways of making profit in the media industry (as far as I know, people have no access to data to understand why certain decisions are made). This is, after all, the real world and in the real world god is profit and not a writer.

The centrality of Mary’s choice in S13 is not part of the original story that, on the contrary, was based on the notion that everything was predetermined and the struggle of our main characters was exactly this: will they or won’t they be able to exercise free will? However S13 reframes the original story because now what is deemed to be relevant is whether or not Mary is just a mother or… “not just a mom”. To use an image that’s become dear to me, the main weight put on one scale was still imagined motherhood: Mary as a character could only compare&contrast against that, against herself (as originally conceived by the narrative) and how she had imagined herself to be. She is therefore never fully free from being Sam and Dean’s mother because she’s never fully free from her own imagined motherhood. Which means she’s never fully free from her Special Heaven where she’s fake-happy with two fake-babies in a fake-perfect house and with who must be a fictional, imagined version of John. Which means that she’s not complete.

I mean, I'm surely not the only one who sees the illogicality here: Mary represents a myth about motherhood and safety and this myth takes the form of a nuclear family living in suburbia with the infamous white picket fence. Okay. She comes back to life to debunk this myth and we see that she's actually very different from how she was portrayed because she's adventurous and wild and taciturn but also leader-like, cold and secretly very sweet. Again, okay. But then she dies and we're told she's complete but we're also told (we don't see it, we're told) she's in a Special Heaven with John which, by the way, sounds very suspisciously close to Heaven's Prison. Fine, alright, okay! BUT THEN what is Mary's heaven (and, later on, everybody's heaven)? A myth about family and safety in the form of a nuclear family living in a sort of overexposed country-side. Like, what???

As I see it, what was needed to deconstruct Mary’s myth was for her to come to terms not only with the fact that her sacrifice was made in vain because there’s (apparently) no escape from the hunting world, but that she had deceived herself. For example, she might have discovered that she kinda doesn’t like leading the imagined life she used to dream about or perhaps her dream was always tainted in real life by what happened with Azazel so she never felt safe anyway, thus removing the one thing she ever wanted by getting out of the huntig world. I could go on and on but what I want to say is that it’s not enough, for me at least, to know that Mary likes to fuck and used to feed her children store-bought meals. This is cool but accessory. Do not show me the conflicted emotions of a character re: her past choices by giving me a WORLD where that character doesn’t make said choice (and therefore feels better about it). Let me see her as she realizes she was also going after a myth, let me see her as she realizes that the man she loved went basically half-mad with grief after her death, let me see her as she realizes how sorrowful her sons’ lives have been. Let me see her interact and generally be around the main characters/focus of the show.

As I’ve said, she couldn’t be free from her own myth because the narrative still needed her for Dean to be free from his own myth. To be honest I think it was a very cool idea and the two things could’ve been done together (I think it’s clear by now that I feel sorry for Mary as a character but that doesn’t mean that debunking the image of a parent isn’t a cool concept to write about). However, it totally was a retcon because S11 Amara, as much as I adore her, didn’t have the experience nor the emotional tools to understand such a deep human concept. She understood that humans need to experience/feel unconditional love and that this love can take the form of parental love from a time when humans are babies that need to be nurtured and cared for. So she saw a picture of Dean and Mary and, by virtue of her bond with Dean, she thought: oh now I get it! And she was right!!! But, like, human relationships are OF COURSE more intricate than this and there’s no way she could’ve understood all this in S11. If she had really understood it she would’ve never brought back a person just for another person to learn a lesson.

This ultimately also proves my point: Mary couldn’t be anything else than a mother in the show because the show itself is focused on Sam and Dean and everybody else depend on them to stay or not in their story. Mine is not necessarily a criticism, on the contrary, the show strikes a real chord with the mythical parent vs real one. But it didn’t let us see it because they decided that bringing back Mary just for her to be a mom would be awful. And they were correct! but, again, you can’t just bring back a central character like her and then spend the rest of THREE seasons writing her OUT of her sons’ story just for her to re-appear on time for her scheduled appointment with the fridge.

But they couldn’t do it because to have Mary back as a real fucking person would have meant, at some inevitable point in time, for the show to have her and her sons sit down and seriously talk about what the fuck happened since her death. To talk about John, to talk about the abuse, to talk about the demon blood, Hell, the Cage, the mark of Cain and, oh by the way we killed grandpa! Which means the show would have had to directly deal with trauma and they clearly didn’t want to go there. Only parallels and mirrors, mirrors and parallels. Mary never left that fridge.