#spn cosmology

[mittensmorgul]

Is it weird to view Chuck and Lucifer as being really similar? They both come off as egotistical, self-centered, and the type who demand everyone to like and sympathize with them while treating everyone as minions who must obey/coddle them. It kind of reminds me when Dean said Sam was a lot like John despite being the rebellious son, and it makes me wonder if the similarity between Lucifer and Chuck was intentional. What do you think?

aw, first off, hi there :)

second... yeah, my personal prevailing theory for years, and how I look at the archangels in general, is that each of the four of them are like... quarters of Chuck. I know I wrote a post about this years ago, but i'll be danged if I could find it... >.>

but yeah, Lucifer embodies those particular facets of Chuck himself.

Similarly, Gabriel always felt to me as embodying other aspects of Chuck, as well as Michael and Raphael. Depending on what point in canon we're at, and how Chuck is interacting with the story, each of the archangels fill one of those roles, you know?

The archangels were one of Chuck's first creations, closest to him and most similar. It feels like they were sort of archetypes in creation, and since I haven't found a better way of explaining it outside of my own head, I'll use the same word I did a couple paragraphs back. They're each a different facet of Who Chuck Is in a really primordial way.

Gabriel evades Responsibility™ and enjoys playing around with creation, pretending to be something he isn't, just wanting to play with the story. That's a different facet of Chuck, as well.

Michael is all about the Rules. He's fully bought into destiny, and the inevitability of the story playing out exactly as written. That's also Chuck.

Raphael we know less about, but after Michael was locked into the cage at the end of s5, and even before that, when we first met him, he was convinced God was gone, and there was no point to letting his creation continue. He just wanted it all to end, so he wouldn't have to be In Charge anymore. Which... is kinda also Chuck.

So, yeah, I do think it's intentional.

[fallenangelblade]

this kentucky fried motherfucker is Not My Asmodeus. colonel sanders lookin ass

there’s only one Asmodeus for me and it’s this guy

[ani-coolgirl]

Asked this question in the SPNFanFicPond discord, but I figured I'd open it up the question to the wide Tumblrverse: What the actual fuck is word below "Paradise" in this picture? This is Ben Edlund's doodle of the cosmology of the Supernatural universe and I for the life of me cannot read those four (?) letters. Obviously the canonicity of this is dubious (Purgatory is notably missing) but I'm still burning with curiosity.

[disturbnot]

i gotta know! because your character and your take on him are so unique! what ideas do you have about supernatural and where he'd fit in that world? care for a little headcanoning going on? cause i gotta see this. i'm intrigued!

as it so happens, dear new friend, i do have an ancient spn verse that i can make an attempt at blowing the cobwebs off of. although i'm going to preface all of this with the fact i haven't watched spn in quite a long time; i had my old verse for ash back in 2014, so some of the details have gotten a little foggy (both for the verse itself and for canon spn lore—i am LONG overdue a rewatch!) but i'll do my best to recount what i can for you. :)

if i recall correctly, ash's spn verse story is prefaced by the death of his father—a hunter that lived somewhere near the southwest us/mexico border at the time and originally hailed from mexico. i believe he and his wife/son were settled in arizona, but i could be wrong (details schmetails). anyway, one night ash's pops is off out on a local hunt; a scheduled descent of tzitzimimeh from the stars—skeletal demons of aztec mythology that are said to compose the stars at night. this shouldn't have been too much of a trial on paper, and yet the man is bested by the swarm. UNFORTUNATELY, the man's ever curious and wayward son snuck out of the house to follow him that night and found his father's body, with tzitzimimeh still on the prowl in the dark. but those weren't the only otherworldly entities slinking around the badland steppe, something else was stalking. it wasn't stalking for humans, though—it was stalking for the tzitzimimeh. the benevolent yet formless essence of the god quetzalcoatl pursued the demons, and found the devastated child in dire need of care and protection. quetzalcoatl, unlike many other primordial/progenitor gods, is of utmost benevolence. seldom partaking in their flesh or their sacrifice, it regards and holds humanity, all life on earth, with a fondest love known only to great mothers. and it aches for the child, yearns to help. it also keens for a vessel. in its nebulous form of abstract light, its powers are minimal, but with material hands... maybe not so much. maybe there is something it could do for the boy. what if it gave the boy the chance to correct this mortal wrong someday? how could he say no? two or three decades later, the boy has gotten old, bones burning with a latent primordial power the god is only too gracious to temper; his body does not deform or decay before quetzalcoatl's brilliant grace, for it sleeps somewhere within, at peace until it is needed for its own agenda against fouler gods. with time, it has become inextricably entangled with ash's soul—he could no longer tell you where he ends and the blessed serpent begins. goes without saying that this precarious union afford ash some very unique and powerful gifts... well, in exchange for a great glowing target on his back. tale as old as time, yes? either way, he carries on his father's livelihood and has worked long and hard as a hunter himself, albeit a hunter with significant advantages (not that this has gotten him all that close to avenging his father) — he likely specialises in cryptids and supernatural animals/creatures. back in 2014, i think i had it down that his mother was also dead, but? idk i will probably change that. i might change the whole thing! who knows? but this is what i have for the moment. tysm for asking, dixon! :D it was fun getting to ponder this again after so long on the shelf. 🙇‍♀️

[autisticandroids]

another thing i willl say about season two is it's a LOT less spooky than season one. like with the exception of crossroads blues, which is really fabulously atmospheric and has incredible creature design (those hellhounds!!), i don't think i've been particularly impressed. like i don't find spn scary at the best of times, but season one has some really solid like... unsettling atmosphere building and tense moments, along with a lot of phenomenal and compelling creature design. like something wicked is a bad episode but i will remember the creature design on the shtriga until i die. and there's a lot of that in season one. season two the episodes pack less of a punch as individual incidents, they're more like just a series of pieces in a (characterizational and thematic) puzzle and you're meant to put them together so the individual pieces don't matter so much. and the ones that weren't so connected to Themes also like, weren't really atmosphere building. they were episodes of supernatural, they fit neatly into the structure of Solving A Case and they didn't really stray outside an already understood and established cosmology of evil. they were there as puzzles with definite answers, not emotional moments in the same way. which i think does make for better supernatural, but it also loses something

[spngeorg]

Episode 98: 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon

We finally get to explore the Great Gig in the Sky... Heaven, as it were. I could talk about this episode for hours. Days, even. But what is Time. (and yes, I considered just assembling this entire post out of song titles and lyrics from the album, but I figured that would give us all Brain Damage... fine, I’ll stop now)

We finally get a peek behind the curtain, but what are we actually being shown? Who’s actually doing the “showing,” and what agendas (including Chuck’s) are influencing what Sam and Dean experience there?

Plus Dean and Cas both take major blows to their confidence in having any hope of defeating Lucifer and stopping the apocalypse. God has always been a dick, honestly. Sam... is still desperately clinging to hope, for now. Things are looking pretty grim all around, though.

I talked long enough in the episode, so here have some links:

The Superwiki page

My Tag for the episode

My cosmology of the spn universe tag

my tag for Heaven (and hell, purgatory, and the empty)

my tag for soulmates (mercifully briefer than the previous two lol)

filming locations map

the Network Draft script

an interview with Thunderbird Dinwiddie (Pamela)

Listen now on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[nikadd]

the thing abt spn as a text is that it’s so full of retcons and inconsistencies bc of the handwavy level of control over each writer’s pov or whatever else that happened that considering literally everything to have happened/been said on the show as canon is simply inconsiderate of the rest of the canon so it’s like not that hard to imagine that many people may have their own due interpretations of the text with certain reductions done to it. but also some interpretations simply lack substance and i’m not here to sit and talk abt polysemy when somebody is clearly reaching too far or not reading what’s clearly in front of them. anyways all that is to say is that if you follow one of the main themes of the show (free will is good, predestination is bad) then you have to agree that the idea of soulmates within the cosmology of the series is not a positive one

[bradycore]

obviously if you compare the first few seasons to the last, there's gonna be a difference in focus/tone, the worldbuilding will have adjusted focus. AND obviously biblical cosmology was intended from the start to be central to the plot. i cant complain about those things. plus it's not like paganism was treated well from the start. but the shift away from the show's folkloric foundation was unnecessarily early and harsh. as soon as heaven came fully into play we were bound to the parameters of its mythos.

like, sam and dean used to casually throw together folk magic and witchcraft when they needed it, but then it became defined as demonic. methods of protection based in tradition like cat's eye shells, devil's shoestring, goofer dust, etc were only mentioned once or twice and then forgotten, while salt and pentagrams lost traditional connotations and were redefined as weapons against christian demons. even christian folklore like exorcisms, holy water, the cross was set to the backburner in favor of weapons made by angels and demons to kill angels and demons.

and the difference in power! angels themselves had started out as gritty and relatively grounded, yes meant to be powerful but reasonably so, and still impressively suited to spn's down-to-earth tone, but then thrown in the middle of s5 was an episode that introduced a dozen ancient, powerful, pagan gods for the sole purpose of showing that an angel could kill them all by snapping his fingers. and in s1 pagan gods were tied to nature and combated by interacting with nature, but then it turned out they could just be killed forever if a human stabbed them with the right thing, and if one of them wasn't killed forever it was because he was secretly an angel. because they're so much more powerful than literally everything else that they redefine the rules of spn's own framework.

no aspect of paganism is allowed to be authentic, because only god is authentic; magic isn't allowed to be folk tradition, because it's usually from hell; folk traditions aren't allowed to be as powerful as celestial and demonic weaponry, because they're not celestial and demonic; no other being is allowed to be as powerful as biblical beings, because god made it so. and everything else in the show has to come back to this--to heaven and hell, angels and demons, to them being the most powerful aspects of the universe, and every other aspect having to play by their rules. some of this is tied to s15's god-as-horror which is fun and cool, but ultimately these felt like careless changes in tone and worldbuilding. how much disregard do you have to have for your show's own roots.

actually a crime how a show that started out embodying americana and folk horror ended up treating pagan deities. what do you mean the christian god CREATED THEM as SCAPEGOATS

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

cramming like anything for my finals tomorrow, currently copying notes for my archeology exam to help me remember them. going through the section on the archeology of religion, and my absolute JOY at realizing that "beliefs around cosmology and the supernatural" can be shortened to "spn"... thank you, tumblr, for saving me a LOT of writing

[ladyknightskye]

Ask game ask game ask game!

Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

Putting it under a cut because I got really rambly there. >.>

Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

Little bit of column A, little of column B. In general I have a rough idea of what happens in a chapter, but I don't usually have like, a bullet point list of what all has to happen. Since getting into SPN and doing a lot of fandom Bangs, I have gotten to the point where I will plan more than a chapter ahead, but I don't have to stick to any of those plans.

2. What do you do when writing becomes difficult?

Honestly? I take a step back or work on something else for a little while. Or, if it's just a part of the work that's not vibing with me, I'll go back to either the beginning of the scene or the chapter and simply redo the entire thing. Usually when I do that, the cut goes into my draft file somewhere else so I can keep it just in case. If it's the whole work that's not working? I tend to abandon it. (I am so sorry to everyone who ever follows me and starts reading WIPs. Someday. Or honestly you can ask and I'd at least give you bullet points of what'll happen next)

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

Mmm, I think it's my ideas more than anything really. Not necessarily the tropes and stuff, but the combinations of them. I had a fairly atypical upbringing (combination of where I live, who I was raised by, the environment of my home) for a woman of my demographics, and a pretty meandering list of interests. I think that kinda combines into a willingness to play with the source material and tropes in such a way that you end up getting interpretations and combinations that aren't that common in many of the fandom spaces I've been in.

I say that not in, like, an "I'm so special~" way, because I absolutely had all the normal "girl" stuff as a kid. Like, I was a horse girl, had an astrology phase, all of that - but I was raised by an extended family (three to four generations at once on two contiguous acres of land, my mother was a military brat that has actually visited other countries and my father was a hippie that graduated from Notre Dame; my paternal grandmother and grandfather met while working on components of the Manhattan Project and said paternal grandmother was a well known pillar of the community; this entire motley crew all lived on the same land as a camper/trailer park that had some permanent residents but renters who came from all over the state as well as families from all over the east coast since to this day I remember the girls I hung out with from West Virginia; I am a character from a family of them), was introduced to the romance genre by Jean Auel's The Valley of Horses at the precocious age of eleven, and by thirteen had my sister handing me her Bertrice Small books on the regular. I read The Kadin at like, twelve or thirteen, so I was introduced to the idea of a healthy polyamorous relationship (let's be real y'all, our mom and grandmama's harem books were basically poly even if the ladies weren't having sex amongst themselves) at a time when most teens around me were discovering their sexuality for the first time. My special interests run the gamut of angelology/Abrahamic folklore, dinosaurs, cosmology (the science of space), epidemiology (heh heh, I was smacked in the face by that fuckin' red dodgeball of Apollo the first time I heard about a mysterious respiratory illness in China in January of 2020), cryptozoology, and music. Like, you throw all that into a blender, some weird shit is going to come out.

[mittensmorgul]

Hello! I remember reading some meta a while back about how John wasn't actually tortured in Hell, and that Dean was the only one tortured. And also, Dean was the only one who got the 1 month = 10 years time manipulation, and that's not how time in Hell typically works. I can't remember if that was you or not?? But if it was, do you know what you would have tagged it? I'm looking for it cuz I really like it and want to reference it 😬

Hi there! I have written about this quite a bit, yes. I thought maybe some of it was in the 2.22 tag, or else in the "heaven hell purgatory and the empty" tag, since it was semi-confirmed that Hell Time (and even Cage Time) does run parallel to Earth Time in 15.08. Dean mentions the "10 years" in a cage thing as possibly a reason Adam/Michael would not want to help them, and then Adam himself tells Michael that it's been 10 years since he'd seen a burger before taking a bite of it. So to them, who were in the cage for a decade, it actually felt like a decade.

So... it feels like it's been confirmed in canon that everyone else experiences time flowing at a normal Earth rate in Hell now. I went through my tags and found a series of posts you may find interesting, but obviously these are just my personal thoughts about it. It's never been stated in dialogue, for example, that Dean specifically experienced a time dilation in order to rush him through the process of breaking him from torture in time to bring about the destined apocalypse. Other demons have confirmed it can take CENTURIES to break down a human soul and rebuild them into demons in Hell. Like Ruby in 3.09:

Ruby: Yes, the same thing will happen to you. It might take centuries, but sooner or later Hell will burn away your humanity. Every Hell-bound soul, every one, turns into something else. Turns you into us. So yeah. Yeah, you can count on it.

They were on a timetable. They didn't have centuries (for one thing, Sam wouldn't live that long to fulfill his end of the fated apocalypse deal...). They needed to speed run him through breaking in the very specific way Chuck's narrative needed him to. They did NOT need John to break in this specific way. He wasn't the fated vessel of Michael, you know? DEAN was. And they needed him-- The Righteous Man-- to shed blood in Hell. I.e., to pick up the implements of torture and fall, essentially. And it still took him 30 years of brutal, directed torture to give in to that destiny. Can you imagine him being saved after 40 earth years before being returned to battle it out with 65-year-old Sam? LOLOL no.

anyway, here's some things I've written on the subject over the years. I hope some of this clarifies my personal thinking on the matter. And okay, now that I've pasted all those here, I think I'd recommend starting at the bottom of this list and working your way up, since I pulled them in reverse chronological order from my blog, and the last linked post is actually the origin of this convo on my blog >.>

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/618379181478248448/hi-im-the-wiki-anon-i-was-just-reading-a

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/189903073925/michael-and-adam-talk-about-only-spending-10-years

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/189647525560/if-deans-hell-time-isnt-indicative-of-overall

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/188516632740/re-demons-so-im-thinking-its-invite-only-most

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186982506615/this-talk-of-the-early-seasons-gives-me-another

I hope that at least clarifies how I think about this!

[drsilverfish]

Jung’s Answer to Job, or The Transformative Power of Anger with God

The Winchesters learn Chuck is God in 11x20 Don’t Call Me Shurley

In 15x03 The Rupture, the Winchesters solidify their shared anger at Chuck.

Dean: “I’m not freaked, I’m angry OK? I’m pissed.”

Sam: “At God?”

Dean: “Yes!”

Sam: “Me too.”

What does it mean to be angry with God?

The psychoanalyst Jung’s ideas about the psyche (as those of you who have been following my S14 Jungian meta series will know) have been drawn on by the SPN writers’ room, particularly in the Dabb era of Supernatural. Jung wrote a book called Answer to Job.

Job’s story is very relevant to Sam and Dean right now, because Job was a “righteous man” whom God tormented. In The Book of Job, Satan came to Yahweh, and suggested that Job was only righteous because his life was easy, as he had God’s protection. He bet God that Job would repudiate Yahweh if the going got tough. God took Satan’s bet, and withdrew his protection from Job, allowing Satan to visit all manner of torment on him. 

Satan covered Job in boils, caused the deaths of his ten children and all his livestock of goats and cattle and camels, and generally f-ed him up.

Satan Smiting Job With Boils (1826) by William Blake

Note that God, at the end of S14, kills Team Free Will’s son, Jack, and now Sam is sick (thanks to the God-wound from the revenge/ equaliser Hammurabi gun) and Cas is losing his powers. So TFW are suffering in a similar manner to Job. 

Job’s friends thought Job must have done something wrong, and suggested he was being justly punished by God for sins committed. 

Job himself opened up a conversation with God in prayer, hoping his appeals would be answered, and lamenting the (unjust) suffering being inflicted on him:

“Does it please you [God] to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the schemes of the wicked?” Job 10:3

“Surely, O God, you have worn me out; you have devastated my entire household.” Job 16:7

“He [God] throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes. I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me.” Job 30:19-20

“Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defence – let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing.” Job 31:35

“As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul…” Job 27:1

Job expected and called on God to be just. But (in Jung’s interpretation) God wasn’t behaving justly. He’d made a bet with Satan, after all. 

Eventually Yahweh does enter the chatroom. He appears to Job. gives a big, bombastic and terrifying speech about how mighty he is, and Job realises he had better bow before Yahweh and retract his criticism:

““I know that You can do all things and that no plan of Yours can be thwarted.... Therefore I retract my words, and I repent in dust and ashes...”

However, the criticism, Jung argues, stands. Jung says, of this encounter:  “The victory of the vanquished and oppressed is obvious: Job stands morally higher than Yahweh. In this respect the creature has surpassed the creator.”  (p351)

https://www.jungiananalysts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/C.-G.-Jung-Collected-Works-Volume-11_-Psychology-and-Religion_-West-and-East.pdf 

 Jung argues that Yahweh is in an imperfect state because he is separated from the feminine God-principle, Sophia, and that Job’s reproach does hold up a mirror to Yahweh, eventually leading him to re-incarnate the lost feminine godhood in the form of Mary, mother of Jesus, and thus mutate from a wrathful God to a mercy-driven one. 

Certainly, God tells off Job’s friends for suggesting Job had deserved his suffering, and even (in some interpretations) implies Job was right to call him, Yahweh, out:

“After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.’ Job 42:7

Jung argues that God needs man in order that God may achieve higher consciousness - the createes teaching the creator. He suggests that Job sees the split in God, and that God is in need of the feminine God-principle, Sophia, in order to be truly just (aka merciful, not wrathful). 

Jung believes God, and religions in general, are human allegorical stories about the human psyche. So the union of God with Sophia is about the union of the unconscious with the conscious mind.

This need for a conjoining of the light and the dark sides of God (for Jung, elements in the human psyche) tracks with SPN. Chuck has painted himself as The Light and Amara as The Darkness, but the God side of the equation, aka Chuck himself, is presently wrathful and the Sophia side of the equation, aka Amara, is presently wise. And Amara learned her wisdom (the power of love) from Dean-humanity-Winchester, just as, according to Jung, the wrathful Yahweh learned from Job. 

Sharon Martin (a Jungian analyst) argues in “The Alchemy of Anger” that anger is transformational. 

http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/spring12-alchemy-of-anger.pdf

Sam and Dean’s anger with God is their anger with The FatherTM; the impact of their own father, John Winchester, on their psyches, and, on a meta level, the anger of characters striving to achieve free will against the constraints of their writers/ creators. 

For now, the feminine and masculine God-principles may have broken up:

On the earthly plane, too, the feminine has been re-sacrificed, ouroboros style (circular narrative style). Because it was the sacrifice of the familial feminine (Mary Winchester and Jess) which initiated the SPN story in the first place. Now we have the re-sacrifice of Mary Winchester, and, most recently, to emphasise the point, Rowena’s sacrifice.  

The sacrifice of the symbolic feminine (wisdom, Sophia) is also going on in Sam and Dean’s psyches. They have lost their mother all over again and Dean, we can see, has presently chosen anger over other emotions (grief, love). Some kind of splitting is also clearly going down with Sam, given that we saw a Lucifer-Sam mind-vision, when Cas tried to heal his God-wound in 15x02.  

Insofar as Cas and Amara are paralleled (Amara leaves Chuck in 15x02, Cas leaves Dean in 15x03) Cas also stands in the place of the feminine in the narrative, at this point. And he too has been “sacrificed” and banished from the Winchester family (pushed away by Dean’s anger).  

So, the WInchesters are presently mirroring Chuck’s own wrathfulness and splitting.

But, according to Jungian analysis, their anger/ eventual consciousness of splitting, is a necessary stage of the alchemical transformation of the psyche towards wholeness. 

Eventually, the feminine principle will return: Chuck will reunite with Amara, Dean will reunite with Cas, and (I’m betting) Mary will reunite with her sons.

Jack who has been symbolised as a Hermes/ Mercury figure, and as the union of light and dark, given that he is the child of Satan and humanity - will also have a significant role to play. 

Job got his happy ending. God eventually blessed him with ten more children, a long full life and a new bunch of goats, cattle and camels.

Hopefully Team Free Will will get theirs.   

[deanmarywinchester]

the spn writers were so afraid to let angel battles get a little metaphysical and for what? so we could watch a Michael-Lucifer battle for the end of the world thats two white men throwing punches in midair, instead of the sky flickering from day to night and back while two balls of flame battle it out in the distance and the world vanishes into white light and angel static every time they get too close? come on. if it’s perceivable instead of being a cosmological sign that the ancient Greeks would’ve seen and gone “oh the gods are angry” about, I don’t want it

[astermacguffin]

Love how much this summarizes my entire spn mpreg rewrite that I feverishly wrote in one sitting the other day. There are three important motivations behind that entire Poast™:

1. I asked myself "How can I make spn as awful as I can and still be better than canon?" Hence, the "mpreg saves the day" au.

2. I want to live up with my title as an @autisticandroids scholar. When I say "I wanna study you" to someone, I commit to it. Like. I definitely did the reading. Godstiel scholars of some renown only work in mysterious ways to you. I get it tho. If you browse my published works, you'll see how most of them are expansions from other people's posts. I do make original posts, but I often function more as a secondary scholar who reacts to fandom literature.

Think of how academics/philosophers build on the works of their predecessors and contemporaries (like how Lacan went beyond Freud, or how Deleuze expanded on Nietzsche and Spinoza).

Notable examples:

- The eucharist meta

- The spn mpreg rewrite (linked above)

- The "angels as psychoanalytic subjects" meta

- The amv intertextuality post

- spn tumblr linking habits and the quasi-transformative nature of referencing

- The consumenatural quartet post

- The metaphysics of Down to Agincourt

- The evil deancas categorization post

3. My ultimate Cas thesis is this: "Cas is a mouth, he is a stomach, but ultimately, he is a womb." I think it makes sense that a being of infinite hunger is also a being of infinite fertility. He is empty (and therefore simultaneously hungry/fertile) by virtue of being the Abstracted Gaze, the stand-in for the viewer.

I also think of the Empty as the Original Womb that "gave birth" to Light/Darkness (a cosmology that I think has both Manichean and gnostic undertones). Cas being touched by the Empty and defeating it through his own womb honestly sounds very metal to me.

Anyway. I forgot the point of this post lol. Mpreg saves the day i guess

[shallowrambles]

#chuck as a vessel to a Yaldabaoth/demiurge-type being is interesting#would that make amara a sophia analog?#since the demiurge is a false god of the material world would that presuppose a 'true' immaterial god?#the empty maybe? the place not the shadow entity#it's 11:30pm and brain is whirring#sorry if this makes no sense 😬 via @bogwitchatrois Nic!!!!

Well, I think all of those are delicious. SPN had a neat way of putting all the things in a blender and coming out with this mutated monstrosity of theology and cosmology.

Funny that you mention Sophia! @13x02 and I were just talking about Hokmah (wisdom) not too long ago, but in relation to the little girl in Jack's garden here and here!

//

The Empty and its Entity are certainly interesting, and I think they also represent the concept of the individual mind, with all its nightmares, traumas, and regrets.

(Dean's mind is portrayed similarly to a Big Empty in Nihilism).

To me this symbolic horror of separation can certainly function as a God, but it also calls to mind cosmic things like the Boötes Void, too. It makes sense that Dean's mind would look like a horror motif of absence and separation. It's what he's most afraid of, abandonment and rejection. Even Rocky's Bar represented a horror of emptiness and separation.

It's Dean's contentedness, but not his happiness. It's a symbolic coworkers' bar and a symbolic roadhouse for road warriors. At this point, it's all Dean's ever dared hope for. The real happiness is hidden from view, "Why do you want what you can't have?" the subconscious-Pamela taunts.

Rocky's Bar is the promise of working alongside friends and coworkers, even when he retires, he can be close to everyone. His real happiness probably lives elsewhere, in one of his "Dean" domains, either the bunker's kitchen or his own bedroom, both of which would likely be much too revealing for live television.

But in Nihilism, even the coworkers' bar is drying up and haunted by emptiness!

DEAN: Well, sorry you wasted your trip out here, but, um...Rocky's still isn't for sale. WOMAN: (looking around the bar) Rocky's looks pretty dead. It's a very generous offer. DEAN: Well, all the same, this bar? I've never had anything this nice. So that sale that you want so bad, well, it's just not gonna happen.

The bar is empty.

//

So yeah. Now that you mention it, The Empty is an inevitable, powerful God in that sense! (We as viewers are Gods, too, at least in this analogy. Or at the very least, worshippers.) When we watch the show, there is Being, but when it Fades to Black, as it inevitably will, that's the Empty.

Chuck is probably representative of the showrunners, too, who are powerful but powerless in the face of bigger things. I think the "true" God of SPN is probably, like you say wisdom/meaning/understanding, as well as the grace to accept our mistakes and keep fighting for one another as we move forward.

God simply represents being and deriving meaning for it, not nihilism. Nihilism/cynicism is the true Bad Guy of Supernatural.

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But if we go there and suppose that Amara was growing into this role of Sophia/wisdom, then that bodes terribly for Chuck moving to erase her, doesn't it?

I like your supposition that Chuck, as a false entity of power and control, wanted to squash that awakening wisdom and truth (Yes, like 15x18 as The Truth) as much as he sought to squash the Jack-Dean-Cas family unit.

Updated this ask to add the GIFs.

One of the things I love pondering on the Chuck Won Theory is if this mutated Thing we're calling God is a Force or a Person?

What if that sniveling, crying mess left behind in the woods is just Chuck, and he's now like Nick, and he can't quite tell exactly who he is anymore. Was he God, or wasn't he? Where did that thing end and he begin?

CHUCK: This... This... This is why you're my favorites. You know, for the first time, I have no idea what happens next. Is this where you kill me? I mean, I could never think of an ending where I lose. But this, after everything that I've done to you... to die at the hands of Sam Winchester... Of Dean Winchester, the ultimate killer... It's kind of glorious.

Maybe he has no idea because he's finally free of that Force. That's the whole point. It's GONE.

DEAN: Sorry, Chuck. CHUCK: What? What? DEAN: See, that's not who I am. That's not who we are. CHUCK: What kind of an ending is this? SAM: (to JACK) His power. You sure it won't come back? JACK: It's not his power anymore.

The unstoppable Force of the narrative, preset and predestined, lives in Jack now. Chuck just wanted to finally be free, and maybe he was content to die for that freedom at the hands of a worthy executioner. He's a showrunner turning in his work badge, now at the mercy of the network.

SAM: (to Chuck) Then I think it's the ending where you're just like us and like all the other humans you forgot about. DEAN: It's the ending where you grow old, you get sick, and you just die. SAM: And no one cares. And no one remembers you. You're just forgotten. CHUCK: Guys... Guys... wait. Sam, Dean and Jack get into the Impala and drive off. CHUCK: Guys... Guys! No, wait. G-Guys... Guys, wait! Guys, wait! Guys, wait! Wait, wait, wait! Please wait! Guys!

Maybe they're just punishing the shell that is Chuck, and here as he screams wait, it's not just the grief talking. But Chuck is realizing his own bereavement. He is become like Naomi-who-cried-Wolf. He made himself so untrustworthy that he can't even get through to the boys to sound the alarm.

He’s belatedly realizing that Jack is shackled and doomed to be overtaken by that overwhelming power, covered up and wallpapered, just as Chuck the man (Nephilim?) was. (Just as Castiel was, despite beginning with noble intentions.) Now Jack is an open, unshackled mark. As Amara had her mark of Darkness, now too Chuck has passed on His mark of light to Jack.

(above is from 15x19)

I like to think that, after he left Sam & Dean, Jack-God went back to those woods. Right after this, he comes up chipperly to deliver the killing blow to Chuck, so that Chuck could never tell. And Chuck becomes like Metatron was to Amara, standing up defiantly to God for the first and only time.

JACK-GOD: Maybe Dean won't kill you, but I will. CHUCK SHURLEY: Spare them. JACK-GOD: Eh. Maybe one of them. Sam, I think. (Chuck looks on in horror) JACK-GOD: Hey, kid. You're the one who wrote it that way. Don't blame me. (Chuck can't speak; he's choking now as he lifts into the air) JACK-GOD: Shame about your body getting destroyed and all. I really, you know, liked living in it. At least this gift... (points at his face) ...is super cute. Maybe even a little cuter. But yeah. I can't risk anyone finding you after I (makes a throat motion and a CHHKK noise). You understand.

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(Text Attributions// Supernatural scripts here via @spnscripthunt. Transcripts are located here via SPNWiki. Visit their Tumblr to donate.)

[septembersghost]

also on the topic from anon earlier, genre shows are so important and enjoyable, and they're a big part of pop culture for a reason. we humans love stories, imagination, lore. we love the dichotomy of light vs. dark. we love complex, brave, damaged, passionate characters. supernatural gets an unusual amount of scrutiny and vitriol, some of which is deserved, some of which i think has certain reasons, some of which may stem from negative things from the fandom, but in its category of genre fiction, it served a purpose and there's a reason it's beloved by many. critical metrics of what defines "quality" have a different application when we're talking about horror or fantasy fiction imo. is spn deeply flawed and messy? yes. its two perhaps most influential forebears - the x-files and buffy the vampire slayer - are as well. txf's mythology gets so convoluted you can't make sense of it (not unlike spn's cosmology). btvs has a lot of issues, some of which are of its era, also like spn. (angel as well, which has its own value and significance. all that matters is what we do.) i adore those shows. they're all fundamentally different, but they share some aspects that made them iconic.

i've written at length several times before about spn's uniqueness in dealing with folklore tropes and leaning into classic gothic ideals, including the familial trauma and the concepts of faith, love as a consuming and transcendent force, and the difficulty of heroism - and that's what i believe a lot of audiences, certainly in the early seasons, latched onto. that doesn't mean it's anywhere near perfect, but it's interesting. the winchesters themselves are ineffable and multifaceted. it is very unique in its approach to its central relationships and in the way the horror tropes inform it.

but then, i love genre shows unabashedly. i watched the vampire diaries and the originals with fascination and warmth for those characters, and would happily say that the latter particularly is one of the best examples of vampire fiction in an almost grand guignol style. (they can try to adapt iwtv, but will it have the grandiose new orleans ricean flair that somehow the originals often achieved?) penny dreadful is lush and terrible and profound. spn may be infuriating and inconsistent and full of holes and have bad writing and be barely held together by red string stitching at times, but there's a reason it imprinted on people, and that CAN be more special than objective "quality." something doesn't have to be "good" to matter to you. something doesn't even have to be acclaimed to occasionally be sublime.