#this is basically what my next hyperfixation is - going through and documenting narrative threads and yelling about them into the void

[trisscar368]

I am still just sitting and glaring at Mystery Spot.

Die and be resurrected.  Die again.  Come back again.  Keep coming back because the game isn’t over, the lesson hasn’t been learned, whatever the trickster wants from you hasn’t been achieved.

Win your way free by figuring out there’s a supernatural entity screwing with you and threatening to kill him.  But the game isn’t over, and Dean dies, and Sam is supposed to keep going.

(I got wordy oops - negative comparison to the finale, rambling about the pattern of making deals, and glaring at the author because I don’t have a knife sharp enough rn)

Back in s3 he can’t do that because he’s carrying the weight of Dean’s hell deal - giving up on Dean, letting go of this, means accepting that Dean is in hell and being tortured because Sam is alive and who could live with that?  But Gabriel was only getting involved because a) it’s fun and b) Sam being unable to let go of Dean is what was going to push him towards Ruby and eventually starting the apocalypse.  (It is of course debatable whether Gabriel intended to stop Sam or to push Sam into making that choice, but we don’t have enough of Gabriel to actually make a solid argument, alas)

There’s cosmic level consequences to these two not being able to let go, because they won’t abide by the rules and *everyone else can use that against them*.  It’s just not that “Death takes, a Winchester takes back and that disrupts the natural order” (though it does *waves hand at 2.01 and how that carries into the s2 narrative for Dean and pushing him into his choice in 2.22*) it’s “Death shows up for nachos, Death gets stabbed because Winchesters don’t like letting go and now we have to deal with God’s sister”.

*That’s* the issue on a narrative level back in Kripke’s era - there are *consequences* to the fact that these two can’t let go.  Domino number one, John dying in a parking lot in the 70s, eventually sets off the apocalypse because these characters look at the possibility of a life alone and they can’t handle it when there’s another option right there.  And every single supernatural entity on the board knows that, and takes advantage.  The dynamic shifts in Carver era to personal consequences, “I can’t let go” vs “you should have let me go” (s9 post Gadreel Sam contrasts nicely with demon!Dean) and how it’s causing the characters harm, but the plot expands in 11/12 because the *family* expands.  Cas starts making dumbass choices and sacrifices because Winchesters, and Jack learns it too.  Dean and Sam both work on *letting* each other and their other family (Cas, Mary, Jack eventually) make choices that do not sit well. 

Bad decisions still happen, but the characters are no longer dying as part of it.  They’re being forced to live with it.  Can you live with the choices you’ve made?  Can you live with the consequences?

Which is the second half of mystery spot.  We’ve done resurrection ad nauseum, time to live with the consequences of reality.  Tv show is over, welcome to the end.  Deal with it.

Except that six months of Sam not being able to let go happened because the game was rigged.  What Sam was pushing for and fighting for was a chance to do things without interference.  To beat the person who was writing that little darkfic.

And their entire *lives* were that.  The game was always rigged, from well before Mary made her deal to save John.  And those Original Sins of sacrificing themselves for a loved one were absolutely rigged.  John selling his soul for Dean in 2x01 and Dean in 2x22, Sam trying in between 3/4... those didn’t happen in a void.  Having the final breath of the narrative be Sam letting go of Dean... on top of all the other reasons why it doesn’t work for me, it’s punishing them for Chuck’s railroading.  They didn’t react correctly by *not* reacting to terrible circumstances, and finally they get to undo that by dying.

“They should never have let an abusive authority figure manipulate their lives from before they were born and push them into making those decisions, how dare.”  Like... what the fuck kind of message is this???  Yes, a lot of their decisions were things they shouldn’t have decided to do, but we have literally seen how many ways Chuck has tried to force them into his story.  Their lives are one big pile of gaslighting now, by canon in explicit detail, so this is not and cannot be what is required to resolve the emotional threads of the story.

Dean wanted to get out and have the apple pie life, and the narrative told him everyone would die if he made that “selfish” decision (go look at 2.20).  Even last season, it was “toes in the sand” if he knew people wouldn’t be hurt by that choice.  Sam wanted to get out and the narrative told him everyone he loved would die no matter what he did  (*gestures at the entire show*).

I keep waiting for the alarm clock to go off one more time.  Put me back on Wednesday, because yeah maybe they weren’t going to necessarily have a happy ending and fluff because their lives are not a tv show - except oh wait, that conclusion that the characters themselves came to?  That their lives were a horror and there wasn’t really any hope because happy endings don’t happen?  Good things don’t happen?  Was because the game was rigged.

For fuck’s sake give them a chance to try.

“I just had a really weird dream.” 

“Clowns or midgets?”