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#8.14
spacedean · 1 year
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DEAN WINCHESTER in 8.14 TRIAL AND ERROR
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scoobydoodean · 1 month
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Hi! I just wanted to start off by saying that your analyses on the characters are awesome and they really helped further my understanding of the show, so keep up the good work! :D
I was wondering, if you don't mind answering, what did you think of about Dean giving permission for Gadreel/Ezekiel to possess Sam in season 9?
I'm still a bit on the fence about how to feel about it and I thought your particular brand of wisdom might be able to help me out.
Dean had just a few pieces of information at the hospital in 9.01.
Dean knew that Sam had every intention of surviving The Trials in 8.14 and in fact Sam promised he would survive them and show Dean to the light at the end of the tunnel, because Dean was suicidal: "I'm closing the gates. It's a suicide mission for you. [...] I want to slam hell shut, too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live, and so should you. You have friends up here, family. I mean, hell, you even got your own room now. You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't – I am. But it's there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it."
Dean observed that Sam became suicidal over the course of The Trials and that this culminated in Sam forsaking his promise and his desire to live and falling into a tailspin where he wanted to die to make himself "pure". Disturbing dialogue from 8.21: "Knights of the Round Table. Had all of King Arthur's knights, and they were all on the quest for the Holy Grail. And I remember looking at this picture of Sir Galahad, and, and, and he was kneeling, and— and light streaming over his face, and— I remember... thinking, uh, I could never go on a quest like that. Because I'm not clean. I mean, I w— I was just a little kid. You think... maybe I knew? I mean, deep down, that— I had... demon blood in me, and about the evil of it, and that I'm— wasn't pure? [...] It doesn't matter anymore. Because these trials... they're purifying me."
Dean pleaded with Sam not to kill himself in 8.23, and Sam agreed, asking, "How do I stop?"
These are the details Dean has prior to Sam falling into a coma. He believes that his brother wanted to commit suicide, but that he did change his mind and decide he wants to live.
Two other notable details:
First, Gadreel earns Dean's trust quickly by risking his ass to help Dean, and then on the phone (after being given the fake name "Ezekiel") Cas, relieved and pleased, vouches for Ezekiel. So Dean has no reason to suspect anything nefarious (and in fact, at this point, Gadreel doesn't have particularly nefarious intentions besides staying in hiding away from other angels).
Second, Dean is not the one who pleads with Sam to live in the dream sequence, getting him to say "Yes". It can't be Dean, because 1) "Dean's" face morphs into Gadreels which is clearly intended to indicate to us that this wasn't Dean speaking 2) If Gadreel was somehow projecting the real Dean into the conversation to give that speech, then Gadreel wouldn't be the one receiving the consent. It would truly be Dean receiving it and not just Gadreel pretending. Those words HAVE to come from Gadreel's mouth for the possession to work—not Dean's. We've seen angels morph into loved ones and mimic their voices perfectly several times.
With all that in mind:
After Gadreel pitches his plan to possess Sam, Dean immediately says it isn't his call to make—it's Sam's. It's after Gadreel shows him Sam falling back into the same suicidality from 8.23—wanting to die so that "no one else can get hurt because of me"—that Dean wavers. Still—at the end of the day, whether Sam agrees to live or not was never Dean's choice, and this is something I often see people get mixed up about. Dean doesn't get to choose whether Sam dies or not. It is still Sam who chooses to live. Sam does this by saying "Yes" to Gadreel. This could not have happened if Sam hadn't changed his mind about living. He doesn't know he's going to be possessed, but he has once again beaten back his suicidality and chosen to live. Sam still had hope in a good future.
Sam chose to live. He did not know he was going to be possessed. That's the issue. However, Dean did not intend to keep Gadreel's possession from Sam after it happened. Dean and Gadreel have this conversation upon leaving the hospital:
DEAN So? How's it look in there? EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY Not good. There is much work to be done. DEAN Yeah, but he's gonna wake up, right? EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY He will. DEAN So, what he does – what, is he gonna feel you inside, triaging his spleen? EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY He will not feel me, no. There is no reason for Sam to know I'm in here at all. DEAN You're joking. No, this is – this is too big. EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY And what will he do if you do tell him he is possessed by an angel? DEAN Well, he'll have to understand.
This conversation suggests that Dean's initial thought process was "We perform supernatural life-saving surgery". He just wanted to get Sam to a point where he'd wake up and they could talk. Like any situation with a relative in a coma, that person in a coma can't consent to surgery. The next of kin is the one who gives consent, because their loved one can't. They can only consent to a procedure if awake to do so. So Dean doesn't stop Gadreel from performing life saving surgery, but his intial belief and intent is that they'll put all of this back in Sam's hands when he's awake.
Up to this point, I don't actually have a problem with what Dean's done based on his knowledge. It's here at the end of the episode, where Gadreel convinces Dean to depart from his intial intent and stall, that in my opinion, the "Dean doing something wrong" part starts:
EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY And if he does not? Without his acceptance, Sam can eject me at any time, especially with me so weak. And if Sam does eject me, he will die. DEAN Then we keep it a secret for now. Or until Sam's well enough that he doesn't need an angelic pacemaker or I find a way to tell him. I - I... As for him being in a hospital, I'll have to figure something out. EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY I can erase it all, if you like. He will not remember any of this.
Dean doesn't feel good about it, but he agrees to keep quiet, because he's scared Sam will yet again make a suicidal play. Dean is riddled with guilt in the following episodes over lying to Sam, and in 9.08, Dean tries to tell Sam he's possessed, but Gadreel takes over Sam's body and stops him. Dean comes clean again in 9.09, only for Gadreel to stop Sam from receiving the news again.
So. Dean's mistake is lying to Sam. He shouldn't have lied to him. Point blank. At the same time, had Dean pushed the issue, would Gadreel have been willing to be expelled? Would he ever have allowed Dean to tell Sam the truth, from the moment he was... installed? Or was Dean screwed from the beginning, and was the idea that he got to choose any of this—any bit of it—really just... an illusion to keep Dean compliant with the possession that was keeping Gadreel under the radar?
Think about it for a second. Why did Gadreel ask Dean's permission? He didn't ever need Dean's permission to do any of this. He didn't need Dean's permission to trick Sam. He didn't need Dean's permission to remove Sam's memory of the hospital. He didn't need Dean's permission to keep the fact that he was possessing Sam a secret. He could have done every bit of this without asking. The problem was, Dean probably would have caught onto the disappearing angel act, and Gadreel would have had to get violent, and for the first part of season 9, Gadreel doesn't want to get violent! He just wants a place to lay low, and sees an opportunity to prove he's a good angel who helps humans—not just the angel who let the serpent into the garden. Getting Dean's "consent" might ease his own conscience about nonconsensual possession or be a way to keep Dean compliant or both, but ultimately, these are more questions worth weighing imo, because Supernatural loves to toy with the illusion that Dean has power in situations where he doesn’t, and in this case, he doesn't... actually have any power at all... does he?
That said, when it comes right down to it, Dean still did something wrong by helping keep the secret—by not trying to tell Sam the truth immediately because he was scared. And well. Okay. So what?
This is a show with characters who have good intentions but still make mistakes. As Cas will say about this later, "You were stupid for the right reasons". We get some great insights into the pitfalls that lead Dean down this path, and it's interesting to watch that happen and then later, see a broken mirror as Sam endeavors to prove through season 10 what Dean is willing to do can't touch what Sam is ultimately willing to do to keep Dean around.
Here's the thing—I don't believe for a single second that Sam wouldn't do the exact same thing in 9.01 had their positions been reversed. Sam and Dean have a conversation along these lines at the end of 9.13 "The Purge":
DEAN All right, you want to be honest? If the situation were reversed and I was dying, you'd do the same thing. SAM No, Dean. I wouldn't. Same circumstances...I wouldn't. 
This genuinely wounds Dean and gets brought up a few times, but then in 9.23 when it's brought up for the last time in another context:
DEAN What happened with you being okay with this? SAM I lied.
Sam never gets the chance to do the exact same thing to Dean, but he has already gone behind Dean's back to try and save his life before. He's used Dean's death to justify doing things Dean begged him not to do on his behalf. He kept the case they were actually on under wraps as he inched toward a plan to turn himself and Dean into Frankenstein's monsters in 3.15 (and really the only reason it didn't work is that Sam got captured by Doc Benton and Dean had to save his ass, and then Sam morosely helped dig the grave). Sam went behind Dean's back directly against his wishes to threaten a crossroad's demon in 3.05. In season 10, he violates Dean's consent by removing the Mark of Cain from Dean's arm using the Book of the Damned, which not only requires an overt human sacrifice of Oskar and gets a woman named Suzie killed in "The Werther Project" because Sam refuses to heed her warnings, but also results in the apocalypse... and all of this was something Dean asked Sam not to do, and Sam did every bit of it to get his brother back, and while standing in the wreckage in 11.01, echoed Dean's line from 9.13, saying, "I would do it again". Dean signed the supernatural possession next-of-kin consent form, and the fallout was Kevin and Sam. Sam violated Dean's consent and tens of thousands of people died and he said he'd do it again while they died around him.
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mikkaeus · 10 months
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this is a show
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transientmorality · 1 year
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MASH | 8.14 “Stars and Stripes”
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ardentpoop · 2 months
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hmm
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fighting-naturalist · 11 months
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Daniel’s navy blue pinstripe suit in various states of dishevelment in “Full Alert” 
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severidekidd · 1 year
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Hey, Herrmann, show him your scar. Right, yeah. All right, look. Back in '92, I pulled a couple of newlyweds out of a burning vehicle. Cindy, she says it kinda looks like Texas. [Cruz]: Burning embers got caught up in my collar at a boarding school fire about six years ago. Hey, Tony, show him your ears. [Tony]: Always wear your hood, Gallo.
CHICAGO FIRE — 8.14 ‘Shut it Down’
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paellegere · 2 months
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i like how dean's impatience to get through these trials mirrors both kevin's situation and his own inner desires. kevin really is, in a way, a manifestation of dean's current state: he's a guy forced into a life he doesn't want and who wants to get it over with so he can move on (to what? who knows).
the bunker was introduced at probably the perfect point then, because it represents a kind of stability dean has never had, and so it only serves to make him crave that alternate life more desperately. it feeds into his impatience and fucks him over in the end.
and on the other end of this is sam, who, like he says at the beginning of episode 8.14, is treating this life as a marathon, not a sprint. there's a marked difference between how sam is using the bunker and how dean is: for dean it's stability and home, an ideal he's never really had. sam, on the other hand, is largely indifferent to this idea of stability, represented in his indifference to maintaining his space (i.e. not caring that he misses the trash can when he throws out his wrapper) and his irreverence toward dean's lifestyle changes (i.e. mocking dean for "nesting" and cooking and generally becoming something of a homemaker). this is a running theme throughout supernatural... over and over sam completely abandons the idea of a normative life, even when he claims to want "out" so badly. he's more willing to give everything up, to avoid forming attachments, to simply not care about what he could have instead.
it's expounded on again and again throughout the show that dean and sam are opposites in this regard. dean has resigned himself to the hunter life, but he secretly craves normalcy. sam tries to get out of the hunter life, but he is more willing than even dean to commit himself fully to it.
and so the fact that this culminates in sam undertaking the trials is delightfully poetic. dean wants out, and so even though he wants to protect sam and take the trials on himself, he fails to rise to the occasion: his own impatience to leave this world behind, his desire to get out, becomes his undoing. sam, committed to this life for the long haul and fully resigning himself to everything that means, is the one left.
so in the end, dean fails to protect sam because of his own inability to give everything up. it's just another reason to hate himself. and how fucked up is it that despite dean going on and on about how attachments are liabilities, it's those very attachments, those deep-seated desires, that backfire on him thoroughly. he can't even live up to his own ideologies. in this way, sam and john are far more similar; dean is the black sheep of the family.
benny and the bunker both are great ways to set up this plot line and symbolize dean's inner psychology. it provides great setup and tension that's been building across the season, so that when the final hour approaches and dean fails spectacularly to protect the one person he's devoted his whole life to, there is a whole list of everywhere dean went wrong to look back on and regret. it's a perfect tragedy because it's entirely preventable, and yet doomed from the start—because how can you really blame someone simply for wanting something he can call home?
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jerzwriter · 8 months
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lower-the-volume · 4 months
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trial and error
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foreveryoungadult · 7 years
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The Vampire Diaries S8.E14 “It's Been a Hell of a Ride”
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spacedean · 1 year
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DEAN WINCHESTER in one random episode per day ‣ 23/327 8.14 TRIAL AND ERROR
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scoobydoodean · 11 months
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Sam Winchester is a physical and sexual omnivore. A beautiful meat and veggie appreciator.
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He is not shy, he is not afraid to consume meat into his body.
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He is not a vegetarian. He is not made of meat substitutes.
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He can and will eat delicious homemade burgers
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and he—sure as shit—is not going to let a fine greasy meat man meal go to waste.
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mikkaeus · 10 months
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“your boy”
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littlemourningstar · 8 months
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Hi!!!! Considering I missed posting quite a few days of my wip a day journey I decided to just do one mass post for the 4 days so I didn’t spam people’s timelines and destroy my sanity!!
Without further ado:
8/11
Got the idea and started writing a prequel to a friends smut fic!!
8/12
Worked on the fic a little more and contributed insanity to a different friend’s fic idea
8/13
Had a THIRD friend post about a plotbunny and then I started writing a bit of that too
8/14
Today I wrote a long email to my therapist lol and the turtle bot said I could count it and technically it was writing and I did use procreate and canva to plot out my app reorganization on my phone so it was Productive at least
It was a long weekend with a lot of time in the car and out and about doing things so while I was worried I may have missed a day of doing something it turns out that I didn’t!!
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ardentpoop · 2 months
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drat! i am not immune to Boys Who Never Had A Home Making One Of The Giant Freaky Underground Bunker Their Time-Traveling Grandfather Gifted Them Upon His Violent Death
and also what it says abt them both that dean is eager to settle down there immediately while sam is more reserved/hesitant to do so
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