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amwritingmeta · 5 years

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15x01: Belphegor, Spells and Symbology - Oh My!

So, my chickadees, we’re one TFW 2.0 member short. Yeah, such a bummer, right? The kid who’s so damnnn symbolic of change overall has bit the big one (courtesy of granddad) (like what?!) and is now in the big black Emptiness in the sky where all angels go when they bite it. (but what is the Empty symbolic of though?) (yessss indeed) (the unconscious where all self-liberation commences)

Okay, Jack be gone, but in his stead we now have this new kid on the block, yeah, and this new kid on the block is taking the place of the linchpin for Team Free Will’s push towards self-actualisation and it’s no wonder, then, that this new kid on the block is a speaker of truth! See what I’m getting at here?

Basically it’s just that Alexander Calvert - darling and dearling - is still playing a character pushing our boys towards Good Positive Change. Or so I believe. I mean, obviously we shall see, but the setup of Belphegor isn’t saying anything else.

Oh, he can’t be trusted. Absolutely not. Night and day to Jack in that regard. Or, perhaps, I might go so far as to say that he’s Jack’s shadow manifested. *shrug* But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s Speaking Truths That No One Else Is Speaking.

Man! Still not off the high from that episode, swear to God I would french Andrew Dabb in a heartbeat.

Okay, reeling it in.

So, three things -->

Thing the First: Truths

He calls Cas an abomination in that stupid, dumb trench coat. This goes to the very core of Cas’ internal struggle with his identity, so this calling out of it, threading back through Cas’ journey, feels weighty af.

He speaks candidly of having worshipped a giant rock shaped like a penis as a human and is, unabashedly, checking out men and women alike (shouldn’t actually ascribe bisexual as his choice sexuality but he is clearly not straight), and then he subtly flirts with Dean, which skeeves Dean out since Jack was kinda his kid, so yeah, stop that immediately, Belphegor. (but hey if he jumps vessel then all bets are off) (just saying)

*rubs hands together because oh my god I really want there to be textual flirtation that doesn’t go anywhere obviously because Belphegor is already picking up on the tension between two certain someones*

Belphegor also brings up Hell and Alastair and Dean breaking and torturing souls! Like what?!! The callbacks to end all callbacks. To the beginning of it ALL. Like, yeah, we’re in the final stretch here and Dabb is not kidding around.

And yes, Belphegor calls the moment Dean and Cas share at the end of the episode what it is, which is awkward, and then tries to prod Cas to talk about it. Albeit ironically (of course Cas won’t open up to him) he’s still doing it because he just doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him and this is precisely the sort of character these two need to poke and prod at their inability to fucking communicate openly.

Hot damn!

But. We shall see what we get. :P

It’s interesting that he barely interacts with Sam. Sam is his own man this episode in very many ways and I very much like it.

Thing the Second: Spells

Graveyard Dirt and Angel Blood

Naturally most of us, I’m sure, immediately thought of the “I’m always happy to bleed for the Winchesters” moment in S7. Here, Cas isn’t so happy. He’s suspicious, and rightly so, of this new player on the scene. Still, he complies.

Now, there are things to take from this scene that have to do with life vs death, mortality vs immortality or even Earth vs (or if you’d rather) combined with Heaven.

Cas’ strong reaction to Belphegor defiling Jack and Belphegor predominantly having a personal interaction with Cas through calling out the trench coat (symbolic of duty/humanity and at this point that space Cas occupies between) puts the focus on them here. Add to that the need of angel blood and it’s even more heavily linked to Cas symbolically, right?

What exactly does the symbology mean? Honestly, beats me. It feels like a foreshadowing that won’t be clear to us until further down the line (hopefully), but it excites me to think that for a character who has battled for his entire progression with the question of where he belongs, we get a spell that literally combines dirt or earth with the blood of Heaven.

Does that mean that there’s a choice to be made - mortal man or immortal wavelength? - or does it mean that Cas is already a bit of both and just has to accept himself as he is and continue on wearing that stupid, dumb trench coat proudly, the same way he has for a good while now, eh?

Well, that is the real question, isn’t it?

But then again, I’m a bit biased. :)

Mound of Salt and Human Heart

This one’s very interesting as it’s tied more directly to both Dean and Sam. Cas is a part of it too, as he’s with Sam when the spell is cast and they run for the safety of it together, but Sam is the one most affected by it, and I’m curious to see what effect it will have on Dean as well.

Why?

Because what does salt mean on this show?

It means protection. The spell is, literally, a protection spell, right? A magic ring of salt a mile wide - no ghosts in and no ghosts out. For characters who have always been incredibly haunted by their past, though in subtext, the external hauntings are being salt-circled away from them, while the human heart of the spell could symbolise the brothers’ hearts actually entering a safe space as well.

Again, why?

Because of what Sam does the moment he passes the perimeters of the spell.

He turns around and he faces a fear that has been very pronounced on the show - his fear of clowns (or, as I’d argue, his fear of people wearing masks, not showing their true face) - and he tells that fear to shut up.

Mind. So. Blown.

What a moment for him! *goddamn fist-pumping the air for him*

The heart is at the centre here, and the heart symbology has always been extremely strong with Dean, but in 13x12 it was Sam’s heart on the line and now both of them are linked to the beating heart on that mound of salt linked to a sense of safety, of protection, of trust. The potential, peeps. The potential of a deeper exploration of what the want in their heart of hearts. Yeah?

Not just in the coming few episodes within that mile wide magical ring of protective salt, because Lord knows how long that’ll last, but through the symbology of it. I mean, what a way to instil hope that this is what they’ll all be pushed to explore during the coming season. *fingers crossed*

Thing the Third: Motivation

Or possible motivation for Belphegor.

Given his speech in the crypt about wanting Hell to stay as it always has, it’s intriguing that he’s an opposite mirror of Anael. She had a boring, repetitive job and she couldn’t wait to get out of Heaven. She chose to make a life for herself on Earth because she actually wanted to help people (if that statement sticks) (I’d love for her to come back this season and then all bets are off) while Belphegor wants to help the Winchesters restore Hell to its recent glories so that he can go back to punching that clock. And, you know, torturing souls.

Too simple?

Yeah, maybe.

Of course he knows who the brothers are (love that there are newspapers in Hell) and this feels like a possible plant for him actually seeking them out specifically. Might not be, but it’s an interesting plant if so. Because of how Lucifer tried to make Nick resurrect him, for one, but also because of the Heaven/Hell dichotomy overall and who’s vying for what and who’s on the side of whom. *curious af*

Here we finally have a character who might have some personal stakes in driving a wedge between these men, and what better way to drive a wedge than to dredge out truths no one’s speaking, thinking it’ll break them apart when we know it’ll actually only serve to open their eyes to their own blindness and will end up making them stronger, individually and, through that, as a group.

*gah*

Could Belphegor not be Belphegor?

Yeah, but I don’t see why he would be.

I think he’s Belphegor the demon, but his stated motivations might just be a half-truth. Perhaps he’s even linked to Michael. darkest!Michael would be something tbh. After all, Michael was always, even if God held the ultimate reins, the shadow along the edges of the brothers’ fate. And after a few lifetimes in that cage, I do wonder exactly what might emerge. *goosebumps*

That said, Michael is a pale representative for toxic masculinity when the Almighty himself has stepped into those shoes, so symbolically it might be more fitting that we get something entirely different. Time will tell!

#spn meta #spn speculation #spn 15x01 #tfw #dean winchester #sam winchester #cas #jack #belphegor #truth sayer #shadow manifestation #symbology #michael #my reading

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sinditia · 5 years

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Supernatural 14x10 – Nihilism

Yockey-Tapping is a deadly duo, my dudes, holy shit! That was a BRILLIANT episode.

There was excellent tension-building throughout the entire 40 minutes of the thing and I was engaged and at the edge of my seat the entire time. Usually when I watch Supernatural, I’m half doing something else, thinking about what to write (ie complain about) in my reviews, but not this time. This episode, my focus was fully on what was happening in the episode, I was immersed in it, and I didn’t care about anything else. Fuckin’ bravo, guys, just bravo.

Jensen continues to impress me with his portrayal of AU!Michael. He really brought the character to life, when before AU!Michael has always been just this meh of a character with unclear motivations and a bland sort of personality. It’s not just that we finally get some explicit explanation about the whys and wherefores of what he’s been doing and what’s going on in that weird little head of his. But we get to see how manipulative he is, how utterly, annoyingly arrogant he is, just how good of a villain he is. I really like it.

One thing that I love about this episode though, is that Michael tries his best to manipulate TFW 2.0 with what he thinks are their greatest fears about Dean. And they sound appropriately cruel, and it seems like it worked for a bit. But then you get to see, at least with Sam and Cas, that their faith in Dean is that strong that they can ignore it, or at least hide that it affects them. I really dig that. Jack, on the other hand, maybe because he’s known Dean a lot less than Sam and Cas, maybe wavering a little. But more on that later.

Dean’s “the dream” scenes were well-executed, I think. I’m sure there’s a lot to unpack there, but I haven’t got any meta skills to do that. I’m sure lots of people have dissected the shit out of how Dean’s mind and dream-world is constructed. My reviews are more from a story-telling and execution point of view and less of a thematic analysis of things.

I really liked the way the episode was constructed. How it just sort of escalated and escalated and then after it was “done”, the ending was a little unsatisfying in the sense that they didn’t really “win”, which I think is a great place to end as an episode of a series. It serves as a potential for further storytelling and keeps people interested and wanting to watch.

Cas’s conversation with Jack at the end was great. I love how fatherly Cas sounded when he was reprimanding Jack. It really hits home the kind of relationship they have. In past episodes we’ve seen how Jack is like a young boy in his perception of his fathers. There was no doubt in his mind that his fathers love him and will come rescue him, he sees them as strong and wise and he looks up to them in pretty much everything. It’s interesting to see Michael plant those seeds of doubt in Jack and I wonder if this is something they’ll explore in the future.

Dean’s thing at the end with Billie is kind of confusing to me because I can’t keep up with SPN lore, honestly, especially with how inconsistent everything is. I’m absolutely in love with the way Yockey always tries to draw aspects from past episodes to make it seem like SPN is an actual cohesive show, but when he’s not around, canon gets all over the place so I just get confused.

So that’s like a death book right? It shows how Dean will die? Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is that he kills himself, which saves everyone from Michael, but morbidly, I also think that Dean wouldn’t look that devastated if that’s what he had to do. He’s never been shy about sacrificing himself to save the world (hell, he’s killed himself just so he can talk to ghosts that one time). So I’m thinking it’s probably something worse. I can’t think of anything at this point though

Oh well, surprise me, SPN. I have high expectations.

Also, Yockey, I love you and I wanna send you a fruit basket k thx bye.

#supernatural #spn #14x10 #s14 #spn spoilers #nihilism #spn season 14 #spn 14x10 #my writing #castiel #dean winchester #sam winchester #jack kline #jensen ackles

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bibliophileiz · 5 years

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The Spear Rewatch Notes

So I missed the season finale of Supernatural because I was out of the country, but now I’m back and have had some time to watch it and my thoughts are thus:

- First scene -- Garth is a dad and Michael’s new vessel is perfection.

- The cereal scene is really cute. - Thematically, I actually find Cas and Jack’s relationship really boring -- I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but Jack’s relationship with Sam is more interesting than his dynamic with Cas and Cas’ parental feelings toward Jack are fascinating primarily in that they’re at least partially rooted in Cas’ loyalty to Kelly, which I don’t think the show explores enough. And I feel like the pair-offs this season have been Cas + Jack (and once Dean + Jack, which was great) and Sam + Dean instead of the more interesting pairings of Jack + Sam and Dean + Cas, which is what we got this episode. But I do like this cereal scene for a number of reasons. - This is the scene where Jack realizes that Cas not only gave up his soul for him, he also gave up his happiness. Both Cas’ deal and his refusal to tell Sam and Dean about it mean he’s going to be in this state of perpetual loneliness. I do think Cas thinks his death is a long way off -- he probably is expecting Sam and Dean to die first, the logic being that the Empty wants Cas miserable and being without Sam and Dean will make Cas miserable. Unlike Jack, Cas has a frame of reference for just how long an angel can live compared to humans -- which is going to come up later in this episode in Jack’s scene with Michael, which is also amazing. - (This isn’t to say that I don’t think Cas’ deal will come back to bite him in the course of the show, because I do think that. I just don’t think Cas thinks that.) - “Did you take the decoder ring out of the box?” “Maybe.”

- Another thing I find fascinating about this episode is the subtle but persistent opposition of Sam’s sense of caution and Dean’s borderline manic optimism. The first scene with Sam, he’s worrying about Garth and Dean’s just like, “He’ll be fine” -- even though Garth will absolutely NOT be fine if he thinks he’s going to outsmart Michael with a trick that didn’t even work on his mom. And Dean’s just like, ‘no biggie, we’ll get him’ which is an attitude he carries all episode, even when Jack gets kidnapped and Michael melts the egg.

- Also I will give you a hundred dollars if you can give me a good reason why Ketch is still in this show.

- Who is the backwards cap teen werewolf, and why is Robert Berens so obsessed with awkward teen intern monsters? (There’s an intern demon in the episode where the guys rescue Linda Tran from Crowley’s prison, an episode which I’m pretty sure Berens also wrote. It makes me think Berens likes this kind of character.)

- So Michael obviously doesn’t bother sending monsters to get Kaia’s spear because he knows Dean’s going to get it. I did it.

-”When was the last time we had a big, no-strings-attached win like that?” Cas, don’t you feel BAD? - He just doesn’t want to tell Dean about his deal with the Empty because the last time Cas pissed off an all-powerful cosmic being in a way that would get him killed in the near future, Dean didn’t speak to him for a week. - I actually don’t like this scene that much though. Dean’s monologue about wanting to kill Michael needs more weight and more room to breathe-- some pauses, some dramatic music, a little more time which we could have had if you cut the Ketch scene that was drawn out for no reason. - Oh, well, at least Dean and Cas are getting their date finally this season.

- Likewise, the scene between Michael and Sam needed to be heavier, more drawn out. I want Michael to actually be worried about Sam, about how successfully Sam has coordinated and trained the apocalypse hunters from Michael’s world. I want there to be some sense of long-expected meeting, instead of it just looking like Michael bumped into Sam in the post office parking lot and decided to throw him into a van. - Seriously, do you have any idea how long I’ve been WAITING for their one-on-one? (I mean, since the end of Season 13, but still.) - I super want Sam to be the one to kill Michael. Dean killed Lucifer, Sam should get to kill Michael. Also, I like the idea of the brothers killing each other’s tormentors.

- Scene with Kaia is excellent and not just because I’m obsessed with the character. - Her introduction is great -- I’m such a sucker for the girl appearing out of nowhere and threatening a dude with a weapon. (Chalk it up to Arwen in The Lord of the Rings or Jane Barnet in Swashbuckler.) - DarkKaia music theme!! - Dean’s acting like he has a bit more respect for her than he has the last two times he meets her, but he still lies to her face. I’m a Dean girl and all, but I am going to enjoy watching Kaia kick Dean’s ass when she finds out Jack can’t get her back to the Bad Place. - Also you can tell Cas thinks lying to Kaia is a bad idea but he doesn’t want to say anything while Kaia’s got a spear pointed at Dean. Instead he tries to manage the damage on the front end by pointing out Kaia’s withholding things from them. He’s got a lot more emotional intelligence than he used to. - Maybe DarkKaia has a DarkClaire she needs to protect in the Bad Place. - She doesn’t, if she did she wouldn’t have tried to kill original flavorClaire.

- Cas: Sam, don’t you go in there alone. Sam: I know. *immediately goes in there alone*

- The scene between Michael and Jack is amazing. (TBH, the second half of this episode is better than the first half, which is also kind of typical of Robert Berens. It’s like he just kills time before the high-stakes climax, and said climax is so good it makes you forget the rest of the episode may have only been meh.) - WHO IS PLAYING MICHAEL, SHE’S SO GOOD. According to IMDb, her name is Felisha Terrell and she doesn’t appear to be in the next episode. Fuck you, Supernatural, you’re going to bring Mark Pellegrino back and not this goddess? - Seriously though, she’s really good, I don’t understand how she doesn’t have more credits on IMDb. Maybe she’s more of a stage actress? - She manages to deliver her lines in this scene with a mixture of casualness and gravitas that really nails the topic of the passage of time and how it changes family and loyalties. - If the cereal scene is Jack understanding what Cas lost by making the deal to bring Jack back, then this scene is Jack understanding what HE lost by coming back. As an all-powerful being with archangel grace in his veins, he was bound to be all but immortal anyway, and now he’s using Enochian magic to keep his body functioning -- magic that kept someone who was constantly using it and burning up her soul to do different spells alive for more than 100 years. Imagine how long it’s going to keep Jack alive when he’s not using it for any spells other than keeping his body working and when he’s eventually not even going to need it for that because his grave will naturally regenerate. - Jack told Dean that he wanted to live his life spending more time with his family and then die when that life was over -- now he’s realizing that time will be long after the rest of his family (including Castiel if Michael has his way, it sounds like) is already dead. Long enough that Kelly, Sam and Dean will become just a tiny percentage of his life. - Of course what Cas knows and Michael DOESN’T know is that longevity doesn’t equal loyalty, or Cas wouldn’t have chosen Dean even after Naomi’s constant reprogramming. - Anyway, Felisha Terrell may be my favorite thing about this episode.

- Love the return of Hair Werewolf and Overly Zealous Intern Werewolf. - Also love the return of Sam Motherfucking Winchester, who takes out even the werewolf who had advance notice he was coming, because he’s Sam Motherfucking Winchester. (Something else Berens does great.) - Can Sam rescue Jack all the time? That really is my favorite of Jack’s relationships.

- Did anyone else think the scene spent a weird amount of time emphasizing Jack’s injury by Garth and Cas’ healing of it? Is Cas’ grace used to heal Jack going to make Jack able to use some of his powers next episode? - Seriously, there was so much time spent on that that I was afraid Jack was about to turn into a werewolf. (Which would have been so dumb, I’m glad they didn’t do that.)

- Fidgety Michael is something I find fascinating. I don’t think we’ve ever seen an angel fidget before. - Michael is so obsessed with these guys knowing his plan/seeing it all play out. He’s the biggest drama queen in this show. (Sorry Crowley.) - I don’t really understand what Michael says to Cas in the scene where he’s beating him up though. -”You got it.” “I sure did.” He was counting on you getting it, stupid. - I love, love, love how Sam sliding the spear across the floor to Dean is a parallel to Sam throwing the archangel blade to him during his battle with Lucifer in Season 13 (about the only good part of that battle, tbh).

- I guess no one was surprised Michael possessed Dean again. - When Kaia finds out Michael broke her spear, she’s going to kick his ass too. - Also, can we appreciate Michael’s level of drama? He starts his Scotch in one vessel and then finishes it in another. That’s some Extra shit right there. Somewhere in the Empty Crowley’s wishing he’d thought of that.

Overall thoughts: Not the best episode but not the worst either. Ringing endorsement, I know. I just felt it had a lot of potential that it didn’t tap into because it was too busy giving Ketch an unnecessary scene (What would have been wrong with Sam grumbling, “Ketch put the egg in the mail” like in every other episode this season?) and spending a lot of time on Intern Werewolf and other, more boring werewolves when it should have been building the tension in scenes like the one between Michael and Sam, which felt a little rushed and flat.

That said, I loved the new Michael and pretty much all Jack’s scenes were good. And since it looks like there’s going to be some trapping of Michael and some invading of Dean’s head, maybe the high-stakes emotional character stuff is all going to come next episode. I want Michael taunting Cas and Sam about how they’ve failed Dean, Jack doing some rescuing of his own, and Dean being pissed off that Michael changed his clothes again. I also want Mary and Sister Jo to save Kansas City and for Garth to puke up the angel grace and be totally fine and home in time to spend Christmas with his daughter.

#is this is the first spn xmas episode since the one with the pagan gods in season 3?#supernatural #supernatural spoilers #michael is a crowley level drama queen #felisha terrell is my new favorite person #also excited for bartender dean

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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Pre-Wayward Sisters Rewatch Notes

1x09: HAVE SOME PATIENCE WHILE WE GO TO MISSOURI

I've been through here so recently but it still cracks me up in the intro when it recaps that Mary "is never coming back", and then the ground it goes on to cover with her which is literally just her season 12 arc she returns to deal with properly. It's pretty much neither here nor there, and while technically I'm rewatching this for Missouri, I have to admit I'm like 90% coming back here because of the phone call parallel to 13x01's prayer because I like tormenting myself and that really sealed the deal on if I would come back to rewatch, since I covered seasons 1-4 in the hiatus.

It's interesting to me that the recap covers so much of the already established Winchester Family History circa 1x09 because it's going over the mythos of the family that led us to this point where we go to the home to explore all this and dig down into the emotional drama behind everything... To actually expose some of the things that we've been sitting on until this point. Our first sight of John since the Pilot, and Mary's last moments in her chronological story until 11x23. And beginning to get into the mystery of the evil that was done to Sam, and Mary's part in it.

The reason I say all this is because obviously when we get to the season 13 episodes introducing us to our Wayward squad, the recaps of the episodes are going to have to cover this same ground - to tell us who everyone is, to bring them into the fold and to tie their stories together. Hopefully by the proper Wayward Sisters episode when we've had all the new girls' stories, we'll get a recap with a very similar feel: just a straightforward "this is the family, do you want to find out more about them?" sort of explanation.

I also remember from the rewatch I did in the summer that the Home one stood out to me for being so focused only on the Winchester mythos and the surrounding ones were more about the monsters and fighting and "saving people hunting things" that the family focus felt far more important here even before the episode started.

It's weird, it makes me preemptively excited to see the family come together just because I know they'll have to do the montage, and like this one was in a low key way, it will high key be a special event, because it will be ABOUT the new family we care about.

I am momentarily distracted by how this episode opens on Sam's vision and then him obsessing over drawing the tree from outside the house over and over. I watched 1x17 last night with my mum and it reminds me of this season's great subtle mirroring and repetition of moments and ideas and motifs, when Dean is obsessing over his mystery symbol. That was the silly example of this to break the tension but to keep consistency through the season, subtly repeating ideas in a way that just keeps it all kind of the same aesthetic, of Sam and Dean doodling on motel paper... Anyway, reminds me of Dabb era's methods but they have 12 seasons of past canon to play with and in season 11 it was extremely blatant the way they revisited old ideas and told us they were shaking them up and doing them differently or just bringing them back for our consideration. I wonder if anyone ever collected up all the ways season 1 internally mirrors itself. It's really just a spiral of mirrors that unlike the character development spiralling closer and closer to a desired end, this spirals out and out that the more canon there is the more there is to reference and repeat, and so it grows exponentially in mirrored subject matter...

At this point Wayward Sisters is going to have a bit of a job navigating the story to tell its own stuff in a fresh way without falling back on the repeated ideas - I don't know if we should be looking for mirroring or if introducing the characters as part of Supernatural's main canon means they can be used by the narrative in this way but only when they get to their own show will they then build their own language. The new show means they can play around with new ways of telling things and the tropes will probably be very different all over the place. Like, for once I'm not expecting a new psychic character to massively mirror Sam, even though Home and how Missouri and Sam bond over his powers is obviously like the main reason to come back here to rewatch before we get an episode where she does it with her own granddaughter. I don't think there's anything evil behind Patience's powers especially if we're assuming they're inherited from Missouri and they're not going to introduce some weird ideas about where those powers came from - it's enough having them I think :P

On the other hand if Patience is being hunted by a hungry wraith that likes her powers then it IS a parallel to all the interest in Jack for HIS powers. We'll see how it shakes out but once they're in a show where they're the main characters (and I really hope Patience is the POV character - I think actually not long after I was talking about that somewhere I saw an interview suggesting she WOULD be, which is AWESOME) then the fact that Patience is/was a Sam and Jack mirror will be utterly by the by. Really I just hope they don't bend her to meet the perfect criteria for a mirror but develop her for herself and put Sam and Jack in her shadow.

Sam realises they need to go home and this is the motivation to reveal that he has been having psychic nightmares - the fact that someone is in trouble and needs saving and the only way to explain to Dean why he knows this is because he suspects he's psychic. For narrative parallels to whatever might happen in 13x03 purposes, I'm interested in how Patience's story compares to Sam's, as she is reconnecting with Missouri by the sounds of things, and has her own issues with being disconnected from her family probably - this episode is still filled with massive disconnects and both of their parents withholding information or just outright avoiding them, seemingly for their own protection. (Mary being rather more direct about protecting them in a heroic way than John, hiding in the shadows refusing to confront them with the mytharc knowledge about Sam). Patience is prooobably going to be out of the loop on what's happening to her, or out of the family loop, which means that this is going to be personal discovery for her too.

Oh hey and then Sam gets them through the door into the house by using a conditional amount of the truth (they're sam and dean winchester and they used to live here) just like in 13x01 Dean just used the truth to the sheriff and got her on-board and them out of jail with that frankness... Sometimes it pays.

OH GOD Dean having to relive the fire by telling it to Sam... and 13x01 starting with Dean re-imagining/dreaming/having a vision about it again :<

I swear I started this trying to tell myself I would not make this about Man Pain because this is the Wayward Sisters watch but I am an addict

Dean goes to make the call and there's a big blue shipping container thing beside him and it's so claustrophobic, like he's chosen the most confined secret space to make the call... It's in total contrast to the vast open space he prayed in - but he STILL shuffled into the shadow of the (blue) building in order to make the prayer and get that illusion of privacy and confinement. The wide shot as he goes in here shows him behind the car and weaving between gas station junk and between these two buildings/large structures. In 13x02 just the random car parked at the back stops Dean from being entirely alone and exposed. I'll take that as a commentary on his layers and how open he is being, although it's sort of awkward when both times, of course, he's going for a super private call that he's going to open himself up for completely, revealing deep down things that have never been exposed before.

People literally started loving Dean about this exact second of the show because he broke so wonderfully to cry and reveal he's not all his top layer stuff. I think someone on the superspecpod (2 of them?) said/agreed on this moment.

Of course we can assume Chuck is listening and not acting, not just because he's omnipotent and abnormally attached to Dean of all humans, but also because John literally did hear this voicemail and either already was in or came straight to Lawrence.

God the fact he makes the call in front of the men's room but then it's the buccaneer's room in 13x02... what a goofy episode... I hate it... Pfft

THIS IS SO HARD TO WATCH.

I rank Dean's pain proportionate to his experience, and this is definitely the worst he's ever been at this point, mostly because we never see him cry until then.

He certainly is dealing better than in 13x02 because he still has a job to do and it might be hard but at least he has some sort of focus and a reason for being there, and even if everything is all messed up (he has to be back here AND Sam has just revealed he's psychic) that's not completely and utterly unbearable in the same way losing Mary and Cas (and even Crowley) has made him shut down so hard in season 13. There's no forward momentum for him. Jack is not enough of a motivation >.>

SAM: All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There’s someone named El Divino. There’s, uh –-[He laughs.]—there’s the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley—

Dear lord bring back these other guys just to kill them off for the epic 13 years of continuity you could get for free.

El Divino would be hilarious because I'm guessing the divine -> cas connection would be especially hilarious to play on

These lines are moments apart:

SAM: [reading] I went to Missouri and I learned the truth. [...] DEAN: Why didn’t you tell him? MISSOURI: People don’t come here for the truth. They come for good news.

Yeah, not that she gave John any.............................. or did she not tell him EVERYTHING she suspected/read about what had happened to Sam in that night? Exactly how far-ranging are her powers? Could she have seen what Azazel did by proximity to the attack around the time it happened and to John? She could see that dude's wife was having an affair, which is out of his knowledge range, so does that mean she knew about Mary's deal, which is loosely coded as infidelity to John with Azazel?

Gaaaah.

but oh NO - Missouri takes one look at Sam and Dean and specifically analyses Sam's woes as missing his dead loved one and Dean's as his missing parent...

*flippy flippy to season 13's entire framing of their loss*

TBH Missouri getting annoyed at Dean asking where their father is is probably specifically because she knows exactly where he is, aka hiding in the spare room upstairs doing whatever angsty things John does, and she's trying to shake Dean off of asking, and she is probably not that great at lying when she is in the middle of it all instead of just cheerfully telling people what they want to hear.

Maybe the whack you with a spoon thing was also to make Dean so uncomfortable with her he wouldn't keep bugging her for info about things she did not want to admit right then.

Keep them on track

I do feel like she was here to challenge them, not to nurture them, and I think it's weirdly the same issue people are having with Mary in season 12 and Dean "parenting" Jack in season 13, where she is not actually meant to be a motherly character, and I have historically had no issues with her in the past, before fandom and everything needing to be tuned to being good to your fave or otherwise the Worst. She's interesting and introduced even just with that guy she lies to as being mercurial and emotionally untrustworthy. She lets them behind the veil as it were since they know she's really psychic but clearly using that power carefully and not being too accurate all the time for people when the truth hurts and her powers can be better used for reading people and working out what would be best to tell them... But for hunters it's a different story... but that doesn't change her default personality... Especially as the end of the episode reveals she has been withholding literally the object of this season's quest from them at this early stage. She literally plays them like her customers except with the personal plot info she can't tell them.

So when she goes through the door saying Dean's not the sharpest tool the shed, she is not a person in a position of emotional responsibility to them, we just see Sam and Dean as scared confused little ducklings (like Jack in season 13) and people being harsh with them, especially I think when we come back to them with years of seeing them grow up and grow harder, so they're all soft and fluffy and mostly unharmed at this point, it's so easy to be defensive of them... And I mean I AM because DEAN, but not so much I think this means Missouri is a horrible person or that she's cruel or Dean shouldn't give her the time of day in season 13 or whatever. I find her to be interesting and she's an obstacle they DON'T overcome because she is twice as fast as them with her psychic advantage so she can help them for the GREATER GOOD, but conceal their much more personal issue from them, making her a minor (friendly and great good-motivated) antagonistic as far as the stuff that matters on the character side of things goes.

In season 13 she has nothing to lose in hiding things from them or lying to them, I bet, especially as she appears to be the one asking them for help rather than them coming to her, so I assume she will be more open, and I also assume that with 13 years space in between, Dean is not going to hold a serious grudge for the way she treated him - because those words are just a few from a one-off meeting with her rather than a childhood of negging or something. Like with Mary she doesn't have responsibility over them as adults, or a moral obligation to them in the same way a recognised caregiver would.

If she can read inside their heads and treats Dean this way she is doing it for a reason and she's running circles around them to not reveal that John has been in contact with her or that even at this point perhaps she knows he's already in town.

OH NO the nursery scene... This is where it all happened. A dark energy in the room...

And now we know that Jack being born and sloping off to the nursery to hide in the corner was heralded by a wave of powerful GOOD energy, not the "toxic" energy of Lucifer and the same thing that Azazel corrupted this room with.

Also Missouri calling Dean an amateur for using an EMF meter might be more of the negging but this scene is Missouri being a serious professional at the ghost hunting thing just by being herself... I think since she's coming back and it will be a less personally charged episode - pretty much has to be - then her natural competence at hunting will be an asset. She might not be able to handle wraiths as easily as ghosts but she certainly has a whole load of real spell ingredients and knowledge about things that really work for actual hunting. She's not a hapless bystander even if her day job is fortune telling...

Oh and then we have Sam out-psychic-ing Missouri. Probably because he's got demon blood but it is interesting what might happen with Patience - if she's more sensitive than Missouri as well, or if they have the same level of talent. It would change from being ominous about Sam - with Missouri as our default example of what the generic psychic of this world building can do as the season 1 intro of such a character, and how Sam is unnerving because he can do more - to a story about outgrowing the talent of your elders and forging your own way in the world with your own strength that only you can define since help can only go so far when you outshine them... In storytelling purposes I can't really imagine they won't make Patience as good as (but with a better innovative mindset) or better than Missouri (in raw power) just because "oh here's a slightly less psychic character" just doesn't really sparkle off the page as a hook. We'll see, but I can imagine it being kinda like the stuff that happens with Sam here, but not in an ominous way, just in a way that Patience is going to move on and join the Wayward Sisters.

Of course Missouri could just die and motivate her even if she has average/normal powers, because she won't be measuring herself against Missouri and it would be a motivation to be as good as she was from a start where her powers are a bit wonky.

(Although with Jack around I can see them being veeery tempted by her being super powerful but not knowing how to control it yet just for the sake of having a parallel.)

I am still not over Sam saying he can "see" Mary now before she appears to him, neatly book-ending this scene and 12x22 and Dean asking Mary to see HIM, and basically the fact they stole literally Mary's entire arc in season 12 from the staging of this scene.

And if you want to keep recycling it in reverse, she burns up again in 13x01 in Dean's dream, to cap that all off.

Wheee

It's weird having Mary on screen in this over-dramatic OMG it's MARY way where it's the most amazing thing that's ever happened, and then we got a whole season of her where she was just kinda around :P

SAM: What’s happening to me? MISSOURI: I know I should have all the answers, but I don’t know.

And yep she's still lying to them and hiding everything she knows, and as such even though she's kinder to Sam since he's probing her less and less snappy than Dean, she doesn't give him the exact advice and information he needs even though apparently she and John knew a hell of a lot for ages...

You know what I would like? This is a total pipe dream, but for her to tell Dean what she actually knew when they met her, and maybe even apologise for withholding information because John said it was for the best and all. Because Sam was FUCKED UP by all this and honestly considering it's all one emotional arc right through the show it makes you wonder what Sam being given actual information by someone other than Azazel when it amuses him to do so would have ever done to help him figure out who he was, what was happening to him, and how he should react to it.

He's sitting on these steps feeling probably somewhat the same as Jack did in 13x02 where he was sitting on that crate in the alley, although from a less aggressive situation, just, kinda reflecting on everything that happened. He sees there's a pattern in everything kicking off, and now Mary apologises to him... And he's got these powers he's only just daring to even voice exist and grappling with what will be his myth arc for basically ever... And Missouri lies to him and withholds information he needs. John knows stuff about Sam - he DIES knowing more about Sam than they ever did until waaay too late. He probably knew BY THEN that Sam had demon blood, which wasn't revealed until the end of season 2, but logically follows from John's last words to mean that whatever reveal about Sam came at the end of the season, this is what he was worried Dean had to save Sam from (or kill him) at the start of the season when he could last have any input on that. And he spent most of season 1 chasing Azazel or working out how to kill him rather than researching Sam so I go back to wondering if Missouri put most of it together herself.

I wonder how much she didn't tell John.

I wonder what she DID tell John the moment the credits rolled on the episode and they were free to talk plot without spoiling anything for us. Did Missouri get him a cup of tea, sit down with him and tell him her full professional opinion of Sam which kicked off the entire everything else John did re: Sam? It's only a couple of episodes before he's on the other side of the country chasing leads on Azazel.

I wonder if she'd tell us any of this 13 years later...

...

I bet she says basically nothing, but these are my hanging questions about season 1 and 2 which ONLY she can enlighten us on.

"Don't you boys be strangers!" "We won't." "See you around!"

welp, sorry Alpha Vampire and "see you next season" but this absolutely and emphatically takes the cake now she is actually returning at long last and it's not just an amusing line about her never coming back - it's an amusing line about her not coming back for thirteen freakin years.

Oh look it's JDM

This rewatch is so weird and messed up about what characters and plot things we're going to pass through. Sure the Wayward Sisters are utterly embedded in the show and even w/o the Patience thing go back more than half it's run - 3/4 of its run in fact - but they appear in such strange places tangential to massive happenings that following the characters around is going to be The Most Chaotic Rewatch Ever, for someone who likes meta-ing patterns.

I mean after this my next episode is to hop along to Claire's intro.

Anyway, John resisting going to see them but "not until I know the truth" which I assume is not the reason Chuck is being hands off in season 13 but I assume he thinks he has his reasons not to intervene.

John learned the truth from Missouri about monsters and the like, but now he's chasing the much bigger, plot important truths... It's going to mean he basically never sees his sons again, except for the prolonged contact at the end of this season/start of the next where he's sitting on whatever he knew about Sam which prompted his last words to Dean. I seriously, SERIOUSLY wonder if him saying he needs to know the truth ties back to "I went to Missouri and learned the truth" and that she DID tell John that Sam has demon blood and she put it all together between their initial contact and meeting Sam with his powers activated in their present day.

Oh gosh, I am sure someone has come up with that before, probably 13 years ago, but still. That's a good conspiracy to end on...

#1x09 #spn rewatches #I mean to post this last night and I'm already another episode through this thing :P #I'll keep adding the parts to this post #I hope I can do them all at the very least by the next time we see a wayward sisters episode #even if I don't think I can watch them all by Friday #at the very least this was the most important one to do for Patience's sake #:D #wayward sisters

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tvgoodness · 3 years

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Erin Krakow Talks When Calls the Heart Season 8 [Exclusive]

[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]

When Calls the Heart has had an extraordinary run. When it began, Elizabeth Thatcher was a newly minted school teacher arriving in Hope Valley and trying to find her footing in a small town that was still scarred and reeling from a tragedy that reshaped the whole community. Now, eight years later, Elizabeth is still the center point of Hope Valley, but the town and its people are every bit as much of the story as she is, and that’s exactly the way series star and co-executive producer Erin Krakow wants it to be. Ahead of this Sunday’s Season 8 premiere on Hallmark Channel in the US and Super Channel Heart & Home in Canada, I chatted with her recently about ramping up production during a pandemic, and talked about the new faces coming to town and where the new season will take the Hearties.

Krakow and the WCTH cast and crew were eager to get back to work this fall, with their typical summer start pushed out due to the pandemic. When they reconvened in British Columbia to start filming, she says their history together and affection for each other made the process go extremely smoothly. “We were very lucky because we're very much a well-oiled machine and we shoot in just the one location in our sweet little town of Hope Valley, so that really did kind of maintain the bubble for us,” she shares.

“I think everyone there, cast and crew, we were all just very grateful to get to be back to work. So many people have been out of work for a very long time. It was through that gratitude that we recognize the responsibility that we had to keep everyone safe in that bubble. So everyone was just really following the rules.”

“All of our cast and crew wore masks, our casts would take off the mask, obviously, when we would film. We were tested multiple times a week. There were temperature checks, all of those things that come with pandemic safety. It was just such a joy to get back to work and to see all of those familiar faces [and] even just getting to hug some of my castmates was a delight. It was really good to be back to work. Because we were all so grateful, we were incredibly careful.”

In the current climate of so many viewing choices, it’s rare for a series to get to eight seasons, and Krakow is very grateful that WCTH has achieved that. “It brings me so much joy to know that our show resonates with so many people. And that it has brought people, in various stages of their lives, such peace and happiness and joy,” she says.

“We really run the gamut of emotions on our show. I've seen reaction videos of people yelling and crying at their TVs. I've seen the videos of people just overcome with joy, watching things like [the] weddings that we've had. It's just so gratifying. And I'm really incredibly proud of what we get to continue to create and the stories that we get to share.”

As the new season begins, Elizabeth is recognizing that she’s ready to pursue a romantic relationship, but you’ll just have to wait and watch to see with whom. Finding just the right balance of tension and tease between Elizabeth, Lucas, and Nathan has been no easy feat, and Krakow says they wanted to do the story right, in a way that’s both respectful of Jack and also not unnecessarily dragging it out. “It was very important to me that we not have Elizabeth jump immediately into another relationship after we told the story of Jack's passing. So that was something that I wanted to make sure of,” she points out.

“And that was really Season 6. It was getting to see Elizabeth with her newborn son and figuring out life as a single mom. She was so focused on that baby and really continuing to gently mourn the loss of her husband, but she wasn't focused on romance. And it was a very slow burn with these guys. Friendships developed and a real deep care [for each other].”

“And truthfully, a love triangle can only be stretched out so long before the fans want to revolt. It felt like, alright, we introduced these guys in Season 6, we got to get to know them there. We explored the flirtation in Season 7. It felt like Season 8 was really the right time, both for just the logistics of our show and what the Hearties might be willing to handle.”

“It was also the right time for Elizabeth. A couple of years have passed. And I think she’s really ready to open her heart again. And it was just a matter of figuring out which guy was going to be that next great love for her.”

Elizabeth’s story is just one of many this season, and the show takes steps to explore more arcs among its large cast of characters. “One of the wonderful things about Season 8, which I am sure our fans will enjoy, is that we're actually getting to know a lot of our ensemble players a lot better this season. We're exploring more of the characters that we don't necessarily get to learn as much about,” she says. “This is a year where we're getting to know people better than we ever have before and see what fuels them, excites them.”

Hailey Dean Mysteries fans are in for a treat when Viv Leacock joins the show this season--and brings along his real-life family. Krakow was thrilled to have them come onboard. “We've got the Canfield family that we're introducing this season. They are fantastic. Viv and Natasha and Vienna and Elias are playing the Canfield family. And we're just so, so excited to have them,” she says.

“Viv’s character, Joseph, is really bringing a kind of grounded spiritual presence, which we'll learn more about as the season progresses and Natasha and her role as Minnie is just this incredibly strong protective mother. Their daughter is blind and they have spent an awful long time trying to find a hometown that will be welcoming to her and to them.”

“They've moved around a lot, and that's an area where we see Elizabeth's passion as a teacher really come through. She is just desperate to bring Angela Canfield into her classroom and teach her as one of the class, regardless of whether or not she can see. And I think Minnie understandably feels very protective about her daughter. So there are a lot of interesting storylines there and we'll see how that conflict [plays out].”

Teryl Rothery also recurs this season as Lucas’s Mom, Helen, and her character is integral to Elizabeth and her novel. “She brings such an interesting kind of spitfire vibe to her character of Helen. She is going through something that she's keeping secret when she gets to town,” she explains.

“So, in addition to her being just a very intimidating presence to someone like Elizabeth, there's also something more emotional, something deeper that's going on with her. And it's when Helen confides in Elizabeth about that thing, that things get a little complicated. So we'll get to see more of how that plays out [as the season progresses].

When Calls the Heart Season 8 premieres Sunday, February 21st, at 9 pm/8c on Hallmark Channel in the US and Super Channel Heart and Home in Canada. Here’s a sneak peek. Check back next week for part 2 of my interview with Erin Krakow and a preview of It Was Always You, which premieres Saturday, February 27th at 9 pm/8c on Hallmark Channel.

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Photos and video courtesy of Crown Media.

#WCTH #Hearties #When Calls the Heart #Hallmark Channel #TV Goodness #Erin Krakow #Viv Leacock #teryl rothery #SuperChannel #super channel heart and home

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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Question: are we supposed to take Jack stabbing himself as an actual suicide attempt? Did he want to kill himself? Or was he just naive and experimenting with what his body could do? I feel for him but I’m confused on how serious we’re supposed to take that scene. Dean’s facial expressions and the ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Translated to me that he felt it was a suicide attempt.

I am super tired so I’m gonna just grab my notes from this part :P

I DON’T LIKE THIS SCENE

PROTECT JACK FROM HIMSELF TOO

I hope he was just being curious like a super amped up version of how Kira on Orphan Black found out she has super healing powers so sliced her own arm open while being scared and fascinated with what she was and pissed off the adults wouldn’t tell her anything but this was gross and violent and pls protect Jack because that was awful.

Dean’s suitably horrified though because he has to contemplate Jack is just as freaked out and lost as he is about this whole thing because this is a gross and horrifying way to show that Jack is as fucked up and lost as the rest of them. I don’t think he was actually trying to kill himself esp. because he knew the angel blade already stabbed him and did nothing and even if he doesn’t know what it is and why that’s signficant he knows he didn’t die of something that should have killed him… I hope it’s just childlike curiosity mixed with bleak existential horror as he comes to understand how much he doesn’t understand himself even in the context of the world he’s in…

I think Dean thought that Jack was trying to kill himself or at least obviously baffled why it didn’t work and reckless enough to explore this some more w/o caring that he might die as a result if his hypothesis is wrong and he is stabbable.

(Based on the sound effects only while in the glaring sunlight it was also the weirdest “parent walks into the room after hearing something odd and uncomfortably organic coming from the kid’s room” scene but I think it did sound stabby enough and also for all the ways my brain convinced me Sam said “shit” in the episode I didn’t think they would do a scene that was NOT horrifying but yeah. It sort of is an “explore the body” scene in a gross stabby way)

But yeah Dean’s reaction was super confused and I think he was swinging back and forth between thinking Jack had been trying to kill himself and trying to conceptualise that Jack wasn’t going to die and after the first stab just kinda kept going, either in a state of “why doesn’t this work” or just self-punishment, especially if he feels regular pain but doesn’t die of it. (Since the tattoo definitely hurt him.)

And then they moved to Jack basically saying because Dean doesn’t trust him and Jack’s been mirroring Dean and sneakily admires him because he’s the tough nut to crack and strongly opinionated but thinks he’s right (I’m reading between the lines here but Jack was mimicking Dean only in the opening and the mimicking is so far the most interesting part of their relationship and how Jack sees Dean, from his side of things) that Jack is now doubting his goodness, believes Dean is right he might hurt someone some day whether by accident or Asmodeus tricking him again or something like it or whatever, just because he’s SO powerful and only just beginning to figure out not just his powers but any sense of what is up and down (like I was saying elsewhere in my notes, for example, they shied away from complaining loudly about Chuck, and lo and behold “Donatello” can exploit that completely by making a message from God sound like a good thing since they didn’t explain their world to him properly >.>) and he’s still working out right and wrong on more than an instinctive level… (I am so proud of Jack, though, and nothing he’s actually done if he could just see what we see, shows anything other than him being a total sweetie)

So yeah it became a conversation about killing him anyway, and Jack’s rapidly escalated through to where Dean was in 10x09 and Dean’s obviously not looking at Jack like Cas looks at Dean right now :P I think between that and Lucifer suggesting he bargain with Mary to get Jack (which I’m not taking as proof it will happen, just that the suggestion was raised to make us think about it at least for now) that Dean’s value of Jack will be tested and that’s how it will come down - that he’s going to end up not wanting to sell him or kill him, but obviously Dean’s the obstacle that Jack has to overcome for acceptance so they’re building tension all over the place about what Dean will do. And like Jack instinctively revealed he’s good when challenged, I got peeps to confirm Dean DID instinctively protect Jack when they thought they were under attack from what turned out to be Donatello. I seriously need to rewatch because I didn’t see a single frame of that encounter because of the sun in the train :P

#Asks #suicide mention cw #13x02 #season 13 spoilers #nougat winchester

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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I'm behind on meta so please feel free to ignore this if it's been already talked about, but I thought it was interesting how - as weird or sort of unusual that fight scene was with dean and the demon, or at least i don't recall anything like it - by making it look sexual and obviously violent, it kinda parallelled Mary's struggle with that asshole hunter. What weirds me out is that it puts Sam & Lucifer in the same role of saviour which is never good, but maybe they just wanted to connect them

like that bc they both want a connection w/ Jack, maybe even see themselves in Jack, who knows lucifer;s side, since they were unable to provide dialogue 4 him besides repeating how Mary is weak bc she gets tired & is all humany and they need to get out and he might need her. ANYWAY, shitty writing aside, do u think it was a parallel and if so what are they trying to say? Was it to show that maybe Sam’s intentions aren’t the purest either, not in an evil way but like bc he’s so intent on gettingMary back that he might be blind - for different reasons than Dean - to Jack as a person? He’s trying so hard & almost doesn’t even entertain the thought that Jack might be corrupted by his power at some point, or by Hell which we see almost happens bc of lack of info. Sam seems to hold on to as much hope as he can, while Dean is at the opposite end of the spectrum (hmm I wonder who could balance it out?). But what do you think of Sam having been weirdly aligned w/ Hell like, he even unwittinglygave the info to Amodeous about how powerful Jack is, while Dean, without even trying, seems to be Jack’s role model for Good (& I love how Jack has a Dean decoder built in) and he even throws him a Bible to read (which, if presented without commentary can be risky, he’s better off reading the Supernatural books, but still, it’s the Holy Book).

Hi! What an ask :D Also I am ALSO so behind on meta so I’m just going to answer this like it’s all new to us, sorry everyone who has already been over this, me and anon are going through this together ;)

To go through chronologically because I’m super tired so I need to break this down…

Yeah, awesome weird fight scene. I loved it - Tink said something about them having a new fight coordinator? There’s been 2 incredible fights back to back for Dean so far and I’m loving it. This one was great I think with the director as well - I feel like he of all of them takes liberties with BL scripts and puts in extra nuance and missing implications that their writing didn’t pick up… He’s 99% responsible for the crypt scenes for example, and in 11x21 included ALL the nuance that made the longing retcon magic happen between Amara, Cas and Dean, just by visual implications. He also super digs the prison imagery and bunker porn and generally using the locations really well… I don’t know much about all the different directors but I’ve learned that seeing his name means it’s time to get excited and nerdy about what I’m going to SEE :D

So yeah, good combo. It made a great parallel with Mary’s fight which I liked first of all just for the Mary and Dean paralleling, especially as she needs connections back to the main storyline just for asserting she still exists, because as you say it was pretty bad writing especially around Mary in that episode, where she just dragged herself around after Lucifer and needed saving. Putting Dean in a parallel situation somewhat defuses it in overall handling of the nonsense, even if I don’t like that it was written this way in the first place. I have still not had time to explore my dash much but I hope people have been making posts about the parallels to female fight scenes, especially Black Widow in the marvel movies… In my notes I just commented he was straddling people to death and left it at that (even though that obviously wasn’t what he was doing - it was a shorthand for the fight style :P) but really it also mirrored 10x15 and Dean in that weirdly charged scenario with whatisface, where he got straddled and had the worm coming out Cole’s throat while leaning over him etc and it put Dean in a very submissive role to all that. In the same way, having Dean fight back by getting his legs around the guy and ending the fight literally *cowering* on a bed with the demon standing over him with the phallic knife, was a fascinating staging of power dynamics where he actually looked more vulnerable than Mary did.

I think Lucifer nice guy’d it - he said he needed Mary and when she wouldn’t go along with him, immediately started whining more and hurt Mary just to make her complacent and remind her that he was still in charge and more powerful than her. Sam of course has no such dynamic with Dean, but I think overall he’s going to be more assertive this season and carrying on - according to the PR - with having more of a leadership role in the dynamic. He’s definitely making the better choices right now while Dean urgently needs a personal day or six. So I think first and foremost it’s a compare and contrast rather than a direct parallel. There’s a great gifset I reblogged somewhere or other about Lucifer in 12x23 saying hurr blurr I can’t raise my son from a prison cell, and then Sam in the cell with Jack just captioned “HOLD MY BEER”, and Sam currently is the only positive father figure - and actually the ONLY father figure *on the board* for Jack, since the pool is Cas - dead, Lucifer - in the AU, Dean - not interested right now… Meaning Jack is pretty much Sam’s sole responsibility and the Lucifer vs Sam stuff may be being played as an oppositional thing. So Lucifer being a dick to Mary after saving her but doing it conditionally and in an attempt to make her go along with him (and that he only wants her to trade for Jack anyway) vs Sam just saving Dean because they love and trust each other already forevers and there being no terms and conditions except for not wanting his brother dead for well duh reasons is… nice.

But yeah it does also put Sam in a weird place where he’s being paralleled to Lucifer in any way and he has that long history with him. And I think by and large this is supposed to be positive for Sam and all but I agree with you that Sam can and maybe will fuck it up, and being oblivious to the dangers is the main way. In the “Donatello” conversation he doesn’t notice that Donatello switched from “Jack’s nature wins” to “let’s try moulding him” which was Asmodeus’s idea (and Sam’s) - but because Asmodeus was AGREEING with Sam and Sam was assuming he meant for the better, then he didn’t notice that Donatello was suddenly agreeing with him.

I think it’s pretty inevitable Jack’s going to have some sort of wobble - we’ve seen Lucifer is a tiny bit in his head even if he already picked Cas as his father and it’s clear he has a good heart, Asmodeus showed how easily some trickery and the path of good intentions can open a portal to hell (aww season 4 Sam) and that is something Sam himself has to deal with and his his hugest character thing overall - his arc led to that, and then on the other side of it has been about repenting for it and feeling awful that this was what he was basically raised to do >.> He should hopefully be a good influence on Jack to guide him away from repeating his mistakes but only if he can see the problem in the first place.

(Also yeah I love Sam and I’m excited and positive for his relationship with Jack but like you I think we do need to think about the problems, Sam’s lack of experience, this being a complicated time for him to take charge of a thing when historically almost every time he has been in a position of responsibility or strength he’s fucked it up when handling things himself, or else gone down some really dark paths… I think he CAN help Jack and ultimately WILL but that doesn’t mean it might not be rough along the way and I think people need to be prepared for that if they’re getting invested in it… Maybe even more so than the people who want Dean to be good with Jack and are getting upset about how hard it is because in a way that is a much more obvious problem and we were warned about it from the start, while Sam and Jack seems like such a good and pure thing it might be easy to let your guard down that the show can easily insert trouble and darkness into it…)

I wonder if there will be some tension to come between Sam and Dean about Jack kinda latching onto Dean though? Because I’ve wondered before that he is the moral centre of the show and Jack was mimicking him because he’s sort of needing Dean’s approval too, not just in a survival way but because Dean is so SURE of what is right, so being like Dean is default being right. (I think Sam has said something similar in 3x07 about always following Dean around trying to be like him when he was young? In that “i know when you’re scared” argument) And of course Dean being so sure of what is right and Jack not meeting that standard by default has been a massive part of why Jack levelled up in Winchester self-doubt and self-hatred in just a few days. Took less than a week to ruin him and Dean’s standards are probably a large part of it >.> So yeah, I hope Sam understands all the nuance of why Jack might have been mimicking/idolising Dean when Sam is the one trying to be the positive role model to Jack, just because he knows the force of Dean’s personality. I hope he doesn’t take it as a bad reflection on himself, ESPECIALLY if/when Jack fucks up as I feel will inevitably happen.

I think it does sort of reflect Sam and Dean’s long-standing alignments though… I just remember the season 6 poster where Sam has the snake and Dean has a literal freakin’ halo because subtlety? What is that? :P

#Asks #13x02 #nougat winchester #sam analysis #dean analysis

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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Hey! First off I love your blog! Second, I say you have a problem or don’t understand why people don’t like Mary and I saw this post pop up on my dash http://justjensenanddean.tumblr.com/post/163320319227/thejabberwock-in-the-beginning-403-i-think. And I think this might explain why. There is such a disconnect between the Mary we got to meet in earlier seasons and the Mary now that goes beyond the “she feels disconnected from being dead for 30 years”. It’s just a different person altogether.

Third. I don’t think this is the place to say this, but tumblr wouldn’t let me submit a link in the askbox so.

Heya, thanks, @snowslittlesnowflakes :)

I don’t know if it’s just an interpretation/how you were reading it all along thing so I think I’m never going to be able to explain this adequately in words without doing a comprehensive study of people who DIDN’T like Mary to see where they went a different way than me, but I found Mary to have great continuity with herself all season. As I’ve been doing my rewatch I’ve been finding even more reasons to yell about how great a character she is and how well her story works and ties together for me.

One of the things I was wondering, and I don’t follow enough Sam girls to be entirely clear on this to know what their vocal demographic is like, but I have a suspicion based on the wank I’ve seen that some Dean girls dislike her louder. I find Mary’s season 12 arc to be intrinsically linked to Sam, and I was expecting/waiting for that ALREADY before the season kicked off, as like, the no.1 bullet point on my list of urgent Mary things they NEEDED to address. To my eyes the show immediately began to set up and prepare to do exactly what it was going to do to deal with this. It was a gut feeling at the start of season 12 but on rewatching I found exactly what had made me think it:

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/161941971596/1x09-she-cant-say-it-here-whether-its-a-ghost

I think it was because immediately in 12x01 they clarified that Mary remembered everything she was supposed to (aka not the time travel nonsense) EXCEPT this. I’m actually not 100% sure people remember being ghosts, since I don’t think Bobby has ever commented on it - or at least if he has it would be a very broad allusion to it, since I know he’s never had a sit down chat about it with anyone :P Anyway, removing it un-did her apology to Sam and that was GOOD because Sam could take that apology back in season 1 on HIS side, but it was no proper and fitting away for an ALIVE Mary who now had to deal with everything to feel like “oh i said i was sorry once when i was a ghost obviously it’s all good now” so SAM was the major cause of Mary leaving and being unable to cope with being around her sons, and this was loudly broadcast in the subtext of 12x01-3 to my eyes and so I was expecting her to leave and I was expecting it to NOT be about Dean, except as a secondary emotional arc from HIS direction towards her.

On top of that, Mary and Dean actually don’t have a point of tension except for the entire underlying trauma and her leaving after 12x03, all of which came from her deal, which was about Sam (ergo, the 12x22 conversation dealing a lot with how Sam was harmed, not Dean, and again, another strike against Mary from people who care about Dean that this conversation seemed not to be about Dean despite how it was to the core because all that Sam stuff directly impacted his life too and he said so and of course he’s rarely if ever felt unconnected from Sam to the point that Sam being hurt isn’t like hurting him too).

So to me it felt like this was a secondary concern to the Sam n Mary stuff, which I was loudly stating at original airing times that I was ready to gobble up and give 100% of my attention to, did so, and therefore took away a completely different reason to be invested in Mary, allowing my Dean girl self to just happily soak up that Dean was having some problems with Mary and that he was going to have an arc of his own with her to make things up with her but the whole POINT was he was being left out and the narrative KNEW it, it wasn’t like the show did any of this forgetfully or maliciously against Dean to deprive him of his mother for no reason - the reason was Sam and that was not between him and Sam and not something I think he fully grasped consciously either, so it was something for ME as the audience to sit on and watch and wait to see how it resolved, and thankfully he and Sam never got into their own fight about it. So I was waiting for it to be resolved but I could see Mary’s discomfort was what she originally stated in 12x02 and not what she told them in 12x03 when leaving. The whole point was she didn’t voice what was ACTUALLY wrong, at least, the core of it, and left instead of dealing with it, having given them a reason they were all utterly helpless to, instead of a reason that Sam could chase after her to deal with with their words and just give her that vindication of her apology she thought she’d never get and - because she doesn’t remember it - never knows she made, putting Sam and an ENORMOUS emotional advantage over her since he already forgave her somewhere between 1x09 and 5x22, when his personal slate was wiped clean. In 12x22 she voices it out loud and it turns out to be fine but you know, if she just SAID it originally...? None of the drama of season 12 would have got past 12x02 :P

(Mary’s revulsion and horror at what she’d done to Sam is also a major emotional subplot of this fic I wrote circa 12x14 and it’s about as subtextual as the way it was being expressed in the show which is why it mostly manifests as Sam wearing flip flops for her and her loathing herself for it) (I include this note because it occurs to me that Sam’s characterisation in that fic probably seems utterly bizarre and extremely unfair on Sam unless you already read it once AND know how I felt about Sam and Mary in season 12, aka that by 12x06 I was sitting on the rooftop yelling about them every time they so much as exchanged a worried glance, and in 12x12 actually screeched out loud in glee about Sam and Mary and the yellow eyes thing and consequently spent the episode reaction time miffed that everyone was more interested in a little matter of the Destiel “I love you” than what I wanted to talk about and so that fic is a reaction to 12x12 and 12x14 at once :P)

ANYWAY I think Mary in season 12 is a substantially different person to any version of her we knew before because the entire point is that we were going to MEET Mary Winchester for the first time outside of dreams and time travel and on the other side of her death.

She remained unbroken up to the opening of 1x01 because as fiesty and sweet as she was as a hunter when she was younger or as housewife-y and settled into a rocky marriage but loving her kids as they eventually managed to convey without rocking the boat too much in 5x16, none of this, even the sad Mary from 5x16, the latest canon version of her we saw before season 1 or 11, is who she would be post-dying and discovering her actions had global consequences and she’d utterly fucked up her sons, SAM IN PARTICULAR, and again I can not stress hard enough how important SAM is in all this, that her horror is about SAM not Dean, and that she’s running away from SAM and that she needs to make it right with SAM.

Dean has a whole other bucket of issues of which the show took a different route to explore and unpack, by prioritising, sensibly, that Mary got maybe 20 seconds to have the “I hecked up” thought on stumbling onto Azazel in the nursery and her death, and I feel like I should repeat this over and over and put in my blog header maybe, the only time we ever see Mary after that is the “I’m sorry” line of dialogue in 1x09. That is her entire chance the show ever gives her to have a voice or to address what she did post-death. And it makes Mary’s post-death character ABOUT this until season 12 (when it... continues to be about this because that’s who she is because that’s the most important thing she feels post-death and 1x09 already confirmed it)... I don’t think what she said in 1x09 EVEN IF SHE REMEMBERED IT, WHICH SHE DOESN’T, is good enough to have Mary back and pretend her deal is forgiven, for Sam’s sake, said out of love for Sam. So the mytharc is about Mary through and through, from the BMoL to the choice to have a nephilim (who is a Sam parallel & hence ending the season with Jack and Sam staring at each other) as the more cosmic mytharc, and yellow eyed demons back, and an AU structured around her deal having never been made that she ends up being punted into with Lucifer, the reason she made it in the first place when looking for ultimate blame (again, something we’ve known since 4x22 and there were hints through the season that she needed a final reckoning with Lucifer).

What we are seeing in season 12 is how that sweet and genuinely inexperienced, dreamy Mary we meet at her YOUNGEST age shown on screen, is like when you scrape together everything - the comments about her unhappy marriage with John, her legacy as a hunter, her fucked up father, her deal, EVERYTHING we know about her, and trying to turn it into a coherent character who has her own agency and inner thoughts and feelings that matter to the narrative, when the narrative previously only EVER produced her as a token to move around for other people’s thoughts and feelings. Even in the time travel episodes, she’s written as emotional manipulation for Dean, not as a character with a fighting chance, because 5x13 in the end wipes her memories clean and makes the very firm point to Mary that she’s gonna shut up, have her babies, and blissfully tell them that “angels are watching over” them when the awful, horrific truth of the Grand Plan has been wiped clean from her brain. I mean, Kelly in the cold open of 12x19 does what Mary was not allowed to do in 5x13 for the sake of the world, and yet is still dragged back to life because the baby is more important than her feelings - and since that’s that Glynn & Bobo episode, I’m assuming that’s a direct criticism on the past narrative, not the show fucking up this thing for once but directly telling us that in these narratives, the mother is meaningless (insert bitterness about Kelly having to survive like 5 Buckleming episodes before anyone wrote her with anything else to say than using her as the vessel for the baby so heavy handed and yet utterly unaware that that was all they were doing with her anyway >.>). The *only* thing that didn’t come up in the narrative except by omission, was the cupids, and they didn’t come up by omission before the title card of 12x01, so I figure they’ve been a part of the entire story all along even if no one said anything, especially with separate references to the angel fall spell to remind us cupids are a thing without pointing at Mary directly.

But all that from her past that we DID know aside, Mary was NEVER a real character before 12x01, in the sense of being allowed motives, forward momentum, or a sense of purpose (and surprise surprise, she barely has one because she’s been so fucked around by the cosmic narrative all she can do is look at it in horror and wonder if there’s a way to make it right so Sam can pick up where he left off and go back to school and Dean doesn’t have to hunt, as John said in 1x20 - She has regressive impression THEIR motivations looking back on her boys, just as we seem to look back on her with regressive ideas about her motivation even though she took her wedding ring off and that too was a powerful motif all season in its appearances and the silence about John and the John mirror in Ketch that she eventually purged herself of). So we can’t say we really knew who she was before (we meet her post-cupid but Toni extracted SHOCKINGLY dark murdery-ness from her and cited it as her Campbell side, and season 6 fills in an emotional blank there, that soulless!Sam happily fit in with them for a year and Samuel only got worried when Sam didn’t understand the concept that baby stew was bad). What she was made to say in the past, narratively, was to make us feel sorry for Dean and Sam because of her and her unknowing tragic request for them not to be raised as hunters. Dean gets so sad he forgets the 2x20 motivation to put saving people over family, and tries to undo history, and ultimately when he can’t, that trauma was part of the lesson Heaven wanted him to take away about his role, same as any other time they manipulated him like in 4x17 or 5x04 or Gabriel tried in 5x08. I used to think 4x03 and 5x13 gave us a chance to meet her but they’re still utterly clamped down in the wider narrative to be a fleeting apology for killing her off and making her stay dead.

Anyway in 4x03 Mary is 19, motivated to get out in a way to parallel her with having Sam’s once innocence about thinking he can escape hunting, and when Dean talks to her, utterly untraumatised except for what you might expect being raised by Samuel. Asking her to be the same person post-death, with her guilt about her deal on her shoulders and 2 adult sons too traumatised about the exact same thing from THEIR end to just open up a fun little dialogue about it, is similarly demanding to keep her trapped in the exact same box, and demanding her to be someone who she realistically would no longer be, and would be demanding her to be a person who would be a poor portrayal of Mary and not taking into consideration every facet of her character, and not allow her to be traumatised or broken or overwhelmed with guilt without also making the demand she shoulder it completely and stoically and continue to try and be a sweet and motherly character because that is the role we may have come to expect of her even though we know Sam and Dean start out bright eyed and bushy tailed and post their death and guilt trauma, are angrier, harder men... And despite the fact the opening run of episodes of season 12 made it very clear it was completely unrealistic to expect Mary to cut the crusts off the sandwiches of her boys and drop back into their lives only to immediately fill an emotional void THEY had instead of wondering how SHE would feel.

Allowing Mary to be selfish and leave and to show her brokenness on screen was utterly fantastic and whatever else you could complain about season 12, I’m 110% here for Mary and the arc they chose to give her because it was POWERFUL and EMPOWERING and they let her messy cry and kill things and do like 8 of Sam and Dean (and Cas)’s own personal selfish, misguided or murdery arcs for herself and at the end she was forgiven, got a group hug, and rewarded with being allowed to ask if she could punch Lucifer in the face and having that wish immediately granted, since she had some catharsis left to get which her boys couldn’t give her, namely going back to the root of her problems and knocking some teeth out :P

I mean, feeling like Mary wasn’t sweet enough is a mysterious complaint to me because I have been rooting for her every step of the way DEMANDING she be ugly and horrible and cold if she needs to be because I WANTED to see the image of Mother Mary utterly torn down and for it to be stomped out, and for her to do the stomping, on Sam and Dean’s faces if necessary, because for ALL of them it would be better in the end not to think she was supposed to be sweet and caring and motherly if she comes back as a REAL character and NOT as an idol.

Like, I get that you could think in 4x03 that was supposed to be telling us that was a character trait of hers and when you’re scraping for crumbs of a character who we get nothing about except these scant little episodes, you might try and stake the entire reading of her on these details, but in the same episode she also was snarky, Dean-like, a more than competent fighter, and tbh before you know about the cupids, just in 4x03′s context, I wondered if she was only latching onto John because he’d get her out of hunting, and it was a manipulative move in a way where of course she liked him and picked a guy she had some feelings for but at the end of the day it was about her rebellion against Samuel and her desire to be free - Azazel offers her peace in the suburbs when he brings John back and his words are not so much about their love but how Mary’s quality of life increases. And once you know about the cupids it just means she’s irrationally in love and staking her idea of that future all on one guy like no one else can do it for her, but she still has ulterior motives, that she wasn’t going to marry John and teach him to be a hunter and JUST want to propagate her bloodline like a good little meaningless walking womb in the grander scheme of things and it didn’t matter in what circumstances she did that.

And since 1x09 and that “I’m sorry” they’ve been trying to TELL us that Mary is messed up and complicated and did bad things and WON’T be so sweet as they think. Again in 2x22. And in 4x03 they reveal that it was this deal, but they still chose to make her a hunter and give her that legacy, and not be led into the deal blind, like some people we see who have no idea what a demon deal meant for them. And that DOES make her deal more fucked up and people who are critical of Mary and have been for a long time, much longer than season 12, have been critical because of the fact she should have known better or should have taken better precautions (thanks again to 12x12 for confirming said precautions were useless and allowing us to headcanon she absolutely did but Azazel strolled right over them anyway, since until that point all we knew was that holy water didn’t work on him).

So... anyway, idk. I wanted to meet the fucked up Mary the show had been promising us since the start, and they introduced the fucked up Mary I wanted to see. And I was delighted. And that’s the backstory behind that dotpost >.>

Re: what I actually said before, though...

Idk if you just saw the post of mine that went outside this blog and lost all the context because of my actual complaint being dotposted (the previous day as well) to avoid drama and because I was mostly grumbling to myself in the tags - idk if you saw that or just some snarky replies where I gave 1 line answers before diving back into the tags for cover, because that got reblogged without any of the context of what I was saying. :P

There’s some perfectly valid complaints about Mary and why people didn’t like her with some self reflection that I’m never going to disagree with even if I personally enjoyed Mary’s arc and had already mentally boxed away a large allowance for the show to suck at telling its own story in a narrative structure way, within its rigid formula, probably because I’ve had to forgive that complaint to enjoy Cas’s part in the story all this time as well and I am a season 10 bitter fan in that respect for Cas, so nothing can suck as hard as “I brought snacks” as his grand total contribution to an episode :P

I was mostly grumbling about the people who specifically disliked season 12 as the MAJOR part of their complaint and that it made no sense, or that everyone was OOC, but then also as an aside, noting that they hadn’t made any attempt to sympathise with Mary and had immediately dismissed her as poorly written. In that case I understand perfectly why they dislike season 12, because sympathy towards Mary and pretty much swapping loyalties from your normal character stanning to Mary as your fave this year (as the show itself did by prioritising her and Cas’s arcs (and even Crowley’s or even Rowena’s to an extent for the sake of killing them off with a bit of fanfare, although, see also grumbling about 12x13 as the worst send off episode ever))... I think it’s important to go for that change in perspective and not judge how it looks on the surface but ask what feelings they’re trying to express by showing these things, in both the similarities AND differences, and ASSUMING the show is competent and did its research when the evidence is clearly there they did and are referencing every event in her life as much as possible, and therefore changes are made with intent to tell us more about her and to reveal new things rather than fuck up old canon. This would go a long way to explaining her arc, and therefore towards making a chunk more of season 12 make sense. And it was a semi-personal comment, aimed at a rather small, loud group of bloggers hence keeping it in the dotposts to myself with no major tags >.>

So, apologies, I’m only making this so lengthy and clear because of the inevitable way misunderstandings happen on Tumblr and I’ve been bothered for days about that post being reblogged without my tags or at least, I reblogged it w/o tags to be sarcastic but since it was all out of context, once it got reblogged, no one would know my tags were there any more vs seeing it all on my blog in the correct place.

Also, like I said, I have no clue if the hating Mary contingent is more weighed towards Dean girls and the fact I related to her pain through Sam while watching Dean take the brunt of her ~rejection~ was something I was chill to weather because I figured it would work out because no way would they under-value Dean’s literal most important relationship on the show, more important than Cas and Sam TOGETHER, and lo and behold 12x22 delivered in spades the mother & son bonding episode I knew I’d get if I held my horses and let them utterly destroy that bond to build it back up. I don’t know if Sam girls have similar issues with Mary but from their own perception of how she hurt Sam, or if they interpret her leaving because Dean was too clingy (surface text of 12x02 & 3) or what. Or if they’re as content as I was to see how the “I hurt you i fucked up i fucked up” arc from Mary to Sam would take them so far as I was happy to go to let the Dean and Mary thing unfold because again, it’s the most important thing in the entire show’s backstory, and 12x23′s AU showed that again, by going to ridiculous lengths to validate what Mary’s deal brought about in the main world, but only AFTER she could look Sam in the eye.

I mean I don’t wanna say I have some magical understanding of season 12 that others lack in general, I just think there are a (few) loud angry bloggers who spent a lot of time yelling at Mary for not being what they wanted, and consequently took everything she did as a personal offence towards their interpretation and had an enormous chip on their shoulder towards the season, whereas @awed-frog‘s self-exploration on the point comes to a completely different conclusion of why Mary’s arc didn’t work for them and it’s a structural fault with the show that made it so frustrating and hard to get to grips with when the emotional telling should have been more upfront to work for them. (I also don’t wanna say their reason is the only good reason to have not got along with Mary in season 12 because there’s surely others, but it makes a lot of sense to me as a reason with little to do with relative amounts of offered sympathy and therefore nothing to do with what I was complaining about so a good example untainted by my specific wank :P)

(and this is why this was all snarky short dotposting >.>)

Anyway standard disclaimer that I’m obviously a Dean girl and I love him dearly, but in this particular case I got in hot water with anons etc all season because I didn’t feel like Mary needed to be punished for hurting Dean (I went past a past like that while looking for some of the things I linked), nor that Dean’s hurt was more important than her pain, and consequentially watched the non-Destiel Dean girls I followed wander down a path I couldn’t go with them because their very own selfsame enthusiasm about Dean and Mary in PREVIOUS seasons had made me so utterly hyped to see her again, given me the appropriate emotional groundwork to prepare for what was about to happen, and... I mean the only thing I’m baffled about is why I had to unfollow so many people with tears streaming down my face because I admired them so much once, but their protectiveness of Dean won the coin toss and they loathed Mary and season 12 so much it just became a well of bitterness. I’m still sad that it was this issue that made me unfollow some bloggers I’ve followed since I got to tumblr, because they just hated Mary and season 12 so MUCH. And I remember reading posts valuing Mary so highly from them, back when she was an idol of Dean’s and nothing more. (Again: general impression, naming no names.)

And like... the ENTIRE SHOW since 1x01, we’ve seen that Dean did not have a healthy emotional distance about Mary, when Sam says she’s not coming back, and ironic as it is that it’s this context, Dean slams Sam against the bridge and is like DON’T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT MOM LIKE THAT and it’s not that that’s ruined that she came back - that line is betraying that Dean can’t even think about her being DEAD and the LOSS he took because she’s so utterly tragically romanticised in his head that *pointing out that she’s dead* is an *insult to her memory* and yeah he’s traumatised and Sam doesn’t remember or whatever, but bringing her back is literally proving Dean wrong not that there was a reason to hope she’d come back because I think at that point he could have NO reasonable expectation to argue with Sam like, WELL SHE MIGHT SOME DAY because that’s not the point. The point was he couldn’t think clearly about who she was or what she meant because it HURT and even before he found out about her deal in 4x03 and swallowed THAT down like a champ, he couldn’t allow himself a SINGLE mixed feeling about her. She HAD to be perfect and venerated.

Well that all went out of control for him, but “I hate you” is the single most important thing Dean has ever said on the show, followed by realising he can hate AND love Mary because she is a complex, fucked up human being who hurt him and THAT was laid down in the first 15 minutes of the show as something he couldn’t overcome. Because Mary wasn’t ever coming back. And then she did. And now he’s overcome it. And I cry about 12x22 just about every day. But anyway. I see Mary hurting Dean as the most essential thing that’s happened to him and as a Dean girl it utterly delighted me to watch his heart shatter in real time on screen over and over.

And yet others saw it as long over due rejection from Dean to Mary in 12x22 like within a season they’d grown to hate her so much they just wanted Dean to say “I hate you” and leave and go take a self-care weekend in the woods and maybe grow a beard and never come home and leave his entire family to fuck themselves about how they treated him, but that was all taken away from them so then they got on with loathing that he made it all about Sam and then forgave her and wanted to reconcile with these assholes instead. :P

And meanwhile the more I rewatch the older seasons the more I move 12x22 from “one of the best episodes of the show” to “actually the best thing to ever happen to this show” and “wtf everyone got character development for the first time since the apocalypse” and I’m over the moon.

And also love Mary a lot. >.>

#Asks #wank for ts #Mary F Winchester #I KNOW this is an emotional disconnect that starts waaaay back and all #I was just bummed at the time of dotposting #because I saw Mary come back in 11x23 and was like #WELP BETTER DO MY BEST TO LOVE AND UNDERSTAND HER SO I DON'T FALL INTO THAT TRAP #and then had one of the most fascinating and engaging media experiences ever as a result #12x22 #I wanted to link basically every post about mary I've made since season 12 but I stopped myself :P #my rewatch this hiatus has involved a LOT of lengthy posts exploring her and why I feel she and her arc are totally integrated #and that she makes perfect sense as a character and season 12 shines an ever brighter light on that in the past #and draws seamlessly for its continuation and ongoing exploration of her #but short of making a Mary Meta Masterpost I decided to chill with linking my entire blog :P #ugh anyway this rant is not aimed at you snowflakes #I appreciate you trying to explain but in the context of the original post I knew exactly what I was annoyed about :P #and was just trying NOT to make a long rambly post about it for the sake of being a wank light blog #aaaah well maybe it's better to just say it and move on >.>#submission

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