#josie sands dean parallels

[shallowrambles]

I love the view that Dean figured out his deeper feelings for Cas in 6 & 7, and the majority of 8 was Dean arcing out of his hero-worship and people-should-never-let-me-down neuroses.

And then.

Post-perceived rejection… (Remember: Cas threw OFF Dean’s hand in Purgatory, and cut OFF cupid’s hand when it was aimed at him.)

So. Late Seasons 8 to mid-12 are Dean actively trying to get over Cas. In s9, he’s off-key paralleled with Josie Sands and Abaddon. (When it’s actually Hannah who’s “the Josie.”) Then he transitions into a reversal-power arc, towards being force-fit into the cartoonish, dare I say ham-fisted Cain role and its parallels. (They spell out the parallel in a distinctly odd way, esp for SPN. Too on the nose. Prescriptive. That’s because it’s actually mirroring Dean’s power fantasy according to Dean’s deepest, least charitable, nihilistic wishes.)

In s10, Dean still appears hung up on Cas, trusting him with the blade and begging him to help kill him if he becomes disinhibited/loses his free will again. Also, “I’m glad you’re here, man,” and Cas’s awkward reply, “Another time. There’s a female waiting in the car.” In a way, Dean’s feelings and fantasies serve to taunt him. The Cain parallel itself feels like a taunt.

Dean may realize Cas “admires” him but it’s definitely not the way Dean wants, that is: not like a secret admirer. Dean is mad for the unbalanced power dynamics re:Cas in the past. Now in Dean’s power reversal: Cas gets the wife treatment and Dean gets paralleled with the powerful Cain figure. He gets to beat Cas just as Cas beat him.

And it’s no accident the Dean’s power reversal arc culminates in a reverse-crypt. Because that’s what Dean’s bitter about. (“That’s not gonna be a problem = You can’t hurt me anymore, not like you did.”) It’s rooted in the bitterness of perceived rejection. That’s why Cas bears the brunt of Dean’s anger here.

Afterwards, Dean feels soooo guilty for being angry.

Later…

At various points, he tries to reassure Cas he’s okay with and appreciates how things are: a best friend, a comrade, a brother. Acceptance!

Dean spent season 10 dealing with his baggage and hoping hopelessly, then in season 11, I think he resolved to accept things. He may have toed the water with sexual tension and short shorts at times, but overall he was trying to live with Cas and let Cas off the hook.

He also encouraged Amara to deal with her own baggage the way he’d worked through his. Season 10 was his reversal arc: him in power for once, with Cas getting the wife treatment and Sam’s corruption being highlighted for once. And in season 11 he was spirited away, dealing with being powerless once more.

After that was done, he tried to swallow his feelings and let go of Cas, the way he encouraged Amara to let go of him.

He may perceive season 11 as his letting go of irrationally wanting Cas. The car scene may represent him giving Cas an out. Even releasing him from any perceived obligations.

So when Cas shows interest in season 12, I do think that threw him! Made him so nervous that he started hoping again, getting all tentative with his little mixtape.

Then Cas returns the damn mixtape. (Burned again!) But instead of getting bitter, Dean says to keep it, it’s a gift. Then he mumbles another “we’re all stronger together,” lil spill to cover his embarrassment.

Because now, he’s fully accepted that he loves Cas. Dean’s feelings haven’t faded so he has resolved to live with them as they are. No matter how many times he gets his hopes up and disappointed.

But now, Dean’s more scared. In season 8 he was ready to tell Cas “I love you.” He spent four years trying to navigate those unrequited feelings and convert them into familial camaraderie.

It’s much scarier in s12 with cosmic consequences on their heads, and Dean with everything he’s ever wanted just at his fingertips.

My fave thing about it all is that Dean and Cas are ready for each other at wildly different points and hardly ever sync up in between all the disasters.

#josie abaddon dean amara and the false parallels by the #abaddon demon dean amara #false parallels #josie sands hannah #josie sands #amara #i am def dehydrated delirious plz ignore meee #josie sands dean parallels #dean and the reversal power arc

[spnwin-reader]

Loss in common:

Enter Millie, The Prickly-but-Hopeful Fixer

[We note that, even after all this time, Millie's building carries the MoL Aquarian star of protection, and it's still Winchester Garage, not...whatever-her-maiden-name is.]

When we first meet Millie, she's bitter. As the one who "kept the lantern on," "the one who stayed," she's hurt and defensive, a lot like how Dean grows to be in latter seasons of SPN.

(Even post-demonicity, Dean is still expected to be the soft place to fall for everyone. Even after Jack kills Mary, Cas has this expectation of Dean's soft-heartedness: "it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.")

Anyway, Millie!

Her reunion with John is part passive-aggressive but loving. We see that Millie, like Dean, has intense abandonment trauma. She speaks abrasively-but-affectionately. She calls John "Kid, Kiddo, etc." which was a go-to with Dean for both Claire Novak and Jack Kline.

JOHN: Love what you've done with the place. MILLIE (passive-aggressive): Well, my husband and son walked out on me, so. It's the best I could do. (growing emotional) Dammit. Welcome home, Kiddo.

Gruff, abrasive, imperfect? Maybe. But full of love.

Alt John and Millie are united by the common loss of Henry, just as Prime John, Sam, and Dean were united by the common loss of Mary.

John thinks Henry walked out on them, but I think Millie is likely more complex. With her tacit knowledge of the Men of Letters, I think it's reasonable that she at least suspects that he might be dead.

What does that tell us about her? It tells us that the loss of Henry was unbelievably painful--it's probably easier for her to consider he left than the very likely truth: his demise.

She's a fixer. That's what she does.

She holds out hopeless hope.

JOHN: I'm fine, Mom. MILLIE: The Hell you are. You've been chasing your dad since he walked out that door. I know that's why you enlisted. But it is time to let the past go, kiddo.

But Millie isn't healed either. She hasn't let the past go, even as she pursues her dream of being a mechanic and owning a garage (like her father). Letting the past go hasn't helped her heal.

In fact, carrying on hunting and the MoL business is what seems to soothe her loss, giving her new meaning and purpose. Millie and John's push-pull dynamic with hunting is much like how it was with Ellen and Jo Harvelle.

///

But overall, we see what Henry's absence wrought. It's just as Henry feared in SPN Prime (9x17 Mother's Little Helper):

HENRY: Therein lies the problem. As our initiation grows closer, I... I worry that this might be a selfish endeavor on my part. JOSIE: Selfish. How? HENRY: If anything were to happen to me, what of John? Millie? JOSIE: They'd be proud to know that you answered the call. HENRY: No. My wife would be a widow, and my son fatherless. I don't expect you to understand. You don't have a fam--[he pauses] I'm sorry, Josie. I didn't mean it that way. JOSIE: I know, Henry. You're a good man. Millie is lucky to have you.

This directly parallels Cas and his allegiance to his work, Heaven, (Heaven is a truck, and Cas is a truck-driver; Dean thinks he's Josie when he's actually Millie).

It also beings to mind the visual of ("little John") Jack's entrance as he wanders around muttering, "Father. Fa-ther. Father. I need to find him. Castiel. He was supposed to be here," while looking for his long-expected, lost father in 13x01 Lost and Found.

But it's also an off-key parallel to prime John, who would become as Millie was, a bereft widower in the cold, floundering and ill-equipped to handle the dangers of the supernatural world.

///

Enter Mary, Action Hero

(Note: Mary's got a short range, so I love how she uses speed to her advantage to get larger targets off-balance.)

///

And importantly, John...is NOT allowed to look cool. It's a RULE. He's a dorky...little...guy.

Mary knocks the demon into a blessed holy water vat, a call-forward to something prime John will do in SPNprime 01x21 Salvation.

//

When Alt John and Alt Mary meet:

Mary's father has been absent (missing) from her life for a short time, and John's father Henry has been absent for most of his life, just as when Dean and Cas meet, theirs too is a tale of missing fathers. Cas's father was absent for all of his life, and Dean's flaky dad has been gone for a (relatively) short time. It also very obviously parallels Sam and Dean searching for their missing father.

When they break inside the Men of Letters clubhouse, Mary keys into John's emotions about his father. This reminds me of of the first time Dean keyed in really hard to Cas's emotions in 5x16.

///

JOHN: How do you cope with it all? MARY (wryly, jokingly): I'll let you know when I find out. (SPNwin 1x01)

//

DEAN: Yeah, I get it. I know how you feel. CASTIEL: How do you manage it? DEAN (wryly, jokingly): On a good day, you get to kill [The Whore of Babylon]. (SPN 5x17)

///

Recent losses of friends & family:

Additionally, Mary and John have both suffered recent losses. Mary lost her narrative twin Maggie, and John lost his comrade Murph to war.

[Mary's cousin went to Hell, just as Sam's brother went to Hell in season in vintage and mid-SPN.] Mary's hunting family was torn asunder, parents separating.

And John? WIth war, John signed up to fill a void left by his father, to find meaning in life.

We can even recall Dean's words to Gordon in 2x03 Bloodlust, how Dean struggled with the idea of "The Invincible Dad" and how his death made the word more terrifying, how it left a wound of depression inside of him that he sought to fill with meaning through work:

DEAN: Yeah. Yeah, you know. He was just one of those guys. Took some terrible beatings, just kept coming. So you're always thinking to yourself, he's indestructible. He'll always be around, nothing can kill my dad. Then just like that (snaps) he's gone. I can't talk about this to Sammy. You know, I gotta keep my game face on. (clears throat) But, uh, the truth is I'm not handling it very well. Feel like I have this - GORDON: Hole inside you? And it just gets bigger and bigger and darker and darker? Good. You can use it. Keeps you hungry. Trust me. There's plenty out there needs killing, and this'll help you do it. Dean, it's not a crime to need your job.

Dean lost his dad, and Gordon lost his sister. This emptiness is depression. John lost his dad and suffered that loss all his life. He signed up to the war for the GLORY OF PURPOSE. He didn't sign up to the war for more pain and grief, but that's exactly what he got.

What's the thing Dean can't fill up, not with booze or love or even sex? It's grief and pain. It can only be filled with love, which is what Cas's confession narratively does in 15x18.

It's also what Mary's love and the love of the Core 4 will eventually do for John.

///

SPN Prime season 8 side-parallel: Connections of recent grief ALSO calls to mind season 8, how Sam connected with Amelia when they had both suffered a loss, Sam lost his narrative twin to Purgatory and Amelia lost her husband to war.

Theirs was a fast-paced reactionary relationship born of grief, something that pinged and annoyed Amelia's father, leading him to be very passive-aggressive with Sam. (Her father was a dick, but he's both a soldier himself and does know her best and probably has her best interests in mind. He recognized that was Amelia mid-freakout, OOC. He pings that her out-of-characterness is a weird reaction to grief).

He was right to be concerned about the shallowness and stability of it. These types of reactionary relationships are well-known: they can be very shaky, melodramatic, idealized, and weak when stress-tested.

Sam (and vintage Dean) both have this tendency to be all-in or all-out when it comes to The Cause. Neither strike a balance very easily. They tend to either be ALL IN for the Perfect War with Perfect War Companions at Your Side...or rushing into something tenuous that represents a weak idea that winds up unsatisfying because it's not genuine: Perfect White Picket Fence or Howling-at-the-Moon Dishibitory Party Life.

In SPNwin, John is doing a lot of running, too. He rushes into the thing with Betty (weak and tenuous), then he rushes into war, he rushes into hunting, and he runs into the relationship with Mary.

This theme of Running into Danger / Running From Danger persists. John certainly struggles with it, BUT in a departure from his past behavior, this new thing with Mary gets a lot of stress-testing, eventually moving from limerence into turbulence, power struggle, and de-idealization. (SPNwin 1x12, The Tears of a Clown)

///

SO.

Mary and her ragtag gang of friends embark on a journey to look for the missing Samuel Campbell the way Sam and Dean look for the errant John Winchester, the way the Banes twins look for their mother Tasha Banes in Twigs, Twine, & Tasha Bane.

Certainly the core 4 are all "running scared" and clinging to one another, having all lost loved ones in a variety of ways. They are united in empathy over their respective losses:

John (dad, comrades)

Mary (narrative sibling, missing dad, splintered family and parental separation)

Carlos (whole family killed by a monster)

Lata (no-contact with her family because they allowed her beloved nanny to die; nonsensical/cruel hierarchy of human society)

Ada (husband lost to madness, son potentially a puppy-destined-to-be-wolf)

And finally we get Henry's letter:

If you're reading this, then I'm gone. I'm sorry I kept the truth from you, John. There's a dangerous world out there, and our family has fought that danger for centuries. The answers to all your questions are at the address below. I love you and your mother. Always.

I think this idea of Henry Winchester as a secret-keeper, and as Mary-prime as a secret-keeper fed into what we know about John-prime turned into: a neuroses of paranoia and over-preparedness.

But thanks to Dean, Alt John has some new tools to work through this: knowledge. Even his anger is useful, openly telling his mother how disappointed and betrayed he feels over being kept in the dark. For her part, she gives him her emotional truth: that she only wanted to protect him.

It's the first healing step for both of them.

#writer robbie thompson #director glen winter #millie winchester #henry winchester #john & millie #henry cas parallels #john cas parallels #john sam parallels #millie dean parallels #john jack parallels #josie sands #lata #alt john #prime john #prime dean #prime cas #alt mary #amelia richardson #spnwin 1x01

[shallowrambles]

A bad Dean, "Abbadon."

So after seeing how closely some of Henry's and Cas's words line up, in some cases almost word-for-word…

I've been thinking a lot about the spectre of Josie Sands...and the initial shadow self to Josie: the OG knight of Hell, Abaddon.

Abbadon seized on Josie's sacrificial sense of love to defeat enemies and secure her position in Hell, the way Crowley will seize on Dean's self-sacrifice for his fam and loved ones to secure his Hell position.

And idk, it's just so interesting as a lead-in to how I think of Dean's next arc, which is a reversal of power. Cas gets to get the idealized role of Dean, reading ppl and taking care: talking almost like a thematic narrator at times, a mouthpiece for "killing of innocents" and "not becoming a monster", a de facto “wife” with (clown college?) Colette (Colt?) treatment. Sam gets to do the ballad of the Campbell "my-way-of-the-highway," taking extremes to keep his family safe.

When Dean moves to the Cain parallel and enters his full-on reversal arc, Charlie gets killed, and it's "Sam's fault," the way that Kevin getting killed was "Dean's fault." It's notably reversed. (Albeit in a Sam fashion, with more, uh, "Sam-typical" strategies.)

////

Anyway, back to Dean and the mark. After knocking out Crowley's enemy, Dean will continue on a failed crusade to save Cas from his enemy, Metatron. The implication is that defeating Metatron will get the angels home, and maybe even release Cas from his work obligations. Obligations which Dean has been, once more, struggling with.

///

Anyway. Abaddon could indeed be a "shadow" Josie, a stand-in for her worst self: her darkest, deepest jealousy. Josie is actually a lot like Hannah. She's a figure that is "more like Henry." She's in Henry's social class, higher ranking, "more equal" and "closer to him" through work.

Josie is committed to the cause (like Cas's lieutenant Rachel was), and she entices the Henry away from Millie and John, the way Hannah takes Cas away from his human family.

I mean, there's also this whole line running through SPN that we need work and work gives us purpose, but it can spiral into meaninglessness when it takes us away from our loved ones. (Hunting functions the same way. Live to work; work to live etc etc.)

Anyway, BOTH Josie and Hannah try to renew his loyalties to career and underline to him how important his work is:

//

Back in season 9, Dean is weird at the sight of Hannah, and Sam shoots Dean a weird side-eye for it. Feeling like an outsider, and bristling at seeing the work that "takes Cas away from them," at being in Cas's "frat bro world" again, Dean immediately jumps to trying to show off his and Sam's skills.

///

SPNwin Millie and Ada.

Seems like women who worked with Henry were a fear of Millie's. After giving (misplaced, presumptive) "parenting advice" to Millie (hi, that's so Sam-coded for her to be a know-it-all here!), Ada puts her whole foot in her mouth, and Millie's back straightens up SO FAST.

But Ada clocks Millie's defensiveness, so underlines that she and Henry just worked together:

Ada is herself a parent, but she was so gloriously annoying in this scene at first. I'm with Millie on Ada's stock advice of John needing more time, more space--that he'd be fine:

"Wow you learn all that from one week on the road with my son?"

Ada recovers with some grace, giving Millie the address where John's staying for her peace of mind, and Millie thanks her for that.

Like the protective jasmine, Millie still loves Henry, so Ada coming out of the gate so ham-fisted was pretty ill-chosen, haha! Poor dear.

Millie's journey will be accepting that Henry made his mistakes (Ada says of Henry in this very convo: "He had his secrets. He made his mistakes." BUT Henry was always motivated by love and wanting to protect them, and Millie makes her peace with that.

The same way Dean makes his peace with Cas wanting to protect him in The Trap in taking on the Mark and in Despair with, "She's gonna kill you, and then she's gonna kill me." There's some tacit acceptance for HOW Cas operates in the last season.

Societal expectations of protection are in the mix. But also fear.

#and ironically dean distrusts cas's work #rightfully so #but he trusts in hunting almost too much! #not seeing the same dynamics at work but at a lower level #dean/cas #cas henry parallels #dean millie parallels #josie sands #abaddon

[shallowrambles]

OOF. Imaginary lovers never turn you down.

This is one of Dean's Harper-coded neuroses for sure.

I think because John was hot-and-cold caretaker, Dean is very...insecurely attached. Even as a child, we see him balking at Sam seeking college, to the point of accidentally smothering the dreams on occasion, and pressuring even when tries to be "sorta okay with it." (Like how we see him in Drag Me Away from You)

///

So anyway, it's a neurosis I love love love to see. Dean will use phrases like, "This isn't really you," and occasionally always-and-never statements whenever he's glomped on a brand new ally to fulfill the fantasy of "never letting him down / disappointing him." SUPERMAN, even. That old hero worship.

But much like with Harper Sayles, even Vance isn't Vance! And so, none of Dean's idealized figures are really them either. He struggles with balancing trust and instinct. (Note: This is how all relationships tend to work. It's what's so LOVELY about Dean growing through these imperfections. He gets older and wiser. "He can try to get better, every day.")

He eventually starts to accept the mistakes of his loved ones: Sam, Mary, Cas. HIMSELF. We see in s15 when he insists he always "knew Chuck was squirrelly" when he clearly didn't. Dean is so used to being right about people/intuition, it's REALLY had to swallow when he's dead wrong. "I didn't wanna admit I was wrong." (He got played by Crowley, by Cain, then Chuck. It sucks to get manipulated so thoroughly!)

///

Anyway. This theme of imperfection, of seeing one another is even what's driving SPNwin.

It asks the question: "What if mom and dad had been REALLY able to truly see one another?"

///

ANYWAY, this stuck out to me!!! I don't know if I want it to be a meta or not, so it goes on the vent blog instead...

IN SEASON 10, Dean is spiraling and running. It doesn't matter who. He's disinhibited, used as a pawn to ensure a "rich man's" continued place as ruler, just as Michael would have used him as a sword to win a war/maintain power.

In season 9-10, Dean is vulnerable. He's reeling from rejection and being shunned for his mistakes. This makes so much sense in the terms of the scripted season 8, with Dean saying "I love you" and getting rejected by Cas, and then again for trying to save Sam's life and “trusting the wrong person" the way Cas (in parallel) trusted Metatron to try to protect others…

After spending all of season 8 coming to terms with the imperfections of his family and loosening up on some of his rigid expectations, after dealing with the complexity of both his little brother AND his would-be love interest, it all blows up in Dean’s face.

Itssooooooooo

//

-> Dean was rejected by his bro for trying to do the right thing, for trying an experimental treatment to save his life, which lead to both the unintended rejection of Cas and Kevin's death. (Sam will later "get Charlie killed" in his attempts to save Dean with ....an experimental hail-Mary.)

-> And in season 9, Cas got back into the Angel war, and Dean didn't like him being a military man again, fearing that it would be Groundhog day all over again. And so, Dean continued to spiral. He was continually paralleled with both Josie Sands-Henry relationship and Josie's shadow self, Abbadon, a knight of Hell, a shrieking wrathful pain.

Dean is become like knight of Hell Abaddon herself at first, before later reversing course to parallel another knight of Hell: Cain.

//

I think of this like Dean's reversal power arc. Dean is become like Rowena: I'll never be powerless again. And his whole world reverses: he gets to call out Sam for the evil Sam is doing, Sam gets to be the one who makes mistakes when trying to save him, and Cas gets the "wife" treatment instead of the war husband one.

Dean is the one to beat Cas up for once, and Cas is one of the characters who gets the brunt of Dean's brutality, because Cas is the one who hurt him the most.

Which brings me to this. Oof. Imaginary people. Imaginary lovers. Escape to the fantasy world. It doesn't matter WHO. Just keep running.

In season 9-10, Dean escapes more fully into a more extreme version of his season 8 neuroses, a world where no one lets him down, except this time he's flipping from imaginary person to person, searching for anyone that "won't let him down."

And guess what? The world still does. And Dean's tired already. Chasing freedom didn't free him or bring contentment.

With the toiling work of Hell on his tail, he runs again, this time to Anne-Marie, who despite his demonness and Crowley's ire, Dean seems to be catching feelings for. Crowley clocks it right away: "Damanged. I can see the old you falling for that."

(Because Dean already is. His humanity is a glimmer, but it's still there. We'll see it in demon Dean’s dispatchment of Lester rather than his assigned target, the wife.)

And more than that, Crowley misunderstands Dean's whole deal: that he is simply running. Running, running, running. Anyone will do.

"Somewhere else.” He says this to Anne-Marie. In a way Dean’s running is checking out of life, a bit like season 7 Cas (nihilism/existential crisis) and season 8 Sam (white picket fence as purely escapism).

But you can't run from yourself.

Dean's humanness hangs on, even in the midst of his Hell tasks, and his humanness persists even in seedy bars with random women-he-should-feel-nothing-for. It is a vexing thing.

He's supposed to feel nothing, to be a rolling stone.

And he isn't.

///

And Dean himself has been a little bit like Anne-Marie herself. It's an old wound by this point, but I see it as a nod to the whole Cas-Raphael thing.

Dean was so busy spiraling over Cas being in danger in s8-10 that he never had time to process all of what happened with Cas’s betrayal. He's still hurt.

And with s9 Cas rejoining the angels, though understandable and well-intentioned...it opened that old vein.

& things like this are in parallel too.

Cause Cas was saying he was doing it for Dean...and then he kept going, punishing Heaven. (There are real feelings for Dean in the mix, but nothing is singular…it’s always tied up in other things.)

I disagree with Metatron in saying that Cas “in love with humanity” solely explained his actions. Yes, Cas is motivated by protecting his human fam, but there have been incredible moments where he wanted to punish the other angels, where he inflicted unnecessary violence on demons (like the demon looting and fleeing Hell in 15x03 The Rupture.

Demon Dean’s “I protected your honor, didn't I?" sounds a lot to me like, Cas’s “Has any but your closest kin ever done more for you?"

Cas did all that for him, or so he said, and yet...

///

Because imho what was going one with Cas wasn't solely about protecting his human family.

There's other complicated stuff in the mix.

It was also about the feelings of betrayal BY Heaven. (Which is why he didn't even trust his own rebel angels!) Cas was utterly rejected by Heaven, MURDERED without a thought by Raphael.

Cas gave into his authoritarianism because he was angry. He was emotional and he was channeling that. They need a firm hand because he loves them. You know, like the specter of pizza man and the babysitter.

///

And yeah, it’s okay that Dean hasn't fully reckoned with that. Dean in s9 said, “Cas, I know you try to be a good guy, okay?" Anne-Marie...she almost...echoes that sentiment when she said “I thought you were a good guy playing bad.”

It's off-key, but it's...similar somehow.

I love that Cas toppled from the Superman pedestal, hitting at Dean's emotional interiority and challenges in the most extreme example possible!

I feel like Lily Sunder flirts with the shadow version of this, because when she first met Ishim, she thought he was PERFECT, too.

It's not one-to-one, but it sure as Hell is getting at Dean's "Cas makes so many mistakes" anxieties, which AU Michael will tap into, too!

But mistake-making IS humanity! AU Michael doesn't get that. (Metatron eventually will. "Sure they lie and they cheat and they steal...but they never give up. YOU do!")

///

So back to Anne-Marie. When she calls Dean on his deeper issues, he:

DEAN: *belittles her judgment and demeans her, calling her a skank* ANNE-MARIE: I'm so screwed up myself. I'm gonna walk out of here thinking I actually deserved that.

This conversation is a a little like this one, where Cas belittles Dean's human status. It's not *skank* but he does call him *just a man.*

CAS: You're just a man.

Anyway, when Dean starts becoming enamored with Anne-Marie, he's doing his own version of soul-searching, seeing himself in someone else.

But because this is his reversal arc, where HE has the power, he gets to be in Cas's more powerful position here.

(Until Amara, ofc, where he will abruptly flip to a powerless default.)

ALSO!!!! There’s this swirling painful question of being nothing more than an EXCUSE to do violence…or used as MUSE to give you work “more importance.”

Dean is afraid he is both for Cas.

I mean. Cas left after season 5, after a weird “fishing” convo where Dean tries to figure out if Cas plans to stay. He left in season 8 to go and lick up Heaven behind him, etc etc.

Dean worries that he’s more muse than loved one. A banner. An excuse. Inspirational, at best????

///

Dean is working through his defense mechanisms. And like I said, idealization is a normal part of most relationships.

It's usually in the early phases and signals immaturity. Choosing to move past them and staying with the people to keep striving can be a lovely thing to show, even if in extreme strokes like SPN does.

And then we get MARY, the motherload of Dean's idealization.

In season 15, when Dean says, "My mom is my hero," he means it in a different way to his early idealizations. He means warts and all! It’s so great!

///

Which is why I love Optimism SOOOOOooooo much. You get Harper, who struggles with similar things...and we get that dynamic scene of her crowing about perfection contrasted with Dean's wisdom he's giving to Jack!

BONUS thoughts:

Cas, Raphael, and Dean, and the thing with Dean, Hell, and Anne-Marie reminds me of this SPNwin scene:

Ah, yes, my fave motif. The John-Cas-Jack boxing motif.

Anyhoo, we have John saying he wants to PROTECT Mary...to KEEP HER FROM DYING. He's doing this to protect her.

And...

Yeah, sometimes I will kiss Robbie on the mouth.

BONUS BONUS thought: in SPNprime, Mary does the same thing for her kids....resonating with John's journal and his fear. Mary dives head-first into trying to eradicate ALL the danger...to win the ENTIRE war so her sons can be safe.

(Aside///Samuel C does this in SPNwin too...with the box that would eat up all the evil in the world.)

I love the theme. Mary nearly destroys the thing she was wanting to protect in the first place. (Like Henry. Like John and his boys. Like so many others.)

BONUS:

It's not either/or! For the matter, why is it peace OR freedom, never both!

#i may not have a point #but having some thinky thoughts #spnwin #alt mary #dean #demon deaon #season 10 #i'm too tired to tag #freeform meta #harper sayles #dean's fear of abandonment #messy messy #the root of dean's perfectionism #is that it's a defense mechanism #cas john parallels #cas henry parallels