#MANdy and aMANda function the same way in stuck in the middle (with you) don't they? lol

[shallowseeker]

re your carmen-silvia-amara post: i was talking to a mutual about carmen the other day and we were discussing where her name comes from. and i suggested the opera carmen and she suggested the model carmen electra. and now you suggested carmen 1983, which is very interesting!! that carmen has this pop culture track of being the hot and fun ideal woman. i don't think it's a coincidence they picked that name for her 👀

It's also a portmanteau of CAR-MEN. Two of the things Dean loves the most. 😏

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I kid, I kid. I love this, though @fivefeetfangirl. Lots of pop culture swirling around this unobtainable idea of the proper dream-girl, huh?

The model Carmen Electra (and, idk why but that makes me think of Elektra by extension):

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The opera CARMEN (1875)

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Carmen 1983 - (A dancers' troupe take on the opera; vibes like Baby & Swayze from Dirty Dancing but with their real lives taking on the ironic beats of the opera)

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There are so many takes looping back around to the Carmen opera. And another 1984 Carmen based more closely on the opera you mentioned, too, for what it's worth. :-)

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Interestingly, Sylvia Jones functions as a reverse of the opera Carmen. Connor is her Carmen, who she kills out of jealousy. (And narratively, the Dean-and-Cas unit, like I said in this ask, functions as a committed, non-idealized foil to the Dean-and-Carmen ideal!)

On the flipside, Dean functions as Chuck and Amara's Carmen. Chuck, according to Lilith, was psychosexually obsessed with Dean. And Amara, according to Chuck, "wanted Dean to care about her, but humans let you down every time."

In the end, the things Dean cares about are the things Chuck specifically wants to kill. Friends, family, romantic attachments, comrades, you name it! He only resurrects them if (a) Dean becomes too uninteresting without them or (b) it can lead to further torment.

In season 11, when Chuck wraps himself in Dean's dead-guy robe and overfocuses on Dean's skin-deep performances, we see that, in parallel to Amara, Chuck doesn't really know Dean at all.

(Compare to Mary and Jack, two others who get wrapped in the gray MoL robe, and who understand Dean a little too well. And of course, Dean wraps Cas in a similarly-styled gray blanket in season 11.)

To Chuck, Dean is just a symbol of psychosexual obsession. Dean is as ghostly and unreal to Chuck as the djinn-Carmen was to Dean!

ADDENDUM: Lily Sunder is Ishim's Carmen.