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[spnmetafromheaven]

one of many reasons castiel spent the first year of knowing dean trying not to strangle him: dean’s weird little winchester-only dialect

i’m fucking obsessed with this right now, so buckle in for a meta. a cool fun (horrible) thing about dean’s dialogue is that a good 90% of what comes out of his mouth is:

a pop culture reference (“you’re just gonna take some divine bong hit, and shazam, you’re roma downey?”)

references to real life phenomenon (“i don’t wanna wake up missing a kidney in a bathtub full of ice” “try new mexico, i hear he’s on a tortilla”)

these also often take the form of nicknames, and dean has a tendency to give people nicknames in general or call them something besides their given name, whether it’s affectionate or rude (“easy there, van damme” “so i’m girl interrupted” furthermore castiel = cas, ezekiel = zeke, etc, see also frequent use of “chucklehead” “asshat” and on the nicer/endearments end “buddy” “pal” “sunshine” etc)

an idiom (“a snowball’s chance” “if it smells like a duck…”)

slang (“drinking the koolaid” “jonesing for some hooch” not to mention the literal endless amount of words dean uses to refer to killing - gank, waste, juice, ice, etc)

a metaphor (“power up your batteries” “fly me back to my page on the calendar”)

a euphemism (“cloud seeding” “i’d have given you an hour alone with her first”)

sarcasm (his habit of replying “peachy” or “super” when asked how he is)

wordplay (see: the entire “vampirate” and “werepire” debacles)

completely nonsensical (guessing what happened to a magical artifact: “it was dug up by tomb raiders? it was seized by the king of the dead by warlords?”)

said at lightning speed - if you pay attention, dean actually talks a LOT, usually a mile a minute (this makes me feel a way when you recall his year of mutism at age 4 but that’s another post)

slang IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (casual usage of “guano,” etc)

a lie, a deflection, a joke, etc

or worse, something dean’s NOT saying, deliberately, because he’s one of the most repressed people on earth

the end result of all this being:

dean winchester is utterly infuckingcomprehensible. 

think about this. there’s an ENTIRE SECTION on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE PAGE of the spn wiki devoted to JUST explaining dean’s pop culture references, because the average viewer won’t have seen everything he’s talking about either. they have a whole page for this called “hunter’s lingo,” but honestly, it’s not all hunters, just sam and dean’s fucking batshit communication style. even i don’t understand dean half the time. SAM gets it, sam speaks it back to dean a lot in the early seasons, but that’s because sam and dean are 1. practically two halves of the same person 2. FREAKS. every time we get an episode that involves outsider POV is devoted to them going “what the fuck is WRONG with them?”

enter castiel. technically speaking, the show implies that angels are omnilingual. castiel should understand every language known to man, but knowing the meaning of words doesn’t help him understand the following:

pop culture references

references to real life phenomenon

nicknames

idioms

slang

metaphors

euphemisms

sarcasm

wordplay

you get the idea.

listen to me. look me in the eyes. castiel cannot understand a single fucking word that comes out of dean’s mouth. my guy laid a hand on dean winchester in hell and immediately fell in love with him and has no fucking idea what he’s talking about ever. because not only is dean winchester’s way of speaking CLINICALLY insane, and sometimes incomprehensible even to other human beings who are not sam, castiel is an angel, and someone prone to taking things even more literally than other angels do

go back and watch and watch seasons 4-5 especially. the reason cas does so much squinting and head tilting is because every time dean opens his mouth castiel has to open up his mental “dean winchester dictionary” and translate entire paragraphs on the fly, because again, dean never shuts up!

what makes this extra hilarious to me is this gem:

this line is from 5.13. at this point cas has known dean for AN ENTIRE YEAR AND A HALF. what you see here is my guy SNAPPING. cas made an EFFORT in this scene. he asked who glenn close was. he’s telling dean that he can’t understand him. he is doing his level best to have a normal conversation with this guy he has a crush on and for the life of him he cannot do it (equal but opposite energy to cas blowing up the gas station and motel room in 4.01, tbh)

yes, cas can understand dean’s tone. he can use context clues, and he usually gets the general idea. and when cas DOES understand dean’s jokes, he laughs at them. the first time we ever see him smile is during their 4.07 heart-to-heart when dean says “it was a witch, not the tet offensive.” since cas has knowledge of human history, he knows what the tet offensive is; he got the joke, and he laughed.

but as far as actual dialogue goes, he consistently struggles to keep up. even after metatron gives castiel the pop culture knowledge in season 9, cas struggles to put it to put it to proper use (dean: “you wanna just walk right into the death star?” cas: “what does a fictional battle station have to do with this?”). whenever he asks dean to clarify it’s always when he’s most annoyed, like most of the time he knows it would be futile but he’s too annoyed to care. (dean: “i don’t know who’s on first, what’s on second!” cas: “what IS second???”) i’m pretty sure he spends seasons 4-6 wanting to shake dean by the shoulders and ask him why he is LIKE THIS. 

it takes cas - who, again, is omnilingual - YEARS to begin to acclimate to dean’s speech and start speaking that language back to him. it’s season 8 before we start really hearing him use slang, season 9 before he begins to understand wordplay, season 10 before he starts using pop culture references (to other angels, who immediately fail to understand him, which disappoints him immensely), and season 11 before he really gets into metaphors. i don’t remember what season he started using “yeah” instead of “yes” but i do know it took a really damn long time. 

and honestly, i don’t think cas truly got the hang of it until at least season 11-12. that’s something like 7 or 8 YEARS. it’s more than half the time they’ve known each other at the point of the series finale. 

so what’s true romance, fellas? it’s falling completely and totally in love with the most inexplicable person you will ever meet in your whole 4.5 billion year life, even though you have yet to understand a single thing he’s ever said to you. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[spnmetafromheaven]

The Supernatural Finale’s Nullification of the Symbolism of the Road: Dean Winchester lived as a progressive hero and dies as a static shadow

During the emotional height of its grand finale, Supernatural’s Dean Winchester ensconces the show’s earlier themes as a road narrative by showing an elongated montage of him driving his classic car along an endless, American road. By returning to the original mythic and intertextual narratives from which Supernatural was born, the finale entrenched within its themes the grand myth of the freedom of the American road. However, this grand myth and symbol, representing the traveller’s metaphorical journey towards inner freedom and self-discovery whilst exulting their newly found connection to the beatific landscape on Earth, placed within the context of heaven - is rendered redundant.

Without canonical material to provide a true world-building of this new heaven, we must rely on the idea of heaven from previous seasons, as well as extratextual narratives of heavenly realms. The audience is told that in this new heaven, souls have freedom and new memories may be created. The vision we see of the finale’s heaven is glowing, sanitised, and idyllic. Coupled with the general Western audience’s presupposition that heavenly realms within texts will be devoid of true horror or suffering, we are to assume these new memories and freedoms will also be heavenly and devoid of suffering. This assumption is bolstered by the appearance of The Roadhouse, Bobby Singer, and Baby, all representative of ‘good times’ and shot with soft lighting (peaceful), then juxtaposed against Dean’s dark, gritty, violent, and horror-filed final moments on Earth. This entrenches the message that Supernatural is sending: Dean is at peace and saved from his suffering.

This disallowance of suffering in Dean’s heaven is antithetical to the myth of the road: the metaphorical journey towards inner-freedom, ‘self-display, and self-discovery’[1]. Conflict, suffering, and trials are essential towards self-discovery and character development, and this is truer for the ‘hero’ protagonist than others. Dean, our hero, in his sanitized heaven is now in stasis. His external goal of defeating god is destroyed, and his internal journey (created by reacting and responding to the trials and tribulations of a varied life) is curtailed. His symbolic drive through Americana heaven has been stripped of its meaning. Our hero is no longer a hero of the road and his journey of self-discovery is terminated.  Kris Lackey in RoadFrames: The Amerian Highway Narrative, writes that ‘Car voyaging remains a symbolic gesture, describing in spatial terms a character’s education in or flight from domesticity’[2]. Whilst Dean is spatially driving away from home/Earth, his character is deprived of the ability to progress or to be educated by his surroundings, and therefore Dean’s drive through this physical space has been stripped of its metaphorical meaning. The physical road of heaven is illusory: it’s symbolism only taking on meaning and worth when the traveller changes in tandem with the view from the car window. The view from ‘Baby’ may change, but Dean cannot.

Keep reading

[spnmetafromheaven]

Why do you think Supernatural has such a large LGBTQ+ following? The representation of queer people ist piss poor and most of the time non-existent. Is it because of the IMO queerbaiting or are there other reasons?

I personally think that it’s a bit offensive to say that queer viewers are attracted to a product either because there is “representation” or because they’re “baited” into watching it. Gays watched television before Glee aired and they weren’t just watching Will & Grace. I’ll also go on a limb here and say that I suspect that Supernatural is more popular among an older queer audience while a younger queer audience is more likely to be critical of it. There is a generational divide in how the queer audience relates to media, after all.

Before “representation”, queer subtext was the way for queer creators or queer actors to convey “we’re here, we see you” to queer people in the audience. I am not saying that was good and the way things are now is bad, because it’s only progress to have actual explicit queerness in media. We’re not arrived to the end of that process, though, and a lot of explicit representation is highly unsatisfactory (token characters, “bury your gays”, stereotypes that are still hard to kill, narratives limited to coming out or dealing with homophobia, etc).

An older audience is used to see subtext and appreciate it. A younger audience sees the same thing and instead of subtext they see queerbaiting, i.e. creators - who are assumed to be nonqueer, or whose queerness is not considered relevant to the discussion - dangling a “promise” of queerness that is not delivered.

Supernatural is, at its core, a show based on nostalgia. I believe it deliberately plays on an “old school” way of crafting stories, including subtext, which is also why I believe it makes no sense to compare Supernatural with a Shadowhunters or a Lucifer and point fingers and say “that one does the thing”, because we’re talking completely different storytelling ways. While Supernatural has definitely evolved through the years and “modernized” itself in many ways, it’s still a narrative that likes to keep a foot in a 1980s shoe. You can like it or not, but it’s one of the things that have made the show what it is, given it a specific identity, and make it last this long.

But the fundamental thing in this discussion is that Supernatural is a story about identity, agency, bodily autonomy, corporeity and violation, abusive parental expectations, defying paternal or paternal-coded and religious-themed authority - what about this doesn’t seem interesting for a queer audience? There are themes of non-normative experiences including in the sphere of sexuality and relationships, there is an undercurrent of masculinity as a theme, and of course Supernatural is a horror story, with all the history of the genre it references and pays homage to, and the genre plays (in good or bad ways) on non-normativity, social subversion, corporeity, and gender. (A fundamental mistake, in my personal opinion, is to think of Supernatural as a drama show, because then it just becomes a bad drama show.)

Why do you think queer people flocked to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, because they were deluded that Marvel Studios would deliver queer representation or because of a narrative about identity, agency, bodily autonomy and defying the authority of the wealthy white male figure in a position of power used for imperialistic totalitarian purposes? (Not coincidentally, The Winter Soldier plays with tropes from the horror genre.)

The main character of Supernatural is a queercoded man who a lot of queer viewers have identified with - I don’t think that experience is worthless just because it’s not textually explicit that the character is queer. A lot of explicitly queer characters in television are not given the same depth and relevance in the story as Dean Winchester, and maybe they’re relatable for their experiences with coming out or dealing with homophobia but that’s it. Dean’s story is about things that resonate with many queer people, his struggles with finding his role in the world as an outcast who feels like a freak for social reasons (unlike Sam’s “supernatural” reasons), as a man in a model of masculinity that is too restrictive and toxic for him, as an inherently antiauthoritarian, subversive force in a conservative, hierarchical system - does all of this get null because the character isn’t explicited as a mlm? Dean’s story is pretty much a journey about embracing a queer experience, is that less worthy of consideration just because it’s not about (explicitly) embracing a queer identity?

There’s also another thing - the inherent value of a metaphor. Castiel’s story, for instance, is basically a metaphor for the experiences of a queer, specifically trans for certain aspects, person from a hostile family. But it’s not - does that make it void of significance for a person with those experiences? I don’t think so. It can be uncomfortable and triggering to watch the same traumatic experiences as yours, but it can be more emotionally useful to watch a metaphor of them. A queercoded narrative can offer the viewer the experience of identification with the character and their story, but with a distance: you don’t live the same traumatic experiences while you “are” Castiel, but you live experiences that have similar aspects, but in an “unrealistic” context, that allow you to elaborate emotions while maintaining an emotional distance.

This doesn’t mean that a queer viewers has to like it just because. Nor that Supernatural shouldn’t have done things differently/better. (It is really not a perfect show.) But it seems to me that there are pretty obvious reasons for its popularity among a queer audience, and I don’t think those are reducible to the queer audience being “baited” into watching something that eventually reveals itself as unsatisfactory and disappointing.

I do realize that my experience with watching Supernatural is not the same as many other fans here on tumblr & adjacent, but universal experiences don’t exist, so I suppose that neither is the “true” one. These were my two cents on the matter and I hope it was a satisfying answer! I probably came off as a bit abrasive but I’ve spent way too many years on this site surrounded by talk of queerbaiting so I hope you can understand :)

[spnmetafromheaven]

10 Baby Facts for SPN Fic Authors

[I swear this is not a rant - it ISN’T. Honest.]

It is actually kind of cool to realize that you possess specialty knowledge that may be of use to others. Stuff that you didn’t really KNOW you knew, until, of course, you are reading along in a fic and something the author describes (or the character says) brings your brain to a screeching halt. “That’s not right – it can’t possibly happen that way…” And then you go and do actual research to back up your gut knowledge. This little FAQ is the result of one such realization.

My dad fixed antique and classic cars for a living from 1964 – 1978, owning his own showroom for 3 years near the end of that time. Born in 1966, I grew up playing in old cars, hiding in floorboards and exploring them to my heart’s content. Our family car for several years was a 1966 Thunderbird, but when dad went to car shows, we rode in whatever he wanted to show off. I’ve been in rumble seats, hard top convertibles, cars with windshields that laid down flat, and cars with no roof, doors, or walls of any kind. My 1st car was a fully restored 1966 mustang. Without really realizing it, I soaked up a LOT of inherent understandings about older cars. The information below is based in that knowledge, backed up with some internet research.

The following is true about Baby (the character in SPN, not necessarily the actual cars that play her): 

1) Compared to most modern sedans, Baby is BIG. Like REALLY BIG. She is 17 and ¾ feet long (5.4 meters) and 7 feet 8 inches wide (2.03 meters). Allowing for door thickness on either side and the gaps between doors and bench seat, I’m betting the front seat is a little over 5 feet wide. Given basic geometry and human skeletal limitations, this means it is not possible for the passenger to have their head resting against the passenger door/window AND place their hand on the driver’s thigh. If the passenger is in this position, the driver can,  at best, entwine fingers with the passenger’s outstretched hand. That’s IT (even with Sam’s monkey arms). Sitting up straight, yes. Slumped over, no. On the plus side, this is why the guys can, in fact, get some sleep in her (and have fun in the back seat).

2) Despite how big Baby is, she is kinda short. Baby is only 54 inches high (4’6” or 138 cm). INSIDE the car, she is slightly less than 4 feet tall total. This means that the following actions WILL make you bump your head (or butt or hands or feet) on the ceiling unless you are very very slow and careful: climbing over the back seat, straddling someone’s lap, taking off your pants or t-shirt (unless nearly lying down in the seat), and lunging across the front bench seat to attack someone bodily. And you will look graceless doing it. [Ahem, trust me on these, I KNOW.] Additional negative modifiers for Sam due to height.

More below the cut.

Keep reading

[spnmetafromheaven]

It's kind of weird how....a man and woman can be told by someone that they likely have a crush on each other and without any context many people who saw this would believe it. Hardly anyone would think, "oh no, this man and woman are just friends." Replace this with two men and the knee jerk reaction is "They gotta be friends, it's no way they're deeply in love." even with a lot of prior evidence of the two men being very intimate and close. It's..a shame. It's why Destiel suffers.

It’s why we suffer because we just take it on the same face value instead of making ridiculous excuses for why it can’t be a thing just because it’s those two.

The “if Dean’s boobs were actually real” clause to interpreting Destiel :P Just.. frikkin make him Deanna from the get go and see what happens when Cas swoops in and saves her. 

[spnmetafromheaven]

Glad you should blog that male gaze fight pose now, because yes I've been thinking about that fight scene all week and can't begin to make words about it, I've also been thinking about how in both 12.01 and 13.01 Dean refers to other guys - John and then Sam as big - "a big marine," "big guy in there" and pondering about how delicate he consciously considers himself to be. Like, we know he's a flannel-wrapped twink, and the show SOMETIMES knows it, but that fight scene leaned into it so hard.

Oooh nooo.

There’s that bit in 1x20 where Dean is teeny weeny and wearing John’s jacket which adds like another entire rank of teeny weenyness to Dean, and Sam and John are just *looming*

And he’s been accused of being delicate and feminine in a bad way many times (9x11 springs to mind… and 6x05 again) - we think these are good qualities and enjoy when he embraces them… I mean the pink ipod moment has been on everyone’s minds since the promo shot of him listening to music, because of that reveal in 9x14 that he had a delicate pink ipod… I’m probably the only one still giggling about how 12x07 had Sam listening to music on his massive phone with a sturdy black case around it… 

I’ve been thinking while searching for the screencaps about how Dean fills so many feminine tropes and we were talking yesterday about the AU where Deanna Winchester is the main character, and how things would be different, or not, and talking about how a good chunk of his issues are feminine coded…

It’s got me thinking about how we expect Dean to be the nurturer and the mother, and literally 4 episodes ago (minus the hiatus time) he was exposing how he always had to be a mother to Sam, as part of Mary’s Bad Mother arc… I wonder if now there’s a sort of unconscious reaction in a way to Dean as the Bad Mother this season, to Jack… I wonder how the sort of things people say and feel about the way he hasn’t stepped up to nurture Jack match how people were feeling about Mary not stepping up to nurture her boys last season.

Because Mary has always been a massive Dean mirror, it makes sense to me that when she comes back they are mirrored all over the place, including their emotional arcs… And my blog has been a non-stop talk about Dean’s feminine coding for the last couple of days. It makes me really wonder if some of the bad feeling people have about the way he’s treating Jack is because he’s supposed to mother him… Hrm. This went unexpected places, sorry :D

[spnmetafromheaven]

A Pillar of Salt in 14x19 (Jack in the Box)

Catching up British-time, as ever, so this is my first piece of meta for the episode, written ”blind” as usual - before checking out what everyone else has to say!

SAM: “His body was crystallised, into a block of salt.”

DEAN: “Salt, why does that sound familiar?”

CAS: “It’s pillar of salt, it’s Biblical… Lot’s wife, punished by Heaven…”

This is the only time in the episode that Dean and Cas are, for a moment, side by side, not exactly on the “same side”, but shot close together (above) as they make brief, somewhat painful, eye-contact - whilst Cas recalls the story of Lot’s wife

We all know that story is part of the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis, upon which two cities, God rained “brimstome and fire” for their “iniquity” (often interpreted to be the sin of homosexuality):

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+19&version=KJV

Indeed, Sodom and Gomorrah have become synonymous with the supposed Biblical condemnation of homosexuality, although that interpretation is disputed amongst priests and scholars - see for example Robert Gnuse (2015) “Seven Gay Texts: Biblical Passages Used to Condemn Homosexuality” Journal of Bible and Culture. Vol 45, Issue 2: 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146107915577097?journalCode=btba 

Choosing a pillar of salt as the first Biblically-inspired murder Jack (under Dumah’s influence) commits, is deliberate and significant in the subtext.  Because, Dean and Cas’ fight (continuing on from 14x18) is framed (by reference to this Biblical story associated with homosexuality) as a lovers’ quarrel (in subtext). This is all the more potent because what Dean and Cas are fighting about, is the fate of their adopted son Jack, a Nephilim, the product of angel/ human congress. 

Jack (precisely because he is the product of angel/ human congress) has always symbolised (in subtext) Dean and Castiel’s “forbidden” love, so (again, in subtext) Dean is (in 14x19) “boxing” (repressing/ closeting/ locking in the Ma’lak box) that love, whilst Cas is fighting desperately to save it.

The Ma’lak box, remember, has (in subtext) already been established as a potent symbol of the closet, most obviously thanks to the scenes of Dean building the box in Donna’s cabin, surrounded by 1970s gay-porn-alike male cowboy pin-ups in 14x11 Damaged Goods:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182296360214/a-fridge-locker-an-enochian-puzzle-box-a-malak

This is (one) narrative reason why, as painful as it is to witness, Dean (not Sam) is the one pushing for Jack to be locked in the box. Because it makes, tragic, sense in the queer subtext of the narrative: 

This is why we see Jack (subtextual symbol of Dean and Cas’ “forbidden” love) panicking and alone in the Ma’lak box (subtextual symbol for the closet) using his phone as a flashlight:

in a way that deliberately mirrors Dean’s own nightmare at the start of 14x12 Prophet and Loss (also a Bucklemming episode) about being alone, locked and panicking in the Ma’lak box (subtextual symbol for the closet of his own making);

 (Image credit Wayward Winchester https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQU9Gwg7FRY )

For those reading Supernatural in its queer subtextual register, Dean and Castiel’s 14x18 and 14x19 fight resonates with all the love (and anxiety about that love) that remains unspoken between them. Castiel’s understanding that to love a human is to break Heaven’s “most sacred oath” (12x10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets) for which the penalty is death (and 12x10 is all about the supposed creation of a Nephilim). Castiel’s decision, on his apparent death-bed, in 12x12 Stuck in the Middle with You, to speak that love anyway: “I love you…. I love all of you.” This links (subtextually) to Castiel’s decision to fight so hard for Jack. 

Dean’s failure to say, “I love you” back, with words (although, of course, the mix-tape in 12x19 The Future, was his attempt). Dean’s abject grief and initial rejection of Jack whilst Cas was dead, at the start of S13 (which - dramatic irony claxon - we know all about, but Cas does not). Castiel’s deal trading his own life (the moment he allows himself to be happy) for Jack’s, with the Shadow in 14x08 Byzantium (which - dramatic irony claxon - we know all about, but Dean does not). 

Dean and Castiel’s 14x18 and 14x19 fight, over Jack’s fate (in subtext, the symbol of their “forbidden” love) takes place in the midst of all these unspoken things. And notice how they mirror one another in this fight:

DEAN (finger pointing at Cas in 14x18): “You are dead to me!” 

CAS ( finger pointing at Dean in 14x19) “Even after hearing what I said, you wanna keep Jack sealed in a living death?”

DEAN: “He agreed to it, because deep down I think he knows it’s best.”

CASTIEL: “No, you’re doing what Dumah… You’re manipulating him!” 

In the subtext, where Jack represents their love, “sealed in a living death” resonates (miserably) as a metaphor for the closet. It also provides tragic fore-shadowing. Because, what Dean does not know, is that their love is already in effect, in a state of “living death”, because Castiel has sold himself to the Shadow for Jack (specifically, should he ever achieve happiness - and we all know, in subtext, that a declaration of love from Dean would make Cas truly happy).

This is also not the first time Sodom and Gomorrah have been mentioned in Supernatural, either. 

In 11x20 Don’t Call Me Shurley, Metatron mentions these very cities to Chuck as one of his “greatest hits”:

METATRON: “Really? This – (METATRON holds up the manuscript and flips the pages.) This pile of self-doubt and nebbishness flooded the Earth?”

(CHUCK crosses his arms)

METATRON: “Followed up Sodom with a blockbuster Gomorrah? Created as much as he punished? No! Unh-unh! The guy I worked for – total badass! And yes, he could be a dick. Now, that guy… had some stories to tell. And he has a lot to answer for.”

Then, in the next episode, 11x21 All in the Family, Dean and Chuck (and notice it is Dean, not Sam) also have an exchange about Sodom and Gomorrah:

DEAN: “Here’s the thing, um…Chuck… And I mean no disrespect. Um… I’m guessing you came back to help with the Darkness, and that’s great. That’s, you know – It’s fantastic. Um, but you’ve been gone a – a… long, long time. And there’s so much crap that has gone down on the Earth for thousands of years. I mean, plagues and wars, slaughters. And you were, I don’t know, writing books, going to fan conventions. Were you even aware, o-or did you just tune it out?”

CHUCK: “I was aware, Dean.”

DEAN: “But you did nothing. And, again, I-I’m not trying to piss you off. You know, I don’t want to turn into a pillar of salt.”

CHUCK: “I actually… didn’t do that.”

11x21 was written, like 14x19 (and 14x12) by Bucklemming, and they often like to “quote” their own previous episodes. So, Jack in the Box recalls Sodom and Gomorrah deliberately to remind us of 11x20 and 11x21 and the fact that Chuck (and remember Chuck has always been a self-send-up stand-in for the writers) does not, in fact, condemn homosexuality. 

It was also, of course, in 11x20 (Robbie Thompson’s last episode) that Chuck came out to the audience (but not - dramatic irony claxon - to Dean) as bisexual: “I had some girlfriends. Had a few boyfriends.” 

Supernatural continues to tell the love story of Dean and Castiel in subtext (and you all know, by now, that I think it is most likely it will continue to do so up to, and including, the final curtain call) but, that subtext is so carefully, so intrinsically, and so very deeply woven into the fabric of the show. 

N.B - of course, the call-backs to 11x20 and 11x21 are also part of the Dabb era Ouroboros narrative in relation to the central SPN theme of fate vs free will (Chuck’s latter-day policy of non-interference being called out by both Dean and Metatron hard in these two S11 episodes); a theme which has already been strongly revisited in S14. These 11x20 and 11x21 call-backs, together with Castiel’s discovery of Joshua’s reproduction of the Samulet in 14x18 Game Night, seem strongly to fore-shadow the return of Chuck. 

And, as Jack specifically refers to God as his grandfather this episode (14x19) and has already (14x14 Ouroboros) been linked to Perseus (who slew the Gorgon but who was also fated to kill his grandfather) - colour me intrigued re a Jack/ Chuck encounter.   

[spnmetafromheaven]

So. 13x02. Was it just me or did that scene where Dean fights the demon in the hotel room for a while until Sam runs in and saves him just feel kinda rapey? Dean seemed really shook too. That demon was hella aggressive and inappropriate - more than usual for trying to kill a guy on this show. And the fight choreography - jeez. What was that about? Can I count this as the must-have-but-no-one-wants Bucklemming questionable consent moment / rape moment? What did I just witness? My poor Dean. WTH?

So yes this scene stood out to me for a lot of reasons, but I don’t actually see it as a negative moment nor equate it with Bucklemmings standard moments of dubious consent (that honour went to Mary and the rapey hunter dude - thanks Bucklemming).

I was gonna write about this in my review. My review which remains in draft form as I write this because I cannot focus long enough to sort out everything I wanna say. *sobs at own inadequacy*

So yes this scene. So you may not have heard but SPN has a new stunt and fight co-ordinator for season 13. So the fight scenes so far have indeed seemed more brutal than previously. Personally I think they have all been awesome. But this one does indeed stand out, and you are right that it seems kinda rapey. Why is that? 

Remember when we talked about 12x11 and Dean’s infamous ride on Larry? How the whole thing was framed to be sexual – look out for @margarittet meta on this scene compared to the movie Urban Cowboy for more info because it is eye opening.

Something SPN does extremely well is utilise standard filming techniques for the ‘male gaze’ but focused on Dean. Dean is quite regularly now framed in a way that would usually be used for a sexy female and it is so very interesting to me that they do this. It is extremely rare for mainstream film and TV to use these filming techniques on male actors. But Dean constantly gets the female treatment. There is an excellent slightly NSFW meta post going around about how Dean is always the character who gets holy water ‘facials’ and the sexual implications of filming said ‘facials’ in a certain way. Note how Dean is also always the character filmed shoving things into his mouth. These filming techniques are never used on Sam. 

Back to this fight scene, and the same techniques are used here. This fight scene was difficult to watch because it was incredibly suggestive, and sexualised. This gigantic beast of a male demon throws Dean down, gets him on the table with his legs up in the air and spread out, then proceeds to pick him up so his face is basically in Dean’s groin, to throw him down on the bed. At which point Dean cowers whilst Sam stabs him through the back.

The moment on the table is bad enough. He is literally lying there with his legs spread while this guy goes at him.and bends forward over him - effectively forcing Dean’s legs up and back like that common position you see in porn where you wonder how often those dudes have to stretch out their hamstrings cos jeez… at least we now know Jensen’s range of flexibility >_>

Then look at this:

I beg anyone to find me a scene in any action movie where this same choreography has been used for the male hero before. I would be very interested in watching it. You know where it HAS been used though?

Here.

In fact in the majority of black widow fights, she ends up with her legs wrapped around the enemy. Interesting right?

However when women use this type of fight style, the character usually has the upper hand. This is because women tend to be stronger in their legs and thighs than their arms. Men however have all sorts of sensitive dangly bits that makes this position extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable for them, so its just not ever done. Its still always framed as sexual though. Women fight this way because it appeals to the male gaze. “Ooh I’d like her to wrap her legs around me like that *wink wink nudge nudge*”.

Ignoring the glaringly obvious sexual undertones of the scene for a moment though, I have to ask why the new stunt coordinator would choose to put Dean in this position at all? Especially when it is then followed by this shot:

Dean, thrown on the bed, pushing himself back and away from his attacker, until Sam turns up at the last minute and saves the day.

Dean is extremely vulnerable throughout the entire fight. He’s not on form at all. This entire fight is showing just how off his game Dean is right now. He’s at rock bottom with his grief weighing on him heavily. Hence the demon gets the upper hand practically straight away. The fight appears sexualised and rapey because it is supposed to be that way. We are supposed to feel uncomfortable watching this scene and it is supposed to signify just how wrong Dean is at the moment. His grief has really wrecked him.

This isn’t the first time we have had shots of Dean in precarious positions however:

So it isn’t a new thing at all. This shot was from 10x18, when Dean was slowly succumbing to the Mark of Cain and was also in a vulnerable position. Another gigantic beast of a man comes towards him and it took something like 8 shots to the chest to take him down. There was genuine fear on Dean’s face in this scene. Dean got the upper hand eventually but the entire scene was framed with an air of discomfort for the audience. Especially since Mr Jacob Stein was leering at him in an overtly sexual manner the entire time his beastly accomplice had Dean pinned.

Two scenes reeking of sexual undertones, both where Dean is put on his back with his legs spread. Its supposed to feel rapey, its supposed to make him vulnerable. Both the 10x18 scene and the 13x02 scene are during times when Dean is travelling down a very dark path towards his own destruction. Whether through the Mark, or through his own heavy hearted grief. 

So there are two reasons why Dean was put in this position. The main reason being to express vulnerability. 

The other reason is to sexualise him and to suggest to the audience just how easily Dean fits into a certain type of sexual role. Of course with the first reason being dominant here the audience is left uneasy and wondering what on earth just happened. But Dean being sexualised and objectified is a pretty constant theme throughout the show. Especially by men and for men. Its part of his bisexual coding. It’s something we never see with Sam - or Cas for that matter. 

Or maybe they just thought spreading Dean’s legs for a huge beast of a man on camera for a second would go down well with fandom. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[spnmetafromheaven]

Things everyone forgets about Castiel:

1.  In his true form, he probably looks something like this:

These nice looking fellas here are angels, as described in Ezekiel 10:14.  They’re said to be massive in size (hence the Chrysler building remark) with at least six wings and four faces. 

When asked, Misha said that Castiel’s four faces consist of a lamb, a zebra, (unsurprisingly) a sock monkey, and (even less surprisingly) a cat.  No wonder he likes cats so much – he’s literally part cat himself.  They are his people.

2.  He wasn’t just a “random foot soldier.”

I see Cas described this way in a lot of fanfics, and it never fails to irk me.  For one thing, Cas isn’t just some run-in-the-mill, middle-class angel: he’s a seraph.  According to the Christian angelic hierarchy, this is the highest-ranking and most powerful form of angel.

Here are two of them guarding the Divine Throne, literally placing the Seraphim closest to God on the Biblical hierarchy.

“Attending Him were the mighty Seraphim, each with six wings.”  (Isaiah 6:2)

Not only that, even among the Seraphim, Cas has always been exceptional:  he was the leader of his own garrison, and charismatic enough to establish leadership among the angels, leading a rebellion first against an archangel (Raphael), and then against “God” (Metatron), even after he’d already established himself as a dangerous and unpredictable figure in the other angels’ eyes.

In short, he is a legitimately terrifying force of nature.  Fear him.

3.  He’s actually incredibly smart. 

In “fanon,” it seems to be an increasingly common trope to depict Cas as a helpless, incompetent child with no life skills, completely dependent on the Winchesters for protection.  This makes very little sense, considering he not only has eons of military experience, but he’s strategically brilliant.  

Case in point:  remember that time he took out a room full of angels by carving an Enochian Sigil into his chest?

Or the time he hid from heaven for months on end in an eerily similar cluster of chain restaurants, while simultaneously hiding an angel tablet under his skin?

Or the time he escaped from the angelic equivalent of the Overly Attached Girlfriend by buckling his seat belt and crashing them into a ditch?

Even as a human, he was incredibly resourceful, getting masking symbols tattooed onto his skin, and ultimately killing at least three full-fledged angels, completely without the use of his own powers.

It’s also important to note that in this season, he also proved himself to be able to function as a hunter without Sam or Dean’s assistance.

Even his most ill-advised decisions were actually completely logic based:  his deal with Crowely was made in order to defeat Raphael and stop a second apocalypse (which he actually did), and his most recent “deal with the devil” was made in order to defeat Amara, which even Sam subsequently acknowledged to be their only option.

So don’t be a Metatron:  “mentally deficient puppy” vibes aside, Castiel is no idiot. 

4.  Even as angels go, he’s extremely unusual.

Another thing that bothers me is that I often see Cas’s eccentricities attributed to his species:  his enduring social awkwardness, refusal to wear anything but a suit and trench coat, off-beat, understated sense of humor, and Aspergers-y inability to catch social cues, perceive sarcasm, or express emotions (despite being one of the few angels to actually have them to begin with) are often attributed to being standard characteristics of the angelic race.  

But let’s have a look at some of the other angels we know.  Do we ever really see them do any of this?  At all?

And before you attribute this to the fact that Cas has less experience on Earth, take a look at the other angel who hasn’t been exposed to humanity in quite a few eons:

Bottom line is, Cas isn’t just “weird” by human standards.  As an entity, he is singularly odd.

God (literally) made him and threw away the mold.

5.  Jokes aside, there is virtually no way he’s heterosexual.

I can’t help but find debates over angelic sexual preference within the fandom to be slightly ridiculous.  While ninety percent of the fandom enthusiastically screams, “He’s gay!” there is a small percentage that firmly insists he’s straight as an arrow.  Roughly two percent of the fandom claims he’s pan or ace, which honestly are the only sexuality headcanons I find logical.

Because, not to make anyone uncomfortable, but Castiel isn’t a guy – he isn’t even technically a “he:”  Angels are canonically WITHOUT GENDER.  This means that while he obviously does experience sexual (or at least emotional) attraction, it would make absolutely no sense for him to be attracted to women exclusively.  He physically *cannot* be straight. 

Keeping this in mind, it also makes scenes like these even more suggestive (if that’s even possible):

Seriously, for those of you wearing your heterosexuality goggles, just imagine Cas had a female vessel.  Then imagine just how “platonic” these scenes would look.

[spnmetafromheaven]

insp (pt I.) 

[spnmetafromheaven]

The Satire in Charming Acres (14x15 Peace of Mind)

The fake 1950s of Charming Acres is, in part, Yockey and Fitzmartin’s political satire on the Trump-Pence “Make America Great Again” back-to-the-1950s rhetoric of the contemporary USA.

The psychic mayor of Charming Acres - old, straight, white dude Chip Harrington, has created “his” fantasy 1950s, which, just like the Trump-Pence et als’ MAGA 1950s, is a creepy, fake, fantasy of the way it never truly was for most (i.e. a “paradise”). 

In particular, Charming Acres immediately made me think of The Stepford Wives (the 1975 version of the film), which is itself a feminist political satire about a male supremacist fantasy, of a 1950s, perfectly subservient female population, in the face of so-called “second wave” feminism. In The Stepford Wives (originally a novel by Ira Levin, 1972) the men of the town conspire, at the local men’s association, to replace their uppity wives with docile robots.

The “meninists” of the alt-right today, with their “incel” terrorism, their worship of Jordan Peterson and his regressive philosophy-lite fantasies of white male authority under threat, their “campaigns” to downvote female-led movies like Captain Marvel and the new Ghostbusters and Wonder Woman on Rotten Tomatoes (wow, such activism!) are today’s equivalent of the men’s association satirised in The Stepford Wives. 

Cindy in Charming Acres, is (and I think Yockey and Fitzmartin are using The Stepford Wives as a deliberate reference point) very like the robotic “perfect wives” of the novel and ‘75 film. Cindy is a very traditionally feminine housewife, who is creepily over-perfect, with her cupcakes and her hostessy “service” of her fake-husband Justin Smith,  e.g. the way she screams at Castiel when he is about to sit in her (fake) husband’s chair, and the way she fixes whammied Sam/ fake-husband Justin Smith Mark II his martinis etc:

She is Chip Harrington’s mind-controlled  fantasy of the way women “should” be:

Here is a still of some of the Stepford wives from the 1975 movie for comparison (notice the matching outfit colours and the matching pearls in relation to Cindy’s outfit in Peace of Mind):

Now, Yockey and Fitzmartin’s satire is very much about “back to the fifties” sexual morality (the Pence part of the Trump/ Pence ticket). In subtext, this is focussed on the horrifying compulsory heterosexuality of Charming Acres.

 Notice all the “perfect” fake ‘50s style couples we see, like Cindy and Justin Smith, and these two below, are heterosexual:

The text gives us another clue that the Yockey/ Fitzmartin satirical subtext of Charming Acres is focussed on pseudo-fifties attitudes to sexuality, because Sunny, who is, of course, as we later learn, resistant to her father’s psychic powers, is able to write steamy and sexually explicit love-letters to her lover, Conrad, which are not in keeping with the general moral tone of her father’s Stepford fantasy town.

And, as many others like @norahastuff and @verobatto-angelxhunter and @weirddorkylittlediana and @bluestar86 and @tinkdw have already pointed out, Castiel, who spends a lot of time referring to his “partner” in the episode (in text that’s his FBI partner Sam, but in subtext, of course, that’s a nod to his husband-coded romantic partner Dean) is read as “queer” in some way by the townsfolk, particularly Mrs Dowling, the boarding house lady, who gives him a disapproving look in the context of talking about the ‘50s style “morals” she keeps in her BnB. 

Cindy, the Stepford, retro “perfect” heterosexual housewife, and Mrs. Dowling, the “morality police” boarding house lady, and whammied Sam/ Justin Smith Mark II,  ALL disapprove of Castiel’s behaviour/ morals.

Cindy screams at Cas for being “improper” as he is about to sit in her fake-husband’s chair, Mrs. Dowling the boarding-house lady gives him the stink-eye because of the “queer” vibe she gets from him, and whammied Sam/ Justin Smith throws Cas out of “his” house for using “bad language”. 

Castiel is, in text, an outsider in Charming Acres because he is an angel and Chip’s psychic powers don’t work on him. However, in subtext, he is an outsider because there is *something* about him that Chip’s creepy Trump/ Pence MAGA-like Stepford fake ‘50s “utopia”, finds “queer”. 

In short, I really loved Yockey and Fitzmartin’s inter-textual referential use of The Stepford Wives in Peace of Mind to make a subtle point about the queer-phobic horror of the present MAGA back-to-the-fifties present.

[spnmetafromheaven]

“The first season they wanted us to make a deal with Motel 6,“ Jerry confided, “and I said, you know, these boys are always on the road, and anyone who’s traveled the back roads of America, they’ve stayed at these cheesy little places with a lot of character. Those kind of places are dying out, and we have an opportunity to make that here. If you do Motel 6, it’s gonna have to look the same every week. So I talked them out of that.”

Another case of studios not “getting it” we thought to ourselves. How does Hollywood stay afloat with so many people making so many bad decisions?

“And then we started pushing these theme motels,” Jerry continued, “these different ones, where we like pick out the state bird and say okay, this is gonna be the Bluejay Motel. So we usually take the state, and start with anything interesting about the state. Sometimes we’ll have these screens, and they’ll have something in them to do with the plot - like in the episode ‘Salvation,’ there are crosses embedded in the screens in the motel. It just looks like a very interesting geometric, but if you study it, there’s a cross in there. And if you look at this one closely, there are skeleton keys there crossed.”

We examined the screen he showed us and assured him that fans sometimes really DO look that closely.

“Oh yeah, they do!” Jerry agreed. “They can freeze it and study it. We had one with fish and bobbers ‘cause that was in Minnesota and we had it as ice fishing. The mud flap girls was a cool one too - it’s getting a little harder, we’ve done like forty motels.

"So is the pressure on now to top yourself with each new motel set?”

Jerry nodded.

The first edit for us is like different is just different. So if we’re gonna do one like the bowling pin one, another Wisconsin flashback, bowling is big there so we did a screen of bowling pins and balls – but it has to work with everything else in that room. There were black and white pictures of guys bowling on the walls, because being different and getting it wrong is just awful. Even in the room they’re shooting in now [for the episode “Sex and Violence”], the palette in there is kinda off – grandmotherly colors, but they have to play with each other and make sense. I think the fans look more closely in this show because they’re a lot of symbolism inherent in the show, so fans try to figure out what’s coming up.

“Foreshadowing!” we said cleverly.

“Exactly, so we toy with that a little bit. We do that within an episode too, I’ll throw a little bone out there, see if they pick up on it before the end of the show. They’re pretty good.”

Source: Jerry Wanek in Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls, by Katherine Larsen and Lynn S. Zubernis (University of Iowa Press, 2013: 206-207, 211). (x) (x) (x)

[spnmetafromheaven]

Rocky’s Bar - “The Dream”

In my Pamela meta I wrote about how Dean’s actual wants and desires are things that he views are completely unattainable to him, even in a dream, and therefore the bar is the next best thing. I want to build on that point more and tie it in to my Pamela meta, because this bar, this dream scene, it was EVERYTHING.

On my first watch I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Dean, that this bar is his supposed happy place. That this is his “dream” life. But then when Sam and Cas are searching in the dark of Dean’s mind Cas says something that clued me in. He says “contentment”.

We need to discuss the difference between contentment and happiness, because they often get confused. Contentment isn’t a negative thing, but when you apply it to a season driven by want and desire, it’s the opposite of moving forward.

Being content means not having any desire or want for anything more than you currently have. It means being happy with your lot. Which is fine, but in this particular case, in Dean’s case, this is actually really sad. 

In Rocky’s bar, Dean has created his own prison (or it was created for him by Michael - we don’t ever actually find out.) He has surrounded himself with memories and mementos from his real life, which hint to all the things he is currently missing out on. Lets take a look:

The name “Rocky” from Rocky and Bullwinkle plus the taxidermy squirrel both represent Dean himself. It could also be a way of honoring Crowley who coined the name for the brothers.

Where there is a squirrel there must be a moose, and Sam is in pride of place up on the wall.

The Impala also has a place of honour on the wall, with it’s original license plate on display.

Death is also given a place. This reminds me of the Tiki bar where Dean killed Death, and it clearly is significant in his mind. It could also be placed here due to Dean’s continuous death and reincarnation.

The cowboy and cowgirl from 13x06 are also lurking in the background, a call back to a time when Dean truly was at his happiest that we’ve seen him for a while. Interestingly these only ever come into shot once Sam and Cas arrive, signifying a rise in Dean’s happiness level perhaps? Also I always love the symbolism of both the cowboy and the cowgirl being a nod to Dean’s bisexuality, but that’s just me. :P

Fred and Daphne appear carved into the bar, to honour another point in Dean’s memories where he was extremely happy. Though you’ll note that its specifically “Daphne loves Fred” and not the other way around. Whilst being a nice memento from a happy experience, it is also reminding Dean of rejection. 

Finally, it can’t be Dean’s mind without a nod to Cas, and Cas is not only clearly in view throughout most of the dream scenes, but he is accessible to Dean. Cas is of course the cosmic cowboy. The one item in the bar that Dean specifically calls attention to.

Dean surrounds himself with these things to remind him of happy points in his life and people he loves, but he himself is stuck in a miserable place. There is a storm raging outside, and the bar itself is empty, with one lone drunken patron (who turns out to be a monster hiding in plain sight). 

Pamela is his only companion, as Sam and Cas are out on a hunt together and he is separated from them, just waiting for them to return, hoping that they are okay. Pamela is just a friend, she has a hot date with her boyfriend while Dean has no one. He flirts, but he doesn’t actually want her. 

The only other character in the bar besides Dean and Pamela (and the vamps that attack every now and again) is the mystery business woman in a grey suit who offers to buy the bar for a generous amount, to which Dean continues to refuse. I was scratching my head over the purpose of this woman for a while. She is stoic and rather uptight, wearing a grey suit that screams angel. She refuses his offer of a drink both times she appears, and is insistent on buying the bar from him.

This woman, coded as an angel, is offering Dean a way out. She is offering him a chance to move on away from the mundane little bar he has settled in, but she isn’t going about it the right way, she isn’t warming him up, she isn’t relaxing, she isn’t accepting his drinks. They aren’t speaking the same language.

He repeats twice that the bar is “the dream” and tells the business woman that “this bar, I’ve never had anything this nice.” He repeats the mantra because his mind is telling him that this is all he can get. It’s nice, it’s a form of contentment, but is it truly what he wants? What he desires?

The woman tells him that the bar “is dead”. Dean doesn’t care. He is hostile towards her and she leaves in a huff. 

Where Pamela is Dean’s voice of reason and guidance, the business woman is a potential escape, but one not done in a way Dean can relate to. She is treated as a negative thing in this narrative, when really she could bring Dean something far greater than this mundanity. It is interesting how both Pam and the business woman are coded as aspects of Castiel in the subtext. 

Castiel is everywhere in this bar dream hidden in plain sight. Like the cosmic cowboy IPA that Dean clearly loves, or the crate of Texan Star he carried in from the store room which is oh so reminiscent of 8x23 and 9x06.

The most obvious example of want and desire among all these Castiel-coded things is the song playing on repeat over and over again. It is probably the most telling indication of all:

https://youtu.be/-xKvkZnF1MY

Searching for a Rainbow by The Marshall Tucker Band

I rode into town today… in my mind, I said ‘Lord I’d like to stay’.. Something in me said boy, move on… Don’t know what it is the good lord bred it in my bones..And I’m searchin for a rainbow, and if the wind ever shows me where to go, you’d be waiting at the end and I know, I’d see the hill with that pot of gold. I’d see the hill with that pot of gold

This old mount I’m ridin’, she’s gettin’ kinda’ tired, But in my heart she knows there’s this one desire…She’s gonna’ take me to the end of our road…. Then she’ll lay down and die and I’ll say 'God rest her soul’…….And I’m searchin for a rainbow, and if the wind ever shows me where to go, you’d be waiting at the end and I know, I’d see the hill with that pot of gold. I’d see the hill with that pot of gold

And I’m searchin for a rainbow, and if the wind ever shows me where to go, you’d be waiting at the end and I know, I’d see the hill with that pot of gold. I’d see the hill with that pot of gold And I’m searchin’ for a rainbow.. and if the wind ever shows me where to go, I’ll see the hill with that pot of gold…..I’ll see the hill with that pot of gold…

This song isn’t about a man living the dream, who is happy with what he has got. This is someone looking for something special, or someone. The lyrics talk about searching for a rainbow (which come on, I think the SPN writers would be well aware of the implications of rainbows to their majority queer fandom) and believing that “you’d be waiting at the end” .

I am sure that in my current social media blackout Destiel fandom has had a collective meltdown over this song. I’m shocked myself that they have chosen something so blatantly obviously about LOVE and with RAINBOW METAPHORS.

When taking the song, the angel coding and the conversation with Pam about love and want all into consideration, what is Dean’s dream really telling us? 

It’s not telling us that he is happy. No matter how much he repeats his mantra that this bar is “the dream”, everything else is at odds with that. 

Rocky’s bar is telling us that Dean has wants and desires.  He has people, things, feelings, that he wants to experience differently than before, or maybe even for the first time. He wants something more, maybe not marriage, but something, with a hunter or someone who understands the life. He wants to follow his heart because he is pining for someone. But that someone is not Pamela, it’s not Daphne, it’s not some pretty girl (because Dean doesn’t want that, he just likes to flirt). 

No. Dean wants a Cosmic Cowboy, and he’s searching for a rainbow. 

[spnmetafromheaven]

An Argument in Tropes - A Destiel Meta

In which I talk a bit about Dean and Cas and the specific tropes their dynamic has been touching on this season.

Keep reading

[spnmetafromheaven]

The Romance Narrative

Keep reading

[spnmetafromheaven]

Hey, I was watching On the head of a pin, and i started questioning when Alistar started rubbing it in deans face that John lasted 100 years without breaking and he only lasted 30 years before breaking... Anyway, i was wondering what you think about this cause i think that it is extraordinary that john could hold on that long when dean could not.. Do you think there was a different torture technique or did john know something dean didn't, basically, what gave john that edge in hell? Thanks :)

Hey there anon, thank you for the question!  And I’m sorry for the delay, it’s been such a busy week and I wanted to give your ask the thought it deserved!

 So, I’ve been thinking about this for a little while and I have some theories about this.  I have always held that John was actually seriously damaged by his experiences in the Vietnam War and that they were highly traumatic, yet like many of his generation, he ignored or self-medicated his trauma.  Unfortunately, given the limited amount of textual evidence concerning John, it’s all very speculative.  But I think, given the way that John fell back on his military training and turned himself and his children into soldiers following the traumatic loss of Mary, it makes me think that when he went through his experiences in Vietnam, he fell back on his Marine training heavily to get through it.  So, I think that he fell back on his training once more when he got to Hell.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape), during the Vietnam War, Marines were given SERE training (Survival, Escape, Resistance and Escape), which is specifically designed to endure being a prisoner of war.  Marines received this training during the Vietnam War, which would have been exactly the type of training that John would have fallen on to help him deal with being in Hell.  SERE is incredibly harrowing (see this account http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2009/01/cancel_waterboarding_101.html), but it based around a code of conduct:

I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability, I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape)

As Meg put it, “You find a cause, and you serve it.  Give yourself over and it orders your life” (7x21).  John had that cause and he served it as a Marine.  It gave him the strength and order needed to endure Vietnam and the strength and order needed to endure Mary’s death and it gave him the strength and order he needed to endure Hell.

Now, I don’t think that however good the SERE training was (and I was unable to find much on the efficacy level of the training, though the author of the Slate article did describe it as more of an elaborate hazing ritual than effective training), it would be sufficient to endure 100 years of torture, no matter what.  However, it is stated in canon that the pain of the real world is different (implied to be harder, more real, more painful) than what the mind/soul experiences in Hell (Dean: “Look at me. Come on. You don’t know what’s real? Look man, I’ve been to Hell. Okay, I know a thing or two about torture. Enough to know that it feels different. Than the pain of this – this regular, stupid, crappy this.” 7x02).  So what happens in Hell is bad, really, really bad, but not as bad as what a person would endure on Earth.  So maybe what John learned and went through on Earth was enough to give him the edge not to break for those 100 years.  And I think that John would have taught Dean what he could, given their lifestyles, about how to resist and deal with capture, but without the capacity of SERE training, it would not have been to the same extent.  But it might have been why Dean lasted as long as he did, because 30 years of torture, in Hell or otherwise, is an incredible amount of resistance.  Would John have endured indefinitely?  Absolutely not.  He would have broken under the torture eventually.  There’s literally no way that he wouldn’t have, torture will eventually break anyone and everyone.

As well, I definitely think that it’s possible that John had a less painful and harrowing experience in Hell than what Dean did, because if it was supposed to be John who was the Righteous Man, once Hell lost him, they must have desperate to cause Dean to break if they suspected that he could be the Righteous Man in place of John.  They would have done everything to make sure that Dean broke and started torturing in Hell because they were without a Righteous Man for an entire year of Earth time and 120 years in Hell.  Could you imagine the desperation in Hell from the Lucifer loyalists who wanted to break that First Seal when John escaped?  Could you imagine their reaction when Dean got to Hell and their excitement at the possibility that he could be that Righteous Man?  Could you imagine what they would have done to him to make him break?

Of course, all this pre-supposes that Alastair was telling the truth.  We know that demons will tell the truth when it will mess with someone’s head (Meg telling Jo about her father), but they can just lie just for the Hell of it.  I am inclined to believe him, since I like the way in which we can interpret Righteousness as not equivalent to good, and that we can then look at Righteousness as even a character flaw and the implications of that.  But, I think that Alastair’s words should be taken with several grains of salt.  Alastair spent 30 years torturing Dean and 10 years tutoring him, there’s no way that he doesn’t know about Dean’s massive daddy issues.  It takes literally less than half a season before the viewer becomes aware of them, so there’s no way Alastair doesn’t know about the way in which Dean uses his father as his yardstick, the metric against which he measure himself and his self-worth.  Telling him that he failed and started the Apocalypse where his father held out, it would definitely have messed with Dean’s head, more than just telling him that he broke the First Seal would have alone.

Anyways, thank you for the awesome ask!  I really enjoyed mulling this over and thinking about it!  Hope you’re having a fantastic day!