#15x10: the heroes' journey

[winchestergifs]

I wanna be the guest star. Being the hero sucks. I mean, sure, you’ll probably win eventually, but until you do, your life blows.

🥂 Congratulations to DJ and Ty, Heroes of Supernatural!🥂

[shallowseeker]

In The Hero’s Journey, when Sam loses his heroic plot armor, the fact that he’s clumsy is The Best Thing Ever.

Like, immediately, he’s a disaster in the kitchen (maybe he shouldn't have bothered the food?), he slips coming up the stairs, and he knocks over a bunch of shit at the case.

They should’ve kept it, and in a fit of irony, his clumsiness saves the day. Through a series of whacky, seemingly impossible, bizarre, Rube Goldberg-like events, Chuck is defeated.

Sam literally trips his way into victory.

The end.

///

Imagine it:

AU Bobby (on retraining Sam): "Oh, come on. A little clumsiness never killed anyone."

(Bobby watches Sam at work)

AU Bobby: 'Cept you. You're gonna take care of yourself before the baddies even get close.

On a subsequent case, all four of our mains are stealthing and (CRASH). “Sam," Cas says, genuinely horrified, with just a hint of blame. Later, after another BOOM, Jack says, "Sam," too, but like he's suffering from secondhand embarrassment on his behalf.

///

JUST LOOK AT HIM:

SAM: Who left this cooking? Doesn't dinner usually cook itself? I'd better--oop--

///

SAM: Ow. OW. OW--oop. (CRASH) OH-OW-THIS-IS-HOT-TOO-WHY IS IT--oop!

///

SAM: Whooooa, stairs, STAIRS--oop.

///

SAM: (BANG) It—oop.

DEAN: Really?

SAM: It fell by itself.

DEAN: I watched you walk into it.

///

SAM: Hai-yaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

///

Sam-fuckin-Winchester, everyone.

(I made this with you in mind @couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name. And I regret nothing.)

Also. Someone NEEDS to let me remake season 15 where they don't get any luck back. Please. It was the weird everyone-teams-up ending we deserved.

[arcanespillo]

“The Heroes’ Journey”

SPN S15E10

[fahclove]

What makes supernatural so fascinating is that the show is very meta in the show itself, like as a story. Sam and Dean canonically have God’s favor and when you acknowledge that all other side characters become so much more tragic, because for them, for every single person that crosses paths with Sam and Dean it is certain their end will be tragic, or, at the very least, slightly ruined.

Like Bela, Cas, Crowley, etc. it’s fascinating to think about their demise via Winchester association. How certain characters try to escape the narrative (Michael/Adam, Garth, Missouri) only to be sucked back in and usually die. And the fact that this is canon and real in the show bc Sam and Dean are God’s Special Boys is crazy. It’s insane. I can’t ever stop thinking abt Supernatural

[mybrainproblems]

But actually I do think that we're all here spilling so much digital ink trying to backwards engineer the secret good supernatural that lives in Andrew Dabb's head

[seasononesam]

Stackednatural- 160/327

The Hero's Journey (15x10) January 23rd, 2020

[clairenatural]

hey sorry to ask you but what is the destiel lamppost thing? if u know what it is

Hi anon!!! I wasn't ignoring you I just wanted to be able to sit down and type out the lore.

So "why lamp"/the destiel lamp thing starts with 15x10, The Heroes' Journey, in which Dean and Sam are stripped of the luck/protections that being written as protagonists gives them by Chuck (very meta) and Dean ends up needing cavities filled.

Garth gives him laughing gas for the procedure, during which Dean has a dream of a black and white 50s style dance sequence. It takes place in the bunker and while initially it's Dean dancing with Garth, eventually Garth leaves and Dean runs over to pick up a lamp from the corner of the room to dance with. Here's the whole thing:

But once it's Dean and the lamp, the dance becomes markedly more romantic - he's dancing with the lamp as a partner, not like the tap dancing he and Garth do side-by-side.

Also important to note that they're dancing to "Let's Misbehave," which is about sex and also was written by Cole Porter, who was gay. This is a really good breakdown of the dance itself, the significance of the song and Cole Porter and its connections to old queer Hollywood.

At the end of the episode, Dean sees Bess and Garth dancing in their living room through the window and says "You know, I always thought I could be a good dancer if I wanted to be."

This is pretty clearly associating the dream sequence, and Dean dancing with a lamp, as about Dean longing for a partner and therefore the lamp as a stand-in for that partner.

NOW. Meta was written as soon as this episode aired with people linking the lamp to Cas, and there has continued to be much better meta than I can write here - this one is in-depth and connects it to themes across the seasons and Dean's years-long character arc. "Cas is Lamp" even has its own superwiki page.

But besides all the normal meta deancas reasons and the fact that this comes at a time when Dean's character arc had been building both to him wanting to settle down with someone AND that someone being Cas (this is the episode right after The Trap and Dean's "I should have stopped you/of course I forgive you" prayer), Cas (and angels broadly) is associated with light and lamps throughout the series, perhaps most iconically in 4x16.

So, after 15x18, "the lamp thing" was something frequently cited and that we held onto as another thing they'd dropped alluding to (nay, ensuring - because they'd surely somehow have to wrap up Dean's own arc of wanting a partner to settle down with) a happy deancas endgame where Cas is rescued and they live happily ever after.

And then. 15x20 happened. And "why lamp" took off as part of a long list of "if they were just never going to mention Cas again, let alone resolve the confession or this very key part of Dean's story arc of wanting to settle down, why did they include [long list of things that make no sense with the ending we got]." Why lamp has become shorthand for a long list of missing links and loose ends and things that just don't add up. If deancas wasn't going to be the happy endgame, then why lamp. Why did they drop so many clues and work up to a very clear resolution for Dean's character arc if they were just going to drop it. Why lamp. It's one of those things that will haunt us because we will never get an answer. Okay grandma, let's get you to bed. But why lamp.

[destielfandomlore]

Hi! I know things are a bit crazy right now, but would you mind explaining lamp-gate? Most of the other -gates I've got a pretty clear picture of, but this one I've somehow missed. Best I've got is it's somehow to do with lampshading, but no idea of the actual details

Oh no worries! So unfortunately I was not present live during s15 airing, but from what I have gathered, why lamp/lampgate has to do with that scene in 15x10 The Heroes' Journey, when Dean goes to Garth to get his cavities filled. He hallucinates/has this dream sequence where he tap dances to "Let's Misbehave" by Cole Porter which apparently has a ton of LGBTQ+ lore attached to it (via @deanwasalwaysbi). Definitely read through that post which goes into a lot more detail.

The long and short of it is that the lamp is theorized to be a stand-in for Cas especially since at the very end of that episode he is looking at Garth and Bess dancing in their living room and is like "I always thought I'd be good at dancing" or something similar.

From there, my understanding is that fandom did lamp=light and looking back on various episodes, there are lighting shifts whenever Cas is mentioned in the context of Dean. Off the top of my head, an example is at the end of 13x05 Advanced Thanatology when Dean gets a call from Cas saying he's alive and his face both figuratively and literally lights up.

There are also often instances of Cas standing under lamp posts which are supposed to symbolize a halo since we don't see actual halos in the spnverse.

Additionally in Dean's room in the bunker, there is furniture doubling at times, can't quite remember the specifics right now, but there are times when there are 2 table lamps/end tables and times where there are not. I believe in the finale everything is doubled and in comparison the absence of Cas is LOUD especially when taken with the insane number of empty beer and liquor bottles littering the place. (Don't take my word for this though because I've seen the finale exactly once.)

I hope that helps but anyone else can add on too!!

[samsrowena]

i hear you on the dean clearing vamp nests by himself but i feel like people forget “the heroes’ journey” and how often the brothers had protagonist armor strategically keeping them out of harm’s way, which would’ve been removed after jack became a “hands off” god. i completely agree the finale was dumb and i did not want dean to die (at least not *that* way), but narratively speaking it doesn’t *not* make sense that he would lose that armor and get hurt. the last couple seasons sought to prove they’re not invincible. so objectively, i saw what the writing was going for even if, objectively, the execution was… terrible lol. does that make sense??

i totally get you but honestly i have a lot of problems with 15x10 for that reason too. like sam and dean trained their goddamned asses off to become hunters. they were literally robbed of their childhood to do it!! so to turn around and act like they can’t even pick a lock without chuck’s influence is utterly ridiculous to me. in some ways it makes their entire journey feel pointless. so i usually just prefer to look at that episode as chuck “cursing” them with bad luck (and that’s how they’re able to gamble it back later) as opposed to removing some silly plot armor or whatever lol just for my own sanity at least

[bloodydeanwinchester]

🩸Bloody Dean Every Episode🩸- 15x10 The Heroes' Journey

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

The Heroes' Journey (15x10)

Fuck me.

No really.

Please?

[missjackil]

Supernatural Battle of the Episodes!

Howdy sports fans! Looks like The Trap was no match for Prophet and Loss! I'm feeling an entry to the Hall of Fame coming?!

Let's see if a lighter, funnier episode stands a chance! Bring it on Chuck!

Chuck: Alrighty then, we have The Heroes' Journey - Looks like I took away Sam and Dean's hero mojo and left them to be normal people. Now Sam has a bad cold and he's clumsy, while Dean has a tooth ache and a raging case of lactose intolerance! Queue a dream sequence of Dean dancing and a monster cage match and we have a pretty fun episode!

[arcanespillo]

“The Heroes’ Journey”

SPN S15E10

[unhinged-jackles]

SPN Best Episode per Season

Masterpost

[mybrainproblems]