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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Samwena in 10x19 The Werther Project

This scene from 10x19 The Werther Project is a classic for obvious reasons, but it has taken me until today to think more deeply about this.

Sam doesn‘t go, “Can you do the spell for me?” or “What’s the Cabirian Invocation?” No, all he says about the topic is, “Great, thanks.” This absolute nerd either already knows the Cabirian Invocation or is at least entirely confident that he knows exactly where to look it up and that he will be able to cast it on his own.

That is the moment when Rowena is suddenly far more affected by this call than before.

Obviously, she thinks it’s hot as hell that Sam can do magic, too, but there’s more to this. She has been expelled from the Coven. Earlier in this season, in 10x07 Girls, Girls, Girls, Rowena was shown trying to recruit those girls as students, with... very limited success.

It’s painfully obvious this is so not going to work, neither for the girls, nor for Rowena.

But hilariously, this scene is not the first time Latin is mentioned in this same episode. No, the first time was this little gem here:

It was even made clear that while the translation for the spell’s name was on the website, Sam looked up thoughtfully and just casually translated it on his own in his head.

I must have been blind never to notice the purposeful contrast between Sam and the girls before, but I seriously never paid attention to this detail until today. And that even though I’m a linguist. Pff.

(And yes, I do believe this contrast is completely intentional. Both 10x07 Girls, Girls, Girls and 10x19 The Werther Project are Berens episodes, and he does give loving attention to detail and parallels.)

Even though she probably wouldn’t admit it, Rowena craves the companionship of joint spellcasting. She’s been lonely ever since she has been expelled from the Grand Coven. She craves a kindred spirit she can nerd out with.

Enter the dude who calls her just to chat about a spell, and who can match her own intelligence and thirst for knowledge.

Sam’s initial reaction to this proposal kind of gets me, lol.

He’s a very intuitive guy with finely tuned senses. He absolutely heard how sultry her voice had become.

He declines (much to his own disadvantage, as the episode later shows. Things would have gone so much better for Sam had he taken Rowena’s offer!)

But, er... what is his face doing? This weird little smile that flares up for just a second, half tormented and half... something else, before he goes back to a far more neutral expression again.

Know what this reminds me of? This moment from 4x09 I Know What You Did Last Summer where Ruby is trying to seduce Sam while he’s desperately trying (and failing) to resist.

And here’s a casual reminder that Ruby, too, was a witch.

Even these profile shots are mirrored (and I can’t for the life of me tell if this mirror was done on purpose, or if it was a coincidence. If this was done intentionally... man.)

The positions of Sam with Ruby and Sam with Rowena are inverted, though, and I love that considering the fact that Sam’s involvement with Ruby and the demon blood and freeing Lucifer are some of his biggest regrets, and even his deepest hurt because it’s what makes him feel tainted and unworthy.

(That heavy swallow Sam does as Rowena says “dark magic” never fails to get me.)

So of course he’s trying absolutely everything and anything to keep himself from going dark side ever again. Little does he know at the time that this connection doesn’t end with him going dark side. It ends with Rowena joining the good guys! She’s his big success. She’s the deeply needed validation for his willingness to see the world in more than black and white. She’s the cure to that deepest hurt and his feeling of unworthiness.

But, erm, back to 10x19 The Werther Project and a timeline where none of that has happened so far:

Suddenly those sexually charged Rowena hallucinations he has later in this episode are making even more sense to me than they ever have before... as does the fact that he declined Rowena’s help when having a seasoned witch around who offered her help freely sure would have seemed like the more sensible choice here.

That he hallucinated her calling him “Sammy” when that’s something he always got mad about when it was done by anyone other than Dean is... certainly something.

I very much read the “It’s opening” not only in reference to the Werther’s Box, but also as Sam’s desire that’s woken up in full here.

And I don’t even mean that in an exclusively physical way, it’s also his desire for magic and knowledge and a kindred spirit and connection and being seen and appreciated for who he is and what he can offer, much like what Rowena herself craves after a life filled with rejection and never fitting in.

Yep. He is so gone on her.

And yes, I also see “it” very much as a placeholder for both of them.

Not even to mention the fact that he 100% trusted whatever this hallucination was telling him, no matter what.

Even if it was to make a blood sacrifice of himself.

To bring this full circle, let’s not forget that he also hallucinated Rowena being impressed by and appreciative of his knowledge of Latin, which... is so painfully ironic with regard to the beginning of this post, I want to bang my head against the desk.

Sam, buddy... you realize you didn’t have to make this shit up, right? You could have had the real one. She wanted exactly the same things you did. She actually appreciated your knowledge of Latin. You both could have been your sapiophile selves around each other all day long to your hearts’ delight.

No? Okay then.

To silence the box, slake its thirst... I mean, seriously. Come on.

And yes, I absolutely see the box as a metaphor for Sam’s deepest wishes. Which takes Rowena’s fondling of the inscription to a whole new level.

Then there’s also the little fact that this is what Benny said to Dean in Dean’s hallucination of Purgatory that was happening at the same time:

And guess what?

Dean woke up on his own.

Guess who didn’t?

Sam didn’t.

Dean actually slapped him, and Sam attacked Dean with a knife for trying to break him out of the illusion.

And even through all of this, even after Dean bandaged Sam’s bleeding wound and began to sacrifice his own blood instead, the Rowena illusion still persisted until the box was opened.

Oh well, indeed. And when Sam next met the real Rowena at the end of the episode, he put her in shackles in a desperate attempt to keep control this time around. Because he had already gotten dangerously close to losing all restraint, just like with Ruby.

I... rest my case.

(Who am I kidding? I’ll never rest my case.)

(Can’t believe they went so far as to even have a similar background in both 10x19 and 15x03 when Sam and Rowena were holding hands like this. Both scenes feature dark gray stone walls with rays of light falling in through a curved window. And Rowena is wearing an iron chain around her wrist in 15x03 to ward off the ghosts when everyone else was wearing the iron chain around their neck. Was this sheer coincidence or done on purpose up to the smallest detail? I feel like I’m losing my mind here. Again all of these are Berens episodes.)

On a side note, when I used the Werther’s Box inscription repeatedly in my Samwena video, I also very much had that metaphor in mind and saw it as them growing closer and closer. In case you haven’t seen the video yet:

https://youtu.be/H0BJ-94EukE

#samwena #samwitch #sam x rowena #sam and rowena #rowena and sam #rowena #sam winchester #rowena macleod #supernatural #spn #10x19 #the werther project #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Samwena in 13x19 Funeralia

Excuse me while I fall into another obsessive Funeralia spiral. (I swear, every single time I rewatch any scenes, this episode gets me!) Or even better yet, join me on my descent!

When Dean tells Rowena that Sam is the one who's going to kill her in every single one of her books, she is hurt. Ruth's acting is absolutely phenomenal, you can see the hurt in every little change on Rowena's face. It even goes far enough for her to have that little lip and chin tremble.

Jared's acting is just as stellar because Sam's guilt over the whole thing is tangible in the air between them. He is so torn by guilt, he can barely look at her reaction for two seconds before he has to swallow and avert his gaze.

Then Sam tries to handcuff her, and she falls back into her pattern of trying to mask her hurt with humor. She thinks she managed it by proving her superiority with that astral projection stunt. She's fleeing in a wild run because of course she wants to avoid getting captured. But I think she's partly also trying to run away from this hurt by physically distancing herself from the place it happened, and especially from the person who caused it.

Note how at this point it doesn't seem to be her plan at all to abduct Sam in any way. She's just trying to run.

Then Sam catches up to her, and she doesn’t even try to flee or fight or use magic. She’s just standing there, frozen on the spot, like she has to know the truth. She has to know if he’d actually do it, but she can’t even face him while he makes his decision.

Sam struggles, he does. There are actual tears in his eyes.

And he realizes he can’t do it. Everything inside himself screams at him not to. He lets the weapon sink.

Thinking Sam has made up his mind, Rowena finally dares to turn around to look at him in a moment of connection because she thinks it’s safe.

That’s when the promise Sam has given Dean takes over that he’d put a bullet in Rowena if she breaks bad.

After the car talk with Rowena in 13x12, Sam finally admitted how helpless he’s feeling to Dean. Sam has failed over and over again this season, and nothing would work out the way he’d intended. He got knocked out like 6 times during the last few weeks and Dean had to come save him multiple times. Sam thinks he’s the one who got Kaia killed, and that he’s the one to blame for Jack being stuck in Apocalypse World. And just one episode ago, he let Gabriel go after using the archangel’s grace to heal him. When Dean found out, he reacted with an extremely volatile outburst of frustration targeted at Sam specifically, for giving away their last hope of saving their mom and Jack. That outburst was loud enough to actually make Sam wince. All of Sam’s choices this season leading up to this point have turned out so terribly wrong that it cost people’s lives.

So Sam allows Dean’s choice to overrule his own because he has lost every shred of trust in himself and his own decisions. Sam can’t let Dean down again, he can’t.

He raises the weapon back up and pulls the trigger.

Sam can’t believe what he just did. He doesn’t want to see Rowena’s corpse slump to the ground. But the outcome he was dreading did, in fact, not happen because she stopped that bullet. Sam can’t bear to see the expression on her face and hear the slight tremble in her voice.

For Rowena, the hurt cuts even deeper than before, burning more fiercely than anything she has experienced in a long time.

Nobody was supposed to be able to hurt her like this ever again. She thought she had fortified herself against it ever since that trauma all the way back with Crowley's father who broke her heart by leaving her. She'd had no idea that Sam possessed the ability to hurt her like this, that they'd somehow grown close enough for this to be possible at all. And now the hurt just won't stop, so she short-circuits and tries to make it stop in the way her old self has done over all these centuries... by lashing out at whoever is hurting her, and making sure they can never do it again.

Naturally, the way she chooses to do this is by... putting him to sleep and transporting him into her room (How even? Levitation?) where she busies herself with lighting all the candles until Sam comes back to his senses. Then she cuts into her own palm, tears his shirt open, and presses her blood onto Sam's bare chest right over his heart. You know, as you do. Completely normal way of attacking someone. Absolutely nothing to see here.

(Also note that while the whole thing did seem to hurt Sam because he groaned in pain, no mark whatsoever is left on his skin. Not a burn. Not a scratch. She made herself bleed, but not him.) Death appears, and while Rowena is claiming that what she's doing here is killing Sam Winchester, her body language is telling the exact opposite. Throughout the entire exchange, she's threatening Billie, not Sam, with the knife. The whole thing hilariously looks like she's defending Sam against Billie! Her body is in a very clear defensive pose and she's positioned exactly in front of Sam.

Even when she finally turns her attention from Billie to Sam, supposedly to make true on her threat to kill him, it's only her head that moves to look back over her shoulder, but her arm with the knife stays aimed at Billie.

That damn knife never even gets anywhere near Sam. Then it's entirely gone in the next shot, so she must have dropped it as soon as she realized there was no way in hell she would cut into Sam's skin with it.

She’s talking softly with Sam about Crowley, but she is so confused. At this point, her emotions are boiling so high she can't handle them at all any longer, so they burst out into the open in exactly the same way they did earlier when she targeted Sam's heart, but this far more violent outburst is aimed at the target that won’t take any harm.

She doesn't understand what's happening, why she can't kill Sam to make sure she's the one in control, why she can't make the hurt stop in the way she has always done in self-preservation over all these long centuries.

Billie is the one who has to put into words what has been so glaringly obvious through the whole scene to anyone other than Rowena herself. "You were never going to kill him. There was a time you would've, but not now."

That's when Rowena caves and finally admits to everyone including herself that she has no idea what to do with all these feelings, because the only way she knows how to handle them is no longer working. She doesn't even get back to her feet to defend herself when Dean bursts into the room, instead just cowering there with quiet sobs.

Sam is the one who stops Dean with a panicked-sounding warning call. Dean was in no danger whatsoever, not from Rowena and not from Billie who clearly just stated that the Winchesters were needed. So the only possible meaning I can read into Sam's call is that he's begging Dean not to shoot Rowena.

After a scene cut, Rowena is still sitting on the floor in a position very similar to the one she's been in ever since her breakdown, with Sam and Dean sitting opposite her. She has something to drink in front of her now, though. And hilariously, we see Sam reach into the fridge like he lives there to take a bottle for himself and Dean each, so I assume he's the one who handed out the drink to Rowena as well, trying to make everyone feel better.

He goes even further than that, asking both Dean and Rowena how they are feeling and getting them to talk openly. In addition to genuinely wanting to know how these people he cares about are feeling, I think what he's doing here is ensuring the waves are smoothed over enough that this will not be a repeat of the Amy Pond situation where Dean went back to kill the "monster".

Rowena asks, "Sam, what've I done?", sounding stifled and horrified like she thinks she has ruined their relationship forever, and she still hasn’t even fully stopped crying.

This is her way of both saying sorry and carefully testing out the waters of where they're standing after all of this. He gives her a look that I can seriously only describe as soft, telling her "You had a chance to kill me and you didn't. I'd call that progress."

The wording makes even more sense considering that Dean is sitting right next to them, so Sam is making a point of putting emphasis on the fact that she isn't a lost cause, that she isn’t something they have to hunt.

Then Sam goes so far as to tell her that it wasn't her fault what happened with Crowley, even though he must realize that's blatantly false and that her way of (not) parenting clearly had a strong influence on Crowley's fate. The way Sam says it with that frowny headshake and soft voice almost gives me the impression they're talking in code, and this is his veiled "I forgive you" in reply to her veiled apology from before.

This whole exchange is insanely gentle given the fact that they both just tried to kill each other. Yes, clearly neither of them wanted to kill the other, what with those tormented expressions on their faces when it happened and Sam firing only a single bullet (which was probably his loophole way of justifying to himself that he kept his word to Dean without actually getting Rowena killed.) But still, it's remarkable how soft this conversation is after the insanity of this episode.

When Dean begins one of his motivational speeches for Rowena, Sam listens quietly, knowing he has won. He has accomplished his goal of making sure Rowena is no longer on Dean's kill list. And only after that, Sam proceeds to say the most outrageous thing possible in this situation, complimenting Rowena on her deadliness and luring the first real smile out of her still tear-streaked face. And with that one seemingly crazy comment, he cements towards her that things between them are fine and that he accepts her despite her past.

(I'm in awe of Sam's emotional intelligence.)

When Rowena asks if they think she can still be redeemed, Sam waits and lets Dean go first, even though one can basically see Sam itch to get his own reassurance out. His mouth even opens! But he has to know for sure first that Dean really has no ill will towards Rowena any longer.

And because he actually trusts her and wants to show both her and Dean that he does, he nips a potential future conflict in the bud by openly telling her the truth that Lucifer is back instead of somehow hiding that fact from her. Dean comments in a way that shows clearly he thought she was going to freak out at this piece of information, but Sam just sits there with a calm face because he trusted that she would not.

Even with everything that's at stake for Sam (they need Rowena to find Gabriel to save Mary and Jack), even after the way Gabriel let him down just one episode prior and Sam's willingness to trust in the good in people has buried them in a whole pile of problems, Sam still wants the relationship between Rowena and him to be based on open trust from here on out. So he gives her the truth about Lucifer, knowing fully well how traumatic it is for both of them.

And Rowena in turn takes that offered trust and returns it to Sam in the most outrageous way possible, finding solace in the fact that he, not Lucifer, is the one prophesied to kill her. Because Rowena is the living proof that his blind faith in the good in people was never wrong, Sam is suddenly shown to have hope and self-esteem again “You changed other people’s fates, maybe we can change yours,” after he had all but abandoned any kind of it following his interactions with Gabriel and Dean in the episode before this one. (He couldn’t even get out anything but stutters when they called Rowena at the beginning of this episode and Dean had to steal the call from him, that’s how low Sam was!)

And Rowena is so touched by still being trusted and accepted despite everything that of course she agrees to help them save their family, when at the start of the episode she had still refused because she was busy trying to save hers.

I... am not okay? Help?

#samwena #amaranthmeta #samwitch #sam x rowena #sam winchester #sam #rowena macleod #rowena #13x19 #funeralia #spn

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Third Wheel?

It’s funny how people talk a lot about Sam being a third wheel for Destiel, but barely anyone ever mentions how Dean can fill that role just as well for Samwena. Episodes: 12x10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets vs. 13x12 Various and Sundry Villains

#samwena #samwitch #sam x rowena #destiel #rowena macleod #rowena #sam winchester #dean winchester #castiel #supernatural #spn #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 3 years ago

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Winchester Derangement Syndrome

A character who is supposed to be ruthless and cold starts to feel things, falls for a Winchester against all reason, and leaves behind everything they thought mattered their whole life long to build their new priorities around said Winchester's morals. Who am I talking about?

#castiel #rowena #rowena macleod #destiel #samwena #deancas #samwitch #dean x castiel #sam x rowena #spn #supernatural #crowley #dean x crowley #drowley #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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The First Time Sam Reads about Rowena

Is it just because I have lost my mind on this extended Samwena spree... or is the first time Sam reads about Rowena on some website and then says her name kind of hilarious?

He looks so damn fascinated.

This is before their first meeting in episode 10x07 Girls, Girls, Girls.

#samwena #samwitch #sam x rowena #sam winchester #rowena macleod #rowena #supernatural #spn #10x07 #girls girls girls #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Rowena uses tea as emotional support?

In 11x23 “Alpha and Omega”, Rowena said to Chuck that her mother always told her “there’s nothing a nice wee cup of tea can’t fix.” I never paid much attention to this line before because of everything else that was going on in the episode... but now it made me have Thoughts (tm).

In 10x21 “Dark Dynasty”, Rowena said this to Charlie, comparing both of their childhoods:

“A difficult and lonely childhood, tragedy, absent parents, always outside the mainstream, sexually progressive, living in your own head for solace and direction.”

Without that tea sentence, I kind of assumed Rowena’s mother might have been unloving... but if she repeatedly tried to comfort her daughter, that actually sounds like quite the opposite. We don’t know for sure what happened, though this makes me think that the mentioned tragedy was probably that Rowena’s mother died when Rowena was still a young child.

But Rowena’s fond memory of the tea and the comfort it provided in a cold world remained. Tea is her emotional support, because it was how her mother comforted her before Rowena’s childhood turned into an entirely lonely one. And the first thing we saw Rowena do after she had been Lucifer’s prisoner in 12x03, where he also threatened to kill her and rip her head off...

...is drink tea. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

#rowena #rowena macleod #spn #Cup of tea?#amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Sam and Lily Sunder in 12x10

I honestly never paid all that much attention to this scene in my previous rewatches of this episode, because the episode itself has such a strong focus on Cas, so that's where my attention was the other times.

But since this time my focus for this episode is on Sam (for... so far undisclosed reasons *coughs*), this scene is driving me completely up-the-wall insane. I'm not even sure I can adequately put into words all the layers of why.

Sam is really there, having a bonding moment with the red-haired, centuries-old woman who knows levels of advanced magic that lie beyond anything Sam has been able to do alone so far, while he's relating to her in a very personal way over past trauma.

The mind-blowing thing about this is that all of this sounds 100% like I'm talking about Rowena, but I'm not.

And you can see, you can actually see, how fascinated and tempted he is by the prospect of this magic.

That the only thing holding him back is the memory of himself going dark with the demon blood powers years ago.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

And how he drops that restraint the moment he finds out that Lily is not talking about any dark powers, but about angelic, divine ones.

I mean, look at how interested he suddenly is.

This is just an assumption on my part, but I think his posture and facial expression mean he is so willing to pay the price?

He even puts the angel blade away he'd been fiddling with up to this point.

He's willing to pay the price until he finds out that this price also includes going back to one of his other deepest regrets—the time he was soulless and completely unhinged and without any remorse.

Which gives them yet another thing to bond over? Something nobody else would truly understand.

Listen, I'm not actually shipping Sam/Lily. I'm honestly not even completely sure what my point for this post is. But I'm just intrigued, you know?

They somehow put Sam's dark past with the demon blood powers and the soulless era and the desperate hunt for revenge for the deaths of Mary and Jess all into one conversation?

That and magic!

Then Lily's "You don't trust me, I understand" is like a throwback to one of the first things Sam said to Rowena: "I don't trust you, and I never will."

And then Lily, as if she already knew Sam in and out from the short time they've spent with each other, brings up the one thing that actually has the potential to make him go down that soulless road again.

Dean's death.

We know it's possible.

Just like Dean's fate was what made Sam drop all his restraints to team up with Rowena, it could do the same thing again, couldn't it?

If Ishim had managed to kill Dean and Cas that night, Sam would have wanted Ishim dead with very little regard for whatever personal sacrifices Sam would have had to make for that. Even if, for some reason, that would have been an eye?

We know that.

Lily knows that.

And Sam knows it, too.

(Also, she promises to wait for him because she really wants him as her student for Enochian magic, apparently? Just, what is happening here?)

#not gonna lie #a part of me is fascinated by this premise #and would have enjoyed seeing Sam do this #not that I would ever want Dean and Cas dead #I love them #just... you know #also of course I'll always prefer Samwena over SamxLily #but still #there was SO MUCH to unpack in this one scene #sam #lily sunder #12x10 #spn #sam x lily sunder #I guess?#amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Samwena in 11x10 “The Devil in the Details”

I just realized that Rowena’s betrayal in 11x10 happened under her assumption that after she trapped Sam in the Cage, he would say Yes to Lucifer to be his vessel. She thought this was going to happen in Sam’s body.

Yeah, and as if he was reading my mind right now, Sam really said this in the episode: (not to Rowena, but I still thought it was hilariously fitting to my current line of thinking)

Help? Why is early Samwena so deranged?! Bonus: One of the first questions Sam asks Lucifer in this episode is about Rowena:

Am I imagining things now, or is there really a flash of hurt in Sam’s eyes over Rowena’s betrayal?

And later, when talking to Crowley, of course it’s Sam again who asks what’s going to happen to Rowena:

Whyyyy is this show trying to drive me mad like this?

#samwena #samwitch #sam x rowena #sam winchester #sam #rowena #rowena macleod #lucifer #crowley #spn #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Samwena in 10x14

I used to think there wasn't any Samwena in the show before their first team-up in 10x18 "Book of the Damned." Then I discovered Sam's fascinated, little smile in 10x07 when he reads about Rowena online and says her name for the first time. And here he goes again in 10x14...

Mind you, he has only ever seen Rowena a single time at this point, in 10x07. But this is the same smile he'd been wearing when reading about the demon-killing spell she created personally. Guess he really just likes her style? One more reason why it was only a matter of time that he'd contact her. This boy is waaaayyyy too fascinated not to. And it took only 4 more episodes till he did... (This is actually a really nice, subtle foreshadowing to their team-up, I just never noticed it before.)

#samwena #sam #rowena #cain #crowley #spn #10x14 #yes of course I love that this spell is called rune of AMARANTH <3 #samwitch #sam x rowena #rune of amaranth #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Samwena and Free Will

So, I’m obsessed with SPN choosing to put Sam into relationships forced on him by some kind of outside influence not once, not twice, but three times? We had that awful love potion thing between him and Becky in 7x08 “Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!” We had Demon-Brady reveal that Sam and Jess were manipulated into a relationship by Azazel’s minions in 5x20 "The Devil You Know”.

And then, of course, we had Chuck reveal in 15x09 “The Trap” that he manipulated Eileen and Sam into a relationship as well:

In 11x22 “We Happy Few”, Chuck also said that free will still exists, though.

And that Rowena’s decision to join the good guys was, apparently, free of his influence:

Which very much reminds me of this scene here in 4x22 “Lucifer Rising”:

She really should have been an official member of Team Free Will!

I’m also obsessed with the fact that the only longer-lasting romantic relationship the show left Sam with that no outside force claimed to have had a direct influence in is the one with Amelia... you know, the one with the grand house and the grand husband she returned to, which we saw her with in 8x09 “Citizen Fang”...

I swear, this show is scrambling my brains! (last image from 11x10 “The Devil in the Details”)

And yes, I know that Amelia’s return to her husband was very much Sam’s choice, while the return of Rowena’s lover to his wife was not her choice at all, but even that inversion is extremely fascinating to me.

#samwena #sam x rowena #samwitch #sam winchester #rowena #rowena macleod #team free will #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 3 years ago

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The First Person Sam Asks About After His Resurrection

Yes, I’m at it again with another Samwena freakout (I’m sorry!)

Sam had just *died* here, in an extremely brutal and bloody way. He got resurrected by his personal worst nightmare. He could have fought, or fled, or freaked out. He has no idea if Dean and Cas made it out of that vampire fight alive. And the *first* person he asks about is ROWENA? Excuse me while I go scream in that corner over there. How did I never notice this before??

#samwena #samwitch #sam winchester #rowena macleod #sam x rowena #spn #supernatural #13x21 #amaranthmeta

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amaranthhiding · 2 years ago

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Rowena and Being Needed

For a supposedly uncaring, cold-hearted person, she sure thrives on being needed or appreciated even in her early seasons. The lengths this woman will go just to see Sam Winchester smile at her in gratitude.

It 10x19 “The Werther Project”, she begins by making absolutely sure that Sam knows he needs her.

And while Sam does seem impressed, it still doesn’t quite do the trick and he’s about to leave, so she has to kick it up a notch.

She stresses again that she’s the only one he can turn to for help in this situation (while coincidentally using the chance to reinforce her point by covering his hand with hers... absolutely nothing to see here, very normal enemy behavior. She’s not at all fascinated by a hunter who would turn to a witch for help rather than hunt her.)

Even within the same episode, there’s a repeat of this...this mating dance she’s performing here for the man she’s so clearly attracted to from the start:

Little did she know that she got under his skin the same way he got under hers, and that she did, in fact, already manage to lure the first smile out of him.

She actually seems affronted when he rejects her help, and with that rejects her statement that he needs her.

Even less did she know that at this point, she didn’t only have Sam smiling at her. She had him hallucinating her touching his arm in a mirror to the real touch from before, in the strangest mixture of sexually charged blood sacrifice and linguistic validation (Sam, what is your mind!)

But that hallucination is a whole separate topic I already discussed here. It’s just hilarious to think how delighted the real Rowena would be if she ever found out about the contents of the hallucination.

In 10x21 “Dark Dynasty”, after Sam has taken her as his prisoner, she constantly tries to assert her position against Charlie, making sure Sam still has a need for her, too.

(And yes, she does manage to make him smile again in the process.)

Sam “The Turf” Winchester then proceeds to reassure her that she is still needed, and only then does she calm down and stop bristling at Charlie for the time being (admittedly, not for very long, but at least for this scene).

Just the fact that he recognizes what she’s doing and knows exactly what she needs to hear is... quite something. Especially considering that she’s supposedly his enemy and he shouldn’t give a damn over what she needs or doesn’t need to hear. The little smile Sam draws out of her when he openly tells her “We need you” in 11x22 “We Happy Few” is kind of killing me.

She likes this feeling.

She likes it so much even that in 12x11 “Regarding Dean”, she voluntarily shows up to help them without even having been asked to come in person, and without asking for anything specific in recompense.

Yes, she wants the Black Grimoire, but the episode clearly shows us on her face and in her actions multiple times that that isn’t all she cares about here, even though Sam is still oblivious to this fact. She saves Dean from the amnesia curse, and she almost dies this episode trying to save Sam, rushing to his rescue as soon as she hears his pained screams over the phone.

The show, for reasons I cannot understand, chooses not to give us the expression on her face in that moment. It also does not to show Rowena driving Baby with amnesiac Dean on the passenger seat, even though that’s exactly what must have happened. And I reallyreallyreally needed to see both of this!

At the end of the episode, when Sam takes the Black Grimoire away from Rowena, the thought of using a stun spell or something similar on him to flee with the book doesn’t even seem to cross her mind at all.

I think what she really wants is for Sam to give her a repeat of this feeling, to show her again and again that he needs and appreciates her. She wants him to consciously leave the book in her possession as a token of trust, that’s why she doesn’t fight him over it and grudgingly gives it to him when he demands it.

But she does, without exception, manage to put some variation of a smile on Sam’s face basically every single time she does one of her little stunts.

In 13x12 “Various & Sundry Villains”, Rowena has just returned from her most violent death at Lucifer’s hand and a very slow, painful resurrection that lasted months until her body was restored.

But she doesn’t even consider just walking up straight to the bunker and telling them she’s back alive (and so traumatized by her death that she’s canonically too scared to even sleep at night.)

No.

She has to concoct an intricate plan because she thinks she has to be useful to be welcomed back. (Sounds a lot like a certain angel, if you ask me.) That she has to be needed to receive any of the warmth of that feeling Sam gives her, which she’s craving now more than ever before, after that horrible death.

Not that she’d ever admit to herself that that’s why she’s doing this. She can logically reason all of it away by needing the spell from the Black Grimoire to unlock her powers, though again, the episode gave her many chances to just grab the book and run, which she never attempted even just once.

Neither did she even try to stick to her original deal with the witches, which was supposed to end with the book in her possession. Instead, she went back to the bunker with the Winchesters after saving Sam from Dean, and apparently let enough time pass there for all three of them to wear different outfits when they confront the witch girls.

At the same time, she's desperately trying to cling to her old belief that love is weakness, which she had to tell herself after getting her heart broken so thoroughly over 300 years ago that it almost destroyed her.

(image from 11x10 “The Devil in the Details”)

She loved that man who impregnated her and left her to give birth to their baby all alone on a straw mat in a barn where she almost died from internal bleeding, without anyone around to even know or care if she did.

And that was when Rowena was still her genuine, far more innocent young self.

If her lover didn’t care about her then, how could anyone possibly care whether the flawed, petty, evil creature she has become lives or dies?

(And that is what she’s still thinking of herself at this point, as is shown 7 episodes later this season when she calls herself that.)

So before letting Sam know she’s alive again, she makes absolutely sure that his reaction to her return from the dead will be a positive one because she thinks she has to. (And she couldn’t bear it if he didn’t care.)

She has to make sure she’s needed.

And she does this by... hiring two witches to curse Dean, creating a mirror to the situation where Sam last called for her help.

Just that the curse this time isn’t something lethal at all, merely a harmless and easy-to-stop love spell that she probably imagined Sam having actual fun watching as it plays out. The fact that a love spell is the first thing that came to her mind when creating this plan is also giving me Thoughts (tm).

I doubt she ever expected that Dean would end up trying to strangle Sam or that Sam’s life would be in actual danger. As soon as it is, she heroically swoops in to save him, though, so that makes her plan work even better than intended.

And then in the bunker, she even says out loud that they need her tracking spell to get the book back.

That they need her.

And she does get everything she wanted out of this. Both Sam’s smile and obvious welcome of her return to life, and even finally his trust. She never tries to flee with the Grimoire throughout the entire episode. No, she wants Sam to give her the spell voluntarily, and she has been working towards that goal from the start of the episode.

And she achieves it.

My god, the twists and turns this woman’s brain does just to strengthen her bond with Sam—and all of that without realizing that’s why she’s doing it. Gaaaah! I’m losing my mind here just thinking about this.

After being told by Sam this episode that Crowley has died, she had some epiphanies because her next appearance in 13x19 “Funeralia” shows her mad with grief over the loss of her only child that she herself wanted dead 3 seasons ago.

So she’s suddenly feeling things she hasn’t allowed herself to feel ever since the night of that betrayal by Crowley’s father. We’re actually watching the progression as her heart unthaws over the seasons.

But it isn’t before this episode that she is ready and willing to admit to herself how overwhelmed she is by all these contradictory feelings she has no experience whatsoever with, other than locking them out (love, loss, grief, guilt, fear, loneliness.)

And what she does in this situation is ask Sam for advice for the second time because he has shown her repeatedly that he gets her despite everything, despite being the deadliest witch around (which he calls her with fondness of all things!)

After that, she’s honestly just gone on him, in a way that’s even more unhinged than before. She already stopped asking for recompense for helping them in season 12, but from here on out it seems there’s barely anything she wouldn’t do.

They ask her for help to save their family, and even though Sam warns her that Lucifer—her biggest fear and the reason she is too scared to sleep at night—is back and likely to get involved, she agrees to help them after Sam said they need her.

In 13x21 “Beat the Devil”, she is left all alone in the bunker after having been forced to push Lucifer through the rift in self-defense when he was trying to kill her (again).

She looks exhausted and very done with the world after just having had to relive her biggest nightmare.

But it’s only when her gaze falls onto the spell bowl keeping the rift open that no longer has a source of grace now that Lucifer is gone that her look changes into one of sheer panic.

Still very rattled by having had to confront her Lucifer trauma and just very narrowly having made it out of the situation alive, she’s overwhelmed again.

It’s hard to sort out her priorities after centuries of solitude by choice, of telling herself like a mantra that there’s nothing in the entire world that she loves.

(It’s actually heartbreaking that not only did she say she didn’t love any person in 10x23 “Brother’s Keeper”, she said she didn’t love anything. Her entire life had been empty here!)

There’s nobody around to turn to for moral orientation. It’s just her all on her own in the quiet of the bunker, surrounded by the treasures of the Men of Letters, ancient enemies of all witches.

All she has to help her with the decision this time are her centuries of experience of how she has dealt with things so far. So she tries to do what she logically knows her old self would have done, which is grab the book and run without a care in the world.

(Very interesting that she only mentions Sam and Dean here, when they were accompanied by both Cas and Gabriel—whom Rowena had been making out with as soon as it was clear that Lucifer would be involved in their plan.)

She doesn’t have to be told she’s needed here. She knows it.

Her experience might not be the only thing at her disposal after all to help her with the decision.

There’s also a nagging, burning feeling that she refuses to acknowledge the name of.

But she doesn’t need a name for it to act on it.

And suddenly, it’s not hard at all any longer to sort out her priorities. All the treasures around her stop mattering. Her own near-death and trauma stop mattering.

She pours everything she has into the one thing that does matter now, to the point of almost passing out from exhaustion.

And just as an aside, on the other side of the rift, that sentiment is mirrored by Sam one-to-one. Sam dies in Apocalypse World, gets resurrected by his own biggest trauma in the form of Lucifer (which is even worse for him than getting killed by Lucifer would have been).

Sam has no idea if Dean, Cas, and Gabriel managed to escape that tunnel where he died. But the first person Sam asks Lucifer about is Rowena.

Yep, really. I’m not making this up.

I cannot even stress how meaningful this is.

Rowena watches in near-desperation as about 30 people step out of the rift one after the other. She can feel her powers waning, she knows she has already pushed her limits beyond what should have been possible during all these hours she’s done nothing but keep the rift open.

”Disposition affects execution,” is what she said to be one of the cardinal rules of magic, and she has done all of this in a state of complete shock over her own near-death.

And I’m so mad at the show for depriving us of the moment when finally, at a point where Rowena couldn’t have managed to keep the rift open for another 5 seconds, Sam is the very last one to pass through.

And we were not shown the expression on either of their faces in that moment, even though we spent precious episode time on Rowena’s detailed reaction to a lot of the other characters stepping through.

I mean, come on.

After all this build-up?!

Why?

I’m almost willing to forgive it, though, because while we didn’t get their instant reactions to seeing each other again, we join them in the middle of an ongoing conversation a little later (who knows how long they have been talking with each other already):

Tell me they weren’t in love here. Tell me, because this scene makes me silently scream inside of myself at the top of my lungs.

It seems almost small in comparison that in 14x07 “Unhuman Nature”, she drops everything and rushes to Sam’s aid when he calls her.

I’m having even more Thoughts (tm) now that this time Sam is the one who creates an artificial mirror of the situation where Dean was cursed and where Rowena voluntarily chose to help them without recompense for the first time.

Sam pretends that instead of Jack, Dean is the one suffering under some kind of magic-induced ailment to get Rowena to come to the bunker.

And not only does she heed the call, she brings the Book of the Damned. Voluntarily.

The meaningfulness of this gesture easily gets lost in everything that’s happening. In that weird way they’ve always done things between them, the books are both a flirtatious game, but also a symbol for their growing trust in each other.

And she voluntarily carries the last book she stole from the bunker straight back into it, outright telling Sam she brought it and obviously having no intention of stealing it again. I cannot. I really cannot with these two.

Now watch a 300+-year-old witch and a badass hunter who have both been through Hell act like teenagers around each other while Jack of all people is the only adult in the room.

They continue playing their game of “I always come when you call” in 14x14 “Ouroboros”.

And in 15x02 “Raising Hell”:

If his face looks far less happy about her arrival here than it did the other times, it’s because Sam had actually been in the middle of a fight with Cas that saw Sam almost-yelling. In comparison to just a second before, his expression actually has softened considerably.

When I said earlier that Rowena had gone unhinged in the things she would do for Sam, I seriously meant unhinged.

Because this is the first time in centuries that someone has needed her. Or appreciated her. Or wanted her around. Or cared.

I’m... fine.

#samwena #samwitch #sam x rowena #amaranthmeta #rowena macleod #rowena #sam winchester #sam #spn

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