#amy madison is anon btw

[goshawk]

I'm the lukewarm take anon and I see where you're coming from but what I understood is you're explaining how the characters had reasons and felt justified in their actions, which. Most people have reasons for doing things, even completely horrendous shit. Doesnt make it right though. Especially since dean sam and cas supposedly have a responsibility to protect, and knowledge about things that affect billions of people. So they should at least try to be rational and look past their own personal life when they're making big decisions, right?

I'm not saying they like have a duty to sacrifice themselves and each other or some such bullshit, but there have definitely been a bunch of times where a workaround was possible if they thought for more than 2 seconds but they still went with the absolute weirdest route (this is probably the writers fault, but these decisions end up part of their character/personalities anyway). plus yea that's an example of what I'm talking about: we chop dean's cringey misogynistic attitude even though it's part of his character. also

- all of them jump the gun and kill monsters who arent shit people on more than one occaison.

- There's an episode where dean literally aims a gun at this kid who is Indigenous I think and threatens her into using her dreamwalking for them. ?????? and sam just goes along with it

- also....... didn't castiel's god phase include absorbing everyone in purgatory and killing a crap ton of humans and angels........... ?

there's probably more but i don't remember specifics. btw this is all very much light hearted and not serious, just in case my tone comes across as rude or mean. sorry for that - and the essay

cont. i'm in covid isolation send me your hot takes

no hard feelings lukewarm anon, im down for some light quibbling! this is really fun to think about

i feel like with this and other superhero-esque shows it's always a rehash of personal vs practical. like yes if we had institutions to monster hunt we could expect them to be more utilitarian and be rational but we have what amounts to three very flawed guys making it up. ideally they would calculate the cost benefit each time and make the right choice, but they have imperfect information and character flaws. i think it'd be a pretty boring show if they were ideal about big decisions. i think on a smaller scale it's like the trolley problem variant where the one person is your best friend/mom/partner/etc vs X number of people. it depends on the value of X - two and it might be okay, a million and it's quite morally dubious. dean's X leans more towards a million, sam's less, and cas' i've got no fucking clue. more on this and the souls later.

tldr, it's a given that plotlines in media of this genre can often be resolved better if the characters spend a little more time thinking or think a little more rationally. the idea of any monster == bad and gungho killing them == good when the show has repeatedly challenged this notion is a really good example of this. salmondean know that there are ways to let vampires live off of animals/blood donations rather than preying on humans, but salmondean choose to kill them anyways.

on that topic, i'd love to take a comparison of madison (sam's werewolf gf, sam kill), amy pond (sam's kitsune friend, dean kill) and emma winchester (dean's daughter, sam kill) when i have more mental space. i think they're comparable if we take a closer scan

honestly, i have to engage with this show with a filter over the bad character choices. there's deeply racist, misogynistic, and homophobic shit in here that i won't attempt to excuse. idt there's much more for me to say there ✌️

i think the dreamwalking thing is a kaia plotline? i dont want to say much about it since i'm really not familiar with what happens. gonna watch before i develop a fledged opinion but yeah that's pretty fuckin bad

at a surface level i don't really mind that cas was targeting the KKK/religious extremists and i think it's hilarious. my actual thoughts are that it's really fucked up and akin to an institutionally operated death penalty once someone consolidates all that power. i think cas' actions are morally reprehensible there but again like. i think he's got a legal insanity defense there. the purgatory souls calculation is a really complex thing that i'm not really sure how to scale yet. i don't think its fair to judge cas for his leviathan tainted thinking processes though.