#but. i digress. i HEAVILY digress.

[incesthemes]

ok tumblr deleted most of my tag essay on this post, so i've recreated and expanded upon it in its own post.

so the op of the post made a great point which really touched on why i've been feeling that i had a fundamentally different takeaway of season 9 compared to the rest of the fandom. i have a lot to say in response to this, not in argument but in support and synthesis of it.

i'll start with dean at the beginning of season 9: he has a great struggle in 901 regarding gadreel possessing sam, more so than any other struggle he's faced when saving sam's life, which points to me as him being aware of and conflicted about sam's history of possession. he understands this is crossing a line because it's similar to lucifer and meg, and so accepting gadreel's deal is violating sam to a length dean hasn't gone to before. dean by and large is the one who has this particular ethical problem (shown throughout the first half of season 9), not sam. hell, dean is the one who leaves sam once gadreel's out, without even waiting for input because his self-loathing is that strong.

sam, on the other hand, is more textually concerned in his 912/913 arguments with the lack of trust ("i can't trust you, not the way i thought i could") and dean's selfishness ("you did it for you"). this is an ongoing conflict sam has with dean, since the beginning of the show. dean doesn't trust sam to make his own decisions and therefore makes them for him, without sam's consent or knowledge. sam wants to be trusted to stand on his own, and he wants dean to put the same faith in him that he puts in dean. this is the core of sam's needs; the violation of autonomy is just an externalization of these needs and this conflict.

and i don't entirely disagree with the connection between going behind sam's back to keep him alive against his will and a rape narrative. both involve a lack of consent and a violation of agency. however, it really doesn't stop there, and it's a lot more complex than that.

and that's what rubs me wrong about more common interpretations of season 9 that i've seen. because this isn't really what the season is about. this violation on its own isn't the point. or if it is on the surface, it's equally about sam lying to himself about what it's actually about. he's consistently left out of major decisions regarding his own life and then lied to about it "for his own good," and he wants the right to choose his own path.

except, as we learn, that's not true. he lied about it. because the point of the whole season is that sam and dean are the same. they will make the same decisions to save each other over and over again. the point of the whole season is that sam has been lying to himself.

i said this in another post, but i think a big reason sam was able to lie to himself about this fact is because he's had the opportunity to let dean go on several occasions. he's been unable to save dean the way dean has saved sam. he fails where dean succeeds. sam has been forced to endure a grief that dean has never had to experience because dean always brings sam back. and so because sam has endured these experiences maybe he's more comfortable letting dean choose death in the abstract—the hypothetical. but in reality when it comes to that point, sam can't actually follow through, because he's just as dependent on dean being there for him as dean is dependent on sam.

and that's what season 9 is about. sam has been lying to himself about this reality from the start. this is why 1019 parallels 311 regarding how insane sam is about dean. it's reiterating the facts we've known but with a new perspective, now that sam is done deluding himself. he needs to accept that he was lying to himself and to dean, and this is what allows season 9 to close and for season 10 to begin, because season 10 is a response to sam's realization. he chooses dean over everything else in a monumental display of hypocrisy and genuine understanding of himself and who dean is to him.

seasons 8-10 should be taken as a single, cohesive unit, and the show goes to great lengths to enforce this. season 9 mirrors season 8, and season 10 acts as a response to and therefore a continuation of season 9. you can see this in the way charlie's death mirrors kevin's (one brother's lies and deceptions leads to increasing stakes that could have been avoided through honesty and openness, which culminates in the death of their beloved ally, and the deceptive brother blames himself for that death because his own unethical actions led to it), or how both of them undergo a change in their physiology as a result of godlike power entering their bodies which mutilate them from the inside and have fatal consequences (sam with the trials, dean with the mark of cain) which can only reasonably be resolved with their deaths (and they both even enter the final stages of this conflict by going to confession). also the plot structures of seasons 8 and 9 on their own mirror each other very closely.

this is all very important because it outlines the purpose of each of these two seasons. it's about them being fundamentally betrayed by their brother, causing that brother to become desperate and feel rejected and unloved, only for them to get what they need out of each other to reaffirm their love. they have to function as a unit, because otherwise both season's primary conflicts (as in, the conflicts established in the first half of each season) are left unresolved. instead, sam gets what he needs from dean in 823, which means that in return dean gets what he needs from sam in 923, thus closing the circle that was opened in 801.

dean reaffirmed that sam is the most important person in the world to him in sacrifice, that he would choose sam over every single other person on earth—this is what sam needed to hear, because it's the foundation of the conflict in season 8, since sam thinks dean chose benny over him and this sent him spiraling into a suicidal depression and self-loathing. so season 9, consequentially, is about dean getting what he needs from sam: he needs to know that sam will do anything in his power to save dean, which is a conflict that began in season 8 (with sam not searching for dean in purgatory) and is reasserted in 913 when sam tells him that he wouldn't violate his agency if the situations were reversed.

and this is exactly what dean gets in 923, when sam says he lied about all of that. dean gets the affirmation that sam's love for dean goes beyond petty ethics, which translates to "dean is more important to sam than anything else in the world" where the "anything else" includes sam's own moral boundaries. this is important to dean because dean eschews his own moral boundaries for sam's sake and safety over and over again throughout the series, and this is a major source of his own character development (see: 122, 203, 214, 222, et cetera et cetera). sam repeatedly denies that he's the same way, and has proven at least once that he wouldn't do the same, so this is an important affirmation for sam to give and it's why dean had spiraled into a suicidal depression and self-loathing (look, another parallel).

so season 8-9 are mirrors of each other, and they have to be mirrors of each other in order to work structurally and for any of the conflicts presented to be resolved. season 10 then is a response to this which shows the consequences of those dual resolutions: aka, sam acts just as unethically as dean does in the rest of the show, except this time knowingly and intentionally instead of subconsciously as he has been doing up to now (see: 1001, 1003, 1004, 1018, 1020, et cetera et cetera).

in order for all of this to work, the conflicts in season 8 and season 9 have to be equal. i.e. dean has to violate sam and his ethics as badly as sam violated dean and his ethics. it also has to be suitably Bad because it's revisiting a conflict that's existed in various iterations across the entire show. this is why it's also deeply important that 923 dean's death also parallels 222 sam's death, because it highlights how this conflict has always existed and how sam and dean are similar to each other. they both make the same choices under pressure and go to equally unethical lengths. which is why season 9 couldn't end until crowley told the audience that sam was trying to make a deal with him to bring dean back to life, specifically after dean begged sam to let him die. the point, then, was never about the violation itself: sam disregards dean's right to choose death just as much as dean disregards it. the season is about how sam and dean are at their cores the same, and it's about sam becoming aware of that reality and then actively, consciously choosing it. which is what sam reiterates across season 10, as a response to his choice in 923.

he only realizes that this is a Bad Thing in 1101 (i.e. after the response has run its course) when he says they both have to change. and the "both" is important because they are the same, fundamentally. sam isn't innocent of this violation of agency and obsessive deception of his brother, and he needs to understand that before actionable change can be made, which is what season 10 is all about.

and there's something poignant that can be said about 1023 being titled "brother's keeper," because this episode is about sam playing the role of brother's keeper, only for it to blow up so spectacularly in their faces that it causes the apocalypse 2.0. it forces sam to recognize that his original conclusion (that dean was right, and that he was lying) was not actually the correct and moral way to continue living. the significance of 1101 only reveals itself in the foundation laid by seasons 8-10, because these are the seasons about sam discovering just how down bad he is for his brother and accepting it wholeheartedly. season 11 then seeks to fix what seasons 8-10 broke, which is of course the entire fucking planet.

and this is the problem: the first apocalypse was caused by the absence of love, and the second was caused by too much love. their love is a destructive force that has world-ending consequences. that's the point of these seasons, what it all comes back to. in receiving the exact type and strength of love they needed from each other, they ended the world. and this is the conflict they need to resolve in season 11, or at least try to. because their love for each other can, has, and will destroy the world, over and over and over again. this theme can't exist unless seasons 8 and 9 mirror each other, unless season 9 is about sam's hypocrisy.

without that world-ending love, they couldn't have started the second apocalypse. if sam weren't a liar, he would have respected dean's choices, and he would have let dean die. if sam truly cared about bodily autonomy, dean would have died in 923 when he begged sam to let him. but he doesn't; that's not the point of the narrative. of course the violation of autonomy is important, because it provides the foundation for the conflict. but the violation is itself a metaphor, a triple whammy of symbolism: the possession is a metaphor for violation, and the violation is a metaphor for betrayal (as seen through the lens of deception).

the point of season 9 is not that dean metaphorically raped his helpless little brother; rather it's that the violation of agency goes both ways, and sam is a hypocrite for trying to maintain his autonomy while stripping it from dean. it's a continuation of season 8, which thus compacts his guilt over "abandoning" dean in purgatory and his self-loathing and fears of not being good enough or worthy enough of dean's love, which thus causes him to act recklessly and injuriously toward himself and dean. it's not a positive conclusion by any means; like i said, this is what causes the second apocalypse, and it's only after they've ended the world twice that sam finally sits down and says maybe they were wrong about this whole thing. maybe their love is too destructive.

in 912, sam says: "something's broken here [...] we don't see things the same way anymore."

in 1101, sam says: "this isn't on you. it's on us. we have to change."

sam goes from blaming dean to blaming both of them, because he realizes that they're both equal partners in their toxic, fucked up love. season 8 and season 9 allowed them to become equals by giving each other the affirmations they desperately needed to achieve true enmeshment, and season 10 is the consequence of that unhealthy relationship.

the point was never that dean violated sam. he does that over and over again throughout the series without destroying their relationship. the point is that sam is willing to violate dean all the same, and he had to face that reality head-on and accept it to resolve the conflict between them and give dean the affirmation he needed, just like dean gave sam the affirmation he needed in 823. the violation was simply a vehicle through which the conflict could come to a head, and the most provocative symbol this show could possibly use was the metaphor of sexual assault and rape, given sam's history with it via meg and especially via lucifer.

i've probably written enough now. the tl;dr is that season 9 invokes what can be interpreted as a rape metaphor not to vilify dean or even really to continue sam's ongoing rape narrative (though the violation that occurs in season 9 uses this as a foundation for the conflict and that's important to understanding the gravity of the situation), but rather to give appropriate stakes to mirror the primary conflict of season 8 and provide grounds for dean to get resolution for the conflict that began in 801 and continued through 923. god i hope this makes sense because now i've written this essay twice and i'm so miserable because of it.

my apologies if any of this is repetitive or meandering or lacking in any way; i tried really really hard to recreate my original essay and also provide more evidence and groundwork for my argument but obviously i'm sure i've missed some details and overlooked structure in many places. if you read this far, i love you and please talk to me about seasons 8-10. i'm losing my mind

[blessedhypocrite]

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[datastate]

speaking of - if i discussed how racist most yttd fans are would you forgive me.

[enhanced-operatives-division]

One day I'll draw the ieytd cast with all the flower imagery i want

[crumbleclub]

Hmmmmm.

Touch-averse Michael trying to work himself up to being able to give his brother a hug when he tells him he's sorry. Evan always liked hugs.

[3416]

I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what’s the deal with Mitch and his dad? Last night prompted a lot of Mitch Daddy Issues Marner comments and I was kinda lost. I know he started hockey like. Ridiculously young and there was one video I saw where he mentioned something about like a hockey deal with his dad where he was like yeah I won’t get into that and it had iffy vibes but?

i don't know like. full full details either tbh. but there is this vid from when mitch was little and he and his dad were in a local news story and that's one of the first things i ever saw about mitch. i think his dad's just been a pretty extreme helicoptor parent and made disparaging comments about how ppl dont take mitch seriously bc of his personality and involved himself in mitch's contract negotiations w the leafs to a degree that reflected badly on mitch. i think you can tell how there are definitely problems with their relationship in the way he talks about his dad to the media and how his "father" knows not to mention hockey around him bc he doesn't want to hear it... the evolution of that relationship where mitch now no longer wants him involved. to me......... he just kind of seems like a guy that was like way too heavily invested in his young kid getting into this sport and there's definitely something fractured there bc mitch has a lot of warmth for his mom and his brother when he talks about his family, but sometimes his dad is excluded from that. (AND as a purely speculative section to this, it's interesting that mitch finds himself very attached to dad figures on the team like patrick marleau, matt martin, jumbo, muzz, bogo, etc... like clearly there are some Feelings there and potentially a paternal void that he likes to fill by glomming on to men who aren't afraid to give him affection praise and love that he definitely craves.... there's an essay to be written abt this but i'll save it for someone funnier)

[brucequeensteen]

ethan what are ur top springsteen tracks.. i want to get more into his music

hello my good and wonderful friend andrew thank you for your question. i have many top tracks i think if you wanna start with an album the best place to start is darkness on the edge of town and/or born to run. born to run was his major breakthrough and its a delight, with bangers like backstreets and thunder road and jungleland and thee title track born to run. and darkness on the edge of night is probably my favourite and has some soulcrushing gems like adam raised a cain and candys room and THEE title track darkness on the edge of town. i also believe his One True Masterpiece is Nebraska 1982, mostly cos of atlantic city. BUT since you asked for tracks here are two playlists i got his stuff that i love best + then my general bruce playlist thats a little longer

but his magnum opus is I'm On Fire once youve listened to that youve listened to all the music you need for a lifetime sorry i sound insane.

[themyscirah]

Reading shit comics kind of sucks but at least I get the satisfaction of proving my own point w this

[elvisqueso]

Who’s your favorite Pocahontas character and why?

oh man oh boy this is a tough one

it's a hard tie between pocahontas and john smith for several reasons, but primarily bc they really are incredibly similar people. but!! for the purpose of this question I'm gonna go for the guy who gets the worst rap ever in online spaces today:

i've gone on spiels about john smith before and how insane he is as a character. the thing to keep in mind about Pocahontas is that the characterizations are quite deep, but not loud; and the story is an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, meaning this man's core-character DNA is Romeo Montague, and that should explain about half of his personality right away. he has no impulse control and doesn't actually relate to ANYBODY except for his paramour. also he's a whore.

where he differs from romeo is that he's also based on an actual guy who lived a ridiculously eventful life (if his own words are to be believed, of course). john pomeroy, who was lead animator for john smith, said john was a guy who was constantly on the move because he was "afraid to see the hole in himself." we love an avoidant king.

what i really love about john tho is that there's so much that's Not Said that can be gleaned by the little that Is, which is that: John is a man looking for meaning in his life, but is simultaneously afraid of what will be there when he does find it. he has no home, no roots, no meaningful connection to his supposed "peers," and he's old enough where he's starting to yearn for those things. and he has. NO self-esteem whatsoever. oh he has confidence in spades— he's earned that. but self-esteem? Subterranean.

also, he and kocoum are foils for each other. when you hold them up to each other like mirrors you get a very interesting picture of what battle experience really does to a guy and how they definitely are never really coping.

finally, he's pocahontas's soulmate and he says the most romantic shit the world has ever heard like it's nothin'.

"I'd rather die tomorrow than live a hundred years without knowing you" and then kissing her hand as she leaves is something that changed my brain chemistry like bro....bro.

thank you for the ask!! i will always take any excuse to talk about this film and its characters. 🫶

p.s. look at pomeroy's early concept art for john smith. it's some of the most incredibly slutty character design for a male lead i've ever seen. that is also in his DNA.

man's whole tiddy is out. this truly was meant to be his Hot Girl Summer.

[soulsxng]

Really random, but sometimes I get hardcore sucked back into the Royal Scandal series. The vibes and the stories are just A+, and so many muses get so noisy.

The only issue with that is the muses being really noisy doesn't lend itself very well to headcanons and stuff, so I'm sitting here trying to answer these Corruption questions for Creation, and the muses are in the back of my head. Doing concerning things. Being generally distracting.

Edit: Just realized that link only includes the main episode songs in their release order...which isn't the chronological order for the series. It's on the same channel if anyone wants to see the rest of the songs!

[inkedmyths]

Clockwork Saint

[hallowpen]

Have you seen First Kill on Netflix?

Of course!

It had forbidden romance! It had sapphics! It had vampires! It had a black female lead! It ticked a lot of my boxes and it had so much potential. I feel like, had the story been executed a bit better, it for sure would have drawn in more 'netflix numbers' for a renewal. But what can you do 😔😔😔

[purenguyening]

That rhythm hell meme reminds me how much I struggled to get used to playing up-beat/syncopated rhythms.

[spaghettithighs]

More fallout from the James Somerton debacle; local person reluctant to respond to a post about the racism of disco revival because most of their argument revolves around anecdotal or observational evidence and they're too eepy to collect citable sources

[anadrenalineslut]

watching wakanda forever with my boyfriend's republican father is very funny because he didn't like the movie cause he thought it was too left and I didn't like how far right it STILL was. yes, I'm talking about the make POC fight each other to prove that they're just as "power hungry" as white people are trope. It really made me frustrated because some of the moves these people were taking were just so.... white? and sure maybe, you could be like "but it's true!!!!! colorism blah blah" and yes in REAL LIFE it is but if you're going to make a movie about a fictional african country that was never touched by colonization, followed by an indigenous country that was, why would you rely on racist tropes still for the plot? They could have just as easily made it about POC cooperation with one another to fight the real enemy: France.

[bravevolunteer]

michael is canonically an arson enthusiast we know this but there's a unique feralness to t.ma michael that i'm obsessed with-