#frigging winchesters

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

My new hobby is watching old SPN episodes dubbed in Spanish, because my Spanish is good enough to understand about 25% and I think in a couple of seasons I can double that, anyway I'm just justifying why I've recently watched 1x01, it is not embarrassing, I am improving myself!

But with that out of the way, you know what's weird? They play the fake FBI agents thing like it's an old scam, like Sam is falling into the familiar patter of it as he follows Dean's lead, which is thematically a good choice to show them starting to re-establish their partnership, but actually it's insane when you think about it, impersonating a fucking Fed cannot be a thing Sam used to do in high school. I'm willing to buy that you get good at a lot of crimes in your teen years, growing up in John Winchester's unit, but like. Hotwiring cars and shit. Not interrogating cops. My suspenders of disbelief only stretch so far.

(Funniest part of the dub so far is how "Black Sabbath. Motorhead." sounds in this accent.)

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

I’ve often wondered if Supernatural, especially the more bro-y early years, doesn’t constitute kind of a masculine equivalent to those old-school bodice-ripper novels, where the author obviously wasn’t able to and/or interested in deconstructing the virgin/whore stuff, but also wanted there to be lots of sexy bits.  So you’d have these elaborate rape-adjacent fantasy set-pieces that were like, okay, Our Heroine and obviously You, Dear Reader are very good girls, but just like...IF you had no choice but to have rough sex with a pirate king...well, hypothetically, that would be...what? How would that go?  Kind of exciting, maybe?  Kind of like being given access to a part of you that you can’t fully admit you’d like to access?

Supernatural was very obviously always (at least in part) about the traumas of masculinity, its violence, its ruptured relationships, fathers who couldn’t take good care of their sons, sons who couldn’t live up to their fathers, brothers who would die for each other but would die before they’d say that out loud, the thrill of power and freedom and also the horror of having no one to turn to for help.  And there was so much of that bodily vulnerability -- having your body invaded and violated, being driven to your knees, being forced to the point of blood and tears, it always seemed to me like there was a little edge of that same kind of fascination -- not literally about sex, but erotic in how tangled up it was with the idea of submission.

Our Heroes and obviously You, Dear Viewer are very strong men, but just like...IF you had no choice but to be exposed and dominated by powers stronger than you...hypothetically, that would be...what?  How would that go?  Kind of cathartic, maybe?  Kind of like being free of something you can’t fully admit is a burden?

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

I woke up in a confused state at 4:30, convinced somehow that all the problems of Supernatural would be solved if they'd just made the characters anthropomorphic animals and trying to work out the worldbuilding whereby Dean could be some kind of mustelid while Sam was clearly a stag. I don't know, it really seemed like an important breakthrough for a few minutes, until I was all the way awake.

Anyway, I don't remember what I was relying on for "logic" at that time, and now I can't go back to sleep, so it's gonna be a weird day.

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Do people who are defensive about the casual Period-Typical Homophobia that Spn slung at Dean Winchester for being a prettyboy go as hard on all the times that Dean called Sam a girl for casual matters of taste, or for Sounding Too Smart, or for being overly reluctant to commit violence?

Because I'm gonna let y'all kids in on a secret: "being a girl" was the way you were allowed to say faggot on network tv in 2008.

I don't disagree that Dean was on the receiving end of a lot of low-key homophobia from the scripts, but I want everyone to face up to the fact that he was sure as shit on the dishing-it-out end as well, and not infrequently.

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

I can never decide, after Supernatural spent 13 years excavating the ten million ways being Child Hunters fucked up Sam and Dean's life

and after every admirable adult character in the whole show, including Time Travel John, said, Man, what a terrible, fucked-up thing that is to do to literal children

and after they specifically try to dissuade every person under 20 from embroiling themselves in the hunting life, up to and including Dean lashing out in a near panic when his stepson is curious about guns

because the show is very single-minded on the themes of You Have to Protect Kids They Are Only Kids and This Is a Brutal Life No Reasonable Person Wants a Child to Acclimate To

were we supposed to...not notice...or not care that when Sam and Dean actually have custody of a literal smol child with no life experience, they go immediately to, "We'll train him up! Family business!" They don't like. Enroll him in community college or organize play dates or buy him a puppy. It's straight to the Boy's Adventure life, with no thought at any point to helping him figure out what he wants to do with his life. But of course, he's a little boy. He wants to make his dads proud, so he wants to do what they ask him to do. He wants to grow up like them.

None of that is acknowledged in any of the text as -- fucking spooky. We literally just watch our heroes replicate their own traumatic childhoods, and nobody like. Mentions that they have stepped seamlessly into the John role of this family psychodrama. It never really comes up.

And I really wonder all the time. Did they think no one would notice how goddamn weird it all is? Or -- what? What is supposed to be happening in the last three seasons?

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

So, let me understand what I just watched.

Did we see an AU where Sam and Dean own a comic book shop together, except Sam is a cute, competent, responsible girl, and Dean is a nebbishy weirdo with surprising depths of courage and loyalty? Only, like, on television, and not on AO3?

I really need my perceptions to be validated, because sometimes this damn show makes me think like a crazy person.

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Netflix’s top line of recommendations for me is now something called Emotional Suspenseful TV Shows.

I think this is algorithm for, “Please, for the love of god, please stop watching Supernatural.  We have so many other shows!  Please, we swear you’d like these, too.  This...this can’t be good for you.”