#which definitely could be a parallel to john only trying to connect with sam through hunting which fails because sam HATES hunting

[jackklinemybeloved]

secret good spn that lives in my head episode that is told entirely in flashback and analyzes the winchester family dynamic and is called “cat’s cradle”

[hawkland]

My (strictly, this time) Destiel Recs #8 - the 15x18—15x20 fix-it edition

For November 5, I wanted to do a fic rec post focusing specifically on 15x18— 15x20 fix-it fics. These are far from the only fix-it fics I recommend, obviously, but ones I’ve read recently (or have somehow missed reccing in the past.) If you want to see some of my past picks and recs, check out my pinboard fix-it fic tag!

I’ll start with a few from this year’s DeanCasBigBang that I’ve read so far and enjoyed a lot which fit into the fix-it category. But hey, while I’m at that, allow me to self-rec/shout out my own DCBB fic, There Are Roads Left in Both of Our Shoes. It’s 117k of fix-it wherein Cas rescues his own damn self from the Empty—but what happens next is the real story to be told.

On to the recs:

Days of Future Passed by Tierra469 (38.8k) - This is an action-packed fix-it where things happen a bit differently in the big showdown against Chuck in 15x19. Chuck sends Dean and Sam back in time to right were they were at the beginning of Season 1, Episode 1—but with all of their memories of the past 15 years intact. “If you think you could have written it better… then do it all over again without me,” Chuck challenges them, and that's exactly what they're going to try to do—including saving some of the people they weren’t able to the first time around, including Cas. 

This is a fast-paced and enjoyable ride through familiar, early hunts and cases as the brothers try to stop the tragedies that left them where they ended up. While they may have knowledge of the future, they no longer have Chuck’s plot armor, so new challenges await them even when they think they should have the advantage of foreknowledge. Meanwhile Dean is trying to connect with a Castiel who doesn't know him yet, and hasn't even taken Jimmy as his vessel. It's all very clever and different from so many fix-its I’ve read. It also contains a more nuanced portrayal of John Winchester than I'm used to seeing in a lot of fic, as he’s faced with his two sons who may be inhabiting their younger bodies but are now men who have lived and faced challenges he can’t even imagine yet. Plenty more recs below the cut!

The Rescue by theirprofoundbond (59k) - While looking for a way to defeat Chuck, “OG Death” appears to Dean, Sam and Jack and tells them they need an archangel to do it. Sam & Jack set out across an empty Earth to find Michael while Dean makes a trip to THE Empty to find Gabriel - but with a promise that he’s not leaving without Cas, too. This is a truly epic adventure/rescue fic with two lovely parallel stories. I greatly enjoyed Sam & Jack’s adventure through abandoned, post-apocalyptic landscapes while Dean experiences a version of the Empty I haven’t seen in any other fics before as well. He’ll encounter some familiar faces in his quest as well. And not to give TOO much away but if you enjoy endgame angel!Cas? This is a fic you won’t want to miss. (The artwork by remyafterdark is absolutely stunning, too.)

No One Lives Forever by cringewerewolf (52.6k) - This is a lovely fix-it fic exploring issues of identity and finding one’s true self while also packing a serious punch of action and story-telling. With Michael’s help, Dean thinks they can go back in time to when he was Death for a day and open Chuck’s book, thereby finding out how to defeat him. But that doesn’t end up going to plan, when it turns out he’ll have to take on the responsibility of Death for longer than simply one day. Still, as Death he has a new identity and abilities which will allow him to travel to the Empty, where he’s able to rescue Cas - but not without also bringing back Ruby and a now-mortal Billie in the process. There are lots of twists and turns as TFW2.0 (and “friends”) work together to defeat Chuck, but at its core this fic is more about each character embracing their true natures and how that will finally bring them peace and happiness.

His Kiss the Riot by spiffyflypie (49k) - This is a fic that seems to be more 15x20 than 15x18 related, at first, but things are definitely not what they seem. My favorite part of this fic is the first section, all from Cas's point-of-view, as he finds himself in Heaven after being rescued by Jack. But something seems off. He knows he's supposed to be happy with this, but it all feels wrong - especially when Dean shows up so soon after all the sacrifices he'd made for Dean to live a long life. There's the BAMF!Cas we know and love here and the deeply creepy feel of this part was awesome. This is another one where to say too much is to give away fun twists and turns. I kind of wanted a little bit more at the end, but it's definitely one of those fics that will leave you thinking and pondering how things could - and maybe should? - be in the universe. At least the SPN one.

Non-DCBB fix-it recs:

Keep Your Love Alive by dothraki_shieldmaiden and FriendofCarlotta (42k) - At first glance this looks like a Heaven fic, but it very much is something different and tied much more to 15x18. To say more than that is to spoil some of the delicious surprises awaiting in this wonderfully crafted fic. If you thought something was very, very wrong and disturbing about what Dean’s Heaven supposedly was, and why so few people were there (and no Cas!) this will give you a very believable answer as to why.

Mercenary by DeanRH (33k) - Like many of my favorite DeanRH fics, this starts out seeming to be a complete AU - but eventually we find out how it ties back to the canon characters and universe after all. In this story we at first meet a Dean who is a former soldier haunted by the memories of atrocities he saw in war - and those he grew up experiencing with his brother Sam. He finds refuge in an LGBTQ+ coffee/book shop and the kind and gentle man named Cas who works there, running the shop for his brother Balthazar. Cas starts getting Dean to open up through a carefully negotiated (light) BDSM relationship, but then Sam starts getting Dean to question the reality of their entire situation. What war was it, exactly, that he’d been fighting? What even is the name of this city in which they live? It's a twisty mindfuck of a fic as I know to always expect from DeanRH and with a greatly satisfying ending. But, DO be careful of the content warnings as this is also a heavy fic at times, too (and deeply personal for the author.)

Amen (Let it Be So) by vibesandwonders (52k) - After pleading and begging prayers from Dean, Jack finally shows up with Cas, freshly rescued from The Empty...and in a very, very bad way. It seems just a short time there has been countless time for Cas and getting him to recover from the experience is going to take a lot of care and patience. Dean is trying the best he can, but he's keeping one very important secret from Cas, HE thinks it’s for the right reasons, but then those secrets all blow up in his face. This is one of those stories where it hurts a LOT before it eventually gets better, but the emotions are beautifully portrayed and Dean's characterization is one I like a lot - where he's TRYING so hard to open himself up for Cas but still having a hard time with his words, and communication troubles come close to causing their downfall. Balthazar is back and a badass, too. It could have used a grammar pass for punctuation, but the writing is so good otherwise I really didn't mind.

chasing belladonna mist by LeverDrift (25k) - Jack rescues Cas from the Empty, but there's a catch - Cas’s deal is still in effect. If he's too happy the Empty will come for him, still, unless Jack (or the others) can find a way to get him out of it. A deliciously different and angsty take where it's a different kind of communication issue between Dean and Cas then we usually see - they WANT to be able to be happy together but getting too close, saying or doing the wrong thing, could summon the Empty at any moment.

No Answer Will Be Heard To The Question No One Asks by Wayward_WLW (Parker_Haven_Wuornos) (33.9k) - Dean is determined to rescue Cas from the Empty now that the world is safe and restored. Sam is concerned Dean isn't going to let go of this mission, no matter how impossible it may be. When he finds a way, he'll have to go through a series of trials in order to get Cas back. And if he does, how will they move on with their lives? A mostly soft and fluffy fix-it fic, the first part focused on the rescue mission and the rest on building their new life together. It's not especially tense or high stakes, but a good warm and comforting read if you are in the mood for it.

to an angel, love and worship are the same thing by thegeminisage (10k) - Cas is back after a year in the Empty. Dean struggles with what he does and doesn't want. Super slow burn of Dean negotiation with himself (and Cas) what he feels with a very patient and understanding Cas who does not need sex from Dean to be happy...but doesn't seem opposed to the small acts of affection he allows.

[wolf-stark]

You ask I deliver — both tfatws asks in one!

tfatws weekly ask 1

i finally saw ep1!! i wont be able to see ep2 until thursday at the earliest but i already have some Thots on this ep. here are the ones I remember

first is, and i'm so sorry for this, a grammar lesson. an appositive is when you stick an additional phrase in between commas, dashes, or the like. i actually just used one! the "and i'm so sorry for this" in the first sentence of this paragraph is an appositive. thing is, most english speakers don't normally use them when they speak, only in writing. so i'm always on high alert whenever i hear somebody in tv or movies use one. (it's generally a marker of bad screenwriting). anyway there was one right in the beginning of the episode. the white army guy yelling at sam wilson said "first lieutenant Torres, our intel officer, will be helping on the ground." yeah so. the writing of this series started out on the wrong foot for me. but the rest of the episode was obviously tons and tons better (every interview i see with malcolm spellman makes me love him more and more)

the contrast between the opening minutes (falcon action sequence) and the rest of the ep.... i would 100000/10 rather watch a series with just sam and bucky dealing with life. i dont give a single crap about the flag-smashers or any of that. i just want sam, sarah & fam getting their boating business back on the ground & yeeting racist dickwads, bucky going through therapy and making amends, sam and joaquin being bros, sambucky homoerotic tension, etc.

the cinnamontography! wandavision mostly used cinematography to signify era n stuff. tfatws doesn't have wv's premise to go off of, so here's some tricks i noticed:

with sam there's obviously all sorts of shots with the captain america iconography next to his face, but he hasn't totally claimed it. there's the mural of steve rogers in the background; there's sam staring into the shield like it's a spectre of steve's face; there's sam looking into the exhibit, the shield and sam separated by glass and a layer of camera focus. steve is a constant spectre, always there, an idea, a symbol himself. sam's relationship with this iconography is distanced. he is separated by glass exhibit walls. by painting canvases. he doesn't yet feel worthy to take on that iconography. this whole thing was pulled off quite well but also a bit on-the-nose if only in quantity. there's just sooooo much fancy iconography stuff

speaking of the exhibit, there's something that i get real pissy about. it's when like, there's an action going on you're supposed to be paying attention to but the cinematographer is like,,,, hey! check out this location! or this headline! or something! there was a lot of that in the exhibit. the camera was like, you could focus on sam and rhodey's convo (which was fine but could have been so much better with an extra like 10 minutes of deep character study talk) but noooo you want me to look at the symbol for the united nations and read all the text about bucky who hasn't even showed up yet. shut up i know the lore and ill watch the shot-by-shot breakdown yt vids you don't have to make the shot this long jkdsalcjklasejf

my fav trick was with bucky and the therapist. i had seen a clip of the scene with bucky and the therapist beforehand and i thought the cinnamontography was super obnoxious, but then i was like, oh duh. the shots frequently change the distance between the camera and its subject. sometimes it's uncomfortably close and sometimes it's really far. a clear allegory for the duality of therapy, esp for bucky! therapy is an invasive process wherein he is ruthlessly examined, picked apart, and berated for his trauma (this therapist is crap in every way btw, "mean therapist" works for greg house and greg house only). so the camera goes close. it makes the viewer claustrophobic like bucky. but when he's like "no i haven't had any nightmares" the camera suddenly goes really far. we see bucky as this tiny head in the center of the bottom of the frame. we are distanced from him. he has pushed us away. we cannot see him. he lies because he is vulnerable. so yeah, amazing work there. the therapy scene was hard to watch on purpose!

did bucky slip a note to yori inside the dollar bill? bucky stop making me emooooo. the suuper awkward fake smile has me 😭 (veteran trying to adjust!)

mark my worrrrds when sam asks someone y the govt picked john “white bread” walker they’re gonna say “we needed somebody everyone can get behind....someone uncontroversial, someone everyone can see themselves in” like that exact racist dog whistle

tfatws weekly ask 2

just saw ep2 so im taking advantage of the 2 seconds i can be on tumblr without worrying about tfatws spoilers before new episode drops

when isaiah said "your people put me in prison for being a hero" and bucky thought "your people" means hydra. 🤦‍♂️

speaking of racism, the interplay between sam being Black (anti-Black racism) and sam being the Falcon (negrophilia, "can i take a selfie w you as i deny you a loan?") and the intersection between the two (j*hn lichrally called sam "steve's wingman"! he takes the crypto out of crypto-racist in like 2 seconds!) !!!!!!!! a Black celebrity's Black experience, the separation of man and identity!!!! (thinking about vanessa bayer in snl in that skit "beyonce is black" telling her black friend "you're not black, you're...my girl!")

after sam gets racially profiled by cops we see j*hn standing in front of cop cars cinematic parallels turns out j*hn is racist who knew

this therapist sucks major ass but she got bucky and sam together in the same room and ready to collaborate...that's something ig. it was lichrally couple's therapy she said she used her miracle exercise with couples sambucky antis get blended

bucky says "he was wrong about you so maybe he was wrong about me"...that's not how people talk. when therapist asks bucky, the guy who doesn't talk at all about himself, "y do you hate sam", the last thing bucky's gonna do is actually connect his hatred of sam to his own self-worth issues. bucky generally refuses to talk about himself, so why would he talk about himself in the one context that nobody ever links back to their own neuroses: hatred of other people? one thing human beings hate most is admitting we're wrong. admitting you hate someone because of your own issues? that's a major therapeutic step. bucky would absolutely have to be prompted to do that. even like one or two lines of dialogue more would have set up that line better. but in terms of the actual thought? an amazing way to take the sam/bucky relationship. bucky bases his self-worth on steve believing in him, and if steve is wrong bucky has no self-worth, so 1) he has to develop self-worth disassociated from steve's assessment of him and 2) he has to love himself before he can love sam, and 3) he has to realize that sam giving up the shield is a sign of sam's humility not his unworthiness.

conversely, we don't get into why sam hates bucky? yeah sam has the right to hate a guy that has tried to kill him (albeit while brainwashed) multiple times, and now shows up in his life just to bash him but. everything happens so fast i cant follow their relationship

in fact i dont feel like i understood much of anything. like y did bucky and sam go on that mission together? how connected are sam/bucky/joaquin with the government? doesn't bucky just want to retire now? literally what is everyone doing/feeling and why???

if battlestar becomes a knowing commentary on the black best friend stereotype i'm gonna party, but i dont expect much of that

the interplay between man and symbol. captain america is obviously a symbol. the shield is obviously a symbol. but steve rogers? the. man behind the cowl? he too seems to become a symbol. a paragon of a good guy, so good he's unreachable. steve was just a guy stop idolizing him the last thing steve would want is to be idolized

as the resident musician/music nerd on mcublr, 1) that captain america rally music slaps, but 2) re: the song at the end of the ep, if you're just gonna rip off mozart's lacrymosa then at least play mozart's lacrymosa. we wont blame you the lacrymosa slaps (if you dont know what im talking about go on yt and search it up youll recognize it fo sho

look i love enfys nest as much as the next guy but if tfatws is gonna get erin kellyman to play another innocent little gurl blackmailed into the fakeout-villain position (her text seemed to suggest as such) then 😡 like why can't women just....be evil? young, freckly, innocent-looking women? girls are not untouchable pure objects but full of rage and resentment just as much as anyone can be

bonus ep1 comment: bucky says about that senator whose car he hijacked, "she continued to abuse the power i gave her." fictionaldarling on yt say that he says "i" because he can't disassociate himself from his winter soldier persona which begets endless and senseless guilt. like dude. can i not be emo for like 1 second.

OKay. First off, as much I enjoy your sending it to me, what made you decide to send me these??

-

TFATWS WA #1

Don't worry about getting this to me as early as possible. I usually don't watch the episode right away.

1. Cool writing lesson.

2. Everyone wants a comedy show [like Friends] about the MCU superheroes.

3. Cinematography is always a beautiful thing.

4. Sam definitely has to carve his own Captain America status for himself, outside of Steve's ya know everything.

5. They have to do that for people who was just now tuning in because they're in love with Sam Wilson or Sharon Carter.

6. I think the therapist was taking a 'tough love' approach for Bucky, because she likely has some very strong opinions about the literal assassin she's been assigned to give therapy too. She did not choose to talk to him, she was assigned that make that clear in the second episode.

And, Bucky isn't lying when he said it wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't a nightmare, it was a resurfaced memory. So, technically he wasn't lying - and yes, the camera does move away because while he's saying he didn't have a nightmare, he's not expanding on what actually happened - so, he's still pushing the therapist/us away.

7. Bucky, and Steve, have/had a TON to adjust to.

8. Yeah, I agree that will be the bullshit line they give. If they ever actually talk about it.

TFATW WA #2

Yeah, always got to take advantage of avoiding those spoilers lmfaoo.

1. Honestly, that line was double meaning. Both about White people and Hydra [which is made up of mostly white supremacists/nazis] So, the line is gesturing to both White People in general and Hydra assholes together. I think the terminology is “double edge sword”??

2. This whole paragraph structure confused me, ngl - so I'm going to answer it the best I can. I do like that they're not ignoring the fact that Sam being Black is 1000% the reason he's not the Official Captain America - because the gov't is racist as hell.

I also like the little lines about how they point out little things about Sam's Falcon persona, like that kid calling him 'Black Falcon' specifically and Sam's response show the split between Sam and Falcon itself.

John is a dick for calling Sam the wingman of Steve Rogers. Sam was a hero all on his own before Steve asked him to join up again. [Side note, it's lichrally??]

3. Exactly, the parallel of Sam being profiled and surrounded while just on the street and John being surrounded by fans and being able to spring Bucky with apparently only a few sentences shows a Loooooot

4. Honestly, at this point I wonder if she's not actually a therapist and is just an agent assigned to assess Bucky outside of an Official Building. I do know, however, that her 'look at each other and speak' exercise is actually a real therapy practice. It's just a little slower.

5. Actually, I think he would've blurted that out. That whole line. I don't think Bucky hates Sam. I think they could've done the scene better, but I think that had Sam prodded him/the therapist been more annoying Bucky would've lost control of his emotions and blurted out the whole "If he was wrong about you, he was wrong about me" but I feel like the writing for this show is just... not there. Sometimes you blurt shit when you get overemotional and I think that was what Bucky was supposed to be like.

6. I don't think Sam hates Bucky, I think he doesn't trust him though. I do wish they'd talked about that though. The whole 'talk to each other' scene should've been a LOT longer and a LOT slower.

7. Sam and Bucky's relationship is being fast tracked because they don't really know how to work the relationship out, writers-room-wise. Bucky is technically retired, but I feel like he's trying to live up to Steve's expectations and doing what Steve would've done and we all know that if Steve was there, Steve would've jumped on that plane with Sam. It looks like Sam/Bucky/Joaquin are a side-team based from Military services but as Sam says they're all free agents so...?

8. Sadly, They seem to just be propping up to be another stereotype.

9. Captain America is a symbol. Steve Rogers is a man. But now Steve Rogers is an idol because of all the shit he's been through and honestly, it's not a bad thing he's become an idol for people - it's using Steve as a reason to make White Bread Walker the next Captain that makes Steve's idolization so fucked.

10. I don't know anything about music so I have no opinion here, sorry.

11. Enfys?? Also, I think they did the whole Innocent Girl Thing as side commentary for Bucky lowering his guard about seeing a young girl rather than a guy.

12. Bucky is the Winter Solider. The Winter Solider is Bucky. That is how Bucky will always see it because although he was brainwashed, it was still him and he remembers all of it. When you have constant memories of something 'someone else' did, you tend to not be able to pull the two personas out of each other. I want Bucky to take up the title, White Wolf instead of Winter Soldier. Honest.

This is all my opinion, I’m honestly a little disappointed with the writing of TFATWS so far so... I’m not really optimistic about this.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Rocky’s Bar and Dean’s split self

I’m still intrigued by Dabb’s choice of song-quote for the latest episode and the scene with Dean trying to collect himself in front of the mirror. To quote myself from the above link--

It’s interesting that, while the textual reading in relation to the episode is obviously a Dean vs Michael one, the whole thing is obviously a subtextual exploration of Dean’s kaleidoscopic identity, his personality full of contradiction, the layers of disguises, the subtle threat of his self shattering always looming. Of course his case is not, like for the song, a personality disorder, but simply the ways he’s had to adapt to his environment, the coping mechanisms he has been performing to survive and try to thrive (Dean does not thrive on trauma, Sam, Dean has developed an extreme adaptability to trauma since he was a tiny bean, but the fact that he’s been doing for so long doesn’t make it any less complicated and exhausting.)

It’s just you, it’s just you. It’s all you.

Textually, it’s about Michael. Subtextually, it’s about Dean’s identity and the many facets of it, and the ways he’s been struggling to handle the various facets in relation to the environment he’s lived in.

Now, let me explore an idea about the scene playing in Dean’s mind. While I do agree that this post makes a valid point about the business lady representing Michael’s way to ensure Dean’s acquiescence, I want to try another reading (not necessarily conflicting).

I was thinking (there’ll be a post) about the parallel between Dean’s door that keeps Michael locked in and the wall that kept Sam’s trauma locked in when Death delivered his soul back. When the wall was broken, Sam had to recompose the different pieces of his self. He was literally split across multiple versions of his self inside his mind.

Now, Dean. When we saw the first glimpse of him inside the bar, we speculated that the mysterious guy passed out on the counter was also Dean. Then we found out that multiple individuals were involved in Dean’s illusion scenario: Pamela, the business lady, the two vampires. But are they really separate constructions, or are they also Dean?

When Sam and Cas enter Dean’s mind, they see him, they see Pamela, they briefly see the vampires (not the business lady). By the time Dean recovers his memories of reality, he’s the only one remaining. My theory is that he has reconstituted himself, although not in a visually noticeable way (like in Sam’s case in 6x22). Every person the appears inside the bar, in the loop, is a part of Dean, a facet of his self.

In the last few days, browsing through tumblr, I have noticed that different people have different interpretations of the positivity or negativity of Dean’s experience with the bar in the mental scenario. Some bloggers have emphasized a positive quality to it: Dean has his own business, is not dependent on anyone, is not shackled to anything, loves what he does, in fact does the thing pretty much exclusively out of love for what he’s doing. Dean is independent and does something he loves, hangs out with a friend he feels comfortable with, is cool with Sam and Cas hunting across the country, while he uses his hunter skills to defend himself and the bar if the occasion arises.

Others, me included (see here and sorta here), have emphasized a negative nature of the situation: the moment Dean is forced to live through on loop, although he doesn’t realize it, has a feel of isolation to it; the cinematography gives a dark, claustrophobic sense to the ambience. The bar is almost empty, and implied not to be successful; Dean only serves alcohol to himself and his staff member. He spills monsters’ blood in an establishment that serves food that he is responsible for, he who as a thing for cleanliness...! The only things that happen in the loop are Dean serving alcohol for himself and his waitress, resisting the pressure to sell the place, and killing vampires who’ve attacked the place. There’s emphasis - we hear it over and over - on the fact that Sam and Cas are on a hunting trip and Dean only knows when they should be back, meaning he’s not sure. Here I have basically described how being a bartender would be good for Dean: and that’s not what we see Dean doing, not what Dean really experiences in the scene playing on loop.

Now, I am not saying one’s right and one’s wrong (heck, I’ll be the first person to be happy if Dean gets to give food people by choice and is happy about it x x). The amazing thing about Dean Winchester is that you can interpret him and his experiences in completely different ways, and still not be wrong. He is multifaceted. And I think that this is the key point here.

There’s definitely a part of Dean that would appreciate the scenario. No major responsibilities towards others, his own business instead of the suffocating “family business” built on guilt and sense of duty. A job that allows him to take care of people in a very lowkey way - he serves them alcohol and food but is not responsible for them (he isn’t fazed by a drunk guy passed out). But that’s also not all of what Dean is. I’m reminded more of what a teenage Dean, tightly wrapped in the ties of the family as run by John, considered an ideal career: fix cars, which then leave, and you’re no longer responsible for them. Would something like that be enough for him now?

Dean thrives surrounded by people - not random people, rather his chosen people, but still people. He loves taking care of them - not because he’s forced to but because he can. In the bar scene, he has Pamela, but everyone else isn’t there.

There’s also something that could be said about the alcohol. Dean and Pamela are the only people we effectively see drink alcohol in the scene. It’s in fact the plot of the scene: Dean prepares drinks for them to drink together. It’s all about alcohol-based socialization. He thinks Cas and Sam have gotten back from the hunt, he immediately prepares a beer for Cas. Alcohol is a ubiquitous part of his life and relationships in this scenario.

So, we’ve had a look to bartender Dean. Now let’s look at Pamela. Confident, going on dates with hot guys, wearing items that subtly (or not so subtly) cue to Cas; equipped with an extreme emotional intelligence and empathy; whose tasks include “cleaning up the blood” when monsters attack the bar. Pamela who worries about Sam and Cas but don’t tell Dean, he’ll use it against me. Who is amused by Cas’ weird (non-flirty) way of talking to ladies.

Pamela is also Dean. A ‘feminine’ side - still badass and assured and strong - whose emotions will be used against him by his own ‘masculine’ side, that prefers to keep his emotions a secret, although projected onto Pamela this becomes a light quip (interesting how she says ‘don’t tell Dean’ not so far away from Dean that he can’t hear her: he doesn’t react, but you expect him to reply ‘I can hear you’ from behind the counter, just like Michael said earlier). A side who carries the memory of getting back from hell thanks to an angel. A side who confidently helps with killing monsters but also tries to wipe out the signs of the violence of the hunting life. A side who is aware of his own emotions and desires and messy psychological things.

I don’t know about you, but for me -- all of this? Also Dean. These aspects get projected onto Pamela because that’s safer. I think this is an important point: Dean keeps aspects on himself that are safer, projects uncomfortable (in various ways) aspects on other ‘characters’ of the scene.

In fact, let’s see the other characters. The drunk unconscious guy who turns up a decoy and attacks Dean and Pamela... is also Dean. The depressed, self-harming side. The side of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

And the vengeful vampire whose nest was killed is also Dean, although there’s a difference - the vampire who yells comes from the outside. It’s like the symbolism is saying that revenge and aggression are part of Dean’s identity, but come from the outside.

Now, the business lady. This part is where I had most difficulty figuring out how I was supposed to read it... until I had a realization, which you can find here. Basically, I think that the business lady represents - together with other aspects of the bar, especially the space where Dean does the paperwork - the side of Dean that is attracted to death.

The lady is visually reminiscent of two pivotal figures in the episode Byzantium - Lily Sunder and Anubis. Lily chooses death in the episode, which turns out to be a liberation, an act of elevation and a reward. And Anubis is a deity of the afterlife, tasked with the paperwork. Dean’s office space is also reminiscent of Anubis’ office which we see when Lily arrives there to get her new evaluation. (Please open the link above for the screenshots.)

There is a lot of elements that remind of death (and Death) in Dean’s mental scene, including the Mexican-inspired figures on the wall that connect us to the Mexican restaurant where Dean asked Death to kill him but then killed Death. The parallels with Anubis also make sense, considering that Anubis has been presented as a Dean mirror. And the lady with the briefcase and the paperwork (who, again, comes from the outside), in my opinion, represents the side of Dean that feels the appeal of death, or at least has a closeness to the idea of dying, if you get what I mean. Which opens interesting perspectives.

She offers him a deal. Death for Dean (not necessarily his own) is generally associated to deals. Mary’s demon deal (his first symbolical death is at four...), John’s demon deal, his own demon deal, the deal with Cain, multiple deals of some kind with Death (when he becomes Death for a day, when he kills Death...) and so on (you could say it even starts with Sue-Ann Le Grange’s deal). In particular the episode is filled with references to his experience in hell - which obviously started with his own most iconic deal. I know you said you weren’t interested, but it’s just a few signatures and you could... Dean says that the bar - his soul, his life - isn’t for sale. Rocky’s looks pretty dead. It’s a very generous offer, the lady retorts. Why would I want to give you anything? Keep your gutter soul. It’s too tarnished, anyway. But Dean put his foot down. No deal. The lady stomps off. Dean doesn’t want to die. He has to intention to make that sale. I’ve never had anything this nice.

In this metaphor, the bar becomes his soul, or his life. Many posts have been written about the interior decor of the bar, filled with symbols of what’s important to Dean. In one of the posts I linked earlier I talked about the bar as the Noah’s Ark opposite Michael’s flood, and it makes sense that his soul is this little thing, tossed around the raging waters but never sinking, never breaking.

But just like Dean is both Noah and God, the bar is more than Dean’s life, because Dean is also Death. Not as in the actual entity with the official job (although he’s done it for a little bit...) but he is a force that has everything to do with death. In the wide sense of the concept - the circle of life and death, the cosmic balance. He’s the force that reconciled creation and destruction, he’s basically always walking the line between life and death. He’s a dispenser of death but also overflowing with life. Killer and nurturer at the same time. But I gotta stop before I end up typing 10k words describing Dean.

Dean’s paperwork office, as I pointed out in the post I linked, is reminiscent of Anubis’ office. A deity of death, who represents the judgment of a person’s morality, the moment that determines your salvation or damnation. Anubis told them that he’s just the guy doing the paperwork, he’s not the actual entity that decides whether a person will be saved or not. The individual is the real judge of themselves (Anubis’ own father punished those who judged themselves worthy of condemnation inside their hearts...), humans are the real “Anubis”, the real “God”. The ones writing the story. And Dean, Humanity and Divinity at the same time, best represents this. He’s the god of salvation and damnation. And by the end of the episode we find out that he’s the one who can either save or condemn the universe - of course.

Behind Anubis there’s a clock, behind Dean there’s a fan. Circles that keep running in the same motion, round and round, the ouroboros of life and death and creation and destruction. Eternity and time. (I haven’t been touching the topic for a while, but at some point I was very intrigued by the undercurrent of space and time in the Dabb era, and maybe it’s time to get the topic out).

I’m going to conclude this post here because otherwise I might go on forever. Thoughts?

[emilywatchescursedshow]

Spn Season 1 Review

Hoboy

First, the live blogs of the last 4 episodes were done in a haze of jetlag depression so were less specific to what was actually happening in the episodes than normal and contained no extraneous information. HOWMEVER. I will get into those episodes more in this recap because:

1. I do not feel like the season really Led Up to this finale. Part of that could be because I took a bit of a break halfway through, but I think also the groundwork for the Sam/John parallel they tell us about was not really set up in previous episodes. 2. I think that the characterization of the brothers and their relationship to John is really Interesting in these episodes and the drama of that is a big part of the show as a whole, so the last several episodes are pretty relevant here.

THEMING The theme of season 1 is more or less: family. How do you handle family trauma and loss? How do you as a parent protect your children vs let them have independent lives (or just suck major ass)? To what extent is your family holding you back? Etc. The two sort of relationship dynamics this plays in is the Sam/Dean dynamic and the John/sons dynamic.

DEAN Dean’s characterization through this theme remains pretty consistent: he wants to be with his family. He showed up to get Sam at the beginning of the season, and he wants to keep them all alive at the end of the season instead of sacrificing John to kill the demon. The irony is that the season ends with them all “dying” (I know they’re not dead, but right now that’s what the show wants us to believe) and Dean’s insistence on family unity is what ends up getting them all killed.

Dean’s story line throughout has been one of responsibility assumed too early. After their mom died, his dad basically made him co-parent. Dean had to give up his ambitions to bend to his dad’s wishes while also trying to protect Sam from John and various monsters. It makes sense for him, given that backstory, that keeping the family together is his highest priority: he has been forced to give up all sense of self to keep his family safe, so if they die then he literally has nothing. I think it’s interesting that Dean is the only one of him or Sam who actually knew their mother, and yet Sam is the one who gets a mother-relevant character arc.

That might be because of the next aspect of Dean’s character we see: he likes to have sex with women. I tend to be pretty sensitive to misogyny/mistreatment of women on screen, so either I’ve lost my mind or I’m already watching this show through a very queer lens because Dean’s treatment of women throughout the season Did Not Bother Me. The only thing that really rang sour was at the beginning of Provenance when Dean is lying to women about his job to get into bed with them, but even then, like, eh? The whole scene (and all the other such scenes) are depicted with a lightheartedness that is hard to read malice into, and Jackles plays that part with such a wide-eyed “Wow! I get to have sex now!” that it’s hard not to feel anything but happy for the guy. I do suspect that Dean is supposed to be characterized as “treating women like whores/expendable” and so does not have an attachment to his mother in this season because he’s not allowed to have a complex relationship with a woman.

SAM Uh boy. So Sam’s arc begins with his girlfriend getting immolated - we learn later that Sam wanted to propose to her and so she was getting in the way of the demon’s plans for “kids like him.” Whatever that means - the show does not communicate its stakes to us AT ALL, more on that later. Sam gets some episodes of characterization throughout. The only two I can remember are the one with the abused psychic and the one where a woman decides she’s in love with him within seconds of meeting him. In neither episode to I really feel like I understand Sam as a character. We are told at various points that he really loved Jessica and her death has affected him greatly. At the beginning of the season, he dreams about it often, but these dreams end up being psychic in nature (I think?) and fall off by mid season. He doesn’t have a keepsake of hers to gaze at longingly or any other way of showing he’s having trouble letting go. Dean basically lets him off the leash to go kiss Sarah in Provenance, which he seems pretty happy to do and has no real guilt over after. Sam’s characterization is carried out very directly - we are told what he is feeling or had felt, instead of some combination of saying it via dialogue and reading it from his actions. I’ve mentioned that I don’t think Jarp is especially strong as an actor, but I have to chalk this up to both weaknesses in writing and acting because scenes that communicate Sam’s internal world are largely nonexistent IMO.

We are told that the connection between their mother’s death and Jess’s death has had a great impact on Sam. He believes that he is cursed so that the “people he loves” (read, women) will die. While in a broad sense this might be true as the demon does admit to have targeted Sam, the supposed “curse” is not really dealt with by Sam except as a barrier in his journey to move on from lost love. Jess’s death served as Sam’s call to adventure at the beginning of the season and should give some emotional connection to Sam’s continued commitment to hunting, but until the final episodes Sam’s involvement in the monster world is continually explained as “wants to find dad” and not “wants to break curse.” In these episodes, Sam’s Jess backstory comes back and we are told that his desire to kill the demon makes him “like John.” Which. Is. Stupid. Let me explain.

In terms of the theming, Sam’s wanting to kill the demon even though it might cost the lives of any number of the Winchesters makes sense because of his established relationship with his family. He wanted to have a normal life which alienated him from Dean and John. Sam has very negative memories of John, and has little brother blindness to the stuff Dean did for him growing up and is largely unhappy with Dean as well. Thus it is not surprising that to Sam, a Winchester dying is not as large a price to pay if it means that Sam gets to have a normal life.

HOWEVER. I am giving the show a LOT of credit here because they DO NOT make that connection, instead going for the stupid “Sam is like John” parallel which is treated almost like a surprise reveal. John’s reasons for killing the demon are NOT Sam’s reasons for killing the demon. John is motivated by revenge to an insane degree: it has consumed his life and the lives of both of his sons. Sam is not revenge motivated. He moves on from Jess’s death in literally THE EPISODE before the finale run starts. Sam is motivated by what he has always been motivated by: his desire for a normal life, including a wife who wont burst into flames. So on a thematic level, short-handing these character conflicts as “Sam is like John” (which is explicitly stated multiple times throughout these episodes) does not work because these characters are approaching family from a very different place even if they end up with the same goal.

I do want to mention that I think Sam’s backstory of wanting a normal life could have been set up better; the show does a good job with Dean’s “too much responsibility too young” child stand-in, but Sam does not get a “I just wanted to go to prom” child stand-in. Which I miss because that would be HILARIOUS. I think the issue the show has here with Sam is, in short, that Sam wanting to be normal is Very Boring, whereas the world of monsters and how Tortured and Jaded everyone is is much Sexier.

JOHN The text of the show is pretty unabashed about telling us things that John did that a reasonable audience member could interpret as being Very Bad. In the brief moments he has on the show, the dynamic between him and his sons is mixed. There are plenty of heartfelt family moments, and there are plenty of fights. I think the show is definitely weakest when it is following John by himself. I do not care about John except as he relates to Sam and Dean, and really if he is in any sort of danger I just want him to die based on how awful he is as a person, so the suspense does not swing the way the writers maybe wanted it to. 

I think the twist at the end, where Dean realizes the demon has possessed their dad because he’s acting nicer, just b a r e l y works based on what they’ve set up. Honestly, I think the real problem is that John Winchester’s actor does not, to me, read as having any onscreen charisma. In the altercations that he has with Sam, I don’t really feel a threat from him. There isn’t any explosive or destructive energy, just sort of “your mom is mad you ate the last of her ice cream” energy. I’ve literally BEEN a more intimidating fake drill sergeant than John Winchester and I’m 5 feet tall and 110 lbs. John has big sad wet dog energy. He can get mad, but not in a way that’s actually intimidating. Thus, him telling Dean that he’s proud is sort of like “yeah, I bet this milksop is proud or whatever” and not “wow I would have expected that character to be a lot more upset right now.” I get that family dynamics can be complicated and a parent can cause you Bone Pain with just a look that to anyone else would seem harmless, but this is a television show where things have to read on screen. One Look Bone Pain is a lot more nuanced to construct. I think John being Big Mean Drill Sergeant is what they’re trying for, but in my opinion he's mostly just annoying.

Anyway John sucks.

WHAT’S NOT THERE The above talks a lot about what *is* in the show vis. the family theme. But Emily, this is a monster show. What about the monsters? Well. What about them indeed.

This first season of Supernatural is very clearly referencing the tradition of The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A lot of former X-Files people are credited on the season and they mention BTVS by name in an episode that is clearly themed around season 6 Buffy villains. Howmever. Both TXF and BTVS have a very important thing that Supernatural does not. STAKES. And not just ones meant for vamps that then get ignored by SPNs stupid vamp lore voice over.

Both BTVS and TXF handle their monsters very differently. BTVS is a universe where the main character has been fully initiated into the world of monsters so that, throughout the course of the episode, it is reasonable for her to detail pretty specifically what the monster is and what it is capable of. On the other hand, the characters in TXF must always be kept on the edge of the monster world, getting faint glimpses here and there. Usually, Mulder has an expository scene giving information on “what is known” at the beginning of the episode and then further monstrosity is communicated to the audience via interstitial scenes that tell the audience what the monster is and where it’s going, introducing dramatic tension: AA NO SCULLY DON’T TOUCH THAT IT’S SUPER GROSS. Both avenues successfully communicate to the audience what the monsters are (approximately), what they can do, and what their motivations are. This means that in the climactic scene, the audience knows what the STAKES are. They know what might be lost of the main characters fail, they know what the characters need to overcome to succeed, and they know what the monster is trying to accomplish.

Now. Some of the MOTW episodes in Supernatural do communicate what the monster is and what it wants. Scarecrow and Bugs are two that come to mind that both do this. Tellingly, both of these episodes also seem very modeled on TXF (compare/contrast Bugs with the trash golem episode of TXF where Mulder hip thrusts after sticking a flamingo in the yard, essay for another time).

Home is the first Supernatural episode that I identified as being extremely plot-oriented after the pilot. It’s also the first episode after the pilot to give sole writing credit to Kripke. There are interstitial scenes wherein the audience sees spooky stuff happening. However, these scenes do not further the audience’s understanding of the monster - we already know the house is evil and trying to kill people, and that’s pretty much all those scenes show. Moreover, Sam and Dean do not learn more about the monster in the house during this episode; their arc is basically just “Wow, isn’t it strange that the house is spooky now? Our mom died here!” The resolution at the end is borderline incomprehensible and their mother just sort of. Appears. Out of nowhere and then vanishes again with very little emotional weight given to this occurrence later in the episode or in the next episode. My summary of Home was pretty much “I did not like this and don’t want to be mean.” I talked about how I like monsters in monster shows, whereas Supernatural is more of a soap opera.

And yeah, the finale of Supernatural (written by Kripke) basically follows that track as well. I don’t know what these demons are or what they want. I don’t know what they can do besides possess people. When Meg confronts people and talks all big it’s hard for me to take seriously because I don’t know what she wants or what she is capable of, except in that one scene where she wanted to fuck Sam which. gross!

This is what I mean by saying that Supernatural does not have stakes. When the choice between losing a family member verses not defeating the monster is posited, the only reason I as an audience member feel engaged is the family conflict that has been established. There is no tension about the monster because I just have to assume that it will do whatever the writers decide it should do. I’m not weighing the odds of the Winchesters winning, I’m just watching them point guns at each other and hoping for the best.

CONCLUSION Jensen Ackles does a good job of playing Dean and he should get an award especially for his performances in the last two episodes of the show. IMO, he basically carried the emotional weight of the conflict and really made us root for Sam to not shoot his dad which is HARD because of how badly John sucks. I’m going to keep watching this show because of Jensen Ackles playing Dean Winchester. Fight me about it.

I think season 1 of Supernatural felt like watching two different shows with the same main characters. On the one hand, you have the MOTW episodes which invariably begin with “Here’s why we’re not tracking down our dad, even though that’s our stated motivation” and then tell a nice monster mystery with some good character beats. On the other hand, you have the series arc episodes, which are soap operas with demonic elements. I’m fine with it - because of Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester. I’m interested to see what season 2 is like.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Pre-Wayward Sisters Rewatch Notes

1x09: HAVE SOME PATIENCE WHILE WE GO TO MISSOURI

I've been through here so recently but it still cracks me up in the intro when it recaps that Mary "is never coming back", and then the ground it goes on to cover with her which is literally just her season 12 arc she returns to deal with properly. It's pretty much neither here nor there, and while technically I'm rewatching this for Missouri, I have to admit I'm like 90% coming back here because of the phone call parallel to 13x01's prayer because I like tormenting myself and that really sealed the deal on if I would come back to rewatch, since I covered seasons 1-4 in the hiatus.

It's interesting to me that the recap covers so much of the already established Winchester Family History circa 1x09 because it's going over the mythos of the family that led us to this point where we go to the home to explore all this and dig down into the emotional drama behind everything... To actually expose some of the things that we've been sitting on until this point. Our first sight of John since the Pilot, and Mary's last moments in her chronological story until 11x23.  And beginning to get into the mystery of the evil that was done to Sam, and Mary's part in it.

The reason I say all this is because obviously when we get to the season 13 episodes introducing us to our Wayward squad, the recaps of the episodes are going to have to cover this same ground - to tell us who everyone is, to bring them into the fold and to tie their stories together. Hopefully by the proper Wayward Sisters episode when we've had all the new girls' stories, we'll get a recap with a very similar feel: just a straightforward "this is the family, do you want to find out more about them?" sort of explanation.

I also remember from the rewatch I did in the summer that the Home one stood out to me for being so focused only on the Winchester mythos and the surrounding ones were more about the monsters and fighting and "saving people hunting things" that the family focus felt far more important here even before the episode started.

It's weird, it makes me preemptively excited to see the family come together just because I know they'll have to do the montage, and like this one was in a low key way, it will high key be a special event, because it will be ABOUT the new family we care about.

-

I am momentarily distracted by how this episode opens on Sam's vision and then him obsessing over drawing the tree from outside the house over and over. I watched 1x17 last night with my mum and it reminds me of this season's great subtle mirroring and repetition of moments and ideas and motifs, when Dean is obsessing over his mystery symbol. That was the silly example of this to break the tension but to keep consistency through the season, subtly repeating ideas in a way that just keeps it all kind of the same aesthetic, of Sam and Dean doodling on motel paper... Anyway, reminds me of Dabb era's methods but they have 12 seasons of past canon to play with and in season 11 it was extremely blatant the way they revisited old ideas and told us they were shaking them up and doing them differently or just bringing them back for our consideration. I wonder if anyone ever collected up all the ways season 1 internally mirrors itself. It's really just a spiral of mirrors that unlike the character development spiralling closer and closer to a desired end, this spirals out and out that the more canon there is the more there is to reference and repeat, and so it grows exponentially in mirrored subject matter...

At this point Wayward Sisters is going to have a bit of a job navigating the story to tell its own stuff in a fresh way without falling back on the repeated ideas - I don't know if we should be looking for mirroring or if introducing the characters as part of Supernatural's main canon means they can be used by the narrative in this way but only when they get to their own show will they then build their own language. The new show means they can play around with new ways of telling things and the tropes will probably be very different all over the place. Like, for once I'm not expecting a new psychic character to massively mirror Sam, even though Home and how Missouri and Sam bond over his powers is obviously like the main reason to come back here to rewatch before we get an episode where she does it with her own granddaughter. I don't think there's anything evil behind Patience's powers especially if we're assuming they're inherited from Missouri and they're not going to introduce some weird ideas about where those powers came from - it's enough having them I think :P

On the other hand if Patience is being hunted by a hungry wraith that likes her powers then it IS a parallel to all the interest in Jack for HIS powers. We'll see how it shakes out but once they're in a show where they're the main characters (and I really hope Patience is the POV character - I think actually not long after I was talking about that somewhere I saw an interview suggesting she WOULD be, which is AWESOME) then the fact that Patience is/was a Sam and Jack mirror will be utterly by the by. Really I just hope they don't bend her to meet the perfect criteria for a mirror but develop her for herself and put Sam and Jack in her shadow.

-

Sam realises they need to go home and this is the motivation to reveal that he has been having psychic nightmares - the fact that someone is in trouble and needs saving and the only way to explain to Dean why he knows this is because he suspects he's psychic. For narrative parallels to whatever might happen in 13x03 purposes, I'm interested in how Patience's story compares to Sam's, as she is reconnecting with Missouri by the sounds of things, and has her own issues with being disconnected from her family probably - this episode is still filled with massive disconnects and both of their parents withholding information or just outright avoiding them, seemingly for their own protection. (Mary being rather more direct about protecting them in a heroic way than John, hiding in the shadows refusing to confront them with the mytharc knowledge about Sam). Patience is prooobably going to be out of the loop on what's happening to her, or out of the family loop, which means that this is going to be personal discovery for her too.

-

Oh hey and then Sam gets them through the door into the house by using a conditional amount of the truth (they're sam and dean winchester and they used to live here) just like in 13x01 Dean just used the truth to the sheriff and got her on-board and them out of jail with that frankness... Sometimes it pays.

-

OH GOD Dean having to relive the fire by telling it to Sam... and 13x01 starting with Dean re-imagining/dreaming/having a vision about it again :<

-

I swear I started this trying to tell myself I would not make this about Man Pain because this is the Wayward Sisters watch but I am an addict

-

Dean goes to make the call and there's a big blue shipping container thing beside him and it's so claustrophobic, like he's chosen the most confined secret space to make the call... It's in total contrast to the vast open space he prayed in - but he STILL shuffled into the shadow of the (blue) building in order to make the prayer and get that illusion of privacy and confinement. The wide shot as he goes in here shows him behind the car and weaving between gas station junk and between these two buildings/large structures. In 13x02 just the random car parked at the back stops Dean from being entirely alone and exposed. I'll take that as a commentary on his layers and how open he is being, although it's sort of awkward when both times, of course, he's going for a super private call that he's going to open himself up for completely, revealing deep down things that have never been exposed before.

People literally started loving Dean about this exact second of the show because he broke so wonderfully to cry and reveal he's not all his top layer stuff. I think someone on the superspecpod (2 of them?) said/agreed on this moment.

-

Of course we can assume Chuck is listening and not acting, not just because he's omnipotent and abnormally attached to Dean of all humans, but also because John literally did hear this voicemail and either already was in or came straight to Lawrence.

-

God the fact he makes the call in front of the men's room but then it's the buccaneer's room in 13x02... what a goofy episode... I hate it... Pfft

-

THIS IS SO HARD TO WATCH.

I rank Dean's pain proportionate to his experience, and this is definitely the worst he's ever been at this point, mostly because we never see him cry until then.

He certainly is dealing better than in 13x02 because he still has a job to do and it might be hard but at least he has some sort of focus and a reason for being there, and even if everything is all messed up (he has to be back here AND Sam has just revealed he's psychic) that's not completely and utterly unbearable in the same way losing Mary and Cas (and even Crowley) has made him shut down so hard in season 13. There's no forward momentum for him. Jack is not enough of a motivation >.>

-

SAM: All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There’s someone named El Divino. There’s, uh –-[He laughs.]—there’s the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley—

Dear lord bring back these other guys just to kill them off for the epic 13 years of continuity you could get for free.

El Divino would be hilarious because I'm guessing the divine -> cas connection would be especially hilarious to play on

-

These lines are moments apart:

SAM: [reading] I went to Missouri and I learned the truth. [...] DEAN: Why didn’t you tell him? MISSOURI: People don’t come here for the truth. They come for good news.

Yeah, not that she gave John any.............................. or did she not tell him EVERYTHING she suspected/read about what had happened to Sam in that night? Exactly how far-ranging are her powers? Could she have seen what Azazel did by proximity to the attack around the time it happened and to John? She could see that dude's wife was having an affair, which is out of his knowledge range, so does that mean she knew about Mary's deal, which is loosely coded as infidelity to John with Azazel?

Gaaaah.

-

but oh NO - Missouri takes one look at Sam and Dean and specifically analyses Sam's woes as missing his dead loved one and Dean's as his missing parent...

*flippy flippy to season 13's entire framing of their loss*

-

TBH Missouri getting annoyed at Dean asking where their father is is probably specifically because she knows exactly where he is, aka hiding in the spare room upstairs doing whatever angsty things John does, and she's trying to shake Dean off of asking, and she is probably not that great at lying when she is in the middle of it all instead of just cheerfully telling people what they want to hear.

-

Maybe the whack you with a spoon thing was also to make Dean so uncomfortable with her he wouldn't keep bugging her for info about things she did not want to admit right then.

Keep them on track

-

I do feel like she was here to challenge them, not to nurture them, and I think it's weirdly the same issue people are having with Mary in season 12 and Dean "parenting" Jack in season 13, where she is not actually meant to be a motherly character, and I have historically had no issues with her in the past, before fandom and everything needing to be tuned to being good to your fave or otherwise the Worst. She's interesting and introduced even just with that guy she lies to as being mercurial and emotionally untrustworthy. She lets them behind the veil as it were since they know she's really psychic but clearly using that power carefully and not being too accurate all the time for people when the truth hurts and her powers can be better used for reading people and working out what would be best to tell them... But for hunters it's a different story... but that doesn't change her default personality... Especially as the end of the episode reveals she has been withholding literally the object of this season's quest from them at this early stage. She literally plays them like her customers except with the personal plot info she can't tell them.

So when she goes through the door saying Dean's not the sharpest tool the shed, she is not a person in a position of emotional responsibility to them, we just see Sam and Dean as scared confused little ducklings (like Jack in season 13) and people being harsh with them, especially I think when we come back to them with years of seeing them grow up and grow harder, so they're all soft and fluffy and mostly unharmed at this point, it's so easy to be defensive of them... And I mean I AM because DEAN, but not so much I think this means Missouri is a horrible person or that she's cruel or Dean shouldn't give her the time of day in season 13 or whatever. I find her to be interesting and she's an obstacle they DON'T overcome because she is twice as fast as them with her psychic advantage so she can help them for the GREATER GOOD, but conceal their much more personal issue from them, making her a minor (friendly and great good-motivated) antagonistic as far as the stuff that matters on the character side of things goes.

In season 13 she has nothing to lose in hiding things from them or lying to them, I bet, especially as she appears to be the one asking them for help rather than them coming to her, so I assume she will be more open, and I also assume that with 13 years space in between, Dean is not going to hold a serious grudge for the way she treated him - because those words are just a few from a one-off meeting with her rather than a childhood of negging or something. Like with Mary she doesn't have responsibility over them as adults, or a moral obligation to them in the same way a recognised caregiver would.

If she can read inside their heads and treats Dean this way she is doing it for a reason and she's running circles around them to not reveal that John has been in contact with her or that even at this point perhaps she knows he's already in town.

-

OH NO the nursery scene... This is where it all happened. A dark energy in the room...

And now we know that Jack being born and sloping off to the nursery to hide in the corner was heralded by a wave of powerful GOOD energy, not the "toxic" energy of Lucifer and the same thing that Azazel corrupted this room with.

-

Also Missouri calling Dean an amateur for using an EMF meter might be more of the negging but this scene is Missouri being a serious professional at the ghost hunting thing just by  being herself... I think since she's coming back and it will be a less personally charged episode - pretty much has to be - then her natural competence at hunting will be an asset. She might not be able to handle wraiths as easily as ghosts but she certainly has a whole load of real spell ingredients and knowledge about things that really work for actual hunting. She's not a hapless bystander even if her day job is fortune telling...

-

Oh and then we have Sam out-psychic-ing Missouri. Probably because he's got demon blood but it is interesting what might happen with Patience - if she's more sensitive than Missouri as well, or if they have the same level of talent. It would change from being ominous about Sam - with Missouri as our default example of what the generic psychic of this world building can do as the season 1 intro of such a character, and how Sam is unnerving because he can do more - to a story about outgrowing the talent of your elders and forging your own way in the world with your own strength that only you can define since help can only go so far when you outshine them... In storytelling purposes I can't really imagine they won't make Patience as good as (but with a better innovative mindset) or better than Missouri (in raw power) just because "oh here's a slightly less psychic character" just doesn't really sparkle off the page as a hook. We'll see, but I can imagine it being kinda like the stuff that happens with Sam here, but not in an ominous way, just in a way that Patience is going to move on and join the Wayward Sisters.

Of course Missouri could just die and motivate her even if she has average/normal powers, because she won't be measuring herself against Missouri and it would be a motivation to be as good as she was from a start where her powers are a bit wonky.

(Although with Jack around I can see them being veeery tempted by her being super powerful but not knowing how to control it yet just for the sake of having a parallel.)

-

I am still not over Sam saying he can "see" Mary now before she appears to him, neatly book-ending this scene and 12x22 and Dean asking Mary to see HIM, and basically the fact they stole literally Mary's entire arc in season 12 from the staging of this scene.

And if you want to keep recycling it in reverse, she burns up again in 13x01 in Dean's dream, to cap that all off.

Wheee

-

It's weird having Mary on screen in this over-dramatic OMG it's MARY way where it's the most amazing thing that's ever happened, and then we got a whole season of her where she was just kinda around :P

-

SAM: What’s happening to me? MISSOURI: I know I should have all the answers, but I don’t know.

And yep she's still lying to them and hiding everything she knows, and as such even though she's kinder to Sam since he's probing her less and less snappy than Dean, she doesn't give him the exact advice and information he needs even though apparently she and John knew a hell of a lot for ages...

You know what I would like? This is a total pipe dream, but for her to tell Dean what she actually knew when they met her, and maybe even apologise for withholding information because John said it was for the best and all. Because Sam was FUCKED UP by all this and honestly considering it's all one emotional arc right through the show it makes you wonder what Sam being given actual information by someone other than Azazel when it amuses him to do so would have ever done to help him figure out who he was, what was happening to him, and how he should react to it.

He's sitting on these steps feeling probably somewhat the same as Jack did in 13x02 where he was sitting on that crate in the alley, although from a less aggressive situation, just, kinda reflecting on everything that happened. He sees there's a pattern in everything kicking off, and now Mary apologises to him... And he's got these powers he's only just daring to even voice exist and grappling with what will be his myth arc for basically ever... And Missouri lies to him and withholds information he needs. John knows stuff about Sam - he DIES knowing more about Sam than they ever did until waaay too late. He probably knew BY THEN that Sam had demon blood, which wasn't revealed until the end of season 2, but logically follows from John's last words to mean that whatever reveal about Sam came at the end of the season, this is what he was worried Dean had to save Sam from (or kill him) at the start of the season when he could last have any input on that. And he spent most of season 1 chasing Azazel or working out how to kill him rather than researching Sam so I go back to wondering if Missouri put most of it together herself.

I wonder how much she didn't tell John.

I wonder what she DID tell John the moment the credits rolled on the episode and they were free to talk plot without spoiling anything for us. Did Missouri get him a cup of tea, sit down with him and tell him her full professional opinion of Sam which kicked off the entire everything else John did re: Sam? It's only a couple of episodes before he's on the other side of the country chasing leads on Azazel.

I wonder if she'd tell us any of this 13 years later...

...

I bet she says basically nothing, but these are my hanging questions about season 1 and 2 which ONLY she can enlighten us on.

-

"Don't you boys be strangers!" "We won't." "See you around!"

welp, sorry Alpha Vampire and "see you next season" but this absolutely and emphatically takes the cake now she is actually returning at long last and it's not just an amusing line about her never coming back - it's an amusing line about her not coming back for thirteen freakin years.

-

Oh look it's JDM

-

This rewatch is so weird and messed up about what characters and plot things we're going to pass through. Sure the Wayward Sisters are utterly embedded in the show and even w/o the Patience thing go back more than half it's run - 3/4 of its run in fact - but they appear in such strange places tangential to massive happenings that following the characters around is going to be The Most Chaotic Rewatch Ever, for someone who likes meta-ing patterns.

I mean after this my next episode is to hop along to Claire's intro.

-

Anyway, John resisting going to see them but "not until I know the truth" which I assume is not the reason Chuck is being hands off in season 13 but I assume he thinks he has his reasons not to intervene.

John learned the truth from Missouri about monsters and the like, but now he's chasing the much bigger, plot important truths... It's going to mean he basically never sees his sons again, except for the prolonged contact at the end of this season/start of the next where he's sitting on whatever he knew about Sam which prompted his last words to Dean. I seriously, SERIOUSLY wonder if him saying he needs to know the truth ties back to "I went to Missouri and learned the truth" and that she DID tell John that Sam has demon blood and she put it all together between their initial contact and meeting Sam with his powers activated in their present day.

Oh gosh, I am sure someone has come up with that before, probably 13 years ago, but still. That's a good conspiracy to end on...