Okay, I know that this will be a blip in the spn tag, but I. Don’t. Care.
My theory: Chuck is inside Jack’s body.
Let. Me. Explain.
Okay, so Chuck can see the future. All possibilities, all realms. Free Will exists and he hates it, but he still knows it can happen.
So what does he do? He plans contingences.
He’s up against the Winchesters. Boys he specifically created to do the impossible. He knows that the 1 in a billion chance that they succeed is an actual possibility. He sees everything. Dean, Sam, and Jack are literally the only beings still left in existence. He must have noticed Jack sucking up life force. He KNOWS that Jack can replace him. So what does he do?
Chuck infuses his God power with his personality.
Amara’s depressed, she’s not doing anything to stop him. Heck, we have precedent with Amara that Chuck is powerful enough to absorb and dominate an equally powerful being. (Which we have not seen that Jack is).
The boys don’t know. Cas is dead. No one will be able to tell.
So Chuck has his fun kicking the boys around and when Jack absorbs his power, he’s actually welcoming a parasite. Chuck takes over Jack while leaving just an iota of his personality behind to power his previous body.
The boys are clueless and Jack does not have enough power to fight back. Chuck is in control.
That’s why Jack does not go back to the bunker! Why he’s content to keep his aunt locked away in his mind!
That’s why Castiel remains in heaven instead of coming back to earth!
That’s why Dean dies on a freaking rusty nail!
Chuck wanted his ending. He’s passing as Jack just enough that people don’t suspect. He’s drinking up the irony of Castiel unable to be with Dean, because he is helping “Jack” rebuild heaven. And Chuck is going to put John riiiight over there just to rub in some salt in Dean’s wounded soul.
The boys, Cas, and the rest of them think that free will won. But no.
Chuck did.
If Dean doesn’t want Chuck’s apple pie life, then he’ll die as daddy’s little instrument.
If Sam didn’t want to stay in hell content in the knowledge he saved his brother, well then he’ll live hell on earth constantly reminded how he couldn’t save Dean.
If Cas wanted Dean to live freely, well too bad boo. You ruined my story.
Chuck’s still writing the story. And The Winchesters don’t even know it.
TLDR: 15x20 was Chuck’s ending because Chuck took over Jack’s body when Jack absorbed his divine power.
You don’t know how scary this post is to me, because I had the exact same thought.
If you look at how Jack stands at the end, it’s not at all how Jack normally stands
Jack’s arms are normally by his sides and slightly in front of him. I always say it’s because of his wings behind him pushing them forward, he’s a bit awkward as he’s also part archangel.
Well this is Jack in the last episode, see how Un-Jack-Like that pose is? It’s just wrong on him, it’s too adult, it’s not like Jack at all
But know who also stands like that?
Chuck…
So could just just be a coincidence? Maybe the director told Alex to stand like that because now he carries the light… then how do you explain this
That shrug is exactly the same
The smile
For reference this is how Jack used to smile
Look at both the eyebrow movement, even in the still, Jack raises his eyebrows when he smiles, look at how Jack actually looks happy. His full face lights up when he smiles. The smile after Jack become god is more a smug smile, his eye brows aren’t even raised. It looks like Chuck’s smile
@studio-hatter please join me in losing my shit about this
also while we’re here i’m still entirely insulted by dean getting a dog called ‘miracle’ that was effectively a replacement for cas, like he was entitled to one (1) miracle after saving the goddamn universe and restoring his own free will for the first time in his entire life, and he doesn’t get cas, he gets a fucking DOG like no… no thank you…
cas who has canonically been labeled “the dog who thinks he’s people” and “cas is like a talking dog” and “attack dog” and “purse dog” and more than I can even count, but in the end dean is not allowed to return his love confession and is given instead a dog they had the audacity to name “miracle” because after years of dean being canonically terrified of dogs, having a lot of weird trauma surrounding dogs, and being told point-blank that he does not like dogs… and after years of showing us that it was Sam who always wanted a dog, whose stories about what he did when he “ran away rom the life” frequently surrounded dogs and him living happily with dogs going back to his childhood and one of his own heaven memories… they literally chose to effectively swap out castiel, the confessed love of dean’s life… for a damn dog…
I don’t find it cute, or sweet, or “the one bright spot in 15.20.” I’m repulsed by it all.
(I mean, I love the doggo, she’s a good girl and deserves love and pets, but I can’t find it cute or sweet or want the dog anywhere near anything having to do with this either…)
I mean it’s another piece of subtext in the episode that just feels weird, like it’s supposedto make you go WTF?!?!
Because it’s not even like Dean gets to enjoy life with Miracle, because he’s dead in a hot minute.
And that feels, yet again, as if the episode’s subtext is making a snarky comment about the episode’s supra-text.
Dead brain: Dean is queer-coded because he likes Broadway musicals and wearing panties.
Live brain: Dean is queer-coded because he feels constant pressure to offer up excuses for things he “shouldn’t like” but somehow can’t stop liking even though he’s embarassed and defensive.
Third eye brain: Dean is queer-coded because over time he learns to be proud of his “weird” preferences and accept and love himself for who he actually is, rather than being ashamed of the “traditional ideal” he isn’t.
I mean, we could argue this is how his queer-coding evolved, on one level.
But, if you don’t think the cucumber water in 12x07 Rock Never Dies was Berens writing some “Dean likes dick” subtext, I don’t know what to tell you, seeing as Oscar Wilde made the exact same queer-coded joke in the Importance of Being Earnest, when Algernon eats all the cucumber sandwiches, which were intended for the ladies.
The cucumber water was definitely queer coding but the thing is, Dean doesn’t just go “cucumber water, yummy!”
He sees the cucumber water and thinks “that might be good- NO! Men don’t drink cucumber water! It’s for the ladies!”
But then Sam drinks it, which gives Dean an excuse to both try, and enjoy, this new thing. But he wouldn’t have done it without some kind of excuse.
When people are like “it was really important for Dean to come out of the closet in the finale” it wasn’t because we needed validation that “cucumber water = queer.” It’s because we want Dean to be able to embrace his preferences and be happy with himself.
Yes true, and that’s why his N. American silence in 15x18, 15x19 and 15x20 in relation to Cas, feels like violence done to him (symbolised by that goddam rusty nail). We know he had something (queer) to say.
You know, I have plenty to say about John but at least what I dislike about him isn’t stuff i literally made up…when most people hate John it’s because they can’t follow a story logically without inserting outrageous levels of hypocrisy and isolating his behaviour from the wider plot.
Like I even have trouble with the concept that Sam was his favourite as so often proclaimed by Dean stans, to whom Dean is this fragile abused baby boy who’s father charged him with his brother’s care for the hell of it. Can’t be because he knew that he had a target on his head and wasn’t going to live as long as Dean and if his youngest son wasn’t handled with incredible care and responsibility he could literally destroy the entire world.
Like sure I have issues with Johns prioritising revenge, but I also followed the story- enough to know that if he hadn’t learned what he learned about the Supernatural and passed that legacy on, Dean would likely be dead, and Sam would become a puppet for the Antichrist. So like- what John was battling wasn’t just a personal battle isolated to the confines of his family relationships. He knew in their reality that the literal apocalypse is a thing that could happen and that humanity as an entirety could be damned because of his sons, and he didn’t just shoot them both and then himself- which is honestly more than most boomer dudes with PTSD AND living in a reality where the devil is actually real, would have done. Sorry.
And shut up with the homophobic John stuff there’s literally nothing to support it for a second it’s just all projection and it’s boring. Everyone rages at the supernatural writers for their cardboard characterisation but they’re nothing on the fandom’s lazy nuance absent takes.
Or: why Sam has more guns, but Dean is the better shot
So I can’t find much proper meta about the weapons (and even the SPN wiki was making mistakes.) But I think there’s a goldmine of good character stuff here. Ryan Steacy has been the SPN armorer since the beginning of the show, and he’s put some really nice thought into the boys. Respect, love, appreciation for him.
So… I’ll just jump right in, shall I?
Dean’s M1911A1
Dean carries thebaddass American pistol. It’s very macho, very MURICA. The 1911 was the service gun during WWI & WWII, right up through the Korean war. So it gets (and deserves) a lotof love. They have a reputation for needing more maintenance than some modern pistols, but considering how often Dean’s just sitting there, casually cleaning while chatting with Sam, he probably sees this as more a feature than a bug. He’s a natural mechanic. Firearm maintenance is probably relaxing and zen for him.
(I do think that for Samit’s more a stressed-based compulsion. He tends to do it when he’s feeling helpless or scared. In “Hello, Cruel World” Dean interprets Sam’s gun-cleaning as sign that he’s in a bad headspace.
BOBBY: Well, at least he’s not curled up under the sink. DEAN: Yeah, no, he’s just sitting there silently field stripping his weapon.
And Hallucination!Lucifer sees it as evidence that Sam’s suicidal. Samgoes for a more traditionally low-maintenance pistol, and I kinda think Dean may clean it for him a lot of the time.)
But anyway. Dean’s 1911 holds large .45 caliber Colt ACP rounds - which means it can only fire sevenshots before he has to reload. (Sam’s pistol, by the way, can fire seventeenshots in a row.)
And people who like the 1911 say this is fine.The bullets are so big and the gun is so powerful that seven shots is all you need. (You hear the phrase “stopping power” or “knock-down power” a lot.) But there are also the people who think that the 1911 is just over-powerful, and it isn’t worth it to sacrifice carrying capacity and accuracy for pure force.
Like, I don’t think it’s ever explicitly stated, but of course he is?
Their entire childhood, it would have been Sam going back to the motel room early to studyordo his homework, while Dean dutifully puts in another three hours shooting coke cans off fenceposts.
This also helps explain his choice of handgun. Dean uses a less accurate pistol with a smaller carrying capacity because he can.He knows he’s going to hit the thing the first time. And if he’s going to be fighting literal wendigos, I guess he wants the holes he pokes in them to be as big as possible.
(plus all this classic Americana does kind of go with the Impala)
Sams’ Taurus PT92AFS
Sam spends the first season borrowing Dean’s Smith & Wesson 5906. It’s very clearly Dean’s - it fires .45 ACP rounds (Dean’s preference) and Dean sometimes actually loadsit before handing it over to Sam. Since Sam doesn’t actually want to be a hunter though most of S1, this makes perfect sense.
Then in S2, Sam gets his Taurus PT92AFS – basically, a budget version of the Beretta M92. In a lot of ways, the Taurus is the souped-up Honda civic you get when you can’t afford a Ferrari. (and in both cases, you’ll totally get people saying they’re being smart by not paying extra for the brand name.)
A Taurus PT92AFS is a practical and cautious choice. It’s not the least bit flashy. It’s light and accurate, it carries a lot of rounds, and they’re little .99mm rounds, which are more budget conscious and accurate than .45 ACP rounds.
Partway into S2, Sam’s Taurus gets nickel plating and pearl grip. Possibly Sam did this so his gun would match Dean’s. Or possibly Dean customized Sam’s pistol as a gift. (it’s the firearm equivalent of painting racing stripes on your car.) Either way, it’s a pretty darn cute touch.
@supernaturalwiki, it’s because the witch-killing bullets Sam makes are .45 ACP, not .99mm. They wouldn’t fit in Sam’s normal Taurus PT92AFS. He makes them for Dean, so of course he makes them in a caliber that Dean prefers.
Sam’s Taurus Judge is a close-quarters backup piece that fires five shots. This is just in case Dean (the better shot) isn’t able to take out the main threat. Hilariously, the Judge is a revolver that chambers both .45 ACP rounds andshotgun shells. This means Sam can load it up with rock-salt shells orwitch-killing bullets or silver bullets. So you know. Whatever’s on the menu that day.
Soulless!Sam’s Heckler & Koch Mk23
Sam switches over to this when he loses his soul, then switches backto his Taurus products when he gets his soul back. When Soulless!Sam and Sam!Sam fight in their vision quest, they fight Heckler & Koch vs Taurus.
The Heckler & Koch Mk23 is designed to have the power of Dean’s 1911 andthe carrying capacity of Sam’s .99mm handgun. So it’s huge, and very intimidating. It’s waterproof, crazy durable. It’s made by a fancy schmancy German defense contractor known for their precision engineering and their popularity with the special forces. H&K weapons are also known for being crazy expensive. This pistol would have set Sam back at least$2,000 (and for reference, you can get a Taurus PT92AFS for $500, easy.) So, either Soulless!Sam killed someone with a Mk23 and looted it, or somehow raised 2K very quickly. And I’m not even sure which option is more terrifying.
But the Mk23 still has that vibe of practicalityandcautionthat Sam seems drawn too. (’Over-prepared’ is a good word to describe it.) It’s still an in-character choice. Just, Soulless!Sam is more brusque and intimidating when he’s dealing with persons of interest, as opposed to Sam!Sam’s softer, more approachable manner. And I think those two attitudes are pretty well represented by the H&K Mk23 and the Taurus PT92AFS respectively.
Interestingly, the H&K Mk23 does not fire Sam’s normal .99mm bullets. It fires the larger .45 ACP caliber rounds. And Soulless!Sam can get away with this because - I’m pretty sure Soulless!Sam is a much better shot than Sam!Sam.
SAM: Ever since I came back, I am a better hunter than I’ve ever been! Nothing scares me anymore. ‘Cause I can’t feelit.
Like again, why wouldn’the be? Soulless!Sam is ice cold, steady heartbeat in a crisis. Marksmanship is a mental thing as much as it’s practice, and Soulless!Sam’s hands aren’t shaking. And that’swhy he eventually switches back to his Taurus PT92AFS. It doesn’t matter if your shots are more powerful, if they don’t hit anything.
(he still does havethat H&K Mk23, though. He cleans it when he’s in a bad mental place. It’s not like he borrowed it from the Campbells or anything.)
tl;dr
Dean uses big slow American bullets, because he’s a good enough shot to compensate. Sam uses little, accurate European bullets, and he uses a lot of them (because he’s cautious, and not quite as good as shot as his brother.) The witch-killing bullets Sam makes are a larger caliber, because he makes them for Dean. He’s got a little revolver that can take them, but he’d prefer it if he didn’t have to use it so much.
Soulless!Sam is both a better shot, and not adverse to giant expensive German handguns acquired though less-than-legal means. So he switches over to a pistol that shoots giant bullets, and lots of them.
(Also, disclaimer: I do not pretend to be a firearm expert. I’m just here to have fun.)
Corrections for Using the Above as a Writing Resource:
I’m seeing this post go by my dash with tags about using it as a writing resource, but there are some errors in it, so for more accurate writing about the handguns in spn, please take the following into account as well.
Like OP, I am not a firearms expert. The extent of my qualifications for writing about handguns is that I bought one for its intended purpose, regularly shot it for several years, and because I live in a state with tight gun control, was required to take a three month handgun usage class, taught by cops, to get my pistol permit. I welcome correction of any errors.
Ammunition
For people looking to write withtechnical accuracy about Sam and Dean’s handguns, probably the most important correction is that afaik, there is no such thing as “.99mm” ammunition. Sam’s Taurus takes what’s usually just called “9mm” rounds, or slightly more technically “9x19 parabellum”, or “9mm luger”.
Ammunition is classified by the diameter of the cartridge. A .45 has the decimal point in front because it’s .45 of an inch in diameter. A 9mm has no decimal point because it’s 9 millimeters in diameter. A 9x19 round is 9mm across and 19mm long.
.45 APC cartridges, as OP says, have more stopping power than 9mm, while 9mm cartridges are smaller and lighter, allowing both for more rounds before reloading and less recoil/greater accuracy. 9mm is by no means the cautious fallback choice of people with lesser gun handling skills though. 9mm is the most popular ammo in the world; like .45 ammunition, was designed for usage in guns originally made for war (”parabellum” is from the motto of the first manufacturer of 9mm cartridges and means “prepare for war”); and is used by more than half of police forces worldwide.
The meta of handguns (Or: handguns are made for killing/They ain’t no good for nothing else).
In the immortal words of Lynyrd Skynyrd and my gun safety instructor, handguns are made for killing. They’re easy to use and don’t actually take much skill to kill with. There’s slightly more to it than “point and pull trigger” but not a ton, especially compared to other skills like “drive a car from Point A to Point B” or “use a laptop to gain accurate information online”. Dean’s M1911A1 is a badass, classic piece of Americana that’s good at killing. Sam’s Taurus is a big, practical workhorse of a firearm that’s good at killing. They’re owned by two killers who are good at killing.
I think it’s fair, based on the rest of canon as a whole, to deduce that Sam and Dean’s choices of handgun are reflective of their different attitudes towards killing. Both Sam and Dean bear an intergenerational curse: Dean’s is that he’s good at killing and he likes it. Sam’s is that he’s good at killing and he doesn’t like it. Dean’s gun matches his identity; he’s a hunter and is proud of it. He loves classic Americana–his leather jacket, his car, his taste in music, and his gun–and he sees it as part of who he is. Sam’s gun also matches his identity; he’s a hunter because he has to be. He’s there to get the job done with as little of himself sucked into it as possible.
But nothing can be deduced from either canon or Sam and Dean’s handgun choices about who is a better killer. That’s not how handguns really work and it’s not how spn worked thematically.
Symbolism in media isn’t there to tell a story that is different than the story being told on the surface; it’s there to reinforce the story being told on the surface. Sam killed a super-powered vampire dude with razor wire and his bare hands. He destroyed himself with demon blood in order to kill better and with less collateral damage. Here he is shooting the scope off a sniper rifle with his handgun from down two floors and across a street:
Dean, obviously, is also an incredibly skilled and motivated killer. He tortured people for 40 years for a living. There’s a grenade launcher in the back of his car that’s a running gag for most of a season because he wants a chance to destroy something with it so badly. Cain calls him a worthy bearer of the Mark because he’s such a good killer, and he agrees (Sam, we find out later, is also qualified to bear the Mark).
I don’t know anything about sport shooting. Maybe in sport shooting, instructors do “start you off with baby .22mm [sic] bullets, then slowly move you up to something bigger“. But for defensive shooting, at least in my experience, they start you off with whatever gun you bought. A high caliber handgun is all I’ve ever shot and is honestly just not that hard to shoot accurately. Skill comes from practice. Sam and Dean both kill a lot. We’re supposed to understand that they’re not just good at it; they’re exceptional, and although it’s cool (like Han Solo) it’s also destroying them (like Luke Skywalker).
The idea that Sam is a less skillful killer because he doesn’t like it, that he makes witch killing bullets for Dean in Dean’s favorite caliber and then has to have a second gun to act as a back up for his more competent brother, that he picked his handgun because it’s low maintenance and then Dean cleans it for him anyway, or that he picked it to compensate for being a poorer shot–all of that is confirmation bias. None of it is anywhere in the text, and it comes from the idea that Dean is the protagonist and Sam is the deuteragonist. And the actual text of spn is not that.
Obviously, when you’re writing fic, neither technical accuracy nor adherence to canon is necessarily paramount or even desirable. A fic writer might not even be interested in them at all, and that’s fine. But if thoseare factors you want to consider, then I hope this will be a helpful addition.
spn had to open the pilot with the flashback establishing sam and dean as brothers because if they’d started it right in stanford and the first introduction to them was dean tackling sam to the ground and saying “easy tiger” every single person in the audience would assume they were lovers and as it was half of us did anyway
when you started watching supernatural in your teens and then years later you hit 22 and realise that this is how old Sam was in the pilot and so then.. and then you start 4 years of agonising countdown and comparison of your existence until - oh my god - until suddenly you’re 26, dude, and so the true reliving of the tragedy begins
Measuring your life’s milestones by what spn characters were doing when they were your age y’know, as one does - THEY WERE SO YOUNG, your honour. Dean was around 22 too when Sam left. And he’s been hunting alone from when he was ~23 to 26 - THAT’S A BABY, your honour. His prefrontal cortex hasn’t even been fully developed for majority of this time. And then afterwards you no longer need to imagine what he’s been doing - you’ve got 15+ years of visual records ahead of you for you comparison :))) In two years time he’ll sell his soul. In three - he’ll go to hell. In (forty) three and a half - he’ll meet the love of his life…
when you started watching supernatural in your teens and then years later you hit 22 and realise that this is how old Sam was in the pilot and so then.. and then you start 4 years of agonising countdown and comparison of your existence until - oh my god - until suddenly you’re 26, dude, and so the true reliving of the tragedy begins
happy birthday dean. happy happy happy birthday.YOU’RE 43 DUDE- i cant believe it’s been 2 years already since I last saw you? hows Cas? heard from Sam that ever since you guys got married, he has had to deal with the love and pining and the excessive flirting a little more than he already had to (AND he had to deal with A LOT of it even before you guys got together) honestly? i feel bad for him, poor guy
But you know that he loves it, he’s so happy that you’ve finally got someone for yourself, years after Dean Winchester being the man who would always put others before him, you finally have someone for yourself, your little tiny happy world. Sam is happy , more than he could be, and so am I. You would call us cheesy but you don’t realise how good it feels to know that someone you care about actually has someone else who they can be so happy with.
How is baby doing? I bet you’ve been taking care of her like she was your actual baby. Speaking of kids, how is jack?!!! Dude became a god and everything and ive been doing absolutely nothing lmfao. OH BEFORE I FORGET, your wedding anniversary is coming up, what have you planned for Cas???????!!! okay dont forget to send pictures okay?
kind of a tradition now, me writing a letter to you for every birthday of yours, i love this tradition though and you bet you’ll always receive your letter. I could never forget you, you know. No matter how many years go by, you will always be my favourite. I miss you so much. Thank you for being there for me always, thank you for existing and thank you for being my bestfriend. I love you so much and i know you know. happy birthday love.
The most hated film of its time: Supernatural:Carry OnVampyre(1932)
After I witnessed the trainwreck that was the supernatural finale, like everybody else, I asked: Why this story? Why was their last hunt a crappy vampire nest with the lamest vampires ever? Why a nail?
I haven’t thought about it in the last two months, until yesterday when @sapphic_energy reminded me that Jenny had Supernatural’s first queer kiss. Of course, Vampires have been a metaphor for queerness from as far back as their Balkan origin. As we were musing on the fact that Dean was killed by gay monsters (you could say by its own kind) it hit me. It’s not just that Dean was killed by the hand of a vampire, he died the death of one. Metal stake(rebar) through his chest, the way Vampires were pinned to their graves to prevent them from rising again. And for the first time, Dean was laid to permanent rest. It’s another bury your gay death.
Now, one interesting thing here is that vamps in Supernatural don’t die from a stake through the heart, you have to decapitate them. This is a whole different vampire lore. I wondered if I’ll find other real-world vampire references so I started researching. Their mythology was changed a lot by the movies that portrayed them, but one film piqued my interest. Vampyr is a German expressionist horror film, that was shot in the style of a silent-film. You could say, it’s silent vampires. Vampire mimes. Vamp-mimes!
If you are not convinced by this, for some reason, let me tell you how the movie starts: Allan Gray is a student of the supernatural. During his travels, he visits a small french village and stays at an inn. He is awaken from nightmares by a man entering his room. This father tells Allan that his daughter is dying, and leaves him a book about vampires, with the instruction to only open it in case he dies. He leaves Allan with this book and a quest for his unfinished business of saving the girl from the vampire.
Dreyer’s source material for this film was the 1872 novelle Carmilla, a tale of a lesbian vampire told in the form of a case file from an occult detective. Both the movie and the novella are about a hunt for a female vampire who preys on young girls.
Now, this is a pretty nice similarity to how John left the Vampmimes case to his boys through his journal.
This movie uses much older lore, one yet untouched by Hollywood. In it, Vampires are much more spiritual in nature. They are the damned spirits of the gluttonous sinners, who gave into earthly cravings. They prey on the young. Their bite is like possession, their lust infects the victims who will suffer from blood-thirst while their soul suffers from the repulsion they feel towards their cravings. Thus the vampire slowly drives them to suicide, a sin that will damn their soul to hell. The only way to stop this undead (and exorcising them from the victim) is to find their burial and pin them to their grave with a metal stake so they could not rise again. Lust, cravings, shame. The film’s inspiration from its lesbian vampire source material is undeniable.
TW: Dean’s death.
A lot of us were heartbroken to see Dean give up so easily and die from what was essentially assisted suicide, so I hate to see the parallel between the two films, but it’s there. We can’t get more burry your gays than this I’m afraid.
So how do these vampires compare to the final’s vampires? The Vamp-mimes felt different to me even on my first watch. They fit with the non-supernatural lore nicely. Their horrible(and seemingly unnecessary) skull masks make them symbolically more undead, they kidnap young children, the father had to open the door for them(invite them in), we see them exclusively at night and their leader is a lesbian vampire, Jenny.
So let’s say I accidentally stumbled upon the inspiration of this horrible episode. The question is still, WHY? There are two very good reasons why Dabb might have referenced this film.
The protagonist is a man who in his obsession of the supernatural lost sight of what’s real and what is fantasy. Dreyer with his esoteric approach managed to create a dream-like metaphysical experience. The line between dream and reality is not blurred but invisible. It’s visuals create a ghostly world of dancing shadows and ethereal visitations. With its odd pacing and no basic structural logic, the film keeps viewers confused. It’s unsettling compositions, at times leaving the viewer to wonder what exactly is real and what isn’t. At one point Allan’s spirit leaves his body and witnesses his own burial. Oh! And the german title of the film? The dream of Allan Grey. The whole film is an “it’s all a dream” trope basically.
BUT this would be a reference not to the plot, but to how the viewers see the film. So how about a reference to how the viewers felt about the film? Let me copy-paste Wikipedia:
“At this premiere, the audience booed the film which led to Dreyer cutting several scenes out of the film after the first showing. At a showing of the film in Vienna, audiences demanded their money back. When this was denied, a riot broke out that led to police having to restore order with nightsticks. When the film premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1933, Dreyer did not attend. In the USA, the film premiered with English subtitles under the title Not Against The Flesh; an English-dubbed version, edited severely. Dreyer soon had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital in France. The film was a financial failure.”
Lucifer knocking over the entire house of cards - but he used glue.
Okay. We see you BuckLemming. We see you Dabb. We see you.
“Don’t worry ya’ll, we cheated. They may have knocked over what we so carefully built, but it still holds together just fine. This thing we built has what they call structural integrity. It doesn’t fall apart quite so easily.”
GUYS, THE FINAL TWO CARDS EXACTLYFALL OFF THE HOUSE OF CARDS THEY CAREFULLY BUILT.
@caswhoevenisshe Thank you for your cursed insight. You are valued.
I think I’m just fully realizing, as I’m half-rewatching the show via YouTube reaction videos…we really weren’t supposed to love Dean. And we really were not the target audience, and by we I mean a much larger segment of folks than you may think. Eric Kripke (and also Robert Singer) didn’t want a bunch of queer OR mentally ill folks OR women OR people of color OR abuse survivors. Hell, he didn’t even really want an audience of macho manly men!
Eric Kripke was aiming for an audience of Eric Kripkes–the kind of whiny pseudo-intellectual nerdbro who finds men like s1 Dean threatening in real life, thinks being rejected romantically by a woman is comparable to real hardship, views any unfamiliar form of intimacy with some base level of suspicion, and expresses disgust at other men’s promiscuity not because he has more “respect” for women (and don’t get me started on the puritanism of equating sex with disrespect automatically), but because he resents that he can’t do the same.
So, thing is…. I have not watched the episode. I just was spoilered on the explore page on youtube when looking up news and there it was. Thank you so much algorithm for ruining the only episode in 4 years that I actually would have liked to watch unspoilered. That’s off the table now of course…. That said. I will watch it later in full. So take all of this with a shitton of salt, because my opinion is basically based only on Dean’s death scene and Sam’s life montage and the ending in Heaven of them meeting again without any in between so I might miss some vital infos – and yeah maybe I should have waited to post after I have seen the full episode first, then again, it doesn’t really matter, my opinion doesn’t matter, as I have not been involved with fandom or tumblr in ages, but maybe my impression can help someone somewhere to feel a bit better about this ending.
So, with that said. And I guess this will be a surprise to most people, these little ten minutes of episode to me delivered more emotion – though the hair and make up on Jared as Aging!Sam was just awful lol so I am ignoring all that – than all of the past 4 years combined.
Is the ending dissatisfying? I can see how people think that. I have to say, I look at it more objectively since I am not involved in fandom etc. anymore. But imo and I really would not have ever expected to say that about an episode written by Dabb. Imo this ending does make sense. I see a lot of posts going around saying that this ending doesn’t make sense, because of the season long arc of the death of the author and fight for free will and that it is the badly written ending Chuck would have penned. And I kind of think no, it isn’t. It’s just that many people treated the past seasons or watched them with rose coloured glasses.
I have expressed in a single post last week why I have issues with Dabb’s era and people’s appraisal of him, because they excused all the bad writing with that only having been „Chuck’s bad writing“ and therefore Dabb and Co were so extremely clever and amazing and soooooo meta. Which yeah, no Dabb was no genius and neither was a Berens. It was objectively bad and lazy writing. This ending however imo actually makes sense – and people only hate it because they did not get what they wanted. Did I get what I wanted from this ending? Not by a long shot – for one: Dean would have deserved more. Much could have been done better, but from the quality or rather extreme lack thereof since Dabb took over, this ending is more than I ever would have expected possible.
So let me get into the meat of it and why I think that way. I can see why it is frustrating to accept this ending, because it feels like all of what they went through was for nothing, because it was never „truly them“ - and I guess that was Jensen’s biggest issue with that ending – and that Dean dies so quickly after just having been free(d). You see, if you operate with the death of the author and celebrating that fact, because it means true free will for the Winchesters then this ending simply – as dissatisfying as it may feel for the character who just achieved freedom – is a fitting one and indeed does not negate character development made (which arguably was influenced by Chuck and never real), but rather showcases it.
Dean dieing on a hunt, in a mundane fashion, due to a rusty nail many say is a disgrace, because it should have been an epic fighting scene or whatever. Why though? We had that countless times. We know Dean is a skilled fighter. He did many Big bads in. Why would it need one more for the final episode? Especially when considering all those times before Chuck has been pulling the strings (this is much more why I think they never should have introduced God in that way and go this route, because that in fact destroys all of the past – which again is why I think Jensen struggled with the ending). Again, I understand people’s discomfort, but I actually think Dean dieing on a hunt, in a mundane fashion, due to a rusty nail is a „good“ (as good as it can get with Dabb & Co) ending. Why? Because it all was entirely Dean. No Chuck. No big story. It was Dean. It was Dean writing his own story. Holding the pen. And That is all I ever wanted (would I have wanted it for him to be able to do it longer, hell yes, but even getting Dean’s joy of being free just for one day imo is worth it and worth more than a lifetime as a puppet for a cruel God). Dean died while doing what he believed in, what he loved doing, with his brother by his side and them both on the same page and not butting heads, he was there out of his own free will, he was not supercharged by an special weapon and he was most of all not indestructable because he was a plaything of God. He died, because he was/is free. Because that is what happens when life happens. And life is tragic. That’s what this is. A tragic death. A tragic death of a wonderful human being. And that’s always what I loved dean for: his humanity and his flaws.
And I don’t see/read it as Dean only finding happiness or true free will in death, though I understand why you could read it that way, absolutely. But imo seeing it that way only cuts things short. Dean was able to let go, he was able to say goodbye to Sam (now his whole speech about him being weaker than Sam etc., that part was enraging and unnescessary, but for the sake of the much despised „bigger picture“ I will ignore it here, because that part I have big issues with). That means he did „overcome“ his „always be there for Sammy“ and giving himself up in the process of doing that (and again yes, that he was only to overcome this when dieing makes this part pretty problematic, very much so – but then again, I don’t expect well crafted story from Dabb, so…). Every single time before (when God was still in the picture) the Winchesters did something bad to undo „death“, etc. whether that was what they would have done if God was not in the picture is up for debate, but in any case here Sam and Dean met one another on eye level. Sam let Dean go and he lived with the grief (yeah, the irony of Dabb trying to replicate „Swan Song“ with roles reversed just in a spectacularly worse way is not lost on me, believe me), but he kept going, didn’t go to extremes to reverse it. He lived with it. Because that’s how life happens. Most of the time it’s not fair. And it’s not what we deserve. But we „carry on“. And we keep writing our story. However a tragic one it might be. But at least it’s ours. We are the paper. We are the pen. And not a bit of spilled ink in Death’s or God’s book. And I happen to think that is as good as it gets…
Alright, those are my two cents on an episode that I haven’t seen lol. I am sure once I see it, there will be a lot of things I will probably dislike about it, but just from the small but probably big bits of the episode, these are my two cents. Don’t get up in arms over it. I am not here to fight. Have never been. And I sure won’t start now that I probably will never log back into this account. :)
So, weirdly enough last weeks episode actually made me think about SPN in terms of meta again - and that hasn’t happened in a looooooong time - so I thought I’d leave it here. Even though I am pretty certain this is not by a long shot what Dabb and Co. have in mind because it would be way too positive and IMO wouldn’t fit with how Jensen struggled with the ending.
That said, last weeks episode was actually the first episode in years that I enjoyed because it was at least semi-cleverly written. Anyway, thing that I kept thinking about is Chuck’s line about how he can see the ending and it just being a gravestone saying “Winchester”. And well, if there is one thing that Chuck has shown in last weeks episode it is that a) that he can’t let go, b) that he has no clue what the audience wants (because they outgrew his writing and his style and his ideas) and c) he doesn’t know the Winchesters at all (he has shown that plenty of times before in S11 as well already).
Point being, he doesn’t know them, they outgrew him, took on a life of their own that doesn’t correspond with his way of seeing and writing them. Now, and like I said this is entirely too optimistic, but I think Chuck seeing a gravestone with the word “Winchester” etched into it might be the furthest thing from something to be scared of, because as I think one could read it, we aren’t talking about the death of the author here - or well, we actually kind of do, because it represents his death at the same time - but it’s the death of his characters, his version of Sam and Dean. And that version has nothing to do with the actual Sam and Dean as we know.
What I mean is: that Death that Chuck may see as Sam and Dean’s actual death may be possibly rather be read as the Winchesters final victory and being free, meaning not their death but the death of Chuck’s version of them. How did we say all those years ago when I metaed regularly? Death isn’t and ending but a transition? I don’t remember exactly but you get the gist of it…
By killing his version of Sam and Dean - that don’t really correspond with the actual Sam and Dean as people but are only characters - he may ultimately free the Winchester for good. But anyway, there’d be stepping stones to take in between and how to get there and like I said, it’s highly unlikely to go that way. But alas it was fun to spec a bit again. :)
Anyway. As of s5 established canon, Lucifer is much better to Nick than Cas is to Jimmy.
Crucially, this isn’t Cas’s fault, he’s never had any reason to care about a single human life (or the well being of that human life’s loved ones) before — certainly not to the point of potentially compromising his mission — and the point of Jimmy within the narrative is to help showcase the flaws within heaven; as long as Cas was a player on the board, his story was never not going to be a tragedy. However, this doesn’t cancel out the fact that when it comes to honesty (about being possessed itself and why it’s needed) and collateral damage, Lucifer scores much higher across the board than probably any angel but Benjamin
SO true, and i think a lot of it comes from assumptions about what merit means when it comes to greater purposes. cas tests jimmy’s faith rather than explaining to him what is going on, probably with the assumption that a person with enough of the right kind of faith will be on board to play their part in the good plan of righteousness — or, maybe even more likely, not considering that an individual being on board with their potential role in the plan would even matter; the only real issue is their fitness for the task rather than their opinion on it.
lucifer, on the other hand, has a better understanding of why individuals’ opinions of their roles matters, due to his own opinion coming into conflict with the role he was given, and that opinion making him uncooperative and thus unfit for the role. (i will also say that while lucifer clearly thinks one’s opinion on their role matters, it’s harder to say what he thinks about outright defiance of the role, just from this…he wants his vessels to be on board with the plan, but the plan is still the plan. but regardless, his approach is a lot more considerate of vessels’ feelings about being vessels than cas’s)
Have you never mused upon the fact that you’re living my life in reverse? My story began when I killed my brother, and that’s where your story inevitably will end.
In a weird way, Cain would turn out to be absoluetly right, just not in the way he probably expected.
It did end in reverse, but truly in reverse, with Dean. Because instead of Dean mirroring Cain when he killed his own brother, Dean was the one who decided to die, instead, so that Sam could live.
Cas helped Dean to finally break the cycle of rage and violence and revenge. It may have started with Cain, but it continued with Mary and John, and ultimately was ended by Dean and Cas and Sam and Jack tearing out the roots of the Winchester family curse, the very heart of it.
The Winchester family curse that was tied directly to the very first curse that ever was: a curse that was created by an older brother sacrificing his younger brother in order to save him.
Also - narratively speaking (and I can’t believe I’m saying this, btw - if you try to quote me, I will fully pretend I don’t know wtf you’re talking about), it does technically make more sense for Dean to die.
Because, think about it - all the storylines that Dean got where his body, mind, heart and soul just got chewed to hell by the plot, including this one where he literally has been through so much that he just spontaneously becomes a Knight of Hell after he dies.
Dean was literally the sacrificial lamb, so that Sam would be clean and sin-free and neat and tidy and ready for a nice life-after-hunting (which also now makes even more sense why Blurwife - because Eileen was full-on hunting/MOL legacy just like Dean, and was a mirror of Dean’s, too), while Dean (who took the brunt of Chuck’s attention/adoration full-on from basically season 4 onward until the end of the show) was unceremoniously dispatched and done away with like an embarassing family secret, with no one else but the damn dog as a witness. Where the only thing left of Dean is his name handed down to Sam’s son, along with a tattoo he probably doesn’t know the whole truth about.
Narratively speaking, I can see why they did it - Dean was too damaged, Chuck said it, himself - but in their haste to make Sam the noble scion of the family, they ignored the one who had the most ground to recover, the most work left to do, the most normal life left to experience. Sam had already had multiple chances to live like a normie and figure out that hunting wasn’t what he wanted (plus, all his gfs kept winding up dead or evil, so y'know), but Dean didn’t really get a chance to choose normal for himself. He wanted it - you could see that with the job contract he had on his desk - and he was trying, even though it was obviously difficult for him (his room was a mess and he did NOT care), but he was carrying on, because it’s just what he did. I mean jfc, Dean didn’t even get to celebrate his birthday a single time on the show - not ONCE. And the one time he expressed interest in maybe having a birthday, Mrs. Butters looked at him like he’d grown a second nose on his forehead or something. Like wtf.
So yeah - they did everything to otherize Dean, right down to the birthdays. Sam acted like he never got to have birthdays ever, but we know that Dean would have done whatever he could to make sure Sam had a good birthday, and he also celebrated it at least twice on screen with multiple characters. Yes, I am STILL SALTY about Dean’s birthday, fight me.
Anyway. Yeah. Essentially, Dean was never meant to make it out of that show alive - he wasn’t designed to. He was the trauma mule, so that there could be brother-feels and such but Sam would still be able to carry on and live a semi-normal life.
GOD HAD BOYFRIENDS i just remembered. why didn’t they do anything with that. they just left it as Thee God having boyfriends, being both into men AND women and then didn’t even let dean have one. insane show.
Only on Supernatural can they make freaking GOD bisexual-with-ex-bfs, but then they also give him a creepy obsession with his #1 favorite creation (Dean) but they specifically just introduce it AS creepy and leave it at that. Because, ew, gay.
Way to try to have your gay cake and choke us with it, too, fuckers. >:(
so you’re telling me they had an episode where dean was like “but dad—“ [cuts himself off] “you know sometimes when i went away it wasn’t because i just ran off. it was because. dad used to, to send me away sometimes. when i really pissed him off.” and sam was like “i know.” and then THE VERY NEXT EPISODE IS LEBANON
The only way to be somewhat at peace with that ep is by headcanoning the following:
Dean didn’t bring back his father, but what he did want the most, i.e., his ideal idea of his father, which cascaded into his ideal nostalgic idea of the perfect family he wanted as a kid.
Which explains why Mary doesn’t rip John a new one for raising his kids in the hunter’s life but rather becomes lovey dovey.
The whole thing is like a cathartic dream for Dean, giving him closure.
And at the end, Dean resolves his own struggle by telling his father that he does have a family. (bonus: tells Sam he’s good with who he is now)
And Dean gets to grieve his nostalgic idea of his childhood family fantasy as he sends his ideal father back.
