#14.17

i didn't get to breach what i think about mary's response to jack torturing and killing nick in the tags on my lrb beyond her participation and enforcement of general hunter values but i do think that her concern for jack comes more so from her continuous attempted assimilation into her idealised familial role as Mother than it does her and jack's aw cultivated interpersonal relationship despite the former being inherently tied to the latter in the sense that she's been narratively excluded from her aw relationships with its refugees since her presence back in the bunker with them as she's been gradually demoted, in a sense, from the capabilities she's shared with them as they've turned entirely to sam and aw!bobby as the ultimately more so hands-off but top-of-the-heirarchy leader due to his previous role within their team that's been semi-permanently dereailsd by their new environment within the bunker that sam has always been more capable in managing, because he's made all its advances, despite his own reluctance in becoming the authority that he is. regardless, mary's exclusion seems to have, i think, inadvertently—through narrative deprioritisation and nonexploration that's eventually become all that she is—pushed her back into her end of season twelve state as stuffing herself into the box of newly realised, not entirely un-mythologised but definitely caricaturised hunting-Mother because her only other avenue of using her agency to regain her own autonomy ended up digging a deeper hole within which she found herself more suspectable to the necessity and objectivity of her familial role proxy dean (and sam) as well as, now, due to her experiences with the aw refugees, the aw's team's own structure proxy aw!bobby. i think this development is most obvious in the literally same episode's opening scene where mary's mantra of, "we're family. it's our job," (also, might i add, alluding to hunting and therefore hinter values) is said in a string of conversation (as sb has pointed out themselves) following dean's overwhelming presence and jack's pushback to the present familial roles as a symptom of his soullessness. anyway, mary's response, i think, is a representation of these combined narrative and structural roles between the winchester familial dynamic and the new dynamic of her relationships as the narrative has neglected exploration of her beyond her present familial assimilation