#phyn rambles

the thing that is magic about supernatural is the gravitational push and pull between sam and dean and the forces that are so much bigger than them.

you could have that in the prequel. the gravitational push and pull between john and mary and the forces that are so much bigger than them. 

it’s literally the canon backstory! 

the first time they met, they bumped into each other and (presumably on trained instincts) mary laid john on his ass then apologized, and he was smitten. but he was only smitten because of cupid’s arrow. the cupid we meet in canon tells sam and dean that their parents weren’t a good match, that they didn’t (wouldn’t?) get along, and that their relationship was ordained and the love was manufactured.

so you have the gravity, right there. the push and the pull. the fighting and the mismatch despite the passion and the love they literally cannot help but feel. and it lends itself so well to telling an unhinged story where two people meet and fall in some kind of love at first sight and are weird about each other! 

(in the way that sam and dean are weird about each other. breaking in in the middle of the night and fighting your brother is weird! disappearing out the door with someone you haven’t seen in two years while lying to your partner about why is weird! it’s all unhinged and so it compels the audience!)

to make that work on screen, you need to set up opposing dynamics so you get the push and pull, and you need chemistry. like, a lot of chemistry. the other magic of spn is the insane off the charts on screen chemistry that J2 have. lightning in a bottle, right?

the thing that made me ultimately decide not to watch the prequel was mary’s casting and character styling. despite being one of the few people actually excited about the story conceit (i love john and mary as characters!! i’m genuinely interested to see how the lying and hunting and vietnam trauma and the personality clash all played out!!), as soon as i saw the first promotional photos, the tentative hope i’d been harbouring for the show died a quiet death.

not only did this version not look much like either of the other two marys we had met in terms of face and height, but she had thick eyeliner and straight hair and a black leather jacket and a hard look and scowl. none of that jives at all with the mary we know and not just because she was sanctified in the memory of winchester men. we met young mary and she was dressed in bright tones with bright eyes! she was full of smiles (and lies), full of dreams for her own future, with bouncy curly hair and emotional frustrations and vulnerabilities. 

she was bringing sam, not dean. 

mary campbell is a rebel. she is like both her sons in different ways, much the same as john. there are parallels on both sides and i think it’s fruitless to say who is paralleled more to whom in the (main) show, who has more of who’s personality. but in that arc, in her youth, mary campbell wanting to leave the hunting life and have a civilian life with her partner john winchester was absolutely a parallel to sam’s similar yearning for freedom, for safety and simplicity. 

so we know already -- mary’s rebellion looks like sam’s rebellion. it’s not the devil may care attitude of dean, it’s a more serious and anxious rebellion against her upbringing. she’s tense but soft. easily annoyed but not sarcastic, possibly too earnest (in itself a perfect lie, something that makes her interesting because she’s anything but honest with john). doe-eyed so that when she drops you on your ass, you’re shocked. this small woman with her sweet smile is kicking your ass? what in the - ? 

casting a mary that is bringing forward features of dean, styling her in such a way as to look harsh and ‘badass’ instead of downright preppy, giving her that look and attitude and all of it? misses the point. 

there is no dean without sam. or at least no story about dean worth watching. because there is no gravitational push-pull between dean and ... dean. meaning that if both the prequel leads are bringing dean’s energy to their role, there is no chemistry. 

electricity isn’t formed without opposing charged ions. there’s no lightning in a bottle when everything is the same.

(there is no sense of pull between them to prompt a push. and when it comes time to write the push in anyway, without the pull? it will feel discordant and unconvincing to the audience’s eye. it will rankle.)

this issue sits as central, to me, even before any retconning of the original story. before the complete lack of 1970s vibe, and before what i’ve seen about them possibly(idk???) getting mary’s age wrong, and what i’ve heard about them making john bumbling or boring despite being a literal marine (who are...extreme) who quite literally just came back from vietnam, likely traumatized and intense. before the fact that they literally copy+pasted the plot of spn to the prequel with mary’s dad going missing. 

all of these features, alongside the casting issues, the styling issues, all of it right down to the original prequelgate itself, speak to the same fundamental issue - 

the prequel is missing heart. 

the lack of sam (not even in presence so much as in essence) functions like a hole in the heart of the show from which it is bleeding inward. the lack of love letter to time era, to the stylings and setting reads like a lack of love to the story itself. the lack of care put in to re-introducing us to the version of mary that we knew, those changes to her style and personality and story, read like an insult to those of us who loved her already, as if she was not worthy of a place in the heart of the creators as she already was.

i wanted to love this show. desperately, i really did. the day it leaked, before i’d heard about the rest of the ensuing prequelgate nonsense, i wrote a post in defense of the concept (since deleted). i wanted so badly to love it. i can’t. because i feel like the people creating it don’t love it. 

many will take this as a critique of jensen ackles and to some extent, it is, but mostly just a critique of trying to create a new show half-cocked while splitting his time acting on a handful of other projects instead of dedicating himself to the time and energy this show needed in order to be a success. i have no idea what his vision was for this story, and i’m not convinced he had a core vision. 

(for whatever else you might critique about kripke’s era of spn, it had a vision and it knew what it was. that vision was central to its resonance.)

more than that though, it’s a critique of all the producers and creators involved who thought that they could build off of what we already loved while gutting the core pieces we loved in the first place, while replacing these elements with their own versions instead, versions seemingly uninterested in the emotional foundations on which they were building. 

i can’t help but feel they were arrogant enough to think that making us love it would be as simple as checking boxes on a list and slapping a shine over it, thinking we’d be satisfied with the empty shell they deigned to put together. that they didn’t need to push each other, challenge the story, question the character favoritism or biases the team members were bringing to the table.

it’s the dean story with dean producers and writers and no one thought to question if they needed more balance? if the story needed more heart? if john was intense enough, if mary was sweet enough, if the characters had dimensions? 

was it ignorance? arrogance? were they all too up their own asses that they dismissed legitimate concerns as fandom wank because of prequelgate and fandom bullshit until it was too late? 

It would start cute like the forehead kiss to baby Sammy in the opening scene of the pilot, a goodbye just for the night, a promise of protection (turned, we know, fast to ash).

Flash forward fast to disturbing territory of Sam blackout drunk as a teen and Dean dropping him in bed, dodging all Sam's octopus limbs trying to attach themselves to dean until he's just - out. And maybe Dean doesn't go for the kiss this time, or maybe he does, but either way he stares at Sam's lips an unsettling length of time, and the scene bleeds into Playthings and there is this distinct undercurrent of 'how often has this exact same thing played out this way over the years'.

We move from there to AHBL and Dean kissing Sam's corpse as if in goodbye, as if seeking atonement, as if that alone could revive it (sense memory still on his lips when he makes his demon deal).

After Sam's wall breaks, comatose, and Balthazar's joke to Dean about not stealing any kisses while he stands vigil over Sam's sleeping form uncomfortably apt, and Dean knows the angels know too much but could he at least keep his goddamn trap shut in front of Bobby, who's looking stiff and away and it figures. It figures he knows too. Figures the whole goddamn world does. (But not Sam, not Sam who is never conscious for these transgressions, these offerings.)

During the trials when Sam is fevered and ill and dips in and out of consciousness, and Dean feeds him and wraps him in blankets and while Sam shakes out the fever, Dean is wrapped around him, presses kisses to Sam's hairline, his forehead, his temples, chin (lips) catching on the grain of stubble dusting Sam's cheeks, thumb grazing his lips until Sam, unconscious and open, sucks it in like a pacifier, like an infant once again.

And maybe if we are going for a 5+1 format, 5 kisses Sam was unaware of and 1 he was let in on, we twist the knife in just a bit?

Possession, we know, involves an open mouth. And how Gadreel entered Sam with Dean's help is a little speculative. If Dean, holding hands with Gadreel, pressed his lips to Sam's mouth and pried it open, stayed there the duration of the trickery he pulled with Gadreel in Sam's brain, so that Gadreel could flow through Dean like a conduit into Sam's open mouth... One wonders if it would be Gadreel or Crowley who would rustle up the image in Sam's mind for him, the strangely familiar sensation of Dean's lips on his.

Of course we could also reject the 5+1 format or subvert it with a happier follow-up, as if two distinct +1s?

Or we could do short snippets of post!finding out Sam (make a whole different 5+1 sequel? 5 kisses Sam let Dean steal, and one that he stole himself?)

We could frame an awake, eyes wide open kiss with demon!Dean that's filthier than all the rest, tongue and suction and bodies pressed firm to each other, Sam's back to a wall, the perfect opportunity to jab Dean with a needle or to get the cuffs on him but only if he's adequately distracted.

After the bmol, after they save Sam, before he's washed, Dean following him to the showers, restless and desperate to touch, to confirm the solidness of Sam's skin away from their mother's prying eyes, but Sam's awake and Dean's never -- never had permission, never stolen one like this, not except as a demon, and between that and Gadreel... But Sam doesn't argue when Dean helps him to the showers, lets Dean help him pry his shirt off when he hisses at the movement and how it strain his limbs, his belt, his jeans, doesn't argue when Dean helps him into the shower itself while maintaining a quiet freeflow ramble about Sam's back needing someone to wash it and not falling over on his still-sore foot and giving himself a concussion. Devolves into Dean kissing Sam's shoulders and hugging him, Sam twisting eventually to look at him, quiet promise of "it's okay" and then Dean takes what he needs and sets his lips on Sam's.

From there, a quiet, not-quite-stolen one of comfort after Sam marches into camp in Apocalypse world with Lucifer behind him, away from the others and Sam melting into the now-familiar, now-comforting sensation.

Dean pulling Sam in after Michael's possession to ground himself, shirtless in his room, out of place in his own skin. His hands on Sam's jaw, his head, more demanding and less feather-light than most times before. Sam's fingers delicately finding a place along Dean's waist, the warm skin there, finding a sense of comfort in feeling how solid Dean is, a sense of fresh understanding as he slides his hands up Dean's back. Dean telling him the beard has to go after he pulls back.

Then after Nick brains Sam and he's dying or dead on the pavement for a moment before he's healed, who cares who sees, this is understood between them, this helps place their jagged pieces together in ways he's not apologizing for anymore - Sam waking up breathing in the air from Dean's lungs on a gasp, lips tingling, mouth opening under Dean to accept him before he even has oxygen in his blood.