#spn 11.13

Rowena: I hate you, because when I look into your eyes I see the woman I used to be, before magic, before the coven. When I was nothing but Rowena, the tanner's daughter. A pale, scared little girl, who smelled of filth and death. I hate you, because when you were born, your father said he loved me. Then he went back to his grand wife and his grand house, whilst I lay pathetic and half dead on a straw mat, my thighs slick with blood. I hate you, because if I didn't, I'd love you. But love, love is weakness. And I'll never be weak again.

and yet hate WAS the weakness and true love isn’t a one way street but that being loved IN RETURN was the key all along and that’s honestly what all these characters up to and including chuck and amara actually needed though chuck was functionally incapable of it and that’s why his story sucked which we will learn IN DETAIL in s15, but for now the next three episodes of spn will detail three important facets of love

first we learn of romantic love and the torment of “heartbreak” as a concept and the introduction of Eileen to Sam’s life despite the fact that she will return only to die and be taken from him tragically before they could truly explore that potential for love in an episode where Dean confesses his fear of the strange warped attraction Amara forces on him to Cas but it’s not really Cas and Dean is so messed up he can’t figure out why Cas seemed “off” yet.... 

then we learn about familial love and what makes a family, and get proof it’s literally not blood in any sense of the word, it’s the people we choose of our free will and without the bonds of blood (vampiric or genetic), and our choices are most important in building a full life with happiness and freedom

then we learn about toxic obsessive love that isn’t really love at all but a walking talking mockery of love that will destroy everyone involved in perpetuating it symbolized by dean nearly being killed by a fake version of amara and finally understanding that this is the sort of love that amara seeks from him...

and then we have dean spending the rest of the season with one singular goal of freeing cas from his own bad decision because... 

and rowena returning from the dead and seeking out power and protection from amara only to begin to understand that power can’t protect her and will never protect her, and hate is maybe not enough to protect her either...

the rest of dabb era continues to hammer these themes home to us and then after Chuck is defeated and love is finally allowed to win.... ???????? the story that Chuck never intended to “write,” the one about love in all its forms, because Chuck never actually understood love at all, also fails to survive Chuck’s downfall at the very moment it actually had a chance to be freed from the depressing narrative in which it had flourished despite all odds stacked against it, and despite Chuck actively trying to murder it at every turn for the purposes of his characters’ suffering... like... so what was even the point of any of it in the end? Tell a story about love growing through every crack of the story while the author desperately tries to pave it all over, and then not let love and humanity and life truly win... wow, that’s honestly the least believable series of events in the history of ever

—What do you say? You with me? Ready to go scrape a few hearts off the bar room floor? —I think I’ll pass. I’m gonna go hit the lore, but you go be you.

Feel like I’m permanently checked in here these days

Well here we have Dean volunteering himself without forethought to deflect a terrible curse from an innocent. Sound familiar?

This also marks the episode where Dean finally unburdens to Sam, and a groundbreaking moment where Dean FINALLY wins a game of Rochambeau. What makes rock-paper-scissors a character-defining moment for him? Well, I've already written that meta... several times (see links in my replies on this post as well as the post itself):

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/156693505070/ameliacareful-chiisana-sukima

This was all a metaphorical “handing the responsibility” over to Sam, and Dean finally FINALLY admitting openly that he is afraid, that he feels facing Amara alone is something he is literally incapable of doing. He has to admit that he needs Sam’s help, and that he’s not confident in himself. What a HUGE thing for Dean, who has always tried to at least put on a brave face even when he’s secretly felt hopeless in the past, yes?

I am baffled as to where you’re getting any of this, but I’ll assume it has to do with 14.13, and the promo clip we got the other day:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182480894570/positivexcellence-14x13-lebanon-sneak-peak

The pearl grants wishes, or as Sam says in that clip, “Technically it’s supposed to give you what your heart desires.” Dean immediately replies that that would be to get Michael out of his head.

Note that nowhere in there does the word “greatest desire” appear.

I think the premise here is that (like in 11.13, which also turned this notion on its head to excellent meta purpose) Dean THINKS he knows what his biggest desire is (i.e. to get Michael OUT of him), but honestly if the last few episodes have been any indicator, since he locked Michael in his brain fridge he’s been truly pushed to consider what Pam said to him during his infinite loop at Rocky’s Bar, as well as the accusations Michael flung at him and his loved ones. He’s been struggling with what he thinks he can’t have, and at the ROOT of all of that is the big personal issues he’s been confronting since 1.01– never feeling like he was good enough, especially in John’s eyes.

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185016627975/aah-1403-power-doesnt-fix-anything-dean-is

At the time 14.04 aired, we all SQUEALED at the direct parallel between Hatchet Man and John Winchester, and Dean’s admiration of the character despite actively recognizing him as a bad guy doomed to lose. It’s a complicated tangle of feelings that are (using the metaphor I started in the post linked above) symptoms of the underlying issues Dean has with John Winchester and how he was raised, what John forced him to become.

The early part of the season is positively crammed with foreshadowing that Dean will eventually get to confront the actual SOURCE of these symptoms, facing John himself and effectively not forgiving him, but as he tells Sasha in 14.05:

Dean: Can I give you a little advice? Let it go. The past is... There's nothing you can do about it now, so it's just baggage. Let it go. You'll feel a lot lighter. Sasha: Is that what you do? Dean: I try. Every single day.

because in 14.13 Dean gets to face John directly:

Dean: You saying you wish things would be different? Sam: Don't you? Can you imagine -- Dad in the past, knowing then what he knows now? I... I think it would be nice. Dean: Yeah. I used to think that, too. But, uh... I mean, look, we've been through some tough times. There's no denying that. And for the longest time, I blamed Dad. I mean, hell, I blamed Mom, too, you know? I was angry. But say we could send Dad back knowing everything. Why stop there? Why not send him even further back and let some other poor sons of bitches save the world? But here's the problem. Who does that make us? Would we be better off? Well, maybe. But I got to be honest -- I don't know who that Dean Winchester is. And I'm good with who I am. I'm good with who you are. 'Cause our lives -- they're ours. And maybe I'm just too damn old to want to change that.

This theme is pretty directly addressed in 14.04, but in 14.05, we begin to see it in a Bigger Picture sort of way that connects it directly to the overarching narrative themes of Chuck’s manipulation of the story revealed in 14.20.

We’ve discussed for eons how Sam and Dean have slowly been dropping the curtain on what they do when dealing with people directly involved in the cases they work. This goes back to s11, at the very least, this causal stating of facts about the horrors people are experiencing. In 11.13:

Dean: I don’t know. I mean it’s not like this thing is exactly following a pattern. I don’t even know what I’m looking for here. We cut out of there pretty quick though so maybe I bought us some time. Melissa: What was that? Dean: We think it was something called a shapeshifter, but it can’t be because I pumped the thing full of silver and it didn’t even flinch. Melissa: What kind of FBI agents are you? Dean: The fake kind. Sam: We’re hunters Melissa: Hunters? Dean: Look all you need to know is we save people like you from things like that.

They don’t exactly go out looking to the truth of what’s really out there to random people, but once people are exposed to the weird stuff, they’ve long ago stopped trying to explain it away. Once someone’s seen the truth, they’ve been providing helpful facts. I mean, recall Dean’s conversation with the Sheriff in 13.01 for the absolute most nihilistic version of this little chat.

And that’s what Dean does with Sasha in this episode.

But it’s Dean’s entire interaction with the djinn that becomes a microcosm on at least three levels of Chuck’s overarching power over all of them.

Take what we now know to be true of Chuck: that his need to retell his story over and over again trumps everything. Look at what this story involved, and zoom it all out to Chuck-level narrative:

A djinn-- a being capable of creating altered states of reality in his victims which he then “feeds” off of, sustaining himself through forcing people to live out the “stories” he implants in them. Just like Chuck altering their lives in subtle ways for his own sustenance.

But this djinn? Has had to “enhance” his powers through Michael’s grace in order to affect the story, to level the entire thing up. He went from keeping his victim’s in a comatose state only able to live out his fantasy worlds inside their own minds, to bringing those fantasies out into the world in three dimensions. Much the way Chuck was eventually compelled to insert himself into his own story again to level the whole thing up.

Michael, in both cases, was merely the narrative mechanism, the expositional character through which all of this was slowly revealed to us.

The djinn itself was only ever a symptom of this interference, just as his visions were only ever a symptom of his interference in the lives of his victims. Once they saw the truth, the whole illusion literally crumbled to dust.

And Dean has to begin to separate himself out from the trap of believing his own responsibility in any of this:

Dean: I know, I know. Not my fault. It's Michael. It's all Michael. You know, I've been trying to -- not forget, but to move on from what I -- from what we -- from what he did. And I got to be honest, I was starting to feel like myself again. Almost. Sam: So we'll work harder. Dean: How, Sam? You get three hours of sleep a night. Sam: All right, then I'll sleep two. Dean, we're going to find Michael, and when we do, we will kill him. Dean: How? Sam: I don't know. We'll -- We'll -- We'll track down Dark Kaia and her spear. We'll -- We'll find something.

And of course back in 14.05 he’s still unwittingly trapped in this level of the narrative, hasn’t been able to free himself from Michael completely yet. Hasn’t been able to completely free himself from that baggage he so desperately wants to put down Just as he hasn’t been able to free himself from Chuck’s Bigger Picture Version of this exact same narrative until 14.20.

To me this becomes fascinating when Michael retakes his vessel in 14.09, crushing Dean’s hope that Michael really had just “left” him. Because Chuck hadn’t really just “left” after 11.23, either. He was still actively involved in manipulating Dean’s life (all of their lives, really, but 14.05 tells this directly through the lens of Dean’s personal experience).

Dean must again overcome this control, but instead of being allowed to lay that baggage to rest, he locks it away in 14.10 with the help of Sam and Cas (a Chuck Move™ if ever I saw one-- if it’s a problem, lock it up and throw away the key). No matter how hard any of them fight against the narrative, against the monsters that have been “supercharged” by Michael’s interference, they’re still only battling the sorts of dust monsters the djinn sent after them in 14.05. It’s all a cosmic runaround designed to keep them living out this story over and over again. It’s only recognizing the actual source of the “curse,” the actual source of the power sucking the life out of their lives, that they’re actually able to see all of this for what it was.

Through each successive confrontation with this exact same theme on every level of the narrative, TFW becomes both more entrenched in fulfilling Chuck’s narrative wishes but also more savvy to how exactly they’re being used.

I know, right?

And not only did 13.11 tell us that Sam’s heart is worth half a million bucks (because whoa it’s worth at LEAST that), it also clearly demonstrated that his heart is currently broken.

*takes five minutes to cry for Sam*

What is all of this reminding me of? S11, and particularly 11.13.

Which was about... hearts! SURPRISE!

And love. And not-love (or obsession).

It’s also reminding me of early s13, when Dean was in this bleak place of grieving that eventually drove him to stab himself in the heart-- literally. I think Sam’s “stabbing himself in the heart” here is more metaphorical, at least for now. But I am Concerned™ for him.

But Sam does express and suffer through grief in different ways than Dean does (because they are different people, and it’s all valid). Not to mention the things that Sam is currently grieving (the hopelessness that they will be able to get Mary back, the loss of Jack to points unknown) are different from what Dean was grieving.

I mean, Dean was driven to that depth of grief at the loss of Cas, and now Sam’s got Cas on the list of people they can’t have in their lives? I mean, I don’t think Dean’s got Cas on that list, you know?

But when Sam grieves, he tends to run. I only hope for his sake that he doesn’t run this time. Or that he’s not driven to the sort of bleak despair that will get him (or Dean, or someone they’re trying to protect) hurt. I don’t know if we’ve ever had Sam experience this sort of bleak despair where he DIDN’T run away from hunting. Dean tends to run INTO hunting full steam ahead when he’s at his lowest points. But Sam? I worry about him in different ways, because this sort of “always keep grinding” stuff is not his typical MO. And I’m not entirely sure how well he’s gonna cope with it.

Sure, yeah, after s3 he went all single-track mind hunting with Ruby, but he did still have Ruby, and as awful as that whole deal turned out to be, she did string him along about being able to find a way to save Dean, which in turn kept Sam going, as twisted as that is. He still had a GOAL.

Right now? He’s just... bleak.

But back to Dean, because any time we mention Dean and Love in the same sentence, I can’t help thinking about 11.11-11.13. I mean, for one thing, the conversation between Sam and Dean at the end of 13.11 had a lot of thematic similarity to their conversation at the end of 11.13, but with their roles flipped around.