a wind had blown away the sun

amonitrate:

CONTINUING A CONVERSATION STARTED HERE, BECAUSE IT GOT TOO LONG FOR TUMBLR TO HANDLE. This is my fault.

…

First, aerynforwormhole, thanks for the thoughtful discussion. I hope you can stay with me here, because before I get to responding to your specific points, I want to lay out the context with which I’m viewing the issue at hand, and that’s going to take a bit because it’s so deeply interwoven with the show since the pilot. This kinda became a meta in itself while I was working on it.

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subjecttochange8:

            In one of my posts about “Nightmare,” I mentioned that I thought the show’s repeated associations of Dean with dark forest imagery could lead us to a fairy tale reading of the show. When I wrote that, I was thinking of Dean in a Hansel and Gretel context. For in both “Nightmare” and “Dream A Little Dream of Me,” we follow a trail of Dean’s repressed memories back to the (dangerous) truth about his relationship with John, much as how Hansel and Gretel follow a trail of pebbles, and later breadcrumbs, to two very different but equally dangerous houses.

            I still think there are places we could go with that comparison. (After all, like Hansel and Gretel, Dean and Sam are “abandoned” by their father in Season 1, though, unlike Hansel and Gretel, it is ostensibly for their own safety.) But Dean’s role as handmaiden in “LARP and the Real Girl” gripped my imagination tight and left a princess-shaped handprint behind. Because I realized that far more than Hansel and Gretel, Dean resembles a certain fairy tale princess…  

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i won’t call this a review because it’s mostly a collections of loose thoughts about the episode, some good, some less good, some not good at all. oh, and i liked the episode, but i’m scratching my head about it. a lot.

in no particular order:

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Anonymous asked: After every episode, I check your blog for your thoughts, because they are always so profound. This week, I sort of hated this episode, but after reading your ideas, I feel much better about it. But this particular first reflection blew me away and haunts me completely, to the point, I am seeing it as the base of the whole series: "Trust. Friendship. Love. that was protecting innocents from dying."

First of all thank you, anon. I’m flattered the you find my thoughts profound. <3 Especially because I feel like I’m flailing and trying hard like averybody else to understand what the show is trying to do. I sort of loved to hate this episode, and I’m pretty sure this is the feeling the writers were trying to convey. There was no happiness to be found in anything and everybody was left worse off than when the episode started. I especially flailed trying to understand Dean’s decision to break up with Benny, but after reflecting a bit on it, I got the importance of it, on a narrative level, and why it was happening, and why it was important development for Dean and for Benny as well and their continuous relationship.

(On a different note, something gave me hope as far as Dean especially is concerned. We know, from Dean’s admission in this episode, and from the entirety of Dean’s story, that he has huge problems detaching himself from the job and relinquishing the responsibility of it - thank you very much, John. Even when it’d be good for Dean, when Dean would be completely justified to say: this is not my responsibility, I come first. I come before your problems and your demand, he doesn’t do it, because he doesn’t know how to do it. The theme though has been very present this season, from the premiere through Sam (we can’t save everybody) to Cas (*you* can’t save everybody). This episode is giving me hope that Dean will get that finally, and will learn to put himself first when he absolutely needs to. Which doesn’t mean cutting off the people he loves and cares, but learning to be more balanced in how much  he gives of himself to the job, first, and to the people he loves second.)

I agree with you that those sentiments, trust and love and friendship, are at the base of the whole series. We use the shorthand of family for it, but there’s been a tradition in Supernatural to talk about family in the largest sense, and not just limited to blood and mired in Dean and Sam’s brotherhood. (In Bobby’s words: Family doesn’t end with blood). 

That this happened now, at episode 810, and that there was no triumph nor happiness in this reunion is symbolic and intentional. Having seen many ‘reunions’ before, I can say sincerely that the show is acknowledging the unhealthiness, and in the end, the futility, of this one reunion if it’s not followed up by an extra step. But I can also see how those feelings of love and trust and friendship have been missing from Sam and Dean for almost the whole season, eclipsed by hurt and pain, by their issues, by their experiences in the year they’ve been apart. And it hasn’t been fun or easy to watch for me because I’m still truly invested in their relationship.

So what I guess it will happen, now, is that they will be rebuilt between them, slowly and with great difficulty, but it will happen. And it will be hard and it will require sincerity and openness, and to put aside pride. But for the first time ever, I feel like the show has put them in a position to become stronger as individuals and as brothers. From that point, it will get expanded to the others relationships, be it Dean and Benny (or Sam and Amelia, though I see a lot of problems there that I have no idea how could be addressed - but maybe it’s just so there’s a more definitive and satisfying closure, idk).

Again, I’m glad my thoughts made you feel a bit better about the show and the episode and sorry if I used your ask to ramble on some more. :D In the end, it’s on Carver to keep on with these themes and address them realistically, and hopefully satisfyingly for all.

more spoilers.

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