charlieblue: (brothers)
Something like a crossroads song ([personal profile] charlieblue) wrote on October 11th, 2008 at 04:24 am
Supernatural S3 Meta
Note: Spoilers up to Mystery Spot. Mostly my current thoughts on the states, psychological and otherwise of the characters. Which may or may not be completely wrong depending on the rest of Season 3 and the beginning of Season 4. Largely centers on Malleus Maleficarum, Dream a Little Dream of Me and Mystery Spot.





Ruby plays fast and loose with the truth - this is already blatantly clear - but regarding her assertion that all demons (that she knows of) were once humans? I think that this is, at least to her, the truth, because she does not believe in Lucifer, she doesn't believe in the divine origins of her species and of hell.

So she, believing that the unimaginably horrific place where she, and all of her kind have metamorphosed into what they are is basically a mutated, human creation, while at the same time still able to remember what it is to be human ... well, she must be incredibly lonely. Isolated, bitter, lost, lonely, and disillusioned. She has seen an evolution of humanity, and has no belief that there was any outside, superior effect that led to the manifestation of a place like hell.

That, to me, at the moment at least, is why she's fighting for Sam. She doesn't want Earth to become an extension of, and victim to the same depraved evolution that hell is. She wants that hope, that just maybe, her end of the stick is human grossness at its darkest and most supernatural, while there is another end, way out of sight, that just might hold hope for humanity.



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Having kind of trail-blazed my way through the now-overgrown internet pathways of old meta and reaction posts on Season 3, I know that a lot of people didn't like the unsubtle, critical treatment of Dean in Dream a Little Dream of Me.

Me? On a superficial note? I could not get over Jensen Ackles' portrayal of Dean as a demon. Holy. Motherfrakking. Shit. The twitching snarl, the glistening creepiness of the black eyes exploited to their fullest by the wide, unblinking eyes that are so alien to what is usually Dean's brightest, most human feature? And the blood. Goddamn. Demonic Dean was mesmerizing, and Dean's reaction to it, I felt, was not a balanced evaluation of Dean's mental state, but simply a levee-break.

The man doesn't have low self-esteem, he is fucking terrified and absolutely furious that the universe has conspired to create circumstances that have forced him to do this.

He is not physically able to resent Sam for this - I think it would quite literally drive him mad if he were to do so.

So what does he do? He curses the one man who has had the most impact on his universe. Dad.

It's not a Dean Defining Moment, it's a Dean in the Moment definition.


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Batman!Sam showed us what we've always known was there underneath the dorky, snarky, joking little brother we see with Dean. He's a warrior, just like he said in the pilot episode, and without the human contact of Dean, without the dream of college and a normal life, it is what he reverts to.

Dean is selfish for not wanting to live without Sam, for laying the burden of his sacrifice on the one person he loved too much to live without.

Sam, on the other hand, is selfish because he will not live past revenge, will not do the one thing Dean hoped he would do, and actually live. He can't. His entire world had narrowed to Sam. To what Sam is without Dean.

Without that Dean who has probably never taken off the amulet a nine-year old Sam gave to him in a fit of pique over his father betraying his trust. An amulet that Dean accepted in a tiny, secret moment of superiority over his father, that he probably touched each time he felt like torching his Dad's car, every time his Dad talked proudly about Sammy at college in front of old friends while Dean hovered in the background like a good little solder.

I haven't seen past Mystery Spot yet, but watching Dean die over a hundred times in a row, then living like a soulless killer for months has got to seriously screw up where Sam has psychologically been at before this point in the season. The Trickster was trying to teach Sam not to sacrifice himself for Dean, to separate himself from the strategically weakening bond he has to his brother.

What he really taught Sam? Without his brother, he comes very close to becoming the one thing that repulsed him in Gordon, the thing that is a corrupt, mutated version of Dean, one without Dean's perspective and pride, his sense of black humour for their line of work.

Plus, hell-o Christ imagery!


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Bela? Bela I love. What is not to love about a modern version of the gentleman thief, opportunistic as Jack Sparrow, slick as James Bond, stylish as post-Billy-Bob era Angelina Jolie and self-sufficient like Blair Waldorf surviving a dog-eat-dog society slaughter in a battlefield of gossip?

She's a danger, and unpredictable. Anyone who stands as an impedance to the main characters is always going to raise the viewers' hackles, somehow rub us the wrong way, and I do feel that. Woman hurt the Impala! Stole the Colt! *insert feminist-faux-pas-Dean insults here!!!!eleventy!!!1!*

But, objectively, as a stand-alone character? I love her.

So far.

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On the gender issues with the show, yes I do see them, and yes, I do understand how offensive and dangerous some of the elements of the show are. So please don't think I'm blindly mocking the issue with the above. I just don't want to get into it in what is essentially, a squee post with delusions of meta-grandeur.

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