Walking off the chessboard: part 3

[amonitrate]

Walking off the chessboard: Sam and Lucifer and the role of the Scapegoat in SPN

( master post)

Part 3

The Scapegoat as truth teller

Perhaps because there is less pressure on the Scapegoat to project the “success” of the family (as with The Hero) and because of their position as the focus of the family’s negative attention, the Scapegoat often sees

Comments

Re: The classic questions of theodicy

[amonitrate]

Yep. Lucifer might be a truth teller, but he's not telling the truth for the sake of the truth. He's doing it out of manipulation and resentment. Which... frankly, can be a dysfunctional family trait as well. The "truth" can be used in a lot of ways. It's kind of a neutral thing by itself. We typically say "telling the truth" is a good thing, born of honesty, but that's not always the case.

I agree Lucifer was interested in wiping the earth of humans; I think he wasn't interested in Heaven's Apocalypse though, maybe this is a technicality or semantics but in SPN at least, the Apocalypse was pretty specifically framed as Michael fights Lucifer and then Paradise happens afterwards (assuming Michael beats him, which the angels were unable to imagine happening any other way). So probably I worded this part in an overly simplistic way that made Lucifer sound too much like a good guy, which he really isn't.

I think Lucifer wants to win Michael over to his side as an act of vengeance against God; he wants his big brother to choose him rather than Daddy, to take sides in the family drama. The whole 'walking off the chessboard' thing can be seen as 'I got Michael to refuse Dad's plan and that means I win, ha, ha'. And I think he is interested in fighting with Michael (if he can't persuade him); that line he gives Castiel about "Nobody dicks with Michael but me"?

Good point. I can see that. But that's still not playing along with the angel's big plans for the apocalypse which leads to paradise on earth. I think he was just interested in getting rid of humans, which wasn't the angels' goal (though they weren't too worried about how many humans died so that some of them could have paradise).

Michael believes he's doing God's will - he is so eager to prove he's a good son by doing what he thinks their father wants - but that's not necessarily what God really does want. Both Lucifer and Michael seem to think that God wants them to fight, but they don't seem to think that maybe He doesn't - Lucifer's line about "One of Dad's tests".

This is also a good point, and fits well with dysfunctional family dynamics. Michael is doing what he thinks his father wants, which could just as easily be a rationalization for what Michael wants to do, you know?

And yeah, I will make this point in a later post, but Michael and Lucifer can't think beyond their roles, and I think that's how they fail, if it was a test. Where Sam and Dean ultimately both do reach beyond them, in different ways.

Been thinking about the absence of fathers

[deiseach]

I agree that Lucifer is the truth-teller about the roles in the heavenly family and how they're not working. We see ample evidence of that with God being absent and apparently heaven falls apart; either the angels think God is dead (Uriel, Raphael, possibly Gabriel though it's hard to tell with him, maybe even Anna, because we don't really know why she decided to rip out her Grace and fall - yeah, yeah, wanted to be human - but why did she want this now?), not particularly caring one way or another (Zachariah), or trying to act in what they perceive is the way God would want (Michael and Castiel, and there's two different approaches).

With God being absent, this gives them the chance to break the pattern - the way that, as you point out, Dean and Sam began to relate to one another as equals in John's absence. God (apparently) abandoning both the angels and humanity seems to be a terrible betrayal - the ultimate smack in the teeth for Dean and Sam who are relying on getting help to stop the Apocalypse, and certainly Castiel feels betrayed and abandoned and hopeless.

But God not being around gives them all the chance to make their own way, to use their free will - except that they don't. The angels are all "destiny, fate, it is fore-ordained" and are thrashing around for a plan to follow. Michael and Lucifer could walk off the chessboard - but they don't. They don't take the chance to grow, to become independent, to renegotiate their relationship, to grow up.

With John's absence first, and death subsequently, Dean and Sam do get that chance, hard as it is on them.

Re: Been thinking about the absence of fathers

[amonitrate]

But God not being around gives them all the chance to make their own way, to use their free will - except that they don't. The angels are all "destiny, fate, it is fore-ordained" and are thrashing around for a plan to follow.

Yep, exactly. And it's a great metaphor for those dysfunctional family cycles, because it is really, really hard to break free of them even when you're aware of them, which many people they effect are not -- instead it's just the way things are, the way things have always been.

They don't take the chance to grow, to become independent, to renegotiate their relationship, to grow up.

Yes! And I think over the course of the series, this is what Sam and Dean have struggled with. And yeah, they got close in the first season. But the second season everything had gone backwards, after John made Sam back into Dean's responsibility, and Dean accepted that burden and struggled with even telling Sam about it. Understandably, but it did set them back to the point where they were barely getting back to anything remotely like an equal partnership in season 5, and really hadn't reached that point by the end.