Walking off the chessboard: part 4

[amonitrate]

This is the longest part! Bear with me, it's also probably the most complicated and delicate part to explain. Hopefully I did it justice.

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

( master post)

Part 4

Perpetuating the role of Scapegoat

One of the catch-22’s that the Scapegoat faces is that rebelling against the

Comments

[annspal]

I'm jumping in to particularly notice this, but appreciate your work across the series of entries. It's fascinating to me to examine the show for patterns like this. You're no doubt right to recognize everything is complicated because the boys do step outside the most rigid boundaries of their roles.

4.04
SAM [to Jack]
It doesn't matter what you are. It only matters what you do. It's your choice.

4.21
DEAN [to Sam]
Because it's not something that you're doing, it's what you are! It means-Seeing these two comments so close together is interesting because it acts like an extended debate over how identity is determined. I really don't think they're talking just about Jack and Sam. In between the two arguments, it's come out that DEAN was made a monster in hell. (I think there are all kinds of parallels to draw between Dean and family man Jack. It wasn't an accident that Jack was specifically given 30 years before the onset of monsterhood

[amonitrate]

Actually, yeah, I haven't really touched on this, but I do think that even before hell, Dean conceptualized himself as something of a monster. See 1.22 and his fear over what he won't do for his family, and he's already calling himself a freak earlier in that season

[annspal]

Possibly fanwanking, but I think there was a part of Dean who thought he was monstrous before hell that allowed him to make that deal; and what happened in hell only confirmed his fears.

I don't consider that idea fanwanking at all. :-) That terrible, inevitable deal! Dean knew how utterly wrong it was (which doesn't mean it wasn't admirable). He knows it even more now after hell.

And yet. Would he make a different choice now? He's still choosing Sam. Lord love them both, the explicit message of 5.22 was how by choosing family they passed the test.

I'm avoiding spoilers for S6 but thank goodness Sam has that stubborn belief in the possibility of redemption for monsters and family alike. I'm nervous to think it may have been burned away.

[amonitrate]

I might be in the minority but I don't find it admirable. Complicated, yeah. I think the right choice, the more difficult choice in that moment, would have been to live with Sam dead. I totally get why for Dean at that time it was practically an impossibility to expect him to do so, with the way he was raised, his conditioning, etc, but one of the themes I appreciate in the show is that this kind of sacrifice is not actually the right thing to do. It does nothing but harm everyone -- the sacrificer and the one sacrificed for, you know? The chain of deals started by Mary led to the apocalypse

[destro]

late to the party but MAN, I did not notice this:

It wasn't an accident that Jack was specifically given 30 years before the onset of monsterhood

That is so. COOL. Thanks for pointing that out!