Meta and Author's Notes on my fic "Saving Sam"
So, my latest fic, “Saving Sam.” (There are spoilers for the fic in this here post, so if you’re planning on reading it, you’ll probably want to read it first. It's pretty short. Then again, I saw a million spoilers for S8 before I actually saw it, and somehow it didn’t spoil much of anything!) I’ve been having the hardest time writing fic lately, so disappointed am I in season 8, which I am just now watching. I guess I’m glad I waited for the DVDs, or else it might have killed my inspiration sooner. :-( I wrote a spoof of the egregious “Man’s Best Friend ...” episode, but I would never want to write fic just to make fun of the show, so I’ve been trying to find my way into writing serious fic again and really struggling at it.
I guess there are people who can separate one season from another, one episode from another, their feelings for one vs. their feelings for another, but I’m not like that. Every fic keeps in mind everything that has ever happened throughout the whole series, and given that S8 carelessly retcons everything that’s ever happened throughout the entire series (even S8 stuff--even occasionally things that happened in the very same episode!), trying to do that is like trying to hold onto every piece of a big lego tower that’s crumbling.
So I’ve turned my mind to trying to figure out where the writers are going with all this. I have some ideas--personally, if I were one of the writers, with 2014 approaching, I couldn’t see how we could resist going end!verse, and that seems to be where things are headed, with Cas now cut off from the power of heaven and fully human, Sam and Dean estranged to the breaking point, and Dean already the kind of sociopath who will sacrifice his friends and allies if it helps him accomplish his goals, which have become his whole world. An lj friend pointed out that Lucifer DID say they would always end up there, no matter what. The writers did it gracelessly, but they got there. (I love the idea of going end!verse with the show, I just wish they were doing it BETTER.)
I’ve read a lot of people who agree with my not-so-pleased assessments of S8. I’ve also read a lot of meta that’s working very hard to defend the writers’ choices. At a certain point, I think you have to give up on defending the writers and let their work speak for itself ... but that got me to thinking. Leaving aside the question of whether the writers on the show are that good anymore or whether what’s ending up onscreen is exactly what they meant to create, I decided to instead have a good, hard, honest look at what the show itself says, taken exactly as it is.
Dean’s obsession with taking care of Sam used to seem at least to a degree reasonable; now it seems dogged, over the top, especially given Sam’s silent indifference to it, if not passive resistance. Sam hasn’t really articulated where he’s coming from this season, but SOMETHING ain’t right. I almost can’t help but read it as Sam fading away, in every respect: his body is wasting away, but long before that, his personality, his self-expression, his emotions were fading. Dean’s thoughts and feelings about Sam are so loud, Sam is not just drowned out, but has become almost irrelevant to the relationship. Dean has his ideas about Sam, his obsession with protecting him and keeping him alive and giving him a happy ending (stop it, you shippers--I hear you giggling out there--not THAT kind of ‘happy ending’!), and what Sam thinks or feels about this or anything is no longer part of the equation. The relationship is breaking down ... or was there a relationship to begin with, or was that relationship always in Dean’s mind?
Dean seems perpetually to be trying to make Sam be the brother he wants and seems perpetually to be dissatisfied with the results, but aside from reluctantly giving in to duty and loyalty to family, the only things Sam has ever really declared he ‘wants’ HIMSELF were jumping into the pit and doing the trials himself (although he might have simply been making the logical choice there, since he was after all the one who had already killed the hellhound and bathed in its blood) ... which implies some kind of meta-universe where Sam just wants to die (which ties in to the fic, but we won’t go there right now). In the world of the show, Sam frequently seems less an individual and more an imperfect reflection of Dean’s desires and needs, as well as an archetypal metaphor, the ‘hero’ in nearly every arc.
Why is Dean the most vivid character when every major arc is about Sam? Indeed, why on earth does Dean never have a freakin’ arc?? He had going to/returning from hell S3-4, and that was it. It’s always about Sam, which frustrates fans greatly, but on a meta level ... maybe there never really was a Dean, maybe it’s always been Sam. I mean, do you know two brothers who are that close? Why on earth would they forego any relationship with any other human being, no matter how fulfilling, to go back to the life Sam never wanted (and which Dean, at least in S5, also said he didn’t want)? Why was it Sam who wanted the apple-pie life, and then suddenly in S5 when Sam was about to go in the pit forever it was Dean who wanted it, who supposedly had always wanted it? Careless choices on the part of the writers, or something deeper? These brothers are tied together by fate, circumstance, duty, and (reluctant) choice to such an extreme everyone knows they come as a pair, “the Winchesters,” as if they are less two individual people and more simply two aspects of the same person.
Meanwhile, the stories have become cliched and obvious. The sets, too. (An lj friend recently referred to the hell set in “Taxi Driver” as “chintzy”--I’ll add to that “hilariously stereotypical.”) Dean and Sam all too often seem less like human beings now than caricatures of the human beings they used to be. It’s like that moment in a “Beautiful Mind”--SPOILERS FOR “A BEAUTIFUL MIND” AHEAD--where you’ve been with John Nash for the whole movie, believing everything he believes, and you suddenly realize you, and he, were fooled all along by his hallucinations, which is a brilliant feat of filmmaking, and could be applied to Supernatural, as well. There were a few times in S5 when I was like, “Hmm ...” when EVERY monster and demon and angel knew Sam and Dean, when they ended up being the two main characters in the whole story of humanity, for heaven’s sake, the major players of the apocalypse ... and thence the only two who could stop it and save the world ... which they’ve done many times now, all of which is spectacularly implausible, and yet they had me suspending my disbelief right along with them ... until this season, when the cracks in the story started becoming too obvious not to notice. Does it not watch, on a certain level, like an 8-year-long fever dream?
I’m rewatching S1 now, the aesthetic of which is, above all, strikingly REAL. The interactions between the brothers and the people they meet are more realistic than any you ever see on t.v., little details about the way they live and dress, how they act, how people really talk, how people really feel, mostly shot on location, all of which is so much of what drew me into the show in the first place. Granted, that’s a really difficult way to make a show; it’s much easier to just build a few sets you can redress to look like different places (as they do now) and do a single take rather than obsessing over a shot until it feels true to life. But it was really cool. That has fallen by the wayside over the years. Even after they dropped the sepia-look filters of S1, it was still reliably dark in its visual style ... then by S7, it’s this bright, colorful show that, well, looks like pretty much any other t.v. show--It looks (on a purely visual level) like a much happier show than it has ever been, which is kind of weird ... or is Dean’s hallucinated world changing over the years, becoming less and less plausible as his subconscious whispers to him, “None of this is real”? (Or maybe it’s the showmakers, whispering that to us obsessed fans ...?)
And, okay, I love my badass Sam and Dean as much as the next fan, but ... really? They can battle anything--ANYTHING--and come out on top? They have the King of Hell on speed-dial (and they foil him every time)? God is writing THEIR story, and theirs alone? They’ve died and come back to life HOW many times? They are the earthly manifestation of Free Will?? That many concussions and they wouldn’t be able to speak comprehensibly, much less continue doling out one-liners from their pretty, unmarred faces. They can pick any lock, get out of any bond, kick down any door, best any monster, decipher any code, avert any apocalypse; I mean, they take competence to a whole new level, even while being teased for being not too bright by their adversaries, who are kind of right about that. Dean and Sam don’t plan much, they don’t learn new techniques, they just kind of kick down a door and kill what’s on the other side. Still, they always come out on top. If all you had was a neverending dream ... in which you could die and go to heaven, purgatory, or hell BUT WOULD ALWAYS COME BACK TO LIFE ... wouldn’t you cast yourself as the indestructible hero around whom the world revolved? (So I enjoyed putting it in the fic that real-life Dean/Sam not only can’t easily escape from shackles, but that he doesn’t even know how to pick a lock in real life.)
Of course, after everything that Sam and Dean have been through (I see fans talking continually about PTSD), for the show to be even a little realistic, they’d have to have at least two seasons of Sam and Dean recovering in a safe spot, getting therapy, etc. (I think that could be a good show! Emotionally satisfying in a way watching them continue battling monsters long past any human’s endurance isn’t. I’m sure the showmakers would think it wouldn’t make for good t.v., but regardless, I’d like to see the fic. ;-) )
Then, in my fic, Dean sees that he is really Sam, only not so tall, and not so cute. This is probably my favorite part of the fic, because really, how likely is it that two guys of this caliber of hotness also happen to be at the center of all the world’s most important stories? Sam is mythically tall (Dean is also remarkably tall, just not taller than EVERYONE ELSE like Sam) and smart and strong, Dean a close second, but with the added bonus qualities of charisma and inhumanly good looks. If, as in my fic, Dean is a shadow of Sam, chasing this ever-more-mythical, smarter, stronger, taller, nicer, deeper, BETTER (in Dean’s view) ‘brother’ who slips from his grasp over and over, his psyche would want to give him some small consolations ... and if real-life Sam/Dean is in fact an average kid who’s not that cute or smart or talented, would he not want, between the two halves of himself, to have it all?
Finally, it’s not every dad who would set one son up as the shepherd and protector of the other, where Dean’s only sense of self-worth is in Sam. This was especially true in the early seasons, but it popped up again in S8, when Dean said his only idea of a happy ending was Sam getting old and fat and happy, with the only future Dean able to see for himself being death. Is it simply terminally low self-esteem ... or is it the reality he senses underneath the surface? It’s not like I think the show would ever go there explicitly (there would be a riot, for starters), but it’s an interesting way to consider the show, one that, at least in my case, made watching the next episode I saw (just last night--very nearly done with S8!) WAY more enjoyable. As the episode started, I couldn’t help seeing in it the metaphor I came up with in my fic, which made it all make sense to me, and made me able to find my way into this season, which I guess, ultimately, is one reason to write fic: to find our way into understanding our stories, and our lives, and maybe even ourselves. Sometimes, anyway.
There must be a thousand different metaphorical interpretations of SPN. Do you have any you’re partial to?
I guess there are people who can separate one season from another, one episode from another, their feelings for one vs. their feelings for another, but I’m not like that. Every fic keeps in mind everything that has ever happened throughout the whole series, and given that S8 carelessly retcons everything that’s ever happened throughout the entire series (even S8 stuff--even occasionally things that happened in the very same episode!), trying to do that is like trying to hold onto every piece of a big lego tower that’s crumbling.
So I’ve turned my mind to trying to figure out where the writers are going with all this. I have some ideas--personally, if I were one of the writers, with 2014 approaching, I couldn’t see how we could resist going end!verse, and that seems to be where things are headed, with Cas now cut off from the power of heaven and fully human, Sam and Dean estranged to the breaking point, and Dean already the kind of sociopath who will sacrifice his friends and allies if it helps him accomplish his goals, which have become his whole world. An lj friend pointed out that Lucifer DID say they would always end up there, no matter what. The writers did it gracelessly, but they got there. (I love the idea of going end!verse with the show, I just wish they were doing it BETTER.)
I’ve read a lot of people who agree with my not-so-pleased assessments of S8. I’ve also read a lot of meta that’s working very hard to defend the writers’ choices. At a certain point, I think you have to give up on defending the writers and let their work speak for itself ... but that got me to thinking. Leaving aside the question of whether the writers on the show are that good anymore or whether what’s ending up onscreen is exactly what they meant to create, I decided to instead have a good, hard, honest look at what the show itself says, taken exactly as it is.
Dean’s obsession with taking care of Sam used to seem at least to a degree reasonable; now it seems dogged, over the top, especially given Sam’s silent indifference to it, if not passive resistance. Sam hasn’t really articulated where he’s coming from this season, but SOMETHING ain’t right. I almost can’t help but read it as Sam fading away, in every respect: his body is wasting away, but long before that, his personality, his self-expression, his emotions were fading. Dean’s thoughts and feelings about Sam are so loud, Sam is not just drowned out, but has become almost irrelevant to the relationship. Dean has his ideas about Sam, his obsession with protecting him and keeping him alive and giving him a happy ending (stop it, you shippers--I hear you giggling out there--not THAT kind of ‘happy ending’!), and what Sam thinks or feels about this or anything is no longer part of the equation. The relationship is breaking down ... or was there a relationship to begin with, or was that relationship always in Dean’s mind?
Dean seems perpetually to be trying to make Sam be the brother he wants and seems perpetually to be dissatisfied with the results, but aside from reluctantly giving in to duty and loyalty to family, the only things Sam has ever really declared he ‘wants’ HIMSELF were jumping into the pit and doing the trials himself (although he might have simply been making the logical choice there, since he was after all the one who had already killed the hellhound and bathed in its blood) ... which implies some kind of meta-universe where Sam just wants to die (which ties in to the fic, but we won’t go there right now). In the world of the show, Sam frequently seems less an individual and more an imperfect reflection of Dean’s desires and needs, as well as an archetypal metaphor, the ‘hero’ in nearly every arc.
Why is Dean the most vivid character when every major arc is about Sam? Indeed, why on earth does Dean never have a freakin’ arc?? He had going to/returning from hell S3-4, and that was it. It’s always about Sam, which frustrates fans greatly, but on a meta level ... maybe there never really was a Dean, maybe it’s always been Sam. I mean, do you know two brothers who are that close? Why on earth would they forego any relationship with any other human being, no matter how fulfilling, to go back to the life Sam never wanted (and which Dean, at least in S5, also said he didn’t want)? Why was it Sam who wanted the apple-pie life, and then suddenly in S5 when Sam was about to go in the pit forever it was Dean who wanted it, who supposedly had always wanted it? Careless choices on the part of the writers, or something deeper? These brothers are tied together by fate, circumstance, duty, and (reluctant) choice to such an extreme everyone knows they come as a pair, “the Winchesters,” as if they are less two individual people and more simply two aspects of the same person.
Meanwhile, the stories have become cliched and obvious. The sets, too. (An lj friend recently referred to the hell set in “Taxi Driver” as “chintzy”--I’ll add to that “hilariously stereotypical.”) Dean and Sam all too often seem less like human beings now than caricatures of the human beings they used to be. It’s like that moment in a “Beautiful Mind”--SPOILERS FOR “A BEAUTIFUL MIND” AHEAD--where you’ve been with John Nash for the whole movie, believing everything he believes, and you suddenly realize you, and he, were fooled all along by his hallucinations, which is a brilliant feat of filmmaking, and could be applied to Supernatural, as well. There were a few times in S5 when I was like, “Hmm ...” when EVERY monster and demon and angel knew Sam and Dean, when they ended up being the two main characters in the whole story of humanity, for heaven’s sake, the major players of the apocalypse ... and thence the only two who could stop it and save the world ... which they’ve done many times now, all of which is spectacularly implausible, and yet they had me suspending my disbelief right along with them ... until this season, when the cracks in the story started becoming too obvious not to notice. Does it not watch, on a certain level, like an 8-year-long fever dream?
I’m rewatching S1 now, the aesthetic of which is, above all, strikingly REAL. The interactions between the brothers and the people they meet are more realistic than any you ever see on t.v., little details about the way they live and dress, how they act, how people really talk, how people really feel, mostly shot on location, all of which is so much of what drew me into the show in the first place. Granted, that’s a really difficult way to make a show; it’s much easier to just build a few sets you can redress to look like different places (as they do now) and do a single take rather than obsessing over a shot until it feels true to life. But it was really cool. That has fallen by the wayside over the years. Even after they dropped the sepia-look filters of S1, it was still reliably dark in its visual style ... then by S7, it’s this bright, colorful show that, well, looks like pretty much any other t.v. show--It looks (on a purely visual level) like a much happier show than it has ever been, which is kind of weird ... or is Dean’s hallucinated world changing over the years, becoming less and less plausible as his subconscious whispers to him, “None of this is real”? (Or maybe it’s the showmakers, whispering that to us obsessed fans ...?)
And, okay, I love my badass Sam and Dean as much as the next fan, but ... really? They can battle anything--ANYTHING--and come out on top? They have the King of Hell on speed-dial (and they foil him every time)? God is writing THEIR story, and theirs alone? They’ve died and come back to life HOW many times? They are the earthly manifestation of Free Will?? That many concussions and they wouldn’t be able to speak comprehensibly, much less continue doling out one-liners from their pretty, unmarred faces. They can pick any lock, get out of any bond, kick down any door, best any monster, decipher any code, avert any apocalypse; I mean, they take competence to a whole new level, even while being teased for being not too bright by their adversaries, who are kind of right about that. Dean and Sam don’t plan much, they don’t learn new techniques, they just kind of kick down a door and kill what’s on the other side. Still, they always come out on top. If all you had was a neverending dream ... in which you could die and go to heaven, purgatory, or hell BUT WOULD ALWAYS COME BACK TO LIFE ... wouldn’t you cast yourself as the indestructible hero around whom the world revolved? (So I enjoyed putting it in the fic that real-life Dean/Sam not only can’t easily escape from shackles, but that he doesn’t even know how to pick a lock in real life.)
Of course, after everything that Sam and Dean have been through (I see fans talking continually about PTSD), for the show to be even a little realistic, they’d have to have at least two seasons of Sam and Dean recovering in a safe spot, getting therapy, etc. (I think that could be a good show! Emotionally satisfying in a way watching them continue battling monsters long past any human’s endurance isn’t. I’m sure the showmakers would think it wouldn’t make for good t.v., but regardless, I’d like to see the fic. ;-) )
Then, in my fic, Dean sees that he is really Sam, only not so tall, and not so cute. This is probably my favorite part of the fic, because really, how likely is it that two guys of this caliber of hotness also happen to be at the center of all the world’s most important stories? Sam is mythically tall (Dean is also remarkably tall, just not taller than EVERYONE ELSE like Sam) and smart and strong, Dean a close second, but with the added bonus qualities of charisma and inhumanly good looks. If, as in my fic, Dean is a shadow of Sam, chasing this ever-more-mythical, smarter, stronger, taller, nicer, deeper, BETTER (in Dean’s view) ‘brother’ who slips from his grasp over and over, his psyche would want to give him some small consolations ... and if real-life Sam/Dean is in fact an average kid who’s not that cute or smart or talented, would he not want, between the two halves of himself, to have it all?
Finally, it’s not every dad who would set one son up as the shepherd and protector of the other, where Dean’s only sense of self-worth is in Sam. This was especially true in the early seasons, but it popped up again in S8, when Dean said his only idea of a happy ending was Sam getting old and fat and happy, with the only future Dean able to see for himself being death. Is it simply terminally low self-esteem ... or is it the reality he senses underneath the surface? It’s not like I think the show would ever go there explicitly (there would be a riot, for starters), but it’s an interesting way to consider the show, one that, at least in my case, made watching the next episode I saw (just last night--very nearly done with S8!) WAY more enjoyable. As the episode started, I couldn’t help seeing in it the metaphor I came up with in my fic, which made it all make sense to me, and made me able to find my way into this season, which I guess, ultimately, is one reason to write fic: to find our way into understanding our stories, and our lives, and maybe even ourselves. Sometimes, anyway.
There must be a thousand different metaphorical interpretations of SPN. Do you have any you’re partial to?