you got what you asked for *15 x 20
In March 2019, I wrote this about SPN's prospective ending:
why i want spn to go home instead of going big.
I said stuff like this:
One of things I love best about SPN is its collection of ephemera, its lost motels, its gravelly roadsides, the sleeves of plaids and the shakers of salt and the throwaway lines that don't make it onto the gifs.
I know it's an epic (love story, odyssey, gospel), but the great American road narrative has always been humble too.
I want an SPN sendoff that goes smaller.
Dean's always (or whatever that means in 13+ years of canon) said he is going to, will, wants to, die bloody; Sam said in 13 x 20 that they'd die together, should it come to that. Blaze of glory, maybe. (And here, outside, in meta-land, J2 have said some similar things). But are those the only options? A happy, heavenly barista/barkeep AU would fit them even less than the long drop off a cosmic cliff. But what Winchesterland would? What would (maybe?) full-circle them to the shadows of a dorm room, a trunk, their close breath and their young grief and their driving off into the dark with smoke in their shirts and so many years of work to do?
***
So did I get what I said I wanted (which actually was not all that clear)? I was mostly not surprised; 15 x20 pulled on the narrative threads I expected (hard) and it was not all of it well-executed (there is plenty to say in a critical vein but I'm not going to say it). But I was totally unprepared for the emotional sequelae, which I am struggling to characterize beyond the obvious, original injury (which: Winchesters might have something to say about that, about wounds that repeat or transfer brother-to-brother or never close at all, physical body or cosmic). I know we're living in a collective elegy with no freedom or peace promised, but that's not all of it. And I didn't think I wanted an ending that kind of dictated its own response and then some, but--
did you get what you wanted? did Sam and Dean?
why i want spn to go home instead of going big.
I said stuff like this:
One of things I love best about SPN is its collection of ephemera, its lost motels, its gravelly roadsides, the sleeves of plaids and the shakers of salt and the throwaway lines that don't make it onto the gifs.
I know it's an epic (love story, odyssey, gospel), but the great American road narrative has always been humble too.
I want an SPN sendoff that goes smaller.
Dean's always (or whatever that means in 13+ years of canon) said he is going to, will, wants to, die bloody; Sam said in 13 x 20 that they'd die together, should it come to that. Blaze of glory, maybe. (And here, outside, in meta-land, J2 have said some similar things). But are those the only options? A happy, heavenly barista/barkeep AU would fit them even less than the long drop off a cosmic cliff. But what Winchesterland would? What would (maybe?) full-circle them to the shadows of a dorm room, a trunk, their close breath and their young grief and their driving off into the dark with smoke in their shirts and so many years of work to do?
***
So did I get what I said I wanted (which actually was not all that clear)? I was mostly not surprised; 15 x20 pulled on the narrative threads I expected (hard) and it was not all of it well-executed (there is plenty to say in a critical vein but I'm not going to say it). But I was totally unprepared for the emotional sequelae, which I am struggling to characterize beyond the obvious, original injury (which: Winchesters might have something to say about that, about wounds that repeat or transfer brother-to-brother or never close at all, physical body or cosmic). I know we're living in a collective elegy with no freedom or peace promised, but that's not all of it. And I didn't think I wanted an ending that kind of dictated its own response and then some, but--
did you get what you wanted? did Sam and Dean?