for posterity (post tags are accurate)
Okay, but aside from Once Upon a Forest, the apocalyptic crackverse AU Michigan is unfolding in its newscycle, and my enthusiastic but ultimately non-specific declarations of love for S9, 10, and 15: I feel like I often struggle to express how very seriously I take Sam and Dean, their experiences, and the way I feel about them. Mostly because I don't like expressing things that are personal, and my relationship to Sam and Dean is about as intimate as I get, haha (but not haha. See, there I go again). Partly because I do want to honor the elements of camp and spectacle that are so much an integral, indispensable part of who SPN is (and who Sam and Dean are). But sometimes I just feel bad, like, saying too many things that are superficial or dismissive because I know I'm rhetoricizing disingenuously about my feelings, if that's a real phrase. Which makes me just want to be like, SAM. DEAN. I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW. I AM TAKING YOU VERY SERIOUSLY. Deathly seriously.
It's kind of like how if I'm writing H/C (a trope I like, and maybe perhaps be 80% molecularly constituted from), if I feel like it's too much or goes on too long I feel really bad about it. Because I'm like, wow, you shouldn't have to deal with this. Not in like, an "oh my wooby cinnamon roll" way--because Sam and Dean have made their choices, and they can probably take it. Whatever. But in a way where it's like, man, you deserve more self-respect than I am allowing you here and you should not have to deal with this on the page. You should be able to hide out on the cutting room floor or in the hidden interstices between episodes and do this. Which I guess is sort of a strange impulse, given how bare they're often laid on-screen. They're not granted much modesty and I imagine they don't expect to be (even ignoring the meta and Chuck and all of that). But they do get some--if they didn't, we wouldn't be here, filling in those gaps and realizing all those implications.
Again, I will fully acknowledge that this is all a bit ridiculous. Especially since part of writing and story is going past the point of comfort and towards those things you're shy about, or ashamed of, or terrified by. (Part of writing and story is also knowing when thing are better served by less. That's not what I'm concerned with here, though.) But I also think that sometimes when writing there's this impulse to narrate, to organize meaning, to clarify. To divulge, even. Maybe part of me feels very strongly, with regard to Sam and Dean, that no, you should not have to clarify yourself. You should not have to give, or explain--to the reader, to whoever's actually in the scene with them, to themselves. You shouldn't have to act or think in ways that are meaningful, or come to something, or make your life better or worse or your character arcful or not. And I don't mean mytharc "plot" stuff; even in stories where "nothing" happens, it's not as though there isn't story.
I don't think story requires these directives or impulses inherently. There's entire movements and eras of literature that are testament to that. But I also don't think my love for Sam and Dean would be well-served by acting like they're from an experimental arthouse French-Mime-Movie-In-Wichita movie.
I guess what I mean is sometimes I get very serious about taking Sam and Dean's experiences of their lives very seriously and sometimes come to that point of getting very invested in this feeling, You don't owe anyone (including me, your brother, yourself) delineation.
It's kind of like how if I'm writing H/C (a trope I like, and maybe perhaps be 80% molecularly constituted from), if I feel like it's too much or goes on too long I feel really bad about it. Because I'm like, wow, you shouldn't have to deal with this. Not in like, an "oh my wooby cinnamon roll" way--because Sam and Dean have made their choices, and they can probably take it. Whatever. But in a way where it's like, man, you deserve more self-respect than I am allowing you here and you should not have to deal with this on the page. You should be able to hide out on the cutting room floor or in the hidden interstices between episodes and do this. Which I guess is sort of a strange impulse, given how bare they're often laid on-screen. They're not granted much modesty and I imagine they don't expect to be (even ignoring the meta and Chuck and all of that). But they do get some--if they didn't, we wouldn't be here, filling in those gaps and realizing all those implications.
Again, I will fully acknowledge that this is all a bit ridiculous. Especially since part of writing and story is going past the point of comfort and towards those things you're shy about, or ashamed of, or terrified by. (Part of writing and story is also knowing when thing are better served by less. That's not what I'm concerned with here, though.) But I also think that sometimes when writing there's this impulse to narrate, to organize meaning, to clarify. To divulge, even. Maybe part of me feels very strongly, with regard to Sam and Dean, that no, you should not have to clarify yourself. You should not have to give, or explain--to the reader, to whoever's actually in the scene with them, to themselves. You shouldn't have to act or think in ways that are meaningful, or come to something, or make your life better or worse or your character arcful or not. And I don't mean mytharc "plot" stuff; even in stories where "nothing" happens, it's not as though there isn't story.
I don't think story requires these directives or impulses inherently. There's entire movements and eras of literature that are testament to that. But I also don't think my love for Sam and Dean would be well-served by acting like they're from an experimental arthouse French-Mime-Movie-In-Wichita movie.
I guess what I mean is sometimes I get very serious about taking Sam and Dean's experiences of their lives very seriously and sometimes come to that point of getting very invested in this feeling, You don't owe anyone (including me, your brother, yourself) delineation.