#spnfiltration
I had not one but TWO breakthroughs today and I honestly can't tell whether it's all the tinfoil on my head or if what I've found actually suggests that my research project is legit and I'm not just making things up. I feel like a fucking GENIUS. One is a portrait an artist drew of one of my poets a few years ago that perfectly illustrates not only what I believe to be true about the poetry but also the cultural/tropic context through which I'm analyzing it in my dissertation, which WHAAAT. AM I NOT JUST MAKING THINGS UP. AMAZING. And the other, uh, is just the biography of a historical figure that the poet mentions in a poem that serves to connect her work to a completely different set of connections I've made. Since the guy's been dead for over a hundred years obviously the all-important biographical information has been around for a while, but I just realized it and it makes for a perfect segue and omgggggg. DEFINITELY NEEDED THIS.
Amazing.
Also, because this is a SPN blog, I'll 1) note that this must be what it felt like to be translating the stupid tablets--long periods of absolutely incomprehension punctuated by sudden clarities.
Also, the Trans suffered (and continue to suffer) the worst out of every character in SPN, including Sam and Dean, and you can't change my mind. They worked Kevin nearly to death after abandoning him for a year, avoided all non-essential contact with him, refused to offer him safe harbor in a secure location (i.e. the bunker) even after he expressed his need/fear, and then got him actually killed. And they left Linda to be imprisoned/tortured by Crowley purely because they just assumed she was dead and could not be bothered to confirm until Kevin insisted, literally from beyond the Veil. The lives the Trans lived correspond directly to the ways Sam and Dean are deeply inadequate to the tasks laid before them.
LET ME BE CLEAR HERE, I don't think anyone should--or can--be adequate to the tasks laid before Sam and Dean. The whole point is that it's just not possible. I also think it's totally understandable that all this would play out in the way that it did, and that Sam and Dean would make the choices they did, consciously or unconsciously. I don't think it could happen differently, or that it should have. I doubt I'd want it to, frankly. I just think it's important to acknowledge that Sam and Dean have really fucked some shit up, in ways that do not begin to approach "but it was for the grater good" or "but it balances out." The moments where they are truly awful human beings are as profoundly important to how I feel about Sam and Dean as their capacity for warmth, hope, and selflessness. <333333
Amazing.
Also, because this is a SPN blog, I'll 1) note that this must be what it felt like to be translating the stupid tablets--long periods of absolutely incomprehension punctuated by sudden clarities.
Also, the Trans suffered (and continue to suffer) the worst out of every character in SPN, including Sam and Dean, and you can't change my mind. They worked Kevin nearly to death after abandoning him for a year, avoided all non-essential contact with him, refused to offer him safe harbor in a secure location (i.e. the bunker) even after he expressed his need/fear, and then got him actually killed. And they left Linda to be imprisoned/tortured by Crowley purely because they just assumed she was dead and could not be bothered to confirm until Kevin insisted, literally from beyond the Veil. The lives the Trans lived correspond directly to the ways Sam and Dean are deeply inadequate to the tasks laid before them.
LET ME BE CLEAR HERE, I don't think anyone should--or can--be adequate to the tasks laid before Sam and Dean. The whole point is that it's just not possible. I also think it's totally understandable that all this would play out in the way that it did, and that Sam and Dean would make the choices they did, consciously or unconsciously. I don't think it could happen differently, or that it should have. I doubt I'd want it to, frankly. I just think it's important to acknowledge that Sam and Dean have really fucked some shit up, in ways that do not begin to approach "but it was for the grater good" or "but it balances out." The moments where they are truly awful human beings are as profoundly important to how I feel about Sam and Dean as their capacity for warmth, hope, and selflessness. <333333