(no subject)
I've been sitting on this bit of meta for quite a while and now seems like as good as any time to finally put my words down into some sort of physical form. Enjoy.
The prevailing opinion in fandom appears to be that if a comparison must be made then Dean most closely resembles Mulder and Sam, Scully and while I certainly understand the reasons behind that particular presumption I don't agree with it. There are certainly things that Dean has in common with Mulder and Sam has in common with Scully. Like Scully, Sam has to put up with Dean's Mulder-like lack of caring about how the world sees him and is constantly trying to smooth the inevitable waves that form in his wake. The skeptic/believer dichotomy has also been bandied around but it's a rather complex analysis that isn't quite as easy in either show as it would first appear.
I'll begin with a story analysis. This is the first thing baylorsr goes to anytime we have this discussion, which is a lot seeing as neither of us can ever stop thinking about the Winchesters and we're doing an X-Files rewatch. Sam and Mulder occupy the same position in their respective stories. They are the driving forces, the seekers, the Campbellian questers who are driven down a specific heroic path. There are outside forces that have plans for both of them, whether it be a yellow-eyed demon or a smoky Consortium. They seek because they have lost people, because the fight has been brought directly to their doorsteps and they must learn the truth. The over-arcing story is very much their story and the evil forces have their eyes directly focused on them, have plans for them and will do everything possible to see those plans come to fruition.
Of course, what those evil forces always fail to fully appreciate is the person standing directly beside the marked protgatonist. Dean and Scully are the protectors and the strength, the firm foundation and the steady hand. The biggest mistake the Consortium ever made was placing Scully with Mulder and it may just turn out that the Demon's own downfall will come because it traded John's life for Dean's. They're as inextricably tied up in the quest as their partners and are as essential to whatever victory may ensue but they're the ones that could conceivably escape, who won't be chased down and forced to participate but who will stand their ground irregardless and fight for their own reasons.
Beyond the archetypal story positions there's also basic psychology. We have evidence that Sam and Mulder are the driven ones, willing to sacrifice nearly anything (except Dean or Scully) to effectuate their goals, they're the prodigals who grew up believing that they would never be who their fathers wanted them to be so they would be their own people and take their own paths. Dean and Scully, by contrast, were the good children, the good soldiers who wanted more then anything to make their fathers proud. Mulder and Sam take intuitive leaps when they're solving problems going from point A to point F in one instinctive jump where Scully and Dean follow the evidence through logically, step by step to reach the same point.
At the center of the similarities lies faith. Much has been made over the years about Scully's religious belief and rightfully so, I was always grateful that Chris Carter gave us a scientist who was also religous. What's so easy to forget and something that I only remember now that I'm in the middle of seeing Scully's character progession begin is that she was not always so. In the early years Scully was as skeptical of her mother and her sister's religion as she was of Mulder's crusade and her belief in both came as evidence upon evidence piled up to convince her. Dean is much the same way, he believes in what he knows, what the evidence provides and what he can see and touch and comprehend. The Sam we see in 'Houses of the Holy' believes in so much the same way that Mulder does, with a frantic kind of desperation that makes him grab fast onto anything he can and is so broken when that thing turns out to not be at all what he needed it to be. They both want to believe and it's that gaping want that drives them both, in the end.
They're stories are different and the laws of their lives don't always match and it can be argued back and forth who is more like who but in the end the important similarity, the thing that keeps so many of us coming back, is the strength of them together. The grandness of the machinations of the roads they travel takes a back-burner to the myriad complexities of who they become and the strength they gain because they have each other.
Plus, Sam and Mulder really are the red-headed woman of their separate partnerships, real gender and hair-coloring of the participants notwithstanding.
;-)
The prevailing opinion in fandom appears to be that if a comparison must be made then Dean most closely resembles Mulder and Sam, Scully and while I certainly understand the reasons behind that particular presumption I don't agree with it. There are certainly things that Dean has in common with Mulder and Sam has in common with Scully. Like Scully, Sam has to put up with Dean's Mulder-like lack of caring about how the world sees him and is constantly trying to smooth the inevitable waves that form in his wake. The skeptic/believer dichotomy has also been bandied around but it's a rather complex analysis that isn't quite as easy in either show as it would first appear.
I'll begin with a story analysis. This is the first thing baylorsr goes to anytime we have this discussion, which is a lot seeing as neither of us can ever stop thinking about the Winchesters and we're doing an X-Files rewatch. Sam and Mulder occupy the same position in their respective stories. They are the driving forces, the seekers, the Campbellian questers who are driven down a specific heroic path. There are outside forces that have plans for both of them, whether it be a yellow-eyed demon or a smoky Consortium. They seek because they have lost people, because the fight has been brought directly to their doorsteps and they must learn the truth. The over-arcing story is very much their story and the evil forces have their eyes directly focused on them, have plans for them and will do everything possible to see those plans come to fruition.
Of course, what those evil forces always fail to fully appreciate is the person standing directly beside the marked protgatonist. Dean and Scully are the protectors and the strength, the firm foundation and the steady hand. The biggest mistake the Consortium ever made was placing Scully with Mulder and it may just turn out that the Demon's own downfall will come because it traded John's life for Dean's. They're as inextricably tied up in the quest as their partners and are as essential to whatever victory may ensue but they're the ones that could conceivably escape, who won't be chased down and forced to participate but who will stand their ground irregardless and fight for their own reasons.
Beyond the archetypal story positions there's also basic psychology. We have evidence that Sam and Mulder are the driven ones, willing to sacrifice nearly anything (except Dean or Scully) to effectuate their goals, they're the prodigals who grew up believing that they would never be who their fathers wanted them to be so they would be their own people and take their own paths. Dean and Scully, by contrast, were the good children, the good soldiers who wanted more then anything to make their fathers proud. Mulder and Sam take intuitive leaps when they're solving problems going from point A to point F in one instinctive jump where Scully and Dean follow the evidence through logically, step by step to reach the same point.
At the center of the similarities lies faith. Much has been made over the years about Scully's religious belief and rightfully so, I was always grateful that Chris Carter gave us a scientist who was also religous. What's so easy to forget and something that I only remember now that I'm in the middle of seeing Scully's character progession begin is that she was not always so. In the early years Scully was as skeptical of her mother and her sister's religion as she was of Mulder's crusade and her belief in both came as evidence upon evidence piled up to convince her. Dean is much the same way, he believes in what he knows, what the evidence provides and what he can see and touch and comprehend. The Sam we see in 'Houses of the Holy' believes in so much the same way that Mulder does, with a frantic kind of desperation that makes him grab fast onto anything he can and is so broken when that thing turns out to not be at all what he needed it to be. They both want to believe and it's that gaping want that drives them both, in the end.
They're stories are different and the laws of their lives don't always match and it can be argued back and forth who is more like who but in the end the important similarity, the thing that keeps so many of us coming back, is the strength of them together. The grandness of the machinations of the roads they travel takes a back-burner to the myriad complexities of who they become and the strength they gain because they have each other.
Plus, Sam and Mulder really are the red-headed woman of their separate partnerships, real gender and hair-coloring of the participants notwithstanding.
;-)