the plans they made put an end to you
I have four two Dreamwidth codes, should anyone want or need one. First come, first served. Comment with an email address.
I also imported
unfitforsociety over to DW, so I now have a full recs backup, which is nice.
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Yesterday, we were talking about writing and how I use structure sometimes to kickstart me when I'm stuck ("how can I tell this story?" as opposed to "what is this story about?") and I mentioned "a lousy history of tomorrows," so last night I went back and read it, and I still think it works - as a story told chronologically backwards, as a story told in second person, and as a story which uses nothing but sex scenes to illustrate the characters and where their relationship is at a given point in time.
I also reread a couple other of my Remus/Sirius stories, and oh, OTP of my heart... *sniffle*
Possibly because they are so tragic (and I'd expected them not to be when I started shipping them), my threshold for OMG MY PAIRING IS RUINED! is a little higher than most people's? I mean, I spent three years bringing Sirius back from the dead, with the added complication of having to write around a canon het relationship at the end there, and they were separated for twelve years, before which they'd clearly had serious trust issues followed by massive betrayal, so... yeah. I am kind of like, "they're not both dead? I can work with that." I think my love of reunionating comes from that whole Shack scene in POA.
TRUE LOVE IN A SHACK! ♥
*sighs nostalgically*
*
I had some really good thoughts on "Lucifer Rising" while I was trying to fall back to sleep at 5 am this morning, but now I don't remember what they were. I am still trying to work some things out in my head.
I am having the hardest time working out my feelings about Sam's powers and addiction, so bear with me here as I trace what we know and when we know it.
After "Mystery Spot," Sam is kind of crazy and broken (see "Time Is On My Side") and losing Dean for real (and what he believes is for good) only makes that worse ("I Know What You Did Last Summer"). He agrees to train with Ruby, and it's strongly implied that he starts drinking demon blood then, to juice himself up to kill Lilith and avenge Dean's death ("Criss Angel Is a Douchebag").
After "Metamorphosis," per Dean's pleas, Sam stops drinking Ruby's blood, but he's still strong enough to take down Samhain in "It's the Great Pumpkin..." (though it gives him a bloody nose and a killer headache).
At the end of "Criss Angel Is a Douchebag," after Dean has said he believes their lives will end bloody and sad (and young), and Barry Bostwick says he did the right thing and ended up killing his boyfriend brother and thus has ended up old and alone, Sam decides that he will once again train up with Ruby, so he can kill Lilith and he and Dean can retire from the hunting life.
In "Death Takes a Holiday," Sam is strong enough to fling Alastair around, but Alastair doesn't stick around long enough for us to discover whether Sam can actually exorcise or kill him. Note: Sam is unable to use his powers when he's not in his body.
In "On the Head of a Pin," Sam sadly determines that Dean is not strong enough to torture the truth out of Alastair (more proof that Sam's not right in the head - he doesn't dispute the Stupidest Plan Ever), and he tells Ruby he needs to power up to be strong enough to do the job for him, so Ruby feeds him her blood and he's able to kill Alastair.
In "Jump the Shark," the ghouls note that Sam's blood tastes odd, and he loses an awful lot of it. In the next episode ("The Rapture"), he's been cut off from his supply of demon blood, he's twitchy about it, and when he can't pull a demon in the climactic fight, he feeds off a random demon (who he then kills, despite apparently powering up and being able to pull a different demon twenty seconds later).
Dean, finally made aware of what Sam's really been doing, after months of being misled and lied to, stages a (poorly thought out but well-meaning) intervention/detox.
Sam goes through a painful withdrawal, with symptoms including hallucinations and seizures (both regular and telekinetic) ("When the Levee Breaks"). When he's set free, he's jonesing like a junkie chasing his next hit, and Ruby gives it to him, noting his appetite has increased and that she's not going to be able to give him everything he needs to take Lilith down, but she knows this other demon who's close to Lilith, so they can kill two birds with one stone (i.e., find out Lilith's location and also give Sam the extra blood he needs to take her on; it was clear to me, btw, that Ruby and the nurse-demon were in collusion while the nurse-demon was being tortured - she and Ruby exchange a couple of knowing glances).
In "Lucifer Rising," Sam kills Lilith, breaking the last seal and thus setting Lucifer free. Ruby reveals that she's been playing him the whole time, and he tries and fails to kill her and she says, "It's useless. You blew your payload on the boss." She tells him that it was him all along, that he never needed the blood to do anything ("It wasn't the blood. It was you. I just gave you the options and you chose the right path every time. You didn't need the feather to fly. You had it in you the whole time, Dumbo.")
We saw Sam getting colder and harder through last season and this season - he said he was trying to become more like Dean ("Malleus Maleficarum") but in reality he was becoming more like John ("Jump the Shark"). The process started before he began drinking demon blood ("Jus in Bello," "Bedtime Stories"), and was an attempt to steel himself for Dean's death, and also to do whatever was necessary to stop Dean's death. So he was already on that path.
Now, we know that Ava and Jake were both able to access various powers (telecoercion, summoning and controlling demons) without drinking demon blood - they just had to open themselves up to it and it was like flipping a switch. (As an aside, Jake's eyes flashed yellow in AHBL2, while Sam's eyes went black like Ruby's.) Andy and Max, though not being pushed by Azazel, were able to strengthen their powers. Sam, on the other hand, was never able to do the telekinesis thing again ("Make the gun float to you there, psychic boy."), and his visions stopped once Azazel was dead.
We know that John was afraid of Azazel's plans for Sam, and that he told Dean that if he couldn't save Sam, he'd have to kill him. He raised his sons with a huge hate-on for all things supernatural, and even though they muddy the waters a little bit (Lenore, Andy), in the end, neither Sam nor Dean can escape the idea that if it's supernatural, it's evil and they kill it. So Dean is terrified of Sam's powers, terrified that he is going to have to kill Sam if Sam becomes something other than himself. Sam, meanwhile, is turning himself into someone he believes is more like Dean, but in actuality is more like their father - revenge-obsessed/driven and blind to anything but that in his quest to protect and then avenge Dean.
So Sam sees himself as a monster, a freak, the one thing he never wanted to be, and he hates that about himself and is trying to turn it into a good thing. Unfortunately, in the universe he inhabits, it appears that the tainted origin of the powers means that they will eventually corrupt/consume him. We still have no idea whether this is true or not, though we can say that trying to juice up the powers via drinking demon blood is a bad idea because it turns you into an addict, regardless of whether or not it taints your soul or turns you into a monster.
Going with the idea that at the end, Ruby was doing her big villain monologue and thus telling the truth (as straightforwardly as a demon ever does, knowing it will hurt Sam more this way), does she mean that he didn't need the demon blood for the power, or that the demon blood wasn't influencing his decisions? Because clearly, the latter isn't quite true - I think it was all Sam making those decisions, yes, but I also think that addiction makes it really hard to separate the "I need to kill Lilith/avenge Dean/stop the apocalypse" motive from the "I need to drink demon blood to stop the shakes" motive. Clearly, the addiction - whether physical or psychological or both - is real, and Sam's not really lying when he says, "I'm not drinking demon blood for kicks, Dean." He needs it to function (and he believes he needs it to function optimally, i.e., at full demon-killing power).
So while I don't think his actions this season can be handwaved, the way his actions in "Born Under a Bad Sign" or even "Sex and Violence" and "Asylum" can be (i.e., it was an outside force in all three cases, though in the latter two, it was Sam saying those things, just with the mean/negative aspects turned up to drown out the positive), I do think that 1. he was already broken and not right after "Mystery Spot" and 2. the addiction was clearly messing with his head, at least indirectly in the sense that he was ashamed and guilty and knew that Dean would not approve, so he lied and hid his actions as much as possible, which more than the demon blood itself was the source of Dean's anger and feelings of betrayal.
In thinking about this, I think I've come to the conclusion that Sam's addiction is more akin to someone using anabolic steroids than someone using recreational drugs - the personality changes, the "powering up", the belief that the drugs are necessary for peak performance, and in Sam's case the stakes are much higher, because peak performance is necessary because he has to stop the apocalypse. But because he knows on some deep level that what he's doing is wrong, he has to place the onus on the outside source - the demon blood is responsible, and he's only doing upping his dosage to save Dean/save the world (since it was already in him, he believes he's already damned). I'm no expert, but I think this is typical of an addict's psychology while in the throes of their addiction.
I guess a lot really depends on how they handle it next season. I will be really upset if they brush it all off as "it was the demon blood, not me, and I'm all better now." I don't think they will, but it is the easy out, and it probably makes Sam a lot more sympathetic to some people to have it be an outside force working on him. For me, knowing that every bad decision he took and every choice he made came out of his deep, massive love for Dean and his desperate desire to save/avenge him, makes him sympathetic even though I want to smack him upside the head repeatedly and remind him that while it was his love for Dean that made him open to manipulation, it was his pride and his desire for revenge that made it so easy.
I still can't decide whether the blood was actually necessary, powers-wise, or if it was just a way Ruby bound Sam to her, made him need her in a way Dean couldn't compete with, and led him over a line he should never have crossed (bleeding and drinking the nurse-demon's blood). In the end, I'm not sure it really matters (except in terms of writing fic and there I can choose whatever I need to make the story work).
Wow, that got really long, but I think I am a little clearer on things now.
*
I also imported
unfitforsociety over to DW, so I now have a full recs backup, which is nice.
*
Yesterday, we were talking about writing and how I use structure sometimes to kickstart me when I'm stuck ("how can I tell this story?" as opposed to "what is this story about?") and I mentioned "a lousy history of tomorrows," so last night I went back and read it, and I still think it works - as a story told chronologically backwards, as a story told in second person, and as a story which uses nothing but sex scenes to illustrate the characters and where their relationship is at a given point in time.
I also reread a couple other of my Remus/Sirius stories, and oh, OTP of my heart... *sniffle*
Possibly because they are so tragic (and I'd expected them not to be when I started shipping them), my threshold for OMG MY PAIRING IS RUINED! is a little higher than most people's? I mean, I spent three years bringing Sirius back from the dead, with the added complication of having to write around a canon het relationship at the end there, and they were separated for twelve years, before which they'd clearly had serious trust issues followed by massive betrayal, so... yeah. I am kind of like, "they're not both dead? I can work with that." I think my love of reunionating comes from that whole Shack scene in POA.
TRUE LOVE IN A SHACK! ♥
*sighs nostalgically*
*
I had some really good thoughts on "Lucifer Rising" while I was trying to fall back to sleep at 5 am this morning, but now I don't remember what they were. I am still trying to work some things out in my head.
I am having the hardest time working out my feelings about Sam's powers and addiction, so bear with me here as I trace what we know and when we know it.
After "Mystery Spot," Sam is kind of crazy and broken (see "Time Is On My Side") and losing Dean for real (and what he believes is for good) only makes that worse ("I Know What You Did Last Summer"). He agrees to train with Ruby, and it's strongly implied that he starts drinking demon blood then, to juice himself up to kill Lilith and avenge Dean's death ("Criss Angel Is a Douchebag").
After "Metamorphosis," per Dean's pleas, Sam stops drinking Ruby's blood, but he's still strong enough to take down Samhain in "It's the Great Pumpkin..." (though it gives him a bloody nose and a killer headache).
At the end of "Criss Angel Is a Douchebag," after Dean has said he believes their lives will end bloody and sad (and young), and Barry Bostwick says he did the right thing and ended up killing his boyfriend brother and thus has ended up old and alone, Sam decides that he will once again train up with Ruby, so he can kill Lilith and he and Dean can retire from the hunting life.
In "Death Takes a Holiday," Sam is strong enough to fling Alastair around, but Alastair doesn't stick around long enough for us to discover whether Sam can actually exorcise or kill him. Note: Sam is unable to use his powers when he's not in his body.
In "On the Head of a Pin," Sam sadly determines that Dean is not strong enough to torture the truth out of Alastair (more proof that Sam's not right in the head - he doesn't dispute the Stupidest Plan Ever), and he tells Ruby he needs to power up to be strong enough to do the job for him, so Ruby feeds him her blood and he's able to kill Alastair.
In "Jump the Shark," the ghouls note that Sam's blood tastes odd, and he loses an awful lot of it. In the next episode ("The Rapture"), he's been cut off from his supply of demon blood, he's twitchy about it, and when he can't pull a demon in the climactic fight, he feeds off a random demon (who he then kills, despite apparently powering up and being able to pull a different demon twenty seconds later).
Dean, finally made aware of what Sam's really been doing, after months of being misled and lied to, stages a (poorly thought out but well-meaning) intervention/detox.
Sam goes through a painful withdrawal, with symptoms including hallucinations and seizures (both regular and telekinetic) ("When the Levee Breaks"). When he's set free, he's jonesing like a junkie chasing his next hit, and Ruby gives it to him, noting his appetite has increased and that she's not going to be able to give him everything he needs to take Lilith down, but she knows this other demon who's close to Lilith, so they can kill two birds with one stone (i.e., find out Lilith's location and also give Sam the extra blood he needs to take her on; it was clear to me, btw, that Ruby and the nurse-demon were in collusion while the nurse-demon was being tortured - she and Ruby exchange a couple of knowing glances).
In "Lucifer Rising," Sam kills Lilith, breaking the last seal and thus setting Lucifer free. Ruby reveals that she's been playing him the whole time, and he tries and fails to kill her and she says, "It's useless. You blew your payload on the boss." She tells him that it was him all along, that he never needed the blood to do anything ("It wasn't the blood. It was you. I just gave you the options and you chose the right path every time. You didn't need the feather to fly. You had it in you the whole time, Dumbo.")
We saw Sam getting colder and harder through last season and this season - he said he was trying to become more like Dean ("Malleus Maleficarum") but in reality he was becoming more like John ("Jump the Shark"). The process started before he began drinking demon blood ("Jus in Bello," "Bedtime Stories"), and was an attempt to steel himself for Dean's death, and also to do whatever was necessary to stop Dean's death. So he was already on that path.
Now, we know that Ava and Jake were both able to access various powers (telecoercion, summoning and controlling demons) without drinking demon blood - they just had to open themselves up to it and it was like flipping a switch. (As an aside, Jake's eyes flashed yellow in AHBL2, while Sam's eyes went black like Ruby's.) Andy and Max, though not being pushed by Azazel, were able to strengthen their powers. Sam, on the other hand, was never able to do the telekinesis thing again ("Make the gun float to you there, psychic boy."), and his visions stopped once Azazel was dead.
We know that John was afraid of Azazel's plans for Sam, and that he told Dean that if he couldn't save Sam, he'd have to kill him. He raised his sons with a huge hate-on for all things supernatural, and even though they muddy the waters a little bit (Lenore, Andy), in the end, neither Sam nor Dean can escape the idea that if it's supernatural, it's evil and they kill it. So Dean is terrified of Sam's powers, terrified that he is going to have to kill Sam if Sam becomes something other than himself. Sam, meanwhile, is turning himself into someone he believes is more like Dean, but in actuality is more like their father - revenge-obsessed/driven and blind to anything but that in his quest to protect and then avenge Dean.
So Sam sees himself as a monster, a freak, the one thing he never wanted to be, and he hates that about himself and is trying to turn it into a good thing. Unfortunately, in the universe he inhabits, it appears that the tainted origin of the powers means that they will eventually corrupt/consume him. We still have no idea whether this is true or not, though we can say that trying to juice up the powers via drinking demon blood is a bad idea because it turns you into an addict, regardless of whether or not it taints your soul or turns you into a monster.
Going with the idea that at the end, Ruby was doing her big villain monologue and thus telling the truth (as straightforwardly as a demon ever does, knowing it will hurt Sam more this way), does she mean that he didn't need the demon blood for the power, or that the demon blood wasn't influencing his decisions? Because clearly, the latter isn't quite true - I think it was all Sam making those decisions, yes, but I also think that addiction makes it really hard to separate the "I need to kill Lilith/avenge Dean/stop the apocalypse" motive from the "I need to drink demon blood to stop the shakes" motive. Clearly, the addiction - whether physical or psychological or both - is real, and Sam's not really lying when he says, "I'm not drinking demon blood for kicks, Dean." He needs it to function (and he believes he needs it to function optimally, i.e., at full demon-killing power).
So while I don't think his actions this season can be handwaved, the way his actions in "Born Under a Bad Sign" or even "Sex and Violence" and "Asylum" can be (i.e., it was an outside force in all three cases, though in the latter two, it was Sam saying those things, just with the mean/negative aspects turned up to drown out the positive), I do think that 1. he was already broken and not right after "Mystery Spot" and 2. the addiction was clearly messing with his head, at least indirectly in the sense that he was ashamed and guilty and knew that Dean would not approve, so he lied and hid his actions as much as possible, which more than the demon blood itself was the source of Dean's anger and feelings of betrayal.
In thinking about this, I think I've come to the conclusion that Sam's addiction is more akin to someone using anabolic steroids than someone using recreational drugs - the personality changes, the "powering up", the belief that the drugs are necessary for peak performance, and in Sam's case the stakes are much higher, because peak performance is necessary because he has to stop the apocalypse. But because he knows on some deep level that what he's doing is wrong, he has to place the onus on the outside source - the demon blood is responsible, and he's only doing upping his dosage to save Dean/save the world (since it was already in him, he believes he's already damned). I'm no expert, but I think this is typical of an addict's psychology while in the throes of their addiction.
I guess a lot really depends on how they handle it next season. I will be really upset if they brush it all off as "it was the demon blood, not me, and I'm all better now." I don't think they will, but it is the easy out, and it probably makes Sam a lot more sympathetic to some people to have it be an outside force working on him. For me, knowing that every bad decision he took and every choice he made came out of his deep, massive love for Dean and his desperate desire to save/avenge him, makes him sympathetic even though I want to smack him upside the head repeatedly and remind him that while it was his love for Dean that made him open to manipulation, it was his pride and his desire for revenge that made it so easy.
I still can't decide whether the blood was actually necessary, powers-wise, or if it was just a way Ruby bound Sam to her, made him need her in a way Dean couldn't compete with, and led him over a line he should never have crossed (bleeding and drinking the nurse-demon's blood). In the end, I'm not sure it really matters (except in terms of writing fic and there I can choose whatever I need to make the story work).
Wow, that got really long, but I think I am a little clearer on things now.
*