Supernatural - As Time Goes By
This season is all about perspective and unreliable narrators, but also, about stories. Men of Letters, of the written word; the tablets and the keys; the cartoons and the LARPers - this season is all about people doing their best to make sense of the world around them. The Winchester heritage is to be chroniclers, to become the authors of their own story. They are Men of Letters, initiated or not.
Which leads me to the key, and its possible destruction. I am so against it. YOU DON'T BURN BOOKS. That's what the old guy is talking about, when he says to throw the box into the abyss. Sam doesn't seem to have the visceral reaction that I did, but still, his eyes lit up when he found out what he had in his hands; he was shocked at the idea of destroying it. (Of course "warded against evil" might not include sweet humans like Charlie or servants of Heaven like Cas. It's perfetly plausible that they could hide it there until Cas can get to it. Of course, Cas isn't trustworthy, so the real question for us as viewers is whether they should burn the Encyclopedia Multiversica to keep it from Naomi.)
This is a season where knowledge is power. Maybe power that can fall into the wrong hands; maybe power that shouldn't be in anyone's hands at all. But ugh, what gives them the right to decide if NOBODY GETS IT EVER?
You can write your own future, but what's already written can't be changed. The episode hammers home just how impossible it is to go back and fix the past. Henry's insistence that he can and should rip through time to go back to John sounds ridiculous even to him. It's even more dramatic when he insists that he could prevent the apocalypse, as if his presence or not for a few more years of John's life would somehow derail the plans of archangels. Cas can't go back to fix things in Heaven. Benny can't rejoin his descendants or his vamp-family. And this, too, puts a slightly different spin on the story as we've always thought of it. This journey into the past is what they were always doing, chasing shadows, trying to get the YED as if it would do anything for Mary; it's what led Sam down the rabbit hole in S4, trying to erase any reason that Dean actually went to hell in a desperate grasp to make it not have happened. Would it have been any different, would it, if you could change time?
I liked Henry himself a lot. HAHAHAHA, HE FUCKED UP THE IMPALA. Fandom sensibilities getting smashed metaphorically makes me cackle in glee, so obviously Henry could've used a bunny skull to smash open the car window and I would have still started nursing a starry-eyed crush. Also a little odd to see that whole Mad Men ~style happening on someone I don't want to kick in the head? And by "odd," I mean, YES PLEASE. (Also, reminiscent of our Cas, in the blue clothing, trench coat, and tie.) And oh, man, how casually he talked about being able to tap into his own soul? Very intriguing.
That shot of Henry watching over the boys twisted even my cold, black little heart. And ugh, his face after Sam casually mentions that John "tortured a demon" was a wonderful little touch. (As was Sam not feeling the need to leave Henry even a little bit of plausible deniability as to what John eventually became. Really, "interrogated" wouldn't have gotten the point across?)
Sam was a little snippy and distant, but Dean's tantrum at Henry for having the nerve to have died AT John was striking, if more a critique of Dean himself than Henry. Dean saw that losing Henry had hurt John a lot, and so Henry had to PAY. In Dean-logic, Henry has to be a BAD PERSON because John was mad at Henry and so John has to have DESERVED IT. And he realizes, eventually, how unfair that was, and what an affect his tirade had on Henry - just because you can make someone feel like shit, doesn't mean they actually did anything wrong. (Dean acting as if he has any idea what Henry was going through chaps my ass, though. It's one thing to miss a parent you've lost. It's another thing to discover a child you'll never get the chance to know.)
Henry's rationalizations were just not cutting it for anyone. I was a legacy, I had no choice, it was my duty to my family. But then we get back to the "[John] did the best he could," which is a nice way of saying, he had no choice, it was his duty to his family. "You had a choice" is a way of saying "I don't like what you did;" while "he had no choice" is a way of saying "I like him and don't want to admit I don't like what he did." (This is why I love Cas so much. Because he calls them, and us, out on every bluff. We need him around for perspective.) (I just really miss Cas, okay.)
*
I'm not sure how I feel about Henry's issues with hunters. It's one of those things where legitimate critiques get wrapped up in barely-coded classism, and that becomes a distraction. That said, he also pointed out some really important masculinity issues in hunter culture. Henry criticizes hunters for their willingness to "shoot first and not bther to ask questions" but the issue with the men of letters is that they start with the questions and then scorn those who can do the shooting. You need both, badly.
David, Larry, Ted. Jesus. Gentleman's club indeed! Which on the one hand does make sense for Cold War-era America. On the other hand, a secret society that has no trouble convincing its members of the existence of demons, archangels, and blood spells gets the vapors at women being able to acquire that same knowledge. The hunting world is overwhelmingly masculinist and not a little bit openly sexist, but it's not the he-man woman hater's club. If you accept (for the sake of argument) that men are, on average, slightly physically stronger and are likely to be more socialized to use violence more easily, then you'd expect to see the Men of Letters slightly skewed female, and hunters skewed slightly male.
The Men of Letters aren't any better or more important than the boots on the ground hunters, but they're not less important either. They're just doing things wrong. If it's about legacy, or mostly about legacy, then it's an aristocracy, easy to wipe out by a few short, targeted attacks. They are just as short-sighted. Whereas hunting is hard to do, but anyone can do it, no matter how ill-suited. If they were willing to work together with the hunters, maybe they'd have been a little more vulnerable, but they'd still be around. (It wouldn't be that hard - identify the smarter young folks who were new to the life; offer girls and boys of hunting families the option to join either society.) But this gives the Winchesters something new. It's a way to win. It's a way to lose big, again, but it's also a way they could do some permanent good.
Henry's fixation is pretty intense classism, and so he fumbles on the most important critique: that it's possible that either or both of them have talents which could be more useful to the men of letters. It's about what they ARE - legacies, apes, alpha-male monkeys - and not what they do or could do. It's sad, that Sam didn't interact more with Henry. Henry would have been proud of him for Stanford, would have appreciated his skill at research and his willingness to use his powers for the greater good. But Sam doesn't say anything, because..because he doesn't want to make himself look good at John's and Dean's expense; because he's still embarassed to see himself as a college dropout; because it would feel fraudulent to give Henry a reason to be proud of him. Still, Henry gave up his life for Sam's, framing the way brawny John gave his own life for Dean's. This season, we're letting the brains off the leash, I hope.
They still don't seem to have considered that their father could possibly have been a child at some point. I sympathize better with John, but I don't think he did the best he could. I get it, though. Why he thought he was loving his kids by being an abusive, alcoholic, paranoid drill sergeant, because at least he was there for them. To John's mind, presence is the only thing that matters - abandonment is the biggest and only sin; sticking around is the only virtue. (Unless there were other issues besides Henry's disappearance, I think this speaks to a huge lack of regard for his mother, who kept it together and seems to have raised him fairly well all things considered.) Whether or not the fate of the world would have been different - I very much doub it - things certainly would have changed.
It's a little strange to imagine a Winchester family dynamic where Sam was the good son and Dean the black sheep, but Sam would have taken to magedom like a duck to water. Dean, while he's no slouch upstairs himself, hates conceptual thinking and structures in which he doesn't feel personally invested and influential. It's unlikely that things would have been as different as Dean supposes, what with Heaven orchestrating their conception and Hell engineering their corruption. But Sam's and Dean's life experiences would have been different, and they matter too.
While this might open up some what-might-have-been wistfulness for Sam, it's another huge blow to Dean's identity. Hunter, good son, LONG-SUFFERING PRINCE OF THE MARTYR SAINTS. Dean's construct of himself is not rooted just in having suffered, not in just having given to his family, but that he is THE PERFECT SON, who has given up EVERYTHING, nobody could possibly UNDERSTAND his BURDEN. And he is a good son, he has given up a lot, he has been through a lot. But it's one thing to be expected to give up all other possibilities in favor of something which you can at least enjoy. It's quite another to have those same expectations placed on you for something to which you are wildly unsuited. For Henry, being a good son isn't rolled together with being a good hunter. For Dean, having to disentangle those things means admitting the possibility that things might have been different, that other people might have burdens he doesn't understand.
And if he can't feel SUPERIOR in his ENDLESS SUFFERING, then what is it good for?! Well, plenty. He likes hunting. He gets a lot out of it, and it was a big part of his own relationship with his dad. Those things are worthwhile. Dean needs to stop defining himself externally. This will allow him to acknowledge value within himself, and to truly get to know and understand others.
Abeddon pushes the theme of perspective further, as she pushes her victims to show me what you know; show me what you've seen. She breathes into their mouths to collect their memories, not the other way around - to get so deeply into someone else's perspective is invasive, damaging.
Abbedon being able to go back on a deal is an interesting development. Maybe it's only crossroads demons that have to keep their word? IIRC, the only other demon we've seen make a deal is Azazel, and he had an independent motive for following through. (Or if the man Sam met with was correct that she was a "hired gun," which makes you wonder who bosses her around.)
It's interesting that the episode gives Abeddon's host a name. Josie Sands was in their class, maybe? They seem to have known her at the house. Maybe it's simply to remind us of the collateral damage of the plan at the end. (Because, presuming angel rules hold, Josie will be buried alive indefinitely too.) Hopefully that devil's trap won't hold her forever, because (a), at least let poor Josie move on to her afterlife, and (b) come on there is NO WAY they can take her down permanently so very easily.
Synthesis seems to be the key of this episode, which weaves show mythology into a much older mythology. That works for the demons, too. Abbedon is a knight of hell, handpicked by Lucifer, first fallen, first-born. They're dealing with an alpha demon. Notably, nobody specifies whether the Knights of Hell were hand-picked as humans. IIRC, Lucifer had an army of angels who followed him when he turned against Heaven.
So maybe we're talking about angel-demon hybrids, just as scary as the humans they've created in the Winchesters and Campbells, with their brains and brawn. The problem with demons is that they're sadistic and self-interested, defined by their own guilt and trauma. The problem with angels is the overwhelming mental block they have against free will. IF they are what I think they are, these Knights of Hell are Lucifer's most terrifying weapon, having used that ability to choose to swear themselves to Lucifer, their loyalty accepted without first being stripped down and reshaped like humans are. Oh, I would love it, please let this be so.
There are other thematic issues that make those two families counterparts. The brawler Campbells are also Lucifer's bloodline, inheritors of a tradition of free-thinking, which manifests both as Mary's and Sam's rebellions and the slightly more democratic hunter society. Michael's vessels, interested in the stability provided by ruthlessly-policed community norms, also established the "legacy" system Dean both embraces and disdains. Sam is learning to value himself. His brainy contribution, his big-picture thinking, they aren't nothing, he just can't (and doesn't have to) be forced to do it alone. It's been eight years of muscle; time to let the mind off his chain.
And the human counterpart to the story comes around full-circle to Henry's death in Sam's arms. Sam, all that time ago, was unwilling to sacrifice their father for revenge. Given everything that came later, it's unclear what choice he would have made today. But Dean is the one who made the choice to sacrifice Henry, and John's entitlement to a life with Henry, in order to save Sam.
(all caps from Home of the Nutty)
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/287680.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
Which leads me to the key, and its possible destruction. I am so against it. YOU DON'T BURN BOOKS. That's what the old guy is talking about, when he says to throw the box into the abyss. Sam doesn't seem to have the visceral reaction that I did, but still, his eyes lit up when he found out what he had in his hands; he was shocked at the idea of destroying it. (Of course "warded against evil" might not include sweet humans like Charlie or servants of Heaven like Cas. It's perfetly plausible that they could hide it there until Cas can get to it. Of course, Cas isn't trustworthy, so the real question for us as viewers is whether they should burn the Encyclopedia Multiversica to keep it from Naomi.)
This is a season where knowledge is power. Maybe power that can fall into the wrong hands; maybe power that shouldn't be in anyone's hands at all. But ugh, what gives them the right to decide if NOBODY GETS IT EVER?
You can write your own future, but what's already written can't be changed. The episode hammers home just how impossible it is to go back and fix the past. Henry's insistence that he can and should rip through time to go back to John sounds ridiculous even to him. It's even more dramatic when he insists that he could prevent the apocalypse, as if his presence or not for a few more years of John's life would somehow derail the plans of archangels. Cas can't go back to fix things in Heaven. Benny can't rejoin his descendants or his vamp-family. And this, too, puts a slightly different spin on the story as we've always thought of it. This journey into the past is what they were always doing, chasing shadows, trying to get the YED as if it would do anything for Mary; it's what led Sam down the rabbit hole in S4, trying to erase any reason that Dean actually went to hell in a desperate grasp to make it not have happened. Would it have been any different, would it, if you could change time?
I liked Henry himself a lot. HAHAHAHA, HE FUCKED UP THE IMPALA. Fandom sensibilities getting smashed metaphorically makes me cackle in glee, so obviously Henry could've used a bunny skull to smash open the car window and I would have still started nursing a starry-eyed crush. Also a little odd to see that whole Mad Men ~style happening on someone I don't want to kick in the head? And by "odd," I mean, YES PLEASE. (Also, reminiscent of our Cas, in the blue clothing, trench coat, and tie.) And oh, man, how casually he talked about being able to tap into his own soul? Very intriguing.
That shot of Henry watching over the boys twisted even my cold, black little heart. And ugh, his face after Sam casually mentions that John "tortured a demon" was a wonderful little touch. (As was Sam not feeling the need to leave Henry even a little bit of plausible deniability as to what John eventually became. Really, "interrogated" wouldn't have gotten the point across?)
Sam was a little snippy and distant, but Dean's tantrum at Henry for having the nerve to have died AT John was striking, if more a critique of Dean himself than Henry. Dean saw that losing Henry had hurt John a lot, and so Henry had to PAY. In Dean-logic, Henry has to be a BAD PERSON because John was mad at Henry and so John has to have DESERVED IT. And he realizes, eventually, how unfair that was, and what an affect his tirade had on Henry - just because you can make someone feel like shit, doesn't mean they actually did anything wrong. (Dean acting as if he has any idea what Henry was going through chaps my ass, though. It's one thing to miss a parent you've lost. It's another thing to discover a child you'll never get the chance to know.)
Henry's rationalizations were just not cutting it for anyone. I was a legacy, I had no choice, it was my duty to my family. But then we get back to the "[John] did the best he could," which is a nice way of saying, he had no choice, it was his duty to his family. "You had a choice" is a way of saying "I don't like what you did;" while "he had no choice" is a way of saying "I like him and don't want to admit I don't like what he did." (This is why I love Cas so much. Because he calls them, and us, out on every bluff. We need him around for perspective.) (I just really miss Cas, okay.)
*
I'm not sure how I feel about Henry's issues with hunters. It's one of those things where legitimate critiques get wrapped up in barely-coded classism, and that becomes a distraction. That said, he also pointed out some really important masculinity issues in hunter culture. Henry criticizes hunters for their willingness to "shoot first and not bther to ask questions" but the issue with the men of letters is that they start with the questions and then scorn those who can do the shooting. You need both, badly.
David, Larry, Ted. Jesus. Gentleman's club indeed! Which on the one hand does make sense for Cold War-era America. On the other hand, a secret society that has no trouble convincing its members of the existence of demons, archangels, and blood spells gets the vapors at women being able to acquire that same knowledge. The hunting world is overwhelmingly masculinist and not a little bit openly sexist, but it's not the he-man woman hater's club. If you accept (for the sake of argument) that men are, on average, slightly physically stronger and are likely to be more socialized to use violence more easily, then you'd expect to see the Men of Letters slightly skewed female, and hunters skewed slightly male.
The Men of Letters aren't any better or more important than the boots on the ground hunters, but they're not less important either. They're just doing things wrong. If it's about legacy, or mostly about legacy, then it's an aristocracy, easy to wipe out by a few short, targeted attacks. They are just as short-sighted. Whereas hunting is hard to do, but anyone can do it, no matter how ill-suited. If they were willing to work together with the hunters, maybe they'd have been a little more vulnerable, but they'd still be around. (It wouldn't be that hard - identify the smarter young folks who were new to the life; offer girls and boys of hunting families the option to join either society.) But this gives the Winchesters something new. It's a way to win. It's a way to lose big, again, but it's also a way they could do some permanent good.
Henry's fixation is pretty intense classism, and so he fumbles on the most important critique: that it's possible that either or both of them have talents which could be more useful to the men of letters. It's about what they ARE - legacies, apes, alpha-male monkeys - and not what they do or could do. It's sad, that Sam didn't interact more with Henry. Henry would have been proud of him for Stanford, would have appreciated his skill at research and his willingness to use his powers for the greater good. But Sam doesn't say anything, because..because he doesn't want to make himself look good at John's and Dean's expense; because he's still embarassed to see himself as a college dropout; because it would feel fraudulent to give Henry a reason to be proud of him. Still, Henry gave up his life for Sam's, framing the way brawny John gave his own life for Dean's. This season, we're letting the brains off the leash, I hope.
They still don't seem to have considered that their father could possibly have been a child at some point. I sympathize better with John, but I don't think he did the best he could. I get it, though. Why he thought he was loving his kids by being an abusive, alcoholic, paranoid drill sergeant, because at least he was there for them. To John's mind, presence is the only thing that matters - abandonment is the biggest and only sin; sticking around is the only virtue. (Unless there were other issues besides Henry's disappearance, I think this speaks to a huge lack of regard for his mother, who kept it together and seems to have raised him fairly well all things considered.) Whether or not the fate of the world would have been different - I very much doub it - things certainly would have changed.
It's a little strange to imagine a Winchester family dynamic where Sam was the good son and Dean the black sheep, but Sam would have taken to magedom like a duck to water. Dean, while he's no slouch upstairs himself, hates conceptual thinking and structures in which he doesn't feel personally invested and influential. It's unlikely that things would have been as different as Dean supposes, what with Heaven orchestrating their conception and Hell engineering their corruption. But Sam's and Dean's life experiences would have been different, and they matter too.
While this might open up some what-might-have-been wistfulness for Sam, it's another huge blow to Dean's identity. Hunter, good son, LONG-SUFFERING PRINCE OF THE MARTYR SAINTS. Dean's construct of himself is not rooted just in having suffered, not in just having given to his family, but that he is THE PERFECT SON, who has given up EVERYTHING, nobody could possibly UNDERSTAND his BURDEN. And he is a good son, he has given up a lot, he has been through a lot. But it's one thing to be expected to give up all other possibilities in favor of something which you can at least enjoy. It's quite another to have those same expectations placed on you for something to which you are wildly unsuited. For Henry, being a good son isn't rolled together with being a good hunter. For Dean, having to disentangle those things means admitting the possibility that things might have been different, that other people might have burdens he doesn't understand.
And if he can't feel SUPERIOR in his ENDLESS SUFFERING, then what is it good for?! Well, plenty. He likes hunting. He gets a lot out of it, and it was a big part of his own relationship with his dad. Those things are worthwhile. Dean needs to stop defining himself externally. This will allow him to acknowledge value within himself, and to truly get to know and understand others.
Abeddon pushes the theme of perspective further, as she pushes her victims to show me what you know; show me what you've seen. She breathes into their mouths to collect their memories, not the other way around - to get so deeply into someone else's perspective is invasive, damaging.
Abbedon being able to go back on a deal is an interesting development. Maybe it's only crossroads demons that have to keep their word? IIRC, the only other demon we've seen make a deal is Azazel, and he had an independent motive for following through. (Or if the man Sam met with was correct that she was a "hired gun," which makes you wonder who bosses her around.)
It's interesting that the episode gives Abeddon's host a name. Josie Sands was in their class, maybe? They seem to have known her at the house. Maybe it's simply to remind us of the collateral damage of the plan at the end. (Because, presuming angel rules hold, Josie will be buried alive indefinitely too.) Hopefully that devil's trap won't hold her forever, because (a), at least let poor Josie move on to her afterlife, and (b) come on there is NO WAY they can take her down permanently so very easily.
Synthesis seems to be the key of this episode, which weaves show mythology into a much older mythology. That works for the demons, too. Abbedon is a knight of hell, handpicked by Lucifer, first fallen, first-born. They're dealing with an alpha demon. Notably, nobody specifies whether the Knights of Hell were hand-picked as humans. IIRC, Lucifer had an army of angels who followed him when he turned against Heaven.
So maybe we're talking about angel-demon hybrids, just as scary as the humans they've created in the Winchesters and Campbells, with their brains and brawn. The problem with demons is that they're sadistic and self-interested, defined by their own guilt and trauma. The problem with angels is the overwhelming mental block they have against free will. IF they are what I think they are, these Knights of Hell are Lucifer's most terrifying weapon, having used that ability to choose to swear themselves to Lucifer, their loyalty accepted without first being stripped down and reshaped like humans are. Oh, I would love it, please let this be so.
There are other thematic issues that make those two families counterparts. The brawler Campbells are also Lucifer's bloodline, inheritors of a tradition of free-thinking, which manifests both as Mary's and Sam's rebellions and the slightly more democratic hunter society. Michael's vessels, interested in the stability provided by ruthlessly-policed community norms, also established the "legacy" system Dean both embraces and disdains. Sam is learning to value himself. His brainy contribution, his big-picture thinking, they aren't nothing, he just can't (and doesn't have to) be forced to do it alone. It's been eight years of muscle; time to let the mind off his chain.
And the human counterpart to the story comes around full-circle to Henry's death in Sam's arms. Sam, all that time ago, was unwilling to sacrifice their father for revenge. Given everything that came later, it's unclear what choice he would have made today. But Dean is the one who made the choice to sacrifice Henry, and John's entitlement to a life with Henry, in order to save Sam.
(all caps from Home of the Nutty)
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/287680.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.