see, I promised more inane essays
Plus a meme.
When you see this, post another Supernatural quote in your lj. Let's see how long this can go on for.
Well, I've had the end scene of Dream A Little Dream of Me stuck in my head, but I don't think *snap* counts as a quote (though it is the creepiest snapping-fingers scene EVER)... so:
"I shot the sheriff."
"... But you didn't shoot the deputy..."
OH DEAN. You slay me.
Okay, I thought I was going to leave my last post at that, but the knife thing begs to be talked about at more length. And the picture-analysis. So without further ado...
One of the issue covers (the first issue maybe?) of the new 6-issue SPN comic miniseries, "Rising Son." This was clearly drawn retrospectively based off of the season 1 box set cover, so a lot of the symbolism is probably intentional. So we've got John, plus the boys before the Christmas of the year that they are 8 and 12, because that's when Sam gives Dean the amulet that Bobby intended for Sam to give to John (THAT HAS TO COME INTO PLAY IN THE SHOW AT SOME POINT, DAMMIT). Dean isn't wearing the amulet in this picture, so.
There are three characters and a home in this picture. It's the Winchester equivalent of a family portrait in front of a whitewashed house and picket fence. The Impala is basically their home -- and here, it being so early in the boys' lives and so relatively close to the event of Mary's death, you see that the home is still on fire (the reflections of the sunset in the windshield make it look like the interior is burning). You could argue that the home keeps burning as long as John is in it, and you see that John is the only one standing half-in the burning home. Sam and Dean, as per John's order, are outside the home and not looking back at the fire. John is nearly consumed by the past, and the one traumatic event that drives his every behavior.
Rock salt & license plate are more evidence that the Impala is home. The KAZ license plate is almost like a house number on their front door, or a street address. It's like they live in a tiny piece of Lawrence that they carry around with them. And as "home" is supposed to be a stable, secure place, the salt is there for security; it's like the wall between them and the rest of the world. Literally it is a wall between them and evil, as salt wards off most evil things. But it's also a wall between them and the rest of normal humanity, because the fact that they need salt for security makes them abnormal.
The sky is interesting. Think of the progressions of all lives, all events, and all stories as the traditional symbolic progressions of spring-summer-fall-winter, beginning-middle-end, dawn-noon-evening-night, child-youth/prime(20-40)-middleage-old. All well and good, right? Well, whose world are we seeing with this sky? John's. Because John is the oldest, and he sees himself as speeding towards a grisly end (most hunters die young and he knows it, and he may even want it in a way). He sees his life as being in its sunset because he lost everything that made it bright. The boys are the only thing keeping the light alive for him, but he knows at this point that even his boys will betray him -- or Sam will, anyway -- because he knows what Sam is. It's heavily implied in In My Time of Dying that he's known what Sam is for much of Sam's life, and that was why he was so afraid of Sam leaving on his own to go to college.
But John's world is in a perpetual sunset, what does that mean for Sam and Dean? A perpetual sense of fatalism. Both of them having to grow up too fast, skipping over dawn and noon. They're so young, but they're both holding the adult tools of the trade, deadly weapons. We can assume that Sam is so young that he's never used that sword, but he's still fiddling with it -- unlike normal families, who keep sharp things away from their children, Sam and Dean have access to everything. And here's where I return to knives vs. guns, because Sam and Dean have free access to everything and, we can assume, free choice of everything. So it's representative of their personalities that Dean chooses guns and Sam chooses blades. It sets them up from the very youngest age as one knight/cop/impersonal type who sees killing as a job and a duty (Dean), and as one intimate killer/potential torturer who is only driven to kill out of passion (over Jess's death) and takes every evil thing personally (Sam). Because, well... evil is personal to him. Literally. And where Dean, having experienced his mother's death, understands that John's need for hunting is nothing personal against the boys but rather reflective of John's own grief and anger, SAM didn't experience the fire and he does take John's need for hunting personally. Because he's growing up in it without exposure to any kind of normality or parental love, however brief (Dean's exposure was very brief), and he doesn't know any better. It makes him angry. (And you wouldn't like Sammich when he's angry.)
Okay, the one last thing is the placement of characters. Western audiences read left to right, and we look at images that way, too. Geoffrey Rush said that in Pirates of the Caribbean 1, he always tried to put himself on the far left of the screen when doing scenes with Kiera Knightley and the monkey, because between a cute animal and a beautiful woman he was afraid no one would ever really see him. So he put himself first in the viewing order for emphasis on the importance of his character. In this picture, if left-to-right is most-to-least important, then Sam is the most important and Dean is the least of the three. Can we say Dean's inferiority complex much? It's not necessarily true, but if this image is symbolic of the way the three guys see themselves (Sam unconsciously sees himself with sheathed claws, fiddling with that blade; John sees himself in the sunset of his life, perpetually half-inside the burning house), then Dean sees himself as unimportant. He is subordinate to John, whom he blindly obeys, and he places Sam in the highest regard because Dean knows that his supreme purpose in life is to "watch out for your brother, boy" -- "take your brother outside and run and don't look back" -- "take care of Sammy for me." Indeed, Dean is the only one in this picture who is armed and actually ready & old enough & trained enough to use his weapon. He is the protector, the first line of defense, the most expendable, the lowest on the totem pole. He's also the mediator and the voice of reason and humanity, and that makes him perhaps the most important of the three, though he doesn't see it that way.
Okay! On to the next picture!
Season one. Guess what? Exact same layout. Look at the car -- same position, same license plate, same bag of rock salt. But vital things are different, and the biggest are the sky and the removal of John. (Vital things are the same, too, but all in good time.)
It's night. Sam and Dean are both only old enough to be hitting the noon/summer/youth-prime notches in their progression of life. But in terms of progression of story, the night sky shows that we, the audience, are basically coming in at the beginning of the end. It's a lot like Greek drama and tragedy, where there is some massive, epic backstory, but the play itself only covers one day at the end of that long buildup -- we see the day where everything culminates and the world shatters apart. SPN is doing the same. We're led to understand even by episode 4, Phantom Traveler, that Sam and Dean have never encountered a demon before and the appearance of one out of nowhere is a bad, bad, uber-bad omen. It's a sign that things are already spiraling out of control and the brothers aren't even aware of it yet. By the end of season 1, they're just beginning to understand that shit is dangerously close to the fan. By the end of season 2, the shit has hit the fan and is well-scattered and the brothers know they're up said creek without a paddle. But by then we also know that this buildup has been decades in the making and that there was a truckload of backstory that both we and the brothers never knew about. (Hence why the brothers are such a good audience vessel.)
Anyway. It's night and there's a storm building. I don't need to explain the storm, because durr. So, placement of characters? Dean is in the same place. In fact, look who gets priority placement -- the Impala. Raises the infamous question of whether or not the Impala is really the main character, doesn't it? But in this sense, the Impala is the most important because it is home, still, but it is no longer on fire. The brothers are sans John, and their psychological ties to Mary's death are beginning to fray and let go. It's healthy for them to let go of that, and it's healthy for Dean to begin to understand that home -- togetherness of family -- is more important than even the injunction to Save Sam No Matter What. Dean is the foremost character in the first season; even though he is on the far right, in the "least" slot, he is also the largest figure in the picture. He's facing life head-on, just like he always has, not hiding behind a car door or slouched sitting on the hood or facing away from the camera as in Sam, here. Dean hasn't changed from when he was young (still has the same shotgun, even) and he doesn't intend to change, and the largeness of his figure shows that he's grown stronger in himself and is capable of being the leader now.
Sam, as I pointed out, is facing half-away from the camera. But instead of him turning away from the camera at the moment of the shot, envision him turning towards it. He was turned away before, he had turned his back on Dean and John for a long time, but in this season he begins to be dragged around again. He's looking over his shoulder, away from Stanford and normality, back towards Dean and hunting and being something he never wanted to be. His "claws" are still there, still sheathed, held close to his body, not quite ready for use. But they're even more dangerous than before, because the blade is curved. Sickle, scythe, Death; curved blades are serious business, not knightly, not honorable like swords. Sam is dangerous and is going to become bad news later.
The season 2 cover changes completely. Dean is still larger, and given priority placement on the left this time. This doesn't mean his perception of himself has changed, though -- he's obviously still suffering from that inferiority complex, even more so now after the events of In My Time of Dying. But of the two boys, even though John had always made it clear to Dean that Sam was More Important Than You, John sacrificed his life for Dean's. There are two ways for Dean to interpret that: A) John really did care about him all this time and loved his eldest son enough to want to see him live. B) John understands that if Dean dies, Sam will never, ever listen to him or obey him again, but John also knows that Sam needs to be kept away from demonic influence -- needs to be kept "in the family." So John swaps with Dean, knowing that Dean has more pull where controlling Sam in concerned. I think Dean is torn between these two interpretations, but the inferiority complex raises its ugly head and makes him believe straight-up that even in saving Dean's life and sacrificing his own, John was still, essentially, shoving Sam into Dean's arms and saying "Run!"
The tombstones behind and between Sam and Dean in this picture are the death/ghost of their father hovering between them, unspoken. A lot of their interaction in season 2 is dictated by their different reactions to John's death. Sam decides to finally obey John, in spirit. Dean has reached the epiphany that it really hacks him off, and has done his whole life though he never admitted it, that John just assumed Sam's superior priority over Dean. John took Dean's obedience for granted. In death, John gave Dean the ultimate order that Dean would have to be blind and mindless to obey -- kill Sam if necessary. Dean finally realizes that there are orders John can give that Dean doesn't have to follow. He's giving John a big old posthumous Fuck You and Sam doesn't know why for a long time, until Dean finally tells him about John's dying command.
"Take care of" is a phrase with a double meaning. Literally, to care for, to protect -- or "to take care of," to dispose of, to pull a hitman cleanup job on. Dean never realized John might mean the latter every time he repeated that Dean should "take care of Sam" until that moment in In My Time of Dying.
Anyway. There isn't much else to be said about the second season cover because there aren't really any props. Their home is still carrying them -- the Impala is stretched beneath and between both of them, like a support pillar, carrying the two together. Dean's moved, and thus stepped out of that one place he'd occupied for his entire life -- Dean is changing and Sam is still behind him, either as support or to stab him in the back. For now, it's support. By season 4, the backstabbing option may have become more viable. But they're both still looking at the camera, and as in season 1, the direction of the camera is the direction facing away from normality and towards hunting.
Check it out. Dean isn't looking at hunting any more. Dean isn't looking at anything; in fact, Dean is probably looking at his own death. Although Dean says over and over throughout this season that he just wants to hunt, just wants to do the good work and fight the good fight and let his time come due when it will, it is clear every time he says it that he really wants to hunt so that he doesn't have to think about the fact that he's just committed time-delayed suicide. Sam can't look at Dean because he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that his brother is the walking dead, so Sam is looking at hunting instead.
And Sam is back in the priority spot, which he hasn't been in since the comic cover, pre-show. He isn't even co-occupying it with the Impala as he was pre-show. The Impala, home itself, the togetherness of family, has taken the least priority -- appropriately enough for the first season in which one of the brothers goes behind the other's back with a third party (Sam talking to Ruby). The Impala is parked at a crossroads and the storm-sky is visible again, both very obvious symbols. Crossroads -- important in the mythology of the show, integral to Dean's deal, and showing that while Dean and Sam are still together, they are at last beginning to look at divergent paths and will soon reach the point of having to choose their own ways. Dean chose to die, but by the end of the season he's realized that he doesn't want that -- but it's too late. Sam chose to obey Dean's wish that he would go no further with his Yellow-Eyes powers, but in the finale he finally chose to exploit his demon powers despite Dean's wishes (when he says "Ruby, tell me what to do, I'll do anything" etc) -- but it's too late for Sam, too, as Ruby's body is already possessed by Lilith. So, given that crossroads at the beginning of the season, they each choose a certain path which turns out to be utterly the wrong choice and neither of them can get out of that exit and back on the highway before it's too late. Iiiinteresting.
Now, as of season 4, they're stuck with where their choices led them. Actually, they each catch a break that allows them to get what they wanted in the last few minutes of No Rest for the Wicked -- Dean gets to live, and Sam gets to use his powers. It's just that, in a sort of Gift of the Magi twist, they each get what they want while losing what they wanted it for in the first place. Dean gets to live again but he'd really wanted not to die in the first place. He still has to deal with having been dead and in hell for months. Sam wanted the knowledge of his powers, but only so he could save Dean, and he wasn't able to do that. Now he has knowledge of his powers and Dean is alive again, but his personal failure at the moment of Dean's death makes his powers not even worth it. (Though right now he's all emotionally shut down and wrongfully pretending that his powers are more important than reuniting with Dean.)
Seasons two and three also don't have any weapons or props in the cover pictures, so we can't say for sure when Sam's "claws" begin to emerge. I'd say late season 2, and then a regression, and then mid-late season 3, culminating in the finale -- where Sam's claws come out full-force, on instinct alone, when he negates Lilith's nuclear blast. I think he was full-power in that moment. And everything since then, training with Ruby, has been an attempt to reach that level again.
If I could retroactively add props to the pictures, I actually think that Dean would have been unarmed in the season 3 cover, while having maybe the Colt or another pistol in hand in the season 2 cover -- not the sawed-off of his youth, because by season 2 Dean was moving away from his youth. Sam... another curved blade, maybe half-raised, in season 2, but then Ruby's knife held up perhaps near his face in season 3.
The Colt and Ruby's knife. Essentially symbols of control over demons/evil, right? Which also equates to control over Sam, in some ways. The power to cause a demon to cease to exist, rather than the power to send it back to hell, is like having the ability to remove mass from the universe. It's extraordinary and it shouldn't be able to be done because of the laws of conservation of mass and energy. Demons represent evil, an abstract, and in order to maintain balance, one should not be able to erase evil from existence -- only disperse it (send the demons back to hell) so that it's less harmful. Sam represents the side of humanity that is tempted by evil, and right now he's succumbing to that temptation. (Dean represents the side of humanity that is obligated by good, and my use of "tempted" and "obligated" there is very deliberate, because it is equally as dangerous to succumb to a feeling of obligation as it is to succumb to a feeling of temptation. It all depends on what one feels obligated or tempted to do. Dean felt obligated to obey John, and you see where that got him; it was an unhealthy obligation. So that was a long way to say that I don't think the angels are going to be any better than the demons.)
Anyway, control over evil -- at first, it's in Dean's realm. The Colt is a gun, Dean's symbol, and Dean keeps it and controls its use for the most part. John, Dean and Sam each fire the Colt once in the season finale, I think? John on the vampire, Dean on the demon-son attacking Sam, Sam on possessed!John. Well, someone fired on Yellow-Eyes at the decoy house thing where he tried to infect another baby. I can't remember whether that was Dean or Sam. Either way, guns are Dean's thing and possibly also John's thing. It's a Good Cop thing; guns are the modern knight's sword & shield, at least in the context of this show and how hunting is presented.
When the power-over-demons weapon changes to a knife, the ball is in Sam's court. Sam is the one who always wants to get the knife, use the knife, trust and/or listen to Ruby because she has the knife. He is drawn to the knife because the knife is the same as his power; power over evil, but in the claw form, the blade form, the intimate form. Dean probably recognizes how dangerous Sam's enthrallment with the knife/Ruby is, because Dean is forever trying to keep Sam and Ruby apart.
Wow. That was a crapload of pointless rambling. I think I may have finally gotten out all I wanted to say about SPN, at least for now. I'd bet money all of this has already been analyzed by other people, but... oh well.
You can bet there will probably be another of these verbal-diarrhea posts after next week's episode. And with a title like "Are You There, God? It's Me... Dean Winchester," it's GOT to be good. XD
I should probably do my stupid homework now. Stupid homework.
-rave
Just found this season 4 promo image. Hah. Look at Sam's curved blade relatively close to his face. It's not Ruby's knife, but still -- I so called it.
When you see this, post another Supernatural quote in your lj. Let's see how long this can go on for.
Well, I've had the end scene of Dream A Little Dream of Me stuck in my head, but I don't think *snap* counts as a quote (though it is the creepiest snapping-fingers scene EVER)... so:
"I shot the sheriff."
"... But you didn't shoot the deputy..."
OH DEAN. You slay me.
Okay, I thought I was going to leave my last post at that, but the knife thing begs to be talked about at more length. And the picture-analysis. So without further ado...
One of the issue covers (the first issue maybe?) of the new 6-issue SPN comic miniseries, "Rising Son." This was clearly drawn retrospectively based off of the season 1 box set cover, so a lot of the symbolism is probably intentional. So we've got John, plus the boys before the Christmas of the year that they are 8 and 12, because that's when Sam gives Dean the amulet that Bobby intended for Sam to give to John (THAT HAS TO COME INTO PLAY IN THE SHOW AT SOME POINT, DAMMIT). Dean isn't wearing the amulet in this picture, so.
There are three characters and a home in this picture. It's the Winchester equivalent of a family portrait in front of a whitewashed house and picket fence. The Impala is basically their home -- and here, it being so early in the boys' lives and so relatively close to the event of Mary's death, you see that the home is still on fire (the reflections of the sunset in the windshield make it look like the interior is burning). You could argue that the home keeps burning as long as John is in it, and you see that John is the only one standing half-in the burning home. Sam and Dean, as per John's order, are outside the home and not looking back at the fire. John is nearly consumed by the past, and the one traumatic event that drives his every behavior.
Rock salt & license plate are more evidence that the Impala is home. The KAZ license plate is almost like a house number on their front door, or a street address. It's like they live in a tiny piece of Lawrence that they carry around with them. And as "home" is supposed to be a stable, secure place, the salt is there for security; it's like the wall between them and the rest of the world. Literally it is a wall between them and evil, as salt wards off most evil things. But it's also a wall between them and the rest of normal humanity, because the fact that they need salt for security makes them abnormal.
The sky is interesting. Think of the progressions of all lives, all events, and all stories as the traditional symbolic progressions of spring-summer-fall-winter, beginning-middle-end, dawn-noon-evening-night, child-youth/prime(20-40)-middleage-old. All well and good, right? Well, whose world are we seeing with this sky? John's. Because John is the oldest, and he sees himself as speeding towards a grisly end (most hunters die young and he knows it, and he may even want it in a way). He sees his life as being in its sunset because he lost everything that made it bright. The boys are the only thing keeping the light alive for him, but he knows at this point that even his boys will betray him -- or Sam will, anyway -- because he knows what Sam is. It's heavily implied in In My Time of Dying that he's known what Sam is for much of Sam's life, and that was why he was so afraid of Sam leaving on his own to go to college.
But John's world is in a perpetual sunset, what does that mean for Sam and Dean? A perpetual sense of fatalism. Both of them having to grow up too fast, skipping over dawn and noon. They're so young, but they're both holding the adult tools of the trade, deadly weapons. We can assume that Sam is so young that he's never used that sword, but he's still fiddling with it -- unlike normal families, who keep sharp things away from their children, Sam and Dean have access to everything. And here's where I return to knives vs. guns, because Sam and Dean have free access to everything and, we can assume, free choice of everything. So it's representative of their personalities that Dean chooses guns and Sam chooses blades. It sets them up from the very youngest age as one knight/cop/impersonal type who sees killing as a job and a duty (Dean), and as one intimate killer/potential torturer who is only driven to kill out of passion (over Jess's death) and takes every evil thing personally (Sam). Because, well... evil is personal to him. Literally. And where Dean, having experienced his mother's death, understands that John's need for hunting is nothing personal against the boys but rather reflective of John's own grief and anger, SAM didn't experience the fire and he does take John's need for hunting personally. Because he's growing up in it without exposure to any kind of normality or parental love, however brief (Dean's exposure was very brief), and he doesn't know any better. It makes him angry. (And you wouldn't like Sammich when he's angry.)
Okay, the one last thing is the placement of characters. Western audiences read left to right, and we look at images that way, too. Geoffrey Rush said that in Pirates of the Caribbean 1, he always tried to put himself on the far left of the screen when doing scenes with Kiera Knightley and the monkey, because between a cute animal and a beautiful woman he was afraid no one would ever really see him. So he put himself first in the viewing order for emphasis on the importance of his character. In this picture, if left-to-right is most-to-least important, then Sam is the most important and Dean is the least of the three. Can we say Dean's inferiority complex much? It's not necessarily true, but if this image is symbolic of the way the three guys see themselves (Sam unconsciously sees himself with sheathed claws, fiddling with that blade; John sees himself in the sunset of his life, perpetually half-inside the burning house), then Dean sees himself as unimportant. He is subordinate to John, whom he blindly obeys, and he places Sam in the highest regard because Dean knows that his supreme purpose in life is to "watch out for your brother, boy" -- "take your brother outside and run and don't look back" -- "take care of Sammy for me." Indeed, Dean is the only one in this picture who is armed and actually ready & old enough & trained enough to use his weapon. He is the protector, the first line of defense, the most expendable, the lowest on the totem pole. He's also the mediator and the voice of reason and humanity, and that makes him perhaps the most important of the three, though he doesn't see it that way.
Okay! On to the next picture!
Season one. Guess what? Exact same layout. Look at the car -- same position, same license plate, same bag of rock salt. But vital things are different, and the biggest are the sky and the removal of John. (Vital things are the same, too, but all in good time.)
It's night. Sam and Dean are both only old enough to be hitting the noon/summer/youth-prime notches in their progression of life. But in terms of progression of story, the night sky shows that we, the audience, are basically coming in at the beginning of the end. It's a lot like Greek drama and tragedy, where there is some massive, epic backstory, but the play itself only covers one day at the end of that long buildup -- we see the day where everything culminates and the world shatters apart. SPN is doing the same. We're led to understand even by episode 4, Phantom Traveler, that Sam and Dean have never encountered a demon before and the appearance of one out of nowhere is a bad, bad, uber-bad omen. It's a sign that things are already spiraling out of control and the brothers aren't even aware of it yet. By the end of season 1, they're just beginning to understand that shit is dangerously close to the fan. By the end of season 2, the shit has hit the fan and is well-scattered and the brothers know they're up said creek without a paddle. But by then we also know that this buildup has been decades in the making and that there was a truckload of backstory that both we and the brothers never knew about. (Hence why the brothers are such a good audience vessel.)
Anyway. It's night and there's a storm building. I don't need to explain the storm, because durr. So, placement of characters? Dean is in the same place. In fact, look who gets priority placement -- the Impala. Raises the infamous question of whether or not the Impala is really the main character, doesn't it? But in this sense, the Impala is the most important because it is home, still, but it is no longer on fire. The brothers are sans John, and their psychological ties to Mary's death are beginning to fray and let go. It's healthy for them to let go of that, and it's healthy for Dean to begin to understand that home -- togetherness of family -- is more important than even the injunction to Save Sam No Matter What. Dean is the foremost character in the first season; even though he is on the far right, in the "least" slot, he is also the largest figure in the picture. He's facing life head-on, just like he always has, not hiding behind a car door or slouched sitting on the hood or facing away from the camera as in Sam, here. Dean hasn't changed from when he was young (still has the same shotgun, even) and he doesn't intend to change, and the largeness of his figure shows that he's grown stronger in himself and is capable of being the leader now.
Sam, as I pointed out, is facing half-away from the camera. But instead of him turning away from the camera at the moment of the shot, envision him turning towards it. He was turned away before, he had turned his back on Dean and John for a long time, but in this season he begins to be dragged around again. He's looking over his shoulder, away from Stanford and normality, back towards Dean and hunting and being something he never wanted to be. His "claws" are still there, still sheathed, held close to his body, not quite ready for use. But they're even more dangerous than before, because the blade is curved. Sickle, scythe, Death; curved blades are serious business, not knightly, not honorable like swords. Sam is dangerous and is going to become bad news later.
The season 2 cover changes completely. Dean is still larger, and given priority placement on the left this time. This doesn't mean his perception of himself has changed, though -- he's obviously still suffering from that inferiority complex, even more so now after the events of In My Time of Dying. But of the two boys, even though John had always made it clear to Dean that Sam was More Important Than You, John sacrificed his life for Dean's. There are two ways for Dean to interpret that: A) John really did care about him all this time and loved his eldest son enough to want to see him live. B) John understands that if Dean dies, Sam will never, ever listen to him or obey him again, but John also knows that Sam needs to be kept away from demonic influence -- needs to be kept "in the family." So John swaps with Dean, knowing that Dean has more pull where controlling Sam in concerned. I think Dean is torn between these two interpretations, but the inferiority complex raises its ugly head and makes him believe straight-up that even in saving Dean's life and sacrificing his own, John was still, essentially, shoving Sam into Dean's arms and saying "Run!"
The tombstones behind and between Sam and Dean in this picture are the death/ghost of their father hovering between them, unspoken. A lot of their interaction in season 2 is dictated by their different reactions to John's death. Sam decides to finally obey John, in spirit. Dean has reached the epiphany that it really hacks him off, and has done his whole life though he never admitted it, that John just assumed Sam's superior priority over Dean. John took Dean's obedience for granted. In death, John gave Dean the ultimate order that Dean would have to be blind and mindless to obey -- kill Sam if necessary. Dean finally realizes that there are orders John can give that Dean doesn't have to follow. He's giving John a big old posthumous Fuck You and Sam doesn't know why for a long time, until Dean finally tells him about John's dying command.
"Take care of" is a phrase with a double meaning. Literally, to care for, to protect -- or "to take care of," to dispose of, to pull a hitman cleanup job on. Dean never realized John might mean the latter every time he repeated that Dean should "take care of Sam" until that moment in In My Time of Dying.
Anyway. There isn't much else to be said about the second season cover because there aren't really any props. Their home is still carrying them -- the Impala is stretched beneath and between both of them, like a support pillar, carrying the two together. Dean's moved, and thus stepped out of that one place he'd occupied for his entire life -- Dean is changing and Sam is still behind him, either as support or to stab him in the back. For now, it's support. By season 4, the backstabbing option may have become more viable. But they're both still looking at the camera, and as in season 1, the direction of the camera is the direction facing away from normality and towards hunting.
Check it out. Dean isn't looking at hunting any more. Dean isn't looking at anything; in fact, Dean is probably looking at his own death. Although Dean says over and over throughout this season that he just wants to hunt, just wants to do the good work and fight the good fight and let his time come due when it will, it is clear every time he says it that he really wants to hunt so that he doesn't have to think about the fact that he's just committed time-delayed suicide. Sam can't look at Dean because he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that his brother is the walking dead, so Sam is looking at hunting instead.
And Sam is back in the priority spot, which he hasn't been in since the comic cover, pre-show. He isn't even co-occupying it with the Impala as he was pre-show. The Impala, home itself, the togetherness of family, has taken the least priority -- appropriately enough for the first season in which one of the brothers goes behind the other's back with a third party (Sam talking to Ruby). The Impala is parked at a crossroads and the storm-sky is visible again, both very obvious symbols. Crossroads -- important in the mythology of the show, integral to Dean's deal, and showing that while Dean and Sam are still together, they are at last beginning to look at divergent paths and will soon reach the point of having to choose their own ways. Dean chose to die, but by the end of the season he's realized that he doesn't want that -- but it's too late. Sam chose to obey Dean's wish that he would go no further with his Yellow-Eyes powers, but in the finale he finally chose to exploit his demon powers despite Dean's wishes (when he says "Ruby, tell me what to do, I'll do anything" etc) -- but it's too late for Sam, too, as Ruby's body is already possessed by Lilith. So, given that crossroads at the beginning of the season, they each choose a certain path which turns out to be utterly the wrong choice and neither of them can get out of that exit and back on the highway before it's too late. Iiiinteresting.
Now, as of season 4, they're stuck with where their choices led them. Actually, they each catch a break that allows them to get what they wanted in the last few minutes of No Rest for the Wicked -- Dean gets to live, and Sam gets to use his powers. It's just that, in a sort of Gift of the Magi twist, they each get what they want while losing what they wanted it for in the first place. Dean gets to live again but he'd really wanted not to die in the first place. He still has to deal with having been dead and in hell for months. Sam wanted the knowledge of his powers, but only so he could save Dean, and he wasn't able to do that. Now he has knowledge of his powers and Dean is alive again, but his personal failure at the moment of Dean's death makes his powers not even worth it. (Though right now he's all emotionally shut down and wrongfully pretending that his powers are more important than reuniting with Dean.)
Seasons two and three also don't have any weapons or props in the cover pictures, so we can't say for sure when Sam's "claws" begin to emerge. I'd say late season 2, and then a regression, and then mid-late season 3, culminating in the finale -- where Sam's claws come out full-force, on instinct alone, when he negates Lilith's nuclear blast. I think he was full-power in that moment. And everything since then, training with Ruby, has been an attempt to reach that level again.
If I could retroactively add props to the pictures, I actually think that Dean would have been unarmed in the season 3 cover, while having maybe the Colt or another pistol in hand in the season 2 cover -- not the sawed-off of his youth, because by season 2 Dean was moving away from his youth. Sam... another curved blade, maybe half-raised, in season 2, but then Ruby's knife held up perhaps near his face in season 3.
The Colt and Ruby's knife. Essentially symbols of control over demons/evil, right? Which also equates to control over Sam, in some ways. The power to cause a demon to cease to exist, rather than the power to send it back to hell, is like having the ability to remove mass from the universe. It's extraordinary and it shouldn't be able to be done because of the laws of conservation of mass and energy. Demons represent evil, an abstract, and in order to maintain balance, one should not be able to erase evil from existence -- only disperse it (send the demons back to hell) so that it's less harmful. Sam represents the side of humanity that is tempted by evil, and right now he's succumbing to that temptation. (Dean represents the side of humanity that is obligated by good, and my use of "tempted" and "obligated" there is very deliberate, because it is equally as dangerous to succumb to a feeling of obligation as it is to succumb to a feeling of temptation. It all depends on what one feels obligated or tempted to do. Dean felt obligated to obey John, and you see where that got him; it was an unhealthy obligation. So that was a long way to say that I don't think the angels are going to be any better than the demons.)
Anyway, control over evil -- at first, it's in Dean's realm. The Colt is a gun, Dean's symbol, and Dean keeps it and controls its use for the most part. John, Dean and Sam each fire the Colt once in the season finale, I think? John on the vampire, Dean on the demon-son attacking Sam, Sam on possessed!John. Well, someone fired on Yellow-Eyes at the decoy house thing where he tried to infect another baby. I can't remember whether that was Dean or Sam. Either way, guns are Dean's thing and possibly also John's thing. It's a Good Cop thing; guns are the modern knight's sword & shield, at least in the context of this show and how hunting is presented.
When the power-over-demons weapon changes to a knife, the ball is in Sam's court. Sam is the one who always wants to get the knife, use the knife, trust and/or listen to Ruby because she has the knife. He is drawn to the knife because the knife is the same as his power; power over evil, but in the claw form, the blade form, the intimate form. Dean probably recognizes how dangerous Sam's enthrallment with the knife/Ruby is, because Dean is forever trying to keep Sam and Ruby apart.
Wow. That was a crapload of pointless rambling. I think I may have finally gotten out all I wanted to say about SPN, at least for now. I'd bet money all of this has already been analyzed by other people, but... oh well.
You can bet there will probably be another of these verbal-diarrhea posts after next week's episode. And with a title like "Are You There, God? It's Me... Dean Winchester," it's GOT to be good. XD
I should probably do my stupid homework now. Stupid homework.
-rave
Just found this season 4 promo image. Hah. Look at Sam's curved blade relatively close to his face. It's not Ruby's knife, but still -- I so called it.