but what does it all MEEEEEEN

[themonkeytwin]

Just to note, I hate how busy my Fridays and Saturdays tend to be. I miss all the SPN flurries around here. *sadface*

BUT I've finallly perused the few ep reactions on my flist, and rather than leave ridiculously long comments on their pages (blacklid and fannishliss, I'm looking at you. AND your comment replies, b. Why you stir up these thinky-thoughts, whyyy?), I

Comments

[themonkeytwin]

important for an angel not to be cut off from the power of the Host

That seems likely, although doesn't explain Gabriel. Maybe it's different for archangels? And there are clearly illegitimate ways to access additional power (and not just by angels), which usually seems to involve blood. As far as Balti goes, I more got the impression that souls are currency, not angeljuice. He seems more wiley, more interested in trafficking and influence than raw power; kind of an angelic version of Bela.

Zack shows up with the horrible perversion of Mary... so it's clear to me that Zack has the power to manipulate Heaven... and likely he was doing so with Sam.

There's no question that he is capable of twisting things up there. My reservation is about how much (although that question is more tied to my question of how much an angel can "create"). He can change night to day and he can appropriate an actiondoll!Mary and reprogram her (keeping in mind also that the actiondoll!Mary already existed in Dean's heaven; he didn't have to create her). I'd accept that he could even nudge their "jumps" to particular memories, and he clearly was able to set a trap and catch them coming out of Ash's. But heaven isn't his.

As for God, while it WAS hurtful to see all those things, there was no other way for Sam to understand, from an adult perspective, what he'd put Dean through and the source of some of Dean's fears and doubts. It enabled him to initiate things in No Return that allowed their real, full reconciliation. God hasn't shown much inclination to spare them pain just for sparing pain's sake, so it wasn't out of character for God to do this, especially assuming that the brothers were how God had always intended to deal with the apocalypse. And, yeah, Joshua said God had done all he was intending to - but that can be taken in sooo many ways, not just the one the boys assumed. I'm pretty sure that God wanted Dean to stop trying to get him to fix everything, to take and own the fight himself, so of course he wasn't going to leave Dean ANY hope that he would just swoop in and save the day. I guess it all just depends on your read of the SPN God, who he is and what his aims are.

More braining obviously required. This will probably become another post. Sigh....

:)

[fannishliss]

As for Gabriel, i really enjoyed the retcon of the trickster... but I like to think that he wasn't "pretending" to be a Trickster -- but actually *inhabiting* a Trickster like he would a vessel - and I guess the specific trickster turned out to be Loki -- and no way the other Norse Gods would have let their relative be impersonated, right? So I think Loki and Gabriel may have merged somewhat. That's my little head fanon. :) --see my Cas icon, since he was the one who first recognized that a "mere Trickster" shouldn't be so powerful, but was instead most probably an Angel, before he recognized that Angel to be Gabriel.

There's also no telling how deep these realities go. I mean, in the djinn-verse, the whole thing was literally playing out in Dean's head... Heaven may not be much more than a computer program with human souls as components if Ash is right, so not very difficult to create or manipulate. With the most recent verse, it was especially interesting in that the boys seemed to physically go there, Virgil followed them, and the rules of magic were different there. But that still doesn't mean the universe was all that deep. A movie we liked was the Thirteenth Floor in which the universe is no bigger than Los Angeles... or our super favorite Dark City where the universe isn't very big AT ALL. :P I guess this is why I saw a few references to Inception (though that particular movie didn't flip my flipper).

Man this ep has been the best meta generator EVER.

[themonkeytwin]

I liked the retcon too. I guess it all depends on when you think Gabe left heaven; my own fanon on how that came about was that he went and found a young, burgeoning pantheon (Norse, in this case) and just included himself. The idea that gods are also vulnerable to possession is kind of a scary one. !

Depth of reality is definitely a key idea. But I always bottom out at the same question: how do you define reality, in that case? *brainhurt* Heaven is programmable? Clearly. "Reality" isn't?... Uh. Hmm. Reality is just a programmable construct with a physical interface for spiritual-entity user-members (souls et al)...? Death is the great unplugging? Angels are admin and God is owner?

Ditto on Dark City, btw. Never got around to seeing Inception. I haven't really been in the mood for it. Sometime, probably....