SPN Meta: Relating to 5.13
Here we go, the other part of my post for 5.13, the bit where I scoop up the goo that is my brain, put it into a cake-icing tube and try to make decorative meta flowers.
In other words, rambling and possibly incomprehensible Meta ahead.
Is it stretching the truth to tell your boss you're dog-tired because you were up late preparing a document for an online conference on free will and determinism in a fictional context?
'Cause really, yeah.
(Of course I didn't tell her that.)
Vessel mini-meta and random thoughts:
I'm thinking there's a bit of attuning of vessels by temperament. Dean and John, righteous, more attuned to Michael; Sam, rebellious, more attuned to Lucifer even before the demon blood treatment; Jimmy Novak, faithful, and Castiel has him prove his faith. I don't know, it's just a thought. Uriel's vessel's temperament... I don't know. Violent perhaps.
Anyway, the main thing. From 5.13 we now know that all YED's kids, every single one, were potential angelic vessels, or had parents who had the bloodline (I have no idea how genetic inheritance of the capacity to contain a being of pure energy works. I think it might be a little beyond a basic Punnett Square, but 100% inheritance might be a bit much to assume.)
Now, I think being fed demon blood attunes a vessel to accept Lucifer, or at least not reject him as a tainted angel. Whether this renders them unusable by regular angel is unknown. However, the big special kid showdown that narrowed them all down to one vessel not only selected Lucifer's vessel, it eliminated that many potential hosts for angels. Suddenly, YED's got some strategic thinking. (and this drabble I wrote a long time ago is pretty much proven correct, yeah?)
Wee little Rosie, who'd be what, 5 now? She's still a vessel, and possibly un-demon-blood treated, as are any of her cycle that are still surviving (thundering herds of five year old angels! Hee!) although I suspect a purge took place with the showdown, when it became clear that Sam's generation would work. ....whiiiich... ooo. Nick's baby and wife. He's a regular, untainted angel vessel (which is why he's burning out holding Lucifer). Maybe his spouse made a deal? Or maybe killing his wife and child, beyond softening him up towards saying yes to big L, did away with another potential vessel or two. The demons may be more tactically savvy than I've been thinking all this time.
As for Michael's side of things, I think John would have worked and been Michael's Sword, had he broken in Hell. See, I think that a righteous person, who is a vessel, who sheds blood in Hell becomes Michael's Sword. They needed Dean to break and not John, because the dynamic would have been wrong. I wonder, maybe, if Michael nudged things while he was there in 1978.... if so, it had to have been a part of the plan all along to influence Mary's unborn baby, otherwise observer effect and causal looping would come into play. Or would it? *ponders*
What all this does then, is has Heaven and Hell dancing lock-step with each other. The righteous person who becomes the Michael Sword must break and shed blood in Hell in order to open the first seal and start down the road to releasing Lucifer and bringing the Apocalypse. A righteous person must break in Hell to become the Michael Sword so he (or she, had things shaken out differently) can be there to host Michael for the big showdown with Lucifer at the end. One doesn't happen without the other. Hell forges the weapon of its own destruction.
Causality and Determinism vs Free Will
(WARNING: I fully admit, I only have half an idea what I'm talking about in this one. Some part of me thinks there's sense in this, the rest of me just wants some extra-strength acetaminophen. Oh, BTW; May cause blinding headaches.)
Supernatural time travel as demonstrated on the show to date indicates that it is arguably a Type 1.1 universe: Immutable timeline operating under the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. The general gist being; events will unfold as they were intended to, regardless of interference, because any change made will be compensanted for by several smaller secondary changes, leading to an indistinguishably similar outcome.
Or is that just what the Angels want people to think?
This time out, Michael manually reverts everything to base state. No 'things adjust so the same result happens regardless of action taken to change the outcome of events'. Michael came in, mind-wiped everyone, and reverted everything to normal. The person Anna killed, John's boss, is likely still dead; under Novikov's principle, he would have died at around the same time of a heart attack or something if Anna hadn't killed him.
In 4.03, the situation was such that Dean's presence might have influenced events, but in the end, the same thing as always happened happens, and had to otherwise Dean would not have been there to change it. However, people in the past retained memories of events, and John bought the Impala. If Novikov's Principle were a factor, the Impala would have caught John's eye whether Dean had suggested it to him or not.
In "The End", Dean takes an action contrary to what his future self says he did, and things change, but will they still end up in the same place? Everyone still seems to be aiming Sam at Chicago Detroit (Thanks percysowner, but whether that's what happens remains to be seen. Events Dean witnessed did not shape who he was when he saw them, but they did affect his decisions upon return. Therefore it seems like observer effect may be in play, because if he hadn't been sent forward, projection or actual future, he may not have made the same decision he did (although I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have cut Sam off forever)
There's an arguable point that Zachariah had his thumb on the scale to weight the future projection of current events in a way he thought favoured his ends. If that's the case, then by doing this and seeming to have shot himself in the foot, he may have deliberately instigated the observer effect. Because Dean has seen this future and it has had an effect on the decisions he's made, even though the decision he made directly contradicts statements his future self makes, it may be enough to ensure that future is brought about.
The angels and demons both have a vested interest in the concept of Destiny. Destiny means no matter how hard the humans try, they'll still end up in exactly the same place. The place where both sides want them to be. The humans are nothing but game pieces, and a means to an end.
But they have free will. A large part of the issue of getting Sam and Dean to take their assigned roles in events hinges on them giving consent. Saying yes, of their own free will. And to get that consent, both sides will use as dirty tactics to gain that consent, even if it means using free will.
The concept of destiny in this case is being used by both sides as a bludgeon. The Winchesters are told that their actions don't matter because they're going to end up in the same place regardless of any actions they do or don't take. They're being told, over and over, that no matter how hard they try, they will fail. They're being told free will is an illusion, directly and indirectly, and the only way to fail is to believe that.
In "The Song Remains the Same", before Michael steps in and hits reset, Mary and John know an awful lot about the future. In order for that to be washed away by Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle, it would take a mammoth amount of change. John's boss died with his eyes burned out; could be explained as an industrial accident, a mishap in the shop. Mary and John's knowledge though would be very difficult to have slip away without fundamentally changing the people they are. Standard amnesia would involve an injury, and medical intervention, adding a traumatic event they never had into their lives. Slowly forgetting over time would not likely happen, not without a psychological fugue. Aside from stopping Anna, which if the Supernatural universe is a type 1.1 universe was not necessary in order to save Mary and John, an instant, gapless non-traumatic amnesia was the only way to revert the timeline to base state, the state it had to be in in order for the people and entities who went back in time to be the people they were.
SO! It's a causality dilemma. Is Michael (and by extension, the other angels involved in forwarding the Apocalypse) acting as a force of self-consistency, restoring events to what they must be according to observer effect, or is he forcing self-consistency into an inconsistent universe? Making the timeline immutable by any means necessary, enforcing predestination on a timeline which actually may or may not be fully locked into one path and one path alone.
Michael evidently believes or wants to believe that he does not have a choice in his role in events. By his own statement, he doesn't want to kill Lucifer. Lucifer's his brother. He's following orders and free will is an illusion. Angels do have free will. If they didn't, Lucifer would not have been able to rebel against heaven. Other angels have used free will; Anna and Castiel and Gabriel, of course, but also Uriel (joining the cult of Lucifer, killing his fellow angels when they refused to join him), even Zachariah, taking initiative to bring about the Apocalypse. Free will among the angels abounds. Michael says it's an illusion. If he had free will, he could say no to killing Lucifer, and try a different path.
And as I said before, integral to the entire Apocalypse is Dean and Sam's assent to be vessels. The whole predestined, fated, predetermined, inescapable schmozzle hinges on their free will.
Free will is shaping destiny. Team Free Will has already won.
(Not quite as coherent or polished as I was hoping, and like I said above, I only have a vague notion what I'm talking about here, so hopefully if you made it all the way through, it wasn't an utter waste of time.)
And now I'm going to come out of post-episode hermit lockdown and start catching up on things (right after I inhale some Tylenol), so if you get a comment on something from last week, that's why
In other words, rambling and possibly incomprehensible Meta ahead.
Is it stretching the truth to tell your boss you're dog-tired because you were up late preparing a document for an online conference on free will and determinism in a fictional context?
'Cause really, yeah.
(Of course I didn't tell her that.)
Vessel mini-meta and random thoughts:
I'm thinking there's a bit of attuning of vessels by temperament. Dean and John, righteous, more attuned to Michael; Sam, rebellious, more attuned to Lucifer even before the demon blood treatment; Jimmy Novak, faithful, and Castiel has him prove his faith. I don't know, it's just a thought. Uriel's vessel's temperament... I don't know. Violent perhaps.
Anyway, the main thing. From 5.13 we now know that all YED's kids, every single one, were potential angelic vessels, or had parents who had the bloodline (I have no idea how genetic inheritance of the capacity to contain a being of pure energy works. I think it might be a little beyond a basic Punnett Square, but 100% inheritance might be a bit much to assume.)
Now, I think being fed demon blood attunes a vessel to accept Lucifer, or at least not reject him as a tainted angel. Whether this renders them unusable by regular angel is unknown. However, the big special kid showdown that narrowed them all down to one vessel not only selected Lucifer's vessel, it eliminated that many potential hosts for angels. Suddenly, YED's got some strategic thinking. (and this drabble I wrote a long time ago is pretty much proven correct, yeah?)
Wee little Rosie, who'd be what, 5 now? She's still a vessel, and possibly un-demon-blood treated, as are any of her cycle that are still surviving (thundering herds of five year old angels! Hee!) although I suspect a purge took place with the showdown, when it became clear that Sam's generation would work. ....whiiiich... ooo. Nick's baby and wife. He's a regular, untainted angel vessel (which is why he's burning out holding Lucifer). Maybe his spouse made a deal? Or maybe killing his wife and child, beyond softening him up towards saying yes to big L, did away with another potential vessel or two. The demons may be more tactically savvy than I've been thinking all this time.
As for Michael's side of things, I think John would have worked and been Michael's Sword, had he broken in Hell. See, I think that a righteous person, who is a vessel, who sheds blood in Hell becomes Michael's Sword. They needed Dean to break and not John, because the dynamic would have been wrong. I wonder, maybe, if Michael nudged things while he was there in 1978.... if so, it had to have been a part of the plan all along to influence Mary's unborn baby, otherwise observer effect and causal looping would come into play. Or would it? *ponders*
What all this does then, is has Heaven and Hell dancing lock-step with each other. The righteous person who becomes the Michael Sword must break and shed blood in Hell in order to open the first seal and start down the road to releasing Lucifer and bringing the Apocalypse. A righteous person must break in Hell to become the Michael Sword so he (or she, had things shaken out differently) can be there to host Michael for the big showdown with Lucifer at the end. One doesn't happen without the other. Hell forges the weapon of its own destruction.
Causality and Determinism vs Free Will
(WARNING: I fully admit, I only have half an idea what I'm talking about in this one. Some part of me thinks there's sense in this, the rest of me just wants some extra-strength acetaminophen. Oh, BTW; May cause blinding headaches.)
Supernatural time travel as demonstrated on the show to date indicates that it is arguably a Type 1.1 universe: Immutable timeline operating under the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. The general gist being; events will unfold as they were intended to, regardless of interference, because any change made will be compensanted for by several smaller secondary changes, leading to an indistinguishably similar outcome.
Or is that just what the Angels want people to think?
This time out, Michael manually reverts everything to base state. No 'things adjust so the same result happens regardless of action taken to change the outcome of events'. Michael came in, mind-wiped everyone, and reverted everything to normal. The person Anna killed, John's boss, is likely still dead; under Novikov's principle, he would have died at around the same time of a heart attack or something if Anna hadn't killed him.
In 4.03, the situation was such that Dean's presence might have influenced events, but in the end, the same thing as always happened happens, and had to otherwise Dean would not have been there to change it. However, people in the past retained memories of events, and John bought the Impala. If Novikov's Principle were a factor, the Impala would have caught John's eye whether Dean had suggested it to him or not.
In "The End", Dean takes an action contrary to what his future self says he did, and things change, but will they still end up in the same place? Everyone still seems to be aiming Sam at Chicago Detroit (Thanks percysowner, but whether that's what happens remains to be seen. Events Dean witnessed did not shape who he was when he saw them, but they did affect his decisions upon return. Therefore it seems like observer effect may be in play, because if he hadn't been sent forward, projection or actual future, he may not have made the same decision he did (although I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have cut Sam off forever)
There's an arguable point that Zachariah had his thumb on the scale to weight the future projection of current events in a way he thought favoured his ends. If that's the case, then by doing this and seeming to have shot himself in the foot, he may have deliberately instigated the observer effect. Because Dean has seen this future and it has had an effect on the decisions he's made, even though the decision he made directly contradicts statements his future self makes, it may be enough to ensure that future is brought about.
The angels and demons both have a vested interest in the concept of Destiny. Destiny means no matter how hard the humans try, they'll still end up in exactly the same place. The place where both sides want them to be. The humans are nothing but game pieces, and a means to an end.
But they have free will. A large part of the issue of getting Sam and Dean to take their assigned roles in events hinges on them giving consent. Saying yes, of their own free will. And to get that consent, both sides will use as dirty tactics to gain that consent, even if it means using free will.
The concept of destiny in this case is being used by both sides as a bludgeon. The Winchesters are told that their actions don't matter because they're going to end up in the same place regardless of any actions they do or don't take. They're being told, over and over, that no matter how hard they try, they will fail. They're being told free will is an illusion, directly and indirectly, and the only way to fail is to believe that.
In "The Song Remains the Same", before Michael steps in and hits reset, Mary and John know an awful lot about the future. In order for that to be washed away by Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle, it would take a mammoth amount of change. John's boss died with his eyes burned out; could be explained as an industrial accident, a mishap in the shop. Mary and John's knowledge though would be very difficult to have slip away without fundamentally changing the people they are. Standard amnesia would involve an injury, and medical intervention, adding a traumatic event they never had into their lives. Slowly forgetting over time would not likely happen, not without a psychological fugue. Aside from stopping Anna, which if the Supernatural universe is a type 1.1 universe was not necessary in order to save Mary and John, an instant, gapless non-traumatic amnesia was the only way to revert the timeline to base state, the state it had to be in in order for the people and entities who went back in time to be the people they were.
SO! It's a causality dilemma. Is Michael (and by extension, the other angels involved in forwarding the Apocalypse) acting as a force of self-consistency, restoring events to what they must be according to observer effect, or is he forcing self-consistency into an inconsistent universe? Making the timeline immutable by any means necessary, enforcing predestination on a timeline which actually may or may not be fully locked into one path and one path alone.
Michael evidently believes or wants to believe that he does not have a choice in his role in events. By his own statement, he doesn't want to kill Lucifer. Lucifer's his brother. He's following orders and free will is an illusion. Angels do have free will. If they didn't, Lucifer would not have been able to rebel against heaven. Other angels have used free will; Anna and Castiel and Gabriel, of course, but also Uriel (joining the cult of Lucifer, killing his fellow angels when they refused to join him), even Zachariah, taking initiative to bring about the Apocalypse. Free will among the angels abounds. Michael says it's an illusion. If he had free will, he could say no to killing Lucifer, and try a different path.
And as I said before, integral to the entire Apocalypse is Dean and Sam's assent to be vessels. The whole predestined, fated, predetermined, inescapable schmozzle hinges on their free will.
Free will is shaping destiny. Team Free Will has already won.
(Not quite as coherent or polished as I was hoping, and like I said above, I only have a vague notion what I'm talking about here, so hopefully if you made it all the way through, it wasn't an utter waste of time.)
And now I'm going to come out of post-episode hermit lockdown and start catching up on things (right after I inhale some Tylenol), so if you get a comment on something from last week, that's why