#rambleoncas meta

[elgreytea]

insane thought but listen. listen. we know how dean hates dogs right. what if he and sam had a thing similar to poughkeepsie that was like. "if you ever see me get a dog. that's not me. something's wrong and you gotta kill me" and then sam. and then sam lets dean get impaled by the r

[elgreytea]

How Did The Car Get Here?

or: why the impala being in dean's heaven means it isn't really heaven

[content warnings: mention of the finale (15x20), though no screenshots are included because i can’t force myself to rewatch it]

okay so i'm finally cracking my knuckles and getting into a meta post after the finale, and it started because marlo and i watched scoobynatural the other month and of course that means some new revelations about the finale came to light, right? right (this is the grain of salt i'm throwing at you <3 it's gonna read like the fan fiction meta. that’s a warning)

you might be thinking, "ely, what the hell does scoobynatural have anything to do with the finale." and to that i say, surprisingly quite a lot

the basic premise of this episode is that sam, dean and cas are whisked away to a tv world (scooby doo) and have to save the people (characters—HEROES, hint hint) in it from a real-world ghost. it's revealed later that the ghost has been tied to a pocket knife that a real estate developer has been putting everywhere in order to scare shop owners into giving their stores to him. (wiki description that might’ve put it better than i could)

when sam and dean first arrive, almost immediately sam says, "how did the car get here?" but more importantly i’d like to ask: why is the car here?

so, let’s get into it.

[ID: A screenshot from “Scoobynatural” of the Impala at night. Sam and Dean stand to the left of the frame. It is captioned with Sam saying “How did the car get here?” / End ID.] 

it feels like many of us, including dean himself in the finale, were surprised (read: offended) to see the Impala in heaven. what's the purpose? it's obviously inanimate, and though dean gives her a gender and a name, it doesn't make her "real," nor does it give her a soul, which seems like a heavenly prerequisite. so how—or why is the car there at all? 

in scoobynatural, Baby is used simply as a means to get from one place to another (as vehicles do) UNTIL it becomes apparent that the ghost they're hunting is actually a ghost. then, the real purpose baby serves is to provide weapons and hunting materials in order to take down the big bad.

[ID: Two screenshots from “Scoobynatural.” In the first one, Velma is speaking and fixing her glasses, surrounded by the Scooby Gang. Scooby and Shaggy are on the left side of the frame, and Daphne and Fred are on the right. It’s night time. The caption reads, “We don’t have the proper tools or weapons.” The second screenshot depicts a cartoon version of Sam, with the caption, “That’s okay. We do.” / End ID.]

mind you, sam and (especially) dean weren't aware of why they'd been whisked into the tv in the first place, or that there was any "real" danger at all. dean was actually enjoying it a LOT, stuffing his face with much-too-tall sandwiches, hitting on daphne, and gaping at the mystery machine in awe. the Impala being there with them seemed insignificant (dean even says so)... until it isn’t, and her true purpose is revealed—

[ID: Two screenshots from “Scoobynatural.” The first one shows a shot from the perspective of inside the Impala’s trunk. Sam and Dean are surrounded by the Scooby Gang on either side of them, with Scooby, Shaggy, and Cas on the right side of the frame, and Velma, Daphne and Fred on the left. The caption describes the trunk unlocking. The second screenshot is of the contents in the trunk: several weapons like a wooden stake, various guns, an axe, a knife, and an arrow. / End ID.]

so, with the Impala appearing in the Scooby universe with all the equipment they could ever want...or need or...dream, doesn’t that remind you of what bobby says in 15x20? let’s see...

[ID: A screenshot of the 15x20 transcript. It’s a snippet from Bobby’s line, which reads, “You got everything you could ever want...or need or...dream. So, I guess the question is...what are you gonna do now, Dean?” / End ID.]

best of all, right after Bobby says this, Dean spots the Impala and decides to go for a drive:

[ID: A screenshot of the 15x20 transcript. It reads, “(Dean looks away from Bobby and sees the Impala, with the original KAZ 2Y5 license plate, parked on the road).” / End ID.]

let me rewind a bit to something i said earlier. “sam and (especially) dean weren't aware of why they'd been whisked into the tv in the first place, or that there was any "real" danger at all.” in my theory for 15x20, I think it’s actually quite a similar situation, in that they are fooled into thinking there is no real danger and that heaven is just...heaven. bobby is there, along with some (crappy) beer and dean’s parents are there, and— wait, doesn’t bobby hate john? and hang on...you’re telling me the beer in heaven is crappy? and hey, wasn’t jack acting a bit strange after becoming god? what was up with that?

a lot of things about the finale just...don’t add up. and the impala is there, even though Baby doesn’t have a soul and therefore could not be/manifest itself in heaven (just as she couldn’t actually be in scoobynatural because she wasn’t there when sam and dean got sucked into the tv). so we’re back to asking: why is the car here? 

i’m going to just take a shot in the dark here and say that maybe it’s for the same reason that she was there in scoobynatural. to serve a purpose when they realize that there’s actually a big bad to be fought—that things aren’t exactly as they seem. 

as to who the big bad is, take your pick!! it could be chuck!jack, or the Empty (it is still loud in there after all), it could even be a djinn dream. but throwing Baby into heaven for seemingly no reason other than to have dean drive her for like fifty years just seems ridiculous to me. she’s got weapons in her trunk, weapons that the heroes (good place to remind you that there is LITERALLY a s15 ep called The Heroes’ Journey) can use to their advantage. 

there’s a lot that points to something being off about the finale. but personally, i think Baby might be our biggest clue. 

kirk out.

[elgreytea]

How Dean Hides Emotion in 15x18

ok something i've been wanting to talk about but haven't had the chance to yet is the cinematography of the scene in 15x18 where dean cries after cas is taken. so i’m gonna break the scene down a bit and hopefully show you how dean hides emotion from not only sam, but the audience as well (and get you to consider how this could mean that dean reciprocates).

so, first we get a long shot of dean, where he’s sitting with his back against the wall, staring off. i’ll get back to this in a moment, but for now, it establishes that dean is still there, where cas left him, in the same position. 

then, we switch to see dean’s perspective when his phone starts vibrating at sam’s call. he doesn’t pick up, and sets the phone aside. by the way, this scene with the phone is a direct parallel to when sam found eileen’s (the person he loves) phone earlier in the ep. and what does he say when dean tries to console him about it? “No, no, no. I can’t...If I let myself go, I’ll lose my mind. I can’t right now.” that’s exactly the same thing dean is doing here. he’s not letting himself talk about it with sam, and he’s not letting himself show it to the audience. might i remind you: “dean can’t reciprocate.”

next is a close up shot of dean’s face, tears in his eyes, covering his face when he puts his hands in his hair:

hiding his face from us, not letting us see how he’s feeling.

then we go back into a long shot. we can see his entire body, and most of the shot is of the room.

(gif cred) 

whenever we’ve seen dean, like during the confession scene, we usually only ever get medium shots or closer (so, from the waist or chest up. also a lot of close ups for dean, too, over the seasons).

so this is different for us. we feel separated from him, we don't know his thoughts and we're not really close enough to see them, either. he’s hiding his face, he's made small within the frame, and we’re stepping even further away as the camera gently zooms out. we’re not supposed to see this. dean doesn’t want us to see how small he feels, how large the rest of the room seems in comparison.

and you know what dean’s the same size of, relatively, in this scene? let me refer you to the shot i said i’d come back to, earlier. the first shot we see when we come back to this scene with dean. notice what he’s looking at:

the empty black chair.

this...isn't just a shot of dean. this is a shot of dean and cas, wherein cas is shown by not being shown at all. it’s why dean’s staring it at, it’s why he has to pull his eyes away from it. the empty black chair is a representation of cas, showing us that there’s someone missing here. think about it,, we could have still had a long shot of this scene without the chair in the frame, but the placement was deliberate. he’s hiding his face, his emotions, from sam, from us, and from cas.  

the empty chair is cas. it’s the representation of him being gone, of what dean has just lost. it’s empty.

[elgreytea]

Let’s Find Our Way to Dodge City

sue me if this is off or doesn’t make sense (because i’m...on my last thread of sanity) but when jack is in heaven in 14x08 and it’s dean and sam and cas all there with him (you know, where they’re in front of a restaurant with their food on Baby’s hood and dean’s cup has two straws in it? yea, that) dean’s laying out a map and he says they’re going up to Dodge city. 

(14x08 Byzantium)  

Dodge. where Tombstone takes place. 

(13x06, Tombstone)

Tombstone, the episode where dean is utterly overjoyed at having cas back and makes him put on a cowboy hat

the episode that has a call back in 15x15 Gimme Shelter in the scene where cas and jack are trying to summon a demon, and cas places a picture of him from Tombstone in the summoning box?

(15x15 Gimme Shelter)

Dodge represents everything that jack would want in a perfect world: Tombstone was the episode where dean and sam and jack were all reunited with cas again. and like jack says, he learns from watching sam and dean. he learns what happiness is in Tombstone, and it’s all of them together. it’s dean having cas back. it’s all of them, in Dodge city. 

also, hey. doesn’t that dog--the one above and between dean and cas in the still from 14x08--look familiar? 

maybe they’ll find their way again to a Dodge City. to someplace that emulates jack’s heaven.  

might i add that jack’s wearing the same shirt and jacket he wears in tombstone? dean’s wearing the same jacket, and sam’s outfit is nearly the same, too.

"the dead are rising in dodge city, kansas."

[elgreytea]

the way that even that early in life, there are ties between dean and religion, his abusive father, and being queer...which are like...the three big themes when it comes to dean and cas' relationship and honestly just ends up adding another layer to it... like, dean and cas being "soldiers" for their (less than great) father figures, being sent out on their own, their (lack of) faith, dean dicovering love and death of love between a same-sex couple of faith (the two nuns; i'm also thinking about cas saying he discovered faith in family in Gimme Shelter), cas dying for dean to be saved after confessing that he loves him....the dots. i have connected them. (x)

[elgreytea]

So this was just pointed out to me but in ep 5 of season 15 Lilith says something along the lines of “I had to die for what I wanted most” which... she did. And she came back via Gods Power (which Jack now has) As well all know very well Cas died(ish? He was just kinda absorbed) for what he “... wants but can’t have” Im sorry this is hardly coherent a friend pointed this line out to me and I freaked and you wrote most of my favorite metas so I thought I’d ask a penny for your thoughts

first of all, i want to say thank you for sending this to me. this is the episode i’ve been wanting to write about for about a month or more, but never had a reason to, so i’m very happy that i can, now! 

Cas’ Arc Isn’t Finished Yet

important: i should clarify that there are two storylines going on in this episode: dean’s relationship with cas (a reaction to their break up) and sam’s chuck visions of parallel universes mirrored by the two werewolf brothers in the ep. just a lot of 15x18 and 15x19 vibes in general..

the “then” section of this episode references dean and cas’ breakup from two episodes before, 15x03. this is the basis of this analysis, because in my eyes the entire lilith plot revolves around cas’ relationship with dean (and sam) and how he feels inadequate in comparison, or as though he doesn’t belong. 

here’s a refresher on what was said in 15x03 (taken from the recap):

cas: something went wrong. something always goes wrong.

dean: yeah, why does that something always seem to be you?

cas: i think it’s time for me to move on.

another important quote from the “then” section of 15x05 that they included from 15x01:

sam: god’s gone. it’s just us.

dean: and about three billion ghosts.

sounds to me like 15x09:

sam: you know, with chuck not writing our story anymore, we get to write our own. just you and me, going wherever the story takes us. just us.

dean: finally free.

so let’s now get into why cas is a mirror for ashley/lilith:

ashley is set up to have two close friends that mirror sam and dean. when they’re all on a camping trip together in the beginning of the ep, she tells them she feels out of place because they both have jobs and she doesn’t. reminds me of a scene in 15x03 when cas tells dean:

(note: at this point “ashley” is actually lilith pretending to be her, but neither dean nor the audience knows that yet. which, again, is why dean is set up to be us in the s15 narrative)

'ashley’ even talks to dean about her feelings of inadequacy directly--she asks him if he likes his job, to which he responds:

even the way he’s sitting and his facial expression remind me of:

...a little (a lot) distanced from the conversation. uncomfortable. on the verge of saying something more.

then ashley/lilith further proves herself as a cas mirror. she asks dean if he thinks it would be better if everything was already planned out for them. remember, we don’t know this is lilith talking, and ashley wouldn’t know that everything was, actually, planned out by chuck. putting ourselves in fake-ashley’s mindset, we can see that she’s under the impression that she’s making it up as she goes.

you know the only character that canonically does that? that is the only one free from chuck’s script?

cas. 

after that, lilith/ashley puts dean to sleep, and he wakes to find her gone, taken by the werewolf brothers, leaving sam and dean to have to rescue her from them. finally, she reveals herself as lilith, and this ensues (remember that at this point, she is a clear mirror for cas):

(side note: can we talk about her outfit, too? the white shirt, the tie...all very reminiscent of cas.) 

so here we can see....even more so a parallel to cas in 15x18, when he’s taken by the empty. the only difference is that chuck didn’t bring him back. but then she talks about chuck’s plan for her, which was:

...interesting. cas mirror was supposed to be rescued by dean and seduce him. okay. i’m listening, i’m looking

then she makes a deal with dean to save sam’s life, and the two are in the car together. this is when we finally get to what you referenced in this ask (so sorry i went off) when she talks about how she died to free lucifer from the cage:

familiar, familiar...

”the one thing i want...it’s something i know i can’t have.”

let’s think about the lilith/ashley/cas similarities again...

lilith is pissed that god brought her back, because she believes she died for a good cause. cas, in my opinion, is in the same boat--dying to save dean in 15x18. so this begs the question: what would make cas want to come back?

like i said here, i think if cas is to come back, then it needs to be because of choice and it needs to be because he’s wanted back (aka, not because god thinks he could be useful. i think this is exactly why they made jack make a point of having a “hands off” approach). cas can’t keep the feelings of inadequacy that his mirror, ashley, had in this episode--these are the exact feelings he’s been battling since pretty much his introduction. which means, in order for his character arc to come full circle, he needs to break free of thinking that he’s unwanted, he needs to think that he deserves to be saved. 

and we know this...

[elgreytea]

I saw a post on tumblr where someone said now that Kripke gave J&D the rights, maybe they’re starting with a prequel just to end on a reboot in years time and honestly ? I wanna believe that so badly. This is tinhatty but what if this is all calculated in a way that makes it so that Jensen is slowly starting to fix everything that was wrong with spn - now that he has the rights and he making spn his own story?! I mean he did say in his ig post he wants to ‘fill in the rest’ - and maybe Mary and John’s story is only the beginning of spn related content from J&D to come ??? Maybe he wants to give spn the justice it deserves?? Thoughts ??

i think that'd be redeemable, actually! i think it'd be cool if it started with "the winchesters" meaning the blood-related winchesters, then exploited the blood is thicker than water motif with cupid setting up john and mary/ john's abusiveness to the boys, and then ended off somehow with "the winchesters" changing to better fit "family don't end in blood" and found family dynamics, etc etc. THAT would give the story its justice tbh

[elgreytea]

as an add on to the Fan Fiction Meta (because idk if i wanna make it any longer), just take this:

(Becky about Chuck's ending/15x19/act one.)

(Dean about Marie's play/10x05/act one.) 

mm. so you’re saying the second act has what dean wants. it fixes what act one doesn’t have. okay. cool cool cool