#spn 11.12

[foxthefanboi]

11x12 - Don’t You Forget About Me

... in which Sam and Dean must unexpectedly endure Jody giving her teenage daughters the sex talk

[mittensmorgul]

don’t mind me just watching 11.10 which is arguably the first episode of dabb era since this was penned by him as he took over the plot arc from carver and set the stage for his first season finale and the arcs of rowena and castiel began a long series of parallels where they’re both coming from entirely different ends of the spectrum but were both used horrifically in the name of power-- rowena’s in protecting herself and cas’s in protecting the people he loved-- and the choices they made in the name of that protection just went horribly horrifically wrong in every way, and dabb founded these two narrative arcs in the fact that cas did everything for love and put these words in rowena’s mouth about hate:

Rowena: I hate you, because when I look into your eyes I see the woman I used to be, before magic, before the coven. When I was nothing but Rowena, the tanner's daughter. A pale, scared little girl, who smelled of filth and death. I hate you, because when you were born, your father said he loved me. Then he went back to his grand wife and his grand house, whilst I lay pathetic and half dead on a straw mat, my thighs slick with blood. I hate you, because if I didn't, I'd love you. But love, love is weakness. And I'll never be weak again.

and yet hate WAS the weakness and true love isn’t a one way street but that being loved IN RETURN was the key all along and that’s honestly what all these characters up to and including chuck and amara actually needed though chuck was functionally incapable of it and that’s why his story sucked which we will learn IN DETAIL in s15, but for now the next three episodes of spn will detail three important facets of love

first we learn of romantic love and the torment of “heartbreak” as a concept and the introduction of Eileen to Sam’s life despite the fact that she will return only to die and be taken from him tragically before they could truly explore that potential for love in an episode where Dean confesses his fear of the strange warped attraction Amara forces on him to Cas but it’s not really Cas and Dean is so messed up he can’t figure out why Cas seemed “off” yet.... 

then we learn about familial love and what makes a family, and get proof it’s literally not blood in any sense of the word, it’s the people we choose of our free will and without the bonds of blood (vampiric or genetic), and our choices are most important in building a full life with happiness and freedom

then we learn about toxic obsessive love that isn’t really love at all but a walking talking mockery of love that will destroy everyone involved in perpetuating it symbolized by dean nearly being killed by a fake version of amara and finally understanding that this is the sort of love that amara seeks from him...

and then we have dean spending the rest of the season with one singular goal of freeing cas from his own bad decision because... 

and rowena returning from the dead and seeking out power and protection from amara only to begin to understand that power can’t protect her and will never protect her, and hate is maybe not enough to protect her either...

the rest of dabb era continues to hammer these themes home to us and then after Chuck is defeated and love is finally allowed to win.... ???????? the story that Chuck never intended to “write,” the one about love in all its forms, because Chuck never actually understood love at all, also fails to survive Chuck’s downfall at the very moment it actually had a chance to be freed from the depressing narrative in which it had flourished despite all odds stacked against it, and despite Chuck actively trying to murder it at every turn for the purposes of his characters’ suffering... like... so what was even the point of any of it in the end? Tell a story about love growing through every crack of the story while the author desperately tries to pave it all over, and then not let love and humanity and life truly win... wow, that’s honestly the least believable series of events in the history of ever

okay got it out of my system and am fully and cheerfully able to throw the finale in the trash yet again. hooray!

[jennsens]

Don’t You Forget About Me | SPN 11.12

[nancylou444]

Hi Nancy! I just wanted to say that even in Italy on TV it says “ Supernatural with Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles and Jim Beaver.” No Misha. What a lead character… Ah, and it’s season eleven lol (Hope you see the photo I attached >_<)

—————————————

Thank you, Micaela for sharing this. ♥

[mittensmorgul]

eeee so i just rewatched 11.12 and it gave me MAJOR 14.08 vibes. i mean, how the vampire said he didn’t want to kill alex right away because he wanted her to be happy first, and how that’s pretty much exactly what the empty told cas. BUT, specifically, he told alex he wanted her to have something to lose, a family. but it was the very thing he wanted her to have and to lose that ended up saving her :’D

OH GOSH. You know, I love the Love Triptych in the middle of s11, and this episode is the second of those three. In case you weren’t around here when s11 originally aired, there was a weird theme through the first half of the season of “thematically or literally paired episodes.” And this is a theme Dabb has played off of extensively in his era. Heck, I even wrote just a few weeks ago about how Carver’s final episode as a writer (11.01) essentially handed off the story to Dabb (11.02).

11.01 and 11.02 were two halves of what was effectively a single episode, you know?

11.03 and 11.04 were about getting their bearings, getting back to a baseline from which they could all begin to move forward

11.05 and 11.06 were literally also in the same town, both dealing with Amara eating souls

11.07 and 11.08 were both MotW cases that had little bearing on the mytharc, but both dealt with themes of childhood innocence lost and revenge, which DO bear on the overall s11 themes– Amara looking for vengeance against Chuck for locking her up at the beginning of creation

11.09 and 11.10 were the two episodes either side of the winter hellatus, the cage, Lucifer, and Amara. Like 01 and 02, they both work as two halves of a whole episode narratively.

and that’s where the “paired” episodes ended. and for full disclosure purposes, I’ve been trying to answer this question for the last several hours, and just spent a LOT of time going through my tags trying to find those posts I discussed these paired episodes in, but I only got as far as 11.03 or so in my blog retagging project, and unfortunately a lot of those posts just… aren’t tagged, so I can’t find them atm >.> Someday I will actually finish tagging everything properly. But this is also why the descriptions above are so… lacking in meta value. It’s late, I should be writing, and yet I’ve spent three or four hours surfing through early s11 meta now, and I’m officially forcing myself to stop for my own good :P

BUT! That brings us to the three “middle episodes” of s11, which I think of as the Love Triptych.

11.11: Finding happiness by following your heart. And the monster and other themes in the episode were about love and heartbreak and pining and regretting sending your ex poop emojis, you know? :P Dean also (before he’s attacked by the banshee everyone was convinced was going to attack Mildred, who may have had a weak PHYSICAL heart, but who had the strongest EMOTIONAL heart) began confessing his fear of Amara’s control over him to Cas(ifer), and had a wonderful heart to heart talk with Mildred about the secret to happiness. Which does also directly relate to your comment above, because of Cas’s deal with the Empty being about him finding true happiness, you know? (and heck, Mildred’s speech was framed around literally sitting and watching a sunset, the sun shining on their faces through the window as they talked about finding happiness)

11.12: Familial love– what makes a family. Explored through Jody and Alex and Claire finding their footing as a family, and Sam and Dean being drawn in as an extension of their family. It was also about the perennial Supernatural theme of what you do for your family, for the people you love.

11.13: Toxic obsession, mislabeled as love. The witch in the episode who controlled the qareen used the monster to punish people for their toxic relationships by literally tearing out their hearts. And when the qareen came for Dean, it wore Amara’s face. At the end of the episode, Dean confessed his feeling of weakness in Amara’s presence.

So yeah, I think all three of those episodes touch a bit on the themes surrounding Cas’s deal.

[mittensmorgul]

11.12, Don’t You Forget About Me.

WAYWARD. Claire, Alex, and Jody forge themselves into a family. :’)

With Sam and Dean as awkward uncles... :P

But they do get a taste of what “normal family life” can be like... with a side order of monster hunting. They don’t have to give up hunting to have something like a traditional family life, too, which is crucial to their character development going forward (and has been since 11.04 and the “something, with someone in the life” conversation that opened the door for this sort of possibility.

And they’re still using these lessons to redefine their own future

[jennsens]

SPN 11.12

[jennsens]

SPN 11.12