#spn3

[incesthemes]

oh okay so kripke put REAL thought into bela's name. he said this lady is going to be the physical manifestation of dean's impending fate as the righteous man, the pure allegory of destiny's inevitable dominion, and he let it drip from every single facet of her character. that's awesome actually

[ima-bookdragon-blog]

Idek

[aborddelimpala]

Dork in #SPN3 Gag Reel

[incesthemes]

in 3x01 dean is singled out and attacked by the demonic embodiment of lust, and tamara is attacked by wrath. considering that the demons themselves assessed tamara's personal vice to be wrath, this also draws a connection between dean's assailant and his threesome at the beginning of this episode—aka, the episode is suggesting that dean's vice is lust. but what these two assignments do is set sam up for something more interesting.

sam is attacked by three of the demons: pride, gluttony, and greed. if dean and tamara are attacked by the manifestations of their own vices, then the episode is implying that sam is as well. with pride as the clear leader of the trio, it reasons that pride is sam's greatest vice. this, i believe, can speak to his characterization across seasons 1 and 2. with gluttony and greed standing silent in the background though, there's perhaps an element of foreshadowing.

pride himself gives sam his title "boy king." that draws a clear line between these vices and sam's fate, and therefore the foreshadowing can be realized in his demon blood addiction, which is frequently throughout season 4 referred to as a hunger for power. so gluttony and greed loom in the background of sam's life, promising that he will succumb to those vices inevitably for as long as he continues down the path of fate.

and then ruby, the very embodiment of that fate, appears out of nowhere to save sam from them, seemingly killing all three of the demons. and then she proceeds to throughout seasons 3 and 4 nurture those vices, sweetly coaxing them out and encouraging him down that path. she "saved" him by leading him down the very path he thought he was avoiding. and this is parallel to all the other ways ruby manipulates him: she draws him closer to fate while pretending to push him away—see for example the way she embodies dean, the opposite of fate, and uses that mimicry to pull him toward lucifer. therefore 3x01 serves as foreshadowing for sam's narrative arc throughout the next two seasons as he falls prey to his own dormant vices and ruby covertly nurtures them until they consume him whole.

[incesthemes]

endlessly fascinating to me that ruby, who undoubtedly is an allegorical representation sam via her temptation of him toward his destiny (toward lucifer), manifests as a simile of dean during two seasons wherein sam is proactively, consciously, and expressly trying himself to imitate dean to become stronger in his absence (death). she therefore becomes an end goal through her mimicry of sam's brother, embodying the very specific strength he covets, while redirecting his effort to her own goals. sam wants to be like dean, ruby shows him how to be like dean, and in doing so he is made ripe for lucifer's picking.

[incesthemes]

so sam got a necklace for john for christmas when he was a kid, dad "lied to him" and didn't show up, so he gave the necklace to dean instead and dean still to this day like 15 years later wears that fucking necklace every single day and cherishes it enough to angrily take it back from the shapeshifter after it was stolen, and you're trying to tell me there's no incest in supernatural? okay

[incesthemes]

One thing I find interesting is that Sam and Dean who are as we all know very open about their sex lives with each other…with one exception. (I’m only talking kripke era) Ruby. When Sam is telling Dean about him and Ruby getting together it is the only time in five seasons where Dean cuts Sam off not wanting to hear more. Ruby who is the only other character to call Sam “Sammy” and not be told “only he (Dean) can cal me that.”

Ruby is the biggest relationship other than John to impact the boys. She is the wedge, the only person to be jealous of. Sam can hookup with girls on hunts but only the once. This is more. And she knows all about how dangerous their lives are more so then they do at the time. Creating jealousy and suspicion. She takes care of Sam and that’s Deans job. She never hated his freak qualities encouraged them when Dean shamed them (out of fear).

She nurtures Sams most hated aspects of himself. But also when he feels the strongest. When he can use this curse to help people. If he helps enough people will it scrub his blood clean?

so okay i'm working on 7-month old memory with ruby because i'm still only on season 2 in my re-rewatch but let's compare ruby and meg (i feel inadequate because i have such extensive notes about meg now but nothing about ruby lol).

they both occupy the same narrative role: to influence sam down the path of his destiny. they flirt with him, get close to him, say what he wants to hear, all to bring sam closer to his fate. they do this through manipulation so that sam will embrace his path and stop running for it.

dean is the diametric opposition to sam's fate, (narratively) the only person in the world who can stop him. this goes the opposite way as well: their choices in the story are between their fate and their brother, and it's only by choosing their brother that they ever manage to avoid their destinies.

so what both meg and ruby do is pull sam away from dean. this is subtle, and they go about it in different ways. meg is aggressive and encourages sam to hate dean, turn away from him. this is an appropriate tactic given the context in which she meets sam, because he and dean are fighting and separated and she's trying to embolden sam to strike out on his own and leave dean behind.

ruby on the other hand can't use that same strategy. they've already entered into a codependent relationship when she shows up, and if the choice is between literally anything else and his brother, sam is going to choose his brother. so ruby uses that against him and becomes dean: and not just dean, but an idealized version of him. the problem, of course, is that this idealized version of dean is the version of dean which is enabling sam to pursue his fate. sam wants dean to accept him and love him warts and all, so ruby does that in dean's place—and that's the danger of it all. she makes his fate out to be desirable and alluring, using dean's voice all the while to seduce him. ruby is not dean: she's just using his likeness to blind sam and manipulate him into fulfilling his destiny. choosing ruby isn't the same as choosing dean, and therefore in choosing ruby sam is unable to avoid destiny.

by all accounts it makes sense for dean to hate her: he not only has legitimate reasons not to trust her, but she's also manipulating sam by impersonating him. she's trying to take his place, and obviously that is going to make his fear of abandonment flare up.

but on the other hand, dean reacts completely differently with meg, even though she too embodies dean's fear of abandonment and represents sam leaving him. instead of being repulsed by her, dean pressures sam to fuck her and even after they figure out she's bad news, dean continues to tease him about this fabricated love affair they had going on. dean's reaction here is understandable too—he's displacing his fear and sense of inadequacy via sexual commentary because he believes sam is going to leave him for a girl.

both reactions are understandable given dean's psyche, but what makes them different? my current assumption is that dean simply learned from meg's example. she was obviously deeply traumatizing to both sam and dean in different ways, and meg is also the origin of dean's firmly held belief that demons are liars. so he's not quick to trust ruby, and she doesn't give him many reasons to trust her, at least when put against her red flags. monsters (especially demons) are also generally repulsive to dean, exacerbated over the years of battling against their respective fates. dean is disgusted by ruby, so he wouldn't want to know what she and sam are up to in bed.

on the other hand, ruby comes to embody just how thin the tightrope sam's walking actually is. sam shouldn't trust her, and he doesn't at first, but this is his fate we're talking about here. she worms her way under his skin and convinces him it's all okay. dean is probably not so blindsided by her because this isn't his fate—he's not faced with the allure of this path the way sam is. his direction is different, and he's blinded in different ways that sam can see straight through just as well.

it's kind of like how dean is exempted from the revenge arc in season 1: he stands on the outside of the conflict because he is in fact its opposing force. where sam is blinded by his fate, dean can see things for what they are and (try to) guide him back to the family. sam does the same thing for dean too because as i said, choosing the brother over everything else is the only way for them to avoid their destinies.

so way too long story short i think that's probably why ruby disgusts dean so much: she disgusts him, and he can see past her facade because he's not drawn in by fate the way sam is. he has no reason to trust a demon and no extenuating circumstances that would sway him to consider it, either. ironically, this just fuels the conflict and drives the wedge between sam and dean deeper because ruby's manipulation is just so complete and so perfect. there was no correct choice: sam was doomed from the start and there was nothing dean could do to stop it.

[incesthemes]

final thoughts: supernatural season 3

GREAT SEASON. i was surprised that it only had 16 episodes, but apparently it was because of the writers strike in 2007-2008? so that makes more sense. also i kinda like the vague poetry of the season being cut short, it very much parallels dean's life getting cut short lmao

i am a BIG fan of the winchesters dying, so between mystery spot and the finale, this season was a delight for me. death in supernatural is such a unique experience, so it's fun to pick apart the emotional weight and the significance of each death. this isn't particularly a new thought for me, but i like that death isn't exactly an "end" in spn; it is just another stage of existence, one from which anyone has the potential to return. obviously this "anyone" only really extends to the winchesters, but their plot armor is something i actually find gives this show a lot of its charm. it's similar to how i feel about death in homestuck, and the in-universe culture surrounding death in both shows is distorted appropriately to ignore its finality and treat it much differently from other stories.

actually on the topic of mystery spot though, i found those 6 retconned months to be peculiar. it ignored the existence of ruby and lilith and everything else going on around hurricane winchester, and while i'm sure it was for time slot reasons, it really has stuck in my mind. if ruby is so hellbent on training up sam to defeat lilith, then why wouldn't she contact him when he's at his lowest to manipulate him accordingly, just like she tried in the finale? the fact that sam is effectively left alone during those 6 months is very weird to me. this is definitely one of those things that make me dislike episodic storytelling, since the story has to be "reset" by the end of the episode in order to start a new A plot come the next one. it would have been nice to see the more realistic ramifications of dean's death in mystery spot a la ruby and her plans, especially knowing that this is exactly what she does with sam during dean's vacation in hell.

i do wish henricksen hadn't died at the end of jus in bello. not that i think it was a bad decision, but something i find nice in charmed is that the sisters always have someone within law enforcement to help cover their tracks. i think henricksen would have fit into that spot really nicely, since he seems to think very much like dean and i think they could have gotten along. with as many run-ins with the cops as they've had up to now, they could use a little help on the inside. because lord, this show makes me hate cops more than i did before with how aggressive and idiotic they are. shoot first ask questions never—yeah, seriously. anyway i don't dislike the direction they took with henricksen, but it could have been an interesting avenue to explore, since there's a template with charmed already. also i just started liking henricksen. i wasn't done with him yet okay. what if he lived and became a hunter. what if he worked alongside them. literally so much potential for this man and now he's dead.

but speaking of jus in bello: the end of the episode proved that ruby had the better plan, and still dean refused to even hear her out when she appeared in the finale. it's in character for him, but that kind of thing is a little grating, especially when that wasn't actually brought up as a counter in the episode. it felt a little disjointed, and so i guess it made me pull a face since we are 0 for 1 in the winchesters vs lilith battle up to this point. it's been made clear that "the way dad taught us" isn't exactly working out for them, so you would think that would at least be thrown back in dean's face. dean's insistence on clinging to john's style has a body count, yet he won't even entertain anything else.

the sudden about-face dean makes halfway through the episode doesn't exactly make much sense either, tbh. at least this is addressed, but i still find it odd. i guess it's another example of dean's toxic machismo and refusal to listen to anyone around him coming out to play? the finale is absolutely a shining display of dean making horrible decisions and paying dearly for them. if that was the intention, then they did that well. it's a pretty strong core of his character though, so i don't really take issue with it.

anyway i don't have too much else to say. i guess i was a little disappointed that there weren't actually all that many demon enemies in the episodes? i do love the variety, and they had great monsters this season honestly, but i was expecting demons to play a much stronger antagonistic role than they actually did this season. also it's a crying shame that dean never really learned much in the end from his time with casey in sin city; he's a little thick-headed lmao.

but yeah overall i thought it was a great season. i have much fewer criticisms with s3 than i did with s2, and i'm happy that most of their weird kinks got sorted out this season. i'm SUPER excited to finally get to castiel too :D i really liked his character! and it means i'm just one season away from crowley, too. i am pumped up :)