brightly_lit | 9.03, or, wiping the drool from the keyboard

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9.03, or, wiping the drool from the keyboard

Needless to say, there will be 9.03 spoilers in this post!

I was dreading 9.03. There were SOO many things I wanted it to be, and I was sure it would fall down on all of them, and instead ... it was everything I wanted and more! YAAAAAY!!!!!

SOO many situations ripe for Cas's ... Casness, for humor and tragedy and everything in between.

Plus, the difficulty of being human is one of my favorite Cas themes (as you might have noticed in my fic!), and they went deep into that in this ep--it was like a fanfic come true! (With even a not-so-subtle Destiel moment there at the end, "I always enjoy our ... time together, Dean." Yeah? Tell us more about this 'time together' that never happens onscreen, Cas ....) Great ideas, great acting, lots and lots of Misha. I am glad I had all the spoilers so I wasn't overly dismayed when April turned out to be evil and Cas was booted from the bunker. OH, CAS!!!!!

I also have to mention a little detail I haven't seen anyone else mention. So Cas is in the bathroom at the beginning, clearly unaware of the basics of how to take care of his body, as he squirts toothpaste into his mouth (... and eats it?!), but then he takes his toothbrush--which he CLEARLY DOES NOT KNOW IS USED FOR CLEANING ONE'S TEETH--into the bathroom stall with him to do ... what, exactly? When it comes to Cas, it's surely best not to ask. A most entertaining little detail. Reminds me of a mentally ... unusual guy (among many) at a job I once had helping people with mental disabilities, and his self-cleaning habits, but ... you probably don't want to know.

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IT IS ABSURD HOW MUCH I LOVED THIS EPISODE. On Tuesday I was trying to decide whether I wanted to watch it right then, or wait, and I'm so glad I decided to just get it over with. Because it was SO GOOD and I legitimately do not understand how those two managed to pull this off. I was really impressed and surprised by the deftness of Castiel's narrative here--like, a lot. I know others were more critical/angry (though I've only seen those responses secondhand) but I thought it was sad and funny and socially aware in ways that those two usually. Aren't??? I don't know what happened in the writer's room but WHATEVER HAPPENED, I HOPE IT HAPPENS EVERY DAY.

I was saying on my LJ that S9 so far was like one big love letter from S9 to me, and that it was refreshing because as much as I really did like S8, IT VERY OBVIOUSLY HATED ME, AND WENT THROUGH A LOT OF TROUBLE TO DEMONSTRATE HOW MUCH. XD

But seriously though S9 so far is basically just going down my list of desires and checking them off systematically, and I didn't even have to write the list.

Santa Claus is real (and not a man-eating pagan god). O_o;;

Also, "Clarence." I DIED. And wept. In that order.

I saw your positive reviews and they gave me hope! I saw a lot of those angry responses, too (I read the viewing party post reactions, which were pretty positive until the end, when it was like, "I hate you, show"), but I was also prepared for what pissed them off, and that might have helped, only ... it's like a fic I would write! You knew as soon as Cas was wandering around talking about how much he liked it there that it HAD to be a prelude to his not getting to stay, because, POOR CAS!!!!

I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WRITERS' ROOM, EITHER. Here's my best guess: a lot of times, other writers help out uncredited, or so I've been given to believe, and these guys REALLY ARE good at the character stuff--like, better than anyone else on the staff. (?!) So maybe someone else did the plotting and they wrote the dialogue? Or maybe in the writers' room, they outlined the plot for them so they just had to follow it exactly? Whatever it was, you know ... I can't believe I'm sitting here going, "Wow, those writers TOTALLY wrote the best episode of the season so far!," but ... I am.

Do tell how S8 hated you, my friend, because I feel like it hated me, too, but I'm having a hard time putting it into words.

And YES, yay, Clarence!!

This is going to sound so stupid, but I really liked the Chinese grocery Castiel walked by; it was totally innocuous and not at all plot relevant, or remotely important at all, but somehow it felt to me like a positive apologetic gesture (but not apologism) for the racist truck, the WOC in a dog collar, and the stereotypically South Asian taxi driver. :')

LOL no S8 just hated me because it saw the need to mobilize all of my un-favorite things all at the same time, and primarily manifested itself in its resounding stonewall in the face of Dean H/C. XDDD Which is not something I'm resentful about (anymore?); I've finally developed Really Fantastic headcanon the draws from S7 and fully encapsulates S8, so I'm good. I am more than good! XD

Have you seen Pixar's Cars? Do you remember when, towards the end of the movie, Mater is upset because Lightning was whisked away by the press and he never got to say goodbye? And then Doc Hudson takes them all to the races, Mater shout "BYE!" and then says that okay, he's all good, the melancholy has evaporated? That's a fairly accurate description of me wrt S8.

It's good to know that I share my mental processes with an animated hillbilly tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy.

... /O\

The saddest thing is, the racist truck ep was trying SO HARD to be ANTI-racist by being "hip to POC, because, you know, Dean tapped that!" which is so head!desk, but it just kind of made me sigh, because poor guys, they're trying so hard and failing. But not tonight! Maybe because they finally stopped trying to be so in-your-face POC-positive.

I felt like the subtext of S8 was like, non-stop Dean h/c, but since it never got around to making it explicit, yeah, deeply unsatisfying.

Aw, man, it's been a long time since I saw Cars ... but it has NOT been a long time since some random scene in some show encapsulated my feelings perfectly! So I feel ya. :-)

I am generally a huuuuuuge fan of subtextual Dean H/C but S7 was RAMPING UP TO SOMETHING DAMN IT, DAMN YOU PURGATORY. XP Though I've since reconciled this with myself because as much as I feel huge blowout emotional disasters can be cathartic and wonderful (and um, in less sensitive terms, aesthetically pleasing when it's fictional), I don't hold to the idea that they "need" to happen, or that that's the only way (or even the most common way, realistically speaking) hurt/trauma/etc. plays out. Ironically, I think it was Dean H/C fandom itself that soured the notion for me in the first place, because the--frankly, militantly held--idea that there was one essentialized endpoint, one prognosis, one model for narrativizing damage--which uh, nope, no, nein.

I'm curious about your S8 Dean H/C subtext thoughts, though! I've spun my Dean H/C gloss for the season, but I think it hinges more on absence than actual presence, even at the level of subtext. Mostly I felt like Dean basically just half-assed his way through the whole year (not that he didn't in S7, but the underpinnings in that case were very different to me). So much of S8 for me was like, Dean be chillin', I be ignoring him and partying with Sam and Cas instead, and then everyone be going home happy! Except Dean, who dgaf anyway.

I felt like it HAD to be implicit, right? You don't just go to purgatory and barely survive and lose your bff there and not be in emotional agony all the time afterward. Just 'cos he's gettin' real good at pushin' it down don't mean it ain't always there. (I felt like the "It's a horror show up there" line alluded to that nicely.)

But, you know ... it's television. If they want the viewer to know he's suffering, they kinda have to tell you explicitly and not just have him blustering around all the time acting like he's a-okay. This is literally rule no. 1 of writing scripts (as I learned in film school from my incredibly high script-writing teacher who came onto me on my birthday): you can't say "Dean is sad," you have to put in the stage directions something the viewer can see: "Dean cries," "Dean puts his head in his hands," "DEAN (grimly) I'M SO SAD SAM I NEED A HUG, DAMNIT." Even the occasional moment-alone-putting-his-face-in-his-hands-with-wet-eyes would have gone a long way.

As for its ramping up to something ... yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But then it changes gears and suddenly it's the Sam show again and Dean's post-purgatory issues are ... what, back-burnered? SEEMS PRETTY IMPORTANT SINCE DEAN IS FREAKIN' MELTING DOWN, and here we are back at all my problems with that season again. If the idea is that Dean's mental breakdown is being neglected, they need to show him hurting more than often than they show him being an asshole, methinks. But whatever; I look back on that season and mainly feel confusion.

tl;dr: I take from Dean's recent traumatic experiences and his remarkably shitty behavior that it must result from inner turmoil/suffering, but THEY NEVER DONE COME RIGHT OUT 'N' SAID SO.

Yes, yes, it would have gone a very long way. XP I draw some of my favorite-est indications of H/C based on how Dean sits down on chairs so IT WOULD HAVE GONE SUCH A LONG WAY. XD

But you know, I think I'm slowly wandering away from the school of needing even that. Because if I consider examples from real life, I think that depending on the person, depending on the context, there are any number of ways people can outwardly exhibit (or fail to) even the craziest of traumas and mental collapses. Which maybe is why I'm so wildly comfortable with Dean's poor interpersonal choices and means of handling everyone important to him, ever, while another set of Deanfans are really not. Being an asshole being the symptom of the greatest salience? Yeah, I can buy that.

I guess where I'm at right now with Dean (lol I think about this far too often and with far too much care, but hey, it's fandom. I know I'm in EXCELLENT company for this kind of thing, XD) is, there's a strain of Dean H/Cdom that swears on their Dead H/C membership cards that people cannot keep all of that down, people cannot hide these things, there has to be that meltdown (as I mentioned previously). And while that's often true (particularly given the volume of Things Kept Down when you start talking Winchesters), no, it's not always true. Because the truth of it is, some people can.

And for some people it actually works; it's not always desperate repression that comes back to bite you in the ass even worse. I don't...necessarily think Dean is one of those people; I'm actually fairly sure he's not. XP But in terms of these last couple years, I'm inclined to believe that yes, apparently he can actualize at least the first part of this strain of people, and "keep it down." And if in a given stretch of time it doesn't show, then there's even a chance that he doesn't feel it for that stretch, either; it's on lock down, and it's behaving. It's not the same as it's non-existence, or even "healing" per se, but those things aren't always an option. And it's not as though the idea of a "talking cure" has been universally proven to be some gold standard. If silence and lockdown work for Dean, I can root for him on that. And if it doesn't, well, eventually he'll be pressed to try something else then, won't he. XP So I do find myself wanting to trust him, in some way, with all of that, I guess.

Of course, at the same time, I don't deny that he is also tearing down everything around him, and that's not handling it, it won't help him, and it's certainly not remotely fair to Sam or Castiel or Kevin or anyone else. So it's kind of like, well Dean, you have two choices. Destroy everything from the inside-out, or the outside-in? :(

Sooooo uhhhh that there would be my most recent fledgling overinvolved no-fourth-wall Dean H/C thoughts, in a very big nutshell. XP I think that's a fair outline of how I write late-season Sam with respect to Dean as well, though I don't think my Sam is quiiite where the above is yet, and also has obvious personal investment in not being collateral as far as outside-in scenarios go, inasmuch as he may be afraid of an inside-out one. So that colors things considerably, too. XP

It's true that some people can manage it pretty well for a while (some for a lifetime of denial and destruction! which, yes, seems to work all right for them, except for the whole driving-everyone-away-from-them bit), and I agree that Dean is one of them, at least at this point. (Come to think of it, he's probably always on a certain level desired this, thinking if he could just keep everything under tight control, he'd be a 'real man' and a better hunter, without all those pesky feelings getting in the way.) I give him maybe a year, possibly two, before the dam cracks and the deluge ensues.

So I hear ya ... although I won't go as far as to describe it as "working" for him. Clearly he's very keen to avoid facing certain things and will avoid it as long as possible, but I have no doubt it'll end up biting him in the ass in a way maybe not talking but at least THINKING about it could have prevented. I mean, I think a kind of suffering he never imagined even when he was in hell is headed right for him as a result of all this denial.

It's all very realistic and I think very interesting--an lj friend pointed out on my meta that when Sam finds out Dean stuck an angel in him, he'll have finally lost everything, betrayed so outrageously by his own brother, which I'm thinking will leave him ripe for saying yes to Lucifer and will drive Dean to end!verse levels of sociopathy (that's my latest theory on where all this is headed). I'm excited for that kind of thing, I guess, particularly if it's done really well.

But though I agree that it's REALISTIC, I suppose it brings up the question of the differences between story and reality that perhaps SHOULD be different. It would make for a much more satisfying show, emotionally speaking, if we occasionally saw Dean's torment. Then again, maybe it WOULD actually be more realistic to see his torment, because even deep in the throes of denial, these people still suffer, if only occasionally, alone late at night when there's nothing to distract them from it. Not necessarily "I'M SO SAD SAM I NEED TO PUT MY HEAD IN MY HANDS WITH WET EYES FOR A MINUTE" kinds of suffering, but there are ways to show someone's inner torment in a visible way, and for the story to work for the viewer emotionally--especially for the viewer to be able to have sympathy and love for that character--I think it's better if you show it. But either way, it's interesting to see these very real, seldom explored human interactions play out on this show that, yes, I can't believe is a real show, either.

I haven't seen this yet, but reading the recaps and hearing that Dean kicks Cas out - it sounds like 1) Zeke is really fucking running the Winchester show right now (which is going to end badly) and 2) Dean may lose more than just his relationship with Sam over all this.

1) Aw hell yes. 2) Oh yes. You must watch! So we can gush together!!

It's on Monday night. We're a little behind here in Australia. They tell us it's 'fast tracked'. We get Glee in 24 hours, but we have to wait a week for good fucking shows.

ARGH!! Well, we'll gush then! (Do you ever watch online? I saw it on the CW website--free with commercials, totally legal, easy to use ... am I tempting you yet?) ;-)

There's a YouTube site I watch it on - but I'm at Uni and I really shouldn't be using their internet for that (which I totally do, which is why I should stop). Except I just looked up the final bit - and yeah, I officially hate Zeke. "I'm sorry" He's not fucking sorry! Poor Cas, he's so sweet.

Sam is going to shred his brother when he finds all this out. Of course, Dean is already hating himself for it. I wonder why Zeke doesn't want Cas around? And of course, Dean isn't going to tell Cas that Sam has an angel riding him, because Cas will be pissed and won't keep it a secret.

Here's my theory: Zeke had to save Cas's life because he is indeed the solution to undoing the spell that cast out the angels, but he can't have him around because Cas would be able to tell that Zeke is TOTALLY LUCIFER! ... Or might in any case be able to figure out exactly what kind of no good he's up to, since he is another angel and all.

Sam's gonna lose his shit over this all right ....

I doubt Zeke is Lucifer. How would he have been able to get out of the Cage? He may be a follower though, or he may have some kind of other plans for leading a rebellion. It may be that Zeke is not Zeke, and Cas will know it's not him. I think maybe Zeke saving Cas' life, well, it could be because it's his brother, or it might be because he wanted to show Dean he could be trusted, you know, the way that Ruby showed Sam she could be trusted through helping them.

Sam is very forgiving, but with everything that is happening, I don't know how he's going to get past this one. I mean, what Dean is doing, it's stupid and reckless and just unbelievably underhanded.

Also, I was thinking - how is Dean going to explain kicking Cas out to Sam? Sam is going to want to know why, and Dean doesn't have a good answer for that.

I wondered the same thing! I figure he's just going to hustle Cas out of there while Ezekiel is in charge, then just tell Sam that Cas insisted on leaving and asked them not to look for him, or something. I think that will make Sam VERY suspicious.

Oh Dean, when will you ever learn that spinning a web of lies doesn't work?

And poor Cas. It's worse than kicking a dog - it's kicking a puppy. Poor widdle Cas. :-(

Telling detail from pocochina's review: how does Ezekiel not know who Naomi is?

My theory is that Zeke wants Cas out of there fast because Cas is the one who will see something is very, very wrong. Zeke is getting cockier, and might even refuse to leave Sam's vessel, forcing him to remain unconscious. I'm wondering where the next episode will go (after the Oz ep). My dream: CROWLEY blows it all up! He'd know immediately what is happening--he didn't become the King of Hell by being stupid. Besides, he'd love a chance to gut Dean emotionally and devastate Sam. Anyway, I'm hoping that's how it goes. I can't Abbadon giving a shit one way or another.

GOOD POINT about Naomi, hmm ...

I like your Crowley idea!

Besides, he'd love a chance to gut Dean emotionally and devastate Sam.

Ah, indeed he would.

If anyone is gonna crow to Sam about Zeke, it's Crowley. He's gonna love it.

Zeke creeps me out. Not just who he might be, but how he takes over Sam in an instant. That bit where he just starts talking in mid-sentence, taking over from Sam when Dean's asking him to take it easy - holy fuck!

and might even refuse to leave Sam's vessel, forcing him to remain unconscious.

I can see it happening. I wonder if there is some kind of angel exorcism to force an angel out from the outside?

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9.03, or, wiping the drool from the keyboard

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tl;dr tl;dr tl;dr !!!!

Re: tl;dr tl;dr tl;dr !!!!

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