A Chasing After Wind

Dean often assumes he knows Sam better than he actually does. Sam isn't usually surprised to find out that there are parts of Dean he doesn't know. Dean, on the other hand, simply assumes in Bloody Mary that he knows everything there is to know about Jessica's death, and is flummoxed in Houses of The Holy to discover that Sam prays every day. Sam in When the Levee Breaks articulates one of Dean's greatest fears when he tells his brother that Dean has never known him.

( I do pray every day )

Both Buffy season six and Supernatural season five end with season finale where a character saves the day by reminding another character that they love them. However, while even just reading the transcripts of Buffy S6 can make me cry, the S5 finale leaves me cold, and it part of why S5 is my least favorite SPN season (bearing in mind that I have only seen through S10).

There are certainly some parallels, and I wonder if the SPN writers were thinking of Buffy S6 when they wrote Swan Song. If so, they left out all the parts that made Grave actually good.

( You're going to stop me by telling me you love me? )

TV shows the give me feelings of visceral horror:

Jessica Jones is really, really, the worst in terms of a single character. Torchwood Children of Earth is also very awful, but it’s the whole situation rather than what’s happening to one character that really gets to me. One of the most horrifying moments of Jessica Jones, to me, is when Kilgrave tells her he’ll leave Malcolm alone if she sends him pictures herself. Somehow the fact that he’s asking for selfies, not nudes, just makes it creepier. He has this much control over her, and she has no real choice but to go along with it. And if she doesn’t do it at the right time, he gives implied threats.

Two others that I find very horrifying are Sam Winchester (in Supernatural seasons 3, 4, parts of 5, and the first half of 7, specifically), and Drusilla from Buffy. Drusilla’s situation is more horrifying than Sam’s, but Sam’s is visceral for me as much if not more because he’s a protagonist and we get a stronger sense of his experiences, and also because I love him more.

There’s really no redeeming factor to Dru’s story. People have tried to find it. I've heard argued that the redeeming factor of Drusilla’s story is that she is happy, when Angel gave her eternal life in order to punish her forever. That may be true, but it seems very, very tiny considering that she has become the very “evil thing” that she was desperate to avoid. Another fan, after pointing out accurately that Dru can’t be a survivor because she’d dead, argued that Dru was…I don’t remember her exact wording, but because Dru just existed. Continued. She remains Drusilla.

Except she wasn’t always Drusilla. We don’t know her human name, but if it was Drusilla I’ll eat my hats. Whoever that girl was, perhaps she wasn’t completely and utterly destroyed, she does still exist as that monster, but she was transformed into the thing she least wanted to be. There is no redemption for her.

And that’s horrifying.

And yet...maybe those fans aren't so wrong. Drusilla is dead, to be sure - but also not. She still exists. She’s not miserable. Angel has turned her into what he wanted her to be. He made her, he designed her. She was, indeed, his art.
But she’s not…she’s not forced, not anymore. She makes her own decisions. “I could pick the wisest and bravest knight in all the land - and make him mine forever with a kiss.” And she does.

She’s insane. Angel and Darla made her insane. They took her sanity and they made her a monster - but they don’t control her. She’s not a prisoner. She’s a very different being now, she’s the “thing” she didn’t want to be. What happened to her was not her choice. As others have pointed out, Dru is the only one of the fanged four who does not get some form of redemption…because she does not need redemption. She’s a victim. An eternal victim.

Dru is a monster, but she is a monster who makes her own decisions about what to do. Angel and Darla can’t, for example, keep her from vamping Darla again. She’s the monster, now, and they are the victims. Dru is out of her mind, but her insanity is hers. She has visions and she says things that make no sense and Angel and Darla can never understand. She’s a Cassandra who has no desire to be understood. She loves. She loves “quite well. If not wisely.” She’s not the young woman who begged Angel to help her be good. And yet…"In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed." Drusilla is her own being, her own independent agent.

Slightly rambly thoughts on Sam Winchester's emotional state in SPN S8. Bear in mind that I have only watched the show through the end of S10.

( Must feel great finally finding someone you can trust )

I was thinking about how Dean’s reassurances of Sam from, well, Sam’s infancy play into Sam’s requests to be reassured. The interesting thing is that Sam doesn’t just ask for reassurances from Dean (although of course he does ask Dean for reassurances; see for example the end of Crossroad Blues), but Bobby, too. See The Magnificent Seven (“We can win this war. Right?”) and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (“But you're gonna be all right. Right, Bobby?”).

It's interesting, as Sam and Dean didn’t know Bobby THAT well when they were kids, and he doesn’t seem like the comforting type. Yes Sam turns to him for reassurance as well as Dean. I don’t think we ever see an example of Sam turned to John for reassurance, though.

Sam cuts back on asking Dean for reassurances after the Hell deal, but in a way, the scene in the church in Sacrifice was a big of example of Sam asking to be reassured. When intensely stressed, he falls back on old patterns.

This is kinda harsh on Dean, but I stand by it. Late S6-mid S7 is the period when Dean's behavior skeeves me out the most.

In Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie, Dean bonds with a little boy, as he has been known to do. But the way Dean bonds with this particular boy strikes me as skeevy.

( Could have swore you loved those places )

Some analysis of the complicated relationships John has with his sons, as mentioned previous entry. Always a difficult thing to do with the very limited glimpses we see of their past, but one I find worth trying.
( Even when they fight )

Brief thoughts on Sam Winchester and lying, will probably have more thoughts later:

We are all well aware of Sam's extensive lying in S4. One particularly nasty example is his claim in Lazarus Rising that he hasn’t been using his powers because “you didn't want me to go down that road, so I didn't go down that road. It was practically your dying wish.” It's the reference to Dean's "dying wish" that makes Sam's lie seem particularly cold to me.

But the thing is, what tends to get forgotten by people (including me), is that Sam actually started lying, or at least hiding things from Dean, in S3.

( And if we don't screw with it, you die! )

Comparing Dean's confrontation with a crossroad demon in AHBL2 to Sam's confrontation with a crossroad demon in IKWYDLS:

( Crossroad Deals )

In a previous entry, I talked about Dean's lack of belief in Sam in Point of No Return. I wrote, "Whether one agrees with Dean about Sam or not (and I disagree with his arguments but not his conclusion - remember, Sam does say 'yes' to Lucifer), you can't argue with how Dean feels, with what faith he has or doesn't have."

I wanted to go into a little more detail about what I meant by agreeing with Dean's arguments but not his conclusions. Let's start with Dean's explanation of why he doesn't believe in Sam: "I don’t know whether it’s gonna be demon blood or some other demon chick or what, but…I do know they're gonna find a way to turn you.[...]You’re angry, you’re self-righteous. Lucifer's gonna wear you to the prom, man. It's just a matter of time."

( Yes )