#canonically we're supposed to believe that cas and jack Finally Got Heaven Right. which would have just. made cas SO happy) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mittensmorgul · 6 years

Note

Do you know of any instances in canon history where Dean's intuition has turned out to be wrong in a major way? Because it seems like we're going to start to see some answers to the "he was brainwashed" question since Jack flapped off and Dean still doesn't trust him.

Hrrrrm. This is a really difficult question, because like the Winchester Hunting Mindset, it’s not this black and white.

Like obviously of course he has and hasn’t, but extenuating circumstances. Context matters. Shades of grey, etc. etc.

Even all during s6 he fought against what his intuition was telling him about Cas, because he so wanted to believe in Cas. I mean, that’s a huge part of why he couldn’t forgive himself, or get over what Cas had done even by 7.17. He blamed himself for not pushing harder for answers, or maybe even for taking that whole year off with Lisa and trying to play normal

But aside from emotional overriding of what he’s got that bad feeling about, I can’t think of a single instance of his intuition being flat-out wrong.

Even in smaller ways, he’s typically right about the case stuff and Sam’s the doubter, but you specifically asked for if he’s been wrong in “a major way,” so I’m going to try and focus on The Big Issues. But again, the only instance I can think of right off the top of my head where he was stubbornly and blatantly wrong about a case was in 12.04– when he was absolutely convinced it was the social services lady who was a witch. Again, waves hello at Davy Perez, for absolutely nailing Dean’s immediate personal trauma and underscoring so many of his personal issues involving Mary’s fresh abandonment, his lifetime of likely run-ins with Family Services and well-meaning social workers, his parentification of Sam, his problematic relationship with John and the responsibility to hide the truth about their lives and protect Sam at all costs… which played right into the case they were working and colored his personal reactions. But again, extenuating circumstances…

Because of his personal issues with Mary and abandonment and the fact the social worker was openly admittedly a witch. Dean also got a very different impression of the family than Sam did (literally, he only had half the information to make his judgment on). He saw the father and son, the “happy families” side of the story where everything was presented to be done by their own choice, for positive family-bonding reasons in the wake of a personal tragedy. Meanwhile, Sam was in the house getting the skeevy third-person retelling of a first-person story by the mother, making it clear to us, who saw both sides of the story, that something was Definitely Fishy in that house. Meanwhile, all Dean could see after that encounter was that Sam had a bizarrely antagonistic reaction to a conversation he could only assume was nearly identical to the one he’d had outside.

This stark division, the reminder that they’d both had an entirely different experience in their respective interviews and thus come away with entirely different theories about the case, is highlighted as soon as they leave. Rather than sharing the reasons for their vastly different impressions and trying to figure out WHY they were given two entirely different impressions of this family, they each stubbornly stick to their guns. That was the entire POINT of this episode, on a meta level. And this lack of communication and understanding of the other’s entirely different experience and viewpoint and insight, Sam’s entirely unprepared for the entire family to be “in on the secret” and Dean’s bowled over to discover the social worker was nothing like she’d appeared to be on the surface.

And as soon as he saw the other side of the story, he instantly figured it out

So that’s the one glaring exception to Dean’s instinct, and it essentially works as an “exception that proves the rule,” because of the meta nature of the reasons he was “wrong” about the social worker.

That brings me to Dean’s role in the overarching narrative of the entire series. He’s the emotional POV for the audience. We’re supposed to ride along with him and even when he’s wrong he’s right. I know this bothers some people, and for some this is a major reason that they just don’t like Dean as a character. But most of the time, he’s the barometer for how the audience is supposed to react and feel and interpret the entire narrative.

We know Dean lies professionally, and is therefore an unreliable narrator, but we’re also given to understand that we’re still supposed to be “on his side” because he’s our emotional POV.

Whether he’s 100% right about Jack puppeting Cas or not doesn’t matter to me, so much as Dean’s reading of it being presented as the correct reading. Whether Jack meant to or not or whatever… (and we have ample evidence that most of what happens with his power is not something he does consciously, but that doesn’t mean he’s not subconsciously doing this stuff anyway), Dean’s read was the presented “main” reading and the events seemed to match it.

But I would argue Dean’s less right than 100%, but not more than 50% wrong. (the 50% being powers vs Jack himself doing it, i.e. the bit he’s partly “wrong” about is his assumption of any sort of intent on Jack’s behalf) and there will be a REASON he is wrong if he is which would necessarily justify his reading.

The fact that DEAN believed in the sock-puppeting, and the fact that JACK believes that it was a possibility, is what’s led directly to Jack’s current dilemma

Now that Cas is back, and he and Dean can finally (as he said in 12.23) “work through our crap,” theoretically he’ll be able to talk with Cas about all of that and try to understand Cas’s motives between 12.19 and 12.23. Unfortunately, Cas is also not objectively placed to talk about it, since it happened TO him and his emotional attachment to Jack /now/ is again a separate thing.

I fully believe he would have formed those same bonds with Kelly and unborn Jack in BETTER circumstances. Even if he’d gone back to the bunker with Sam and Dean as he’d already consented to do before the events at the sandbox. Arguably, it would’ve been a much safer and secure place for Jack to have been born, and for Dean and Sam to have come to understand the larger circumstances at play here.

As it is, Jack or his powers just made it happen for sure. Because of Dean’s stated concern that Cas wasn’t under his own control there, it renders anything Cas would have to say about it moot, because we can’t trust his objectivity. Because of Dean’s stated pov opinion on it.

Cas’s innate goodness and kindness vs his issues with protecting people/being a guardian angel/wanting a win all would lead him to care for Jack, and to feel responsible for caring for Jack, even if Jack’s powers hadn’t become a mitigating factor. I mean that’s why Kelly “picked him” to be Jack’s guardian in the first place. She (or Jack’s power) could plainly see Cas’s “goodness” in direct contrast to Dagon’s “badness.” He was even wavering about his orders to kill Kelly and Jack a few times IN 12x19, but he got pushed over the edge hard. This was not a gentle nudge or a moment of genuine character realization.

In the span of one glowy-golden-eyed sock puppeting (and that part is NOT up for debate, Jack’s power literally took Cas’s hand and used him to destroy Dagon), he went from “Jack must die and go to heaven before he’s born” to “Jack must be born with all his power at all costs” with no logic in between. We didn’t see his process on screen, and "he’s powerful enough to make me zap a knight of hell" is not good enough reasoning.

This was arguably the first instance of Jack’s power trying to do something good (killing Dagon) while having drastically unanticipated consequences (Joshua’s death, Dean being injured, the Colt being destroyed, and Cas abandoning his stated mission to take Kelly to Heaven so that Jack could be born with all his power). His power had already resurrected Kelly and thereby saved Jack, and that had caused cosmic alarm bells to ring in Heaven, providing the homing beacon Kelvin used to locate Kelly in the first place.

If anything it should be more concerning that he has that much power before he’s ever born. That firmly demonstrated his self-defensive instinct that we’ve seen trigger his power repeatedly since he’s been born.

After his power ~does the thing~ he doesn’t even seem to understand that he’d done anything. Like waking Cas up in the empty. Or the fact that his power resurrected Kelly when she’d killed herself, and yet he has no concept that he probably could’ve resurrected the guard he’d accidentally killed in 13.06 in the same way. Jack still is in a stage where he has to WANT to do things and I think understanding the guard is dead was too final to realize he COULD bring him back.

He seems to just ~do stuff~ with his power, not realizing it, and then later once he realizes he CAN, he attempts to do it deliberately– like the whole “throw people around” thing he seems to have perfected so he can do it without killing the rest of TFW at the end of the episode. I mean, the previous time he’d pulled that trick led to the circumstances he was terrified would happen ~without him intending harm~ but being unable to stop it from happening anyway. And yet he still did the Force Throw thing.

Then again, his INTENT when he was throwing that power at Dave the Ghoul was to kill/maim/injure… but he clearly has a lower setting on it and wasn’t afraid to use it on Sam, Dean, and Cas before flapping off, immediately after stating his reasoning for leaving being his desire NOT to hurt them…

He’s so highly conflicted about his OWN relationship with his powers that HE HIMSELF thinks of them as a tool and not inherently a part of himself. Right now his powers are literally acting like the man behind the curtain, and everything Dean’s witnessed with his own eyes has confirmed his initial impression that Jack’s powers are Not Trustworthy.

Over the course of the first six episodes of the season, Dean’s gotten to know Jack //the human person// outside of his powers, and seen what he was struggling with, his self-loathing and self-doubt and fear and confusion, and knowing that Jack’s powers may have set up the circumstances that led to Cas dying but also led directly to Cas coming back… well, that proved Jack’s intent was good, but still doesn’t clear up the whole “my power does what it wants and damn the consequences” issue that brought them to this point in the first place.

It’s rather a moot point if it ever really had been true or not before 13.04, but Dean’s BELIEF that it was true influenced Jack’s belief about whether or not it was true, which led directly to Jack “calling out” for Cas in the Empty… sort of proving the mechanism by which his power acts without his conscious control, and extends a TERRIFYING amount of influence into realms were even God has no power to act. And he does it all without it even registering to him. So in that respect, yeah, Dean’s 100% right.

He’s right because that’s the function of his POV within the narrative itself. And again, I know that has the potential to piss people off, and it’s kind of a hard fact to swallow sometimes, but unless the narrative explicitly proves Dean’s intuition wrong, we’re supposed to trust Dean’s assertions. And so far I’ve seen nothing to contradict this one.

#spn 13.06 #spn 12.19 #Anonymous #jack nougat winchester #seriously though why doesn't everyone just trust dean's gut instincts it's like he's got an uncanny magical gift here...#the special agony of brainwashing #feeling a wee bit rightfully terrified of the Incredible Nougat Power #dean is the center of the universe

42 notes · View notes