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wakanda-flocka-flame-blog · 4 years

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The 15x08 episode Preview is the Reason I’m Drunk.

Firstly, I must mention that the episode that airs tonight was written by Bucklemming and directed by Speight, so... get ready for pain and cheap jokes. :)

Alright here’s where we’re starting out. The kitchen.

This scene being shot in the kitchen is so important. This kitchen is regarded as the emotional hub of the Winchester family. It’s been a common place of gathering for the boys and their closest of kin. It served as Castiel’s happy place when he was being used by Lucifer in season 11 episode 18 “Hell’s Angel”. This kitchen was where they mourned the passing of their son, celebrated his return, and fought about how to handle his downfall -- which led to the “break up” between Dean and Castiel.

Even though the kitchen is just one of many rooms in the bunker, the conversations that happen in this room are usually about the boys’ relationship with each other, the people they love, and the struggles they have with their emotional bonds. From Sam telling Dean he would have let him die if Dean had been the one to undergo the Trials in season 9 episode 13 “The Purge” to Jack asking Castiel why he can’t tell Dean and Sam about Cas’s Empty deal in season 14 episode 8 “Byzantium”. Unlike the strategy-bound plot points they tackle in their war room, the sickeningly violent threats in their dungeon, and the deafeningly long silences in their respective bedrooms, the kitchen is for family.

The kitchen is the room in the bunker in which Castiel feels the most comfortable. In there, he is pictured seated lethargically or leaning on a table or wall whereas in any other room in the SPN!verse, he stands or sits stiffly at attention for the most part. I

It is also the place where Dean feeds his family. Dean is known to see food as a type of love language; he cooks and eats emotionally. He has been known to consistently prepare meals for and feed Cas who has slowly stopped reminding Dean that angels don’t eat. Like at the end of “Byzantium” when Dean, Sam, Jack, and Cas all shared a burger and a beer after Jack’s rebirth.

Now, that that’s out of the way, let’s jump into the meat and potatoes of this meta study on the 15x08 midseason finale preview scene.

We open with Castiel sitting on his usual side of the kitchen table brooding, pensive, and alone. Immediately after, Dean appears by the door, peeking in before walking tentatively into the kitchen.

Something intense just happened between Castiel and Michael!Adam.

Cas glances up and they lock eyes for a second. The only time they give each other eye contact for the duration of the scene. Dean immediately heads to the fridge for a beer and opens it. He grabs this beer for show. He doesn’t seem to take a sip from it.

Note: This scene has running for 14 seconds in complete silence. Not even music. Just footsteps and breathing and Dean opening the fridge and popping a beer, so clearly that’s what the show is trying to get us to focus on. ITS QUIET. It’s tense. It’s strange. It sticks out to you as uncomfortable. This is on purpose.

Dean leans in the frame as though he’s standing at the table where he usually sits. The angle is staged in a way where they are both in the shot, but cannot be in focus at the same time.

For most of s15 a table has been between them whenever they were in a scene alone. There is intentional space here. They’re usually standing so close, a Bible couldn’t get through them. Dean has openly told Castiel to back up. This is weird for them, and it speaks volumes. They’re not as close as they used to be.

Dean says the first line, “Maybe you went too far.”

We can safely assume Dean is talking about what just happened with Cas and Michael!Adam, but there’s another strong layer to consider here.

Cas broke it off five episodes ago in season 15 episode 3 “The Rupture”. After that episode, Cas hopped in his car, stopped answering calls, and basically disappeared. He made himself unreachable.

Hmm. Speaking of going too far...

If anyone has “gone too far” in Dean’s mind, it’s Cas. Remember, y’all, Dean is the type of man to blow up Cas’s phone if he can’t find him. And, if he’s missing Castiel so much so often that he’s doing that, anywhere that isn’t right beside him is too damn far away. I don’t know what went on in the scene with Michael!Adam yet because this is just the preview scene we were given.

This episode airs tonight.

Cas does not look at him and eventually grumbles out, “………maybe.”

Cas noticed how loaded Dean’s opening line was. It had a double meaning for them. The only reason they are in the bunker together is because of Michael!Adam, Sam’s wound, and… well, because the plot demands it. They’re refusing to talk about why they’re so upset with each other, and that communication issue is manifesting through one long, continuous, never-ending fight. In past seasons, things get icy when Dean and Cas fight. They’re known to ignore each other, stare coldly in silence, bicker about how hurt they are, talk to each other through their family (Sam and Jack), and throw in a diss whenever they can slide it smoothly into the conversation. All that stuff your Grandma and Grandpa do at the Thanksgiving table after their 60 year anniversary. So, Cas clearly knows what Dean was getting at when he suggests Cas went too far. Because they’re fighting. And they’ve fought off and on for eleven years. Dean stabbed him the second he met him, this behavior is nothing new.

So, when Dean accuses Castiel, the angel answers, “Maybe.” instead of “you’re right”, which means there’s a fundamental disagreement here. They disagree when it comes to the episode’s textual issue of dealing with Michael!Adam and the subtextual issue of these two refusing to confess something to each other.

All in all, Castiel doesn’t think that he went too far in either situation, especially when it comes to Dean. Dean treated Castiel like a verbal punching bag, so he left and he did some stuff that Dean didn’t like, yeah, but he didn’t go too far. Not from Cas’s perspective. And, so Castiel’s answer to both questions is a passive aggressive “maybe”. Oof.

Dean speaks again, refusing to meet Cas’s eye, “I mean he’s been on lock down for quite a while, you know? Maybe you just, uh…………….. went too fast.”

Being locked in Chuck’s narrative has been like a trap for Dean. This narrative is something he can’t seem to get out of, much like a prison. Not knowing what’s scripted and what isn’t is getting to him. Freedom and free will is the paramount of Dean’s moral compass. But, in this situation, he doesn’t know how to be free, so he’s going through an existential crisis. And when he lashed out, it came from that locked up mentality being forced to do whatever someone else wants for the rest of his life, confined into a box, fighting the same fight over and over again. Dean can’t even trust his own friends, because they’re in this trap too and may be used to hurt him, which they have been before.

(i.e. Castiel being used by Heaven to hurt/betray him in s4, Castiel being used by Crowley to hurt/betray him in s6, Castiel being used by the Leviathan to hurt/betray him in s7, Castiel being used by Naomi to hurt/betray him in s8, Castiel being used by Metatron to hurt/betray him in s9, Castiel being used by Rowena to hurt/betray him in s10, Castiel being used by Lucifer to hurt/betray him in s11, Castiel being used by fetus!Jack to hurt/betray him in s12...... they need the best counseling money can buy.)

So, when Dean says that he’s been locked up for a while and Castiel went too fast, he means he needed Castiel to stay -- to put up with his attitude for just a little while longer, but Cas...

He went.

Too fast.

After hitting Cas with cruel words in the face of what seemed to be endless, brutal rounds of family tragedy after family tragedy, Cas peaced out. He’s done being treated this way. He wanted to leave, so he left. And when he left….

He left before Dean could figure out the right words to say to make him stay. He left before Dean could take it all back. He left before Dean could fix it.

He went.

Too fast.

That being said, what makes Castiel "Cas” is that he confidently writes his own stories. Dean was who he decided to follow while he lived this chapter of his own angelic life, but if Cas wants to stop following Dean, he can and he will. With barely a moment’s notice. Just like he did with Heaven. Castiel is his own singular being. He is self-sufficient, independent, and strong as a ox. Castiel is a creature of the sky, he can fly far away and it will feel natural to him. But because he is his own man, he will do so when he chooses. Chuck’s involvement in their lives bothers Cas, but not in a way that prohibits him from living his life and being himself.

That is not the case for Dean.

There is another long pause. Cas is waiting for Dean to keep talking. Castiel’s silence is loud, but not striking. Dean looks down at himself like he said too much. In a way he did. He starts again, “What’s he doing now?”

“No idea. He was very distraught.” Cas answers with curt and measured statements, hands folded on the table, hair... flawless.

Cas knows what it means to be imprisoned and trapped. He knows what it means to feel pain. But what he doesn’t understand is why Dean internalizes his pain, lets it boil into toxic emotions of self-hatred, and uses it as an excuse to hurt others -- even as an excuse to hurt Cas. Why Dean would do that… Cas has “no idea.”

He knows how he wants to be treated by Dean and he now refuses to accept any less. Thing is... Cas hasn’t told Dean how he wants to be treated. He just takes it and frowns. That doesn’t in any way mean he deserves to put up with Dean’s sourpuss attitude, but he is also expecting Dean to read his mind. They’re both at fault for the rift between them.

Dean presses the task at hand, wanting to cut through their fighting and solve the problem, “Yeah, but what exactly did he say?”

Cas, not getting the memo (which is very on brand for him), replies with words Dean has said to him unapologetically, “Leave. Get out. I want you dead.”

Cas looks like he’s about to cry.

There’s a long pause where Dean takes in his answer, knowing Cas is shoving his words back in his face. Dean nods and looks even further away from Castiel.

Somehow, this can also translate to the dramatic scene that will soon happen between Michael!Adam and Castiel.

It is important to note that Michael!Adam was the archangel who ran Heaven alongside Chuck for most of existence. He was every angel’s boss, including Castiel’s. There is no doubt that everything in Castiel’s life happened because Michael gave an order, and “Cas of the past” did it without question. Fast forward to 2008, Michael gives the order to rescue his true vessel and Cas fucking falls in love with it. Then, Cas rejects Heaven, teams up with his true vessel to fight him, and tricks him into The Cage for a very. long. time. Mind you, this happened after millions of years of basically being the most powerful being in creation with no enemies that could possibly be a threat.

I bet Michael hates Cas, and if those two were in a room together, he’d see Cas as a traitor against his own kind -- against him. Without Castiel, he wouldn’t have been locked away. Whatever words Michael!Adam had for Cas couldn’t have been kind. And when Cas said this, he was telling Dean that nothing Michael!Adam said to him cut worse than what Dean had said to him over the last few weeks.

Then, Castiel adds, “We didn’t bond.”

When Cas said the word “bond”, Dean Broke Down. It’s all over his face, his eyes go glassy, he looks up with an emotional blush. He’s clutching that beer like a lifeline. The words hanging here are:

We [Michael!Adam and I] didn’t bond. But, Dean, you and I did.

The thing about Michael and Adam is that they’re both Dean mirrors. They’re both final results of the two paths that Chuck’s script offered Dean, and they’re both not AT ALL who he is.

In every known universe, Michael is shown as this war hungry, super strong, ultimately immortal sociopath with unfettered power and no regard for humankind or monsters. If the supernatural world and Chuck had gotten their way, Dean would have literally become Michael. A villian. Dean does not consider himself a villian.

Adam on the other hand is a Dean mirror in a universe where John has little to no influence on his life. Adam is “pure!Dean without John and Sam”, raised by Mary as Mary wanted to be (not a hunter, living an apple pie life). Untouched by the supernatural, Adam’s happiest memories are of his prom and playing at the park with his mom. He liked sports, he dated girls, he planned for college and a career in his future. His life is what Dean missed out on when he was raised by John. Yet, what happened to Adam at the end of his life would have happened to Dean if he wasn’t trained and ready to fight the supernatural (which happened when he was raised by John). If the mortal world and Chuck had gotten another variation of his way, he would have ended up killed and possessed without the proper tools to defend himself from a tragic fate. A victim. Dean does not consider himself a victim.

Neither Michael nor Adam are versions of Dean that Cas could have bonded with, and these are the versions of Dean that Chuck kept pressing into his narrative throughout his life.

So when Cas said “We [Michael!Adam and I] didn’t bond” he was telling Dean that he always came back to him because he likes Dean for who he is, not for the narrative Chuck forces on his life. He doesn’t follow Dean because he’s the Righteous Man or because he’s Mary Winchester’s son. He follows Dean because they bonded. They have a connection, they’ve fought for each other, they know each other, they have history, they’ve coparented, and it is unlikely anything can break that bond between them.

He doesn’t understand Dean’s self hatred and cruel words which is why he left. Cas has come to a point where he knows Dean is a lil butthead sometimes, but because Dean and Cas are who they are, that connection between them is still there. Their bond hasn’t been severed, and it likely never will be. And a bond like that means that they love each other and will make it through this. But, Dean better not get it TWISTED. Their bond may not be broken, but it’s been beat down and slapped around. He needs to say sorry. Give a hug. Talk it out. Be a grown up.

Dean felt that pain Castiel felt when he heard his words repeated back to him.

He knows he hasn’t apologized. And everyone (Cas, Sam, Eileen, even the viewers) are waiting for an apology and Dean’s not doing it.

Why is Dean not apologizing?

Why won’t Dean say sorry for the things he said to Cas? Why can’t he find the words? Why is this so hard for him? What is he afraid he’ll accidentally say?

Dean doesn’t respond, so Cas sighs and asks where Sam is.

Relieved to have a break from being confronted with his previous actions, Dean struggles out his next line, but his voice wavers like he’s trying to sound casual even though he’s definitely about to cry. Sam has always been an easy topic for Dean to talk about, and while Cas isn’t done fighting, he still wants to be able talk to Dean while they’re together.

Dean says, “Eileen hit a snag on a case. So… he won’t be gone long.”

LET’S TALK ABOUT KITCHENS TWICE MORE AND WE’RE DONE I PROMISE LOL

Kitchen Point #1: Eileen and Sam are quickly becoming a package deal. Just last episode, they were cooking and flirting and smiling after a long night of having fun together. And, here, we see Dean and Castiel having the complete opposite of a good time in the exact same space. There is a notable mirror between the scenes of “Eileen and Sam in the kitchen” while Dean goes off to let them build up their bond, and “Dean and Cas in the kitchen” while Sam let's them repair their bond.

Kitchen Point #2: The kitchen shakes in a way reminiscent of when their son Jack escaped from the Malak box in season 14 episode 19 “Jack in The Box”. Then the first time kitchen shook, it was the final catalyst to break their family. Mary had just recently been killed, Jack was soulless, Dean and Sam went behind Castiel’s back to lock Jack in the Malak box, and Jack was soon to run away and get murdered. The end result of the previous shaken kitchen was Jack’s murder, Chuck’s reveal, and Dean and Castiel’s split.

Now the kitchen shakes again.

Cas looks at Dean for a second time as the scene closes and gets up pointing out the culprit as he says Michael’s name.

We don’t know if Dean looks back.

We get a harrowing shot of Michael!Adam.

The screen fades to black.

I can’t believe there was so much to read from that one small lil tiny preview scene. Safe to say I’m strapped in for the episode. Bring it on.

Just gotta say, I’ve loved all y’all work for a while :) I wanna be a meta-writer too and finally got to do one :) I will be doing more throughout the final season :) your meta work gives me life :) so glad you are writing too :)

@amwritingmeta @drsilverfish @naruhearts @mittensmorgul @bluestar86 @tinkdw @legendary-destiel @elizabethrobertajones @dotthings @dimples-of-discontent

#supernatural meta #destiel meta #destiel #deancas #dean winchester #castiel #season 15 #spn 15x08 #our father who aren't in heaven #spn promo #supernatural promo #meta #season 15 speculation #my meta #spn meta #season 15 meta #kitchens

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jalebi-weds-bluetooth · 4 years

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IPKKND & Angst - Top 9 Scenes

Angst: A feelings of anxiety and frustration that isn’t specific.

In the serial verse, this is exactly why “kyun dard hai itna, tere ishq main?” (why does it hurt to be in love with you?)

Words fall short to praise the writers, actors, production team for the moment they were able to express anguish and sentiments through the facade of denial and ignorance.

“Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.” ― Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

1. The first promo. Nafrat paas aane na de, mohabbat door jaane na de. This is angst, personified. 2. She tells she’s leaving for Lucknow, forever. He hears she’s leaving him, forever. (S1, E45) 3. He tells her it’s his engagement, and whether it happens or not, how does it matter to her? She tells that it doesn’t matter, with tears stinging her eyes. (S4, E10) 4. When he compels her to marry him. And she agrees. (S6, E4 - S6, E8) 5. When he passionately dances with his wife. The woman he supposedly hates. (S6, E33) 6. "Khushi, please stop crying. Khushi I... I love you.” (S7, E27) 7. “That I love you damnit!” (S8 , E30)

8. “No, Arnav ji will come. I have faith in him. Today is our wedding.” (S9, E30 - S10, E2) 9. “Arnav and Khushi will always stay together.” (S10, E30)

Read more for in-depth thoughts.

“Nafrat paas aane na de, mohabbat door jaane na de.”

“Hate prevents us from growing closer, love forbids us from growing apart.”

This promo had me hook, line and sinker. It was refreshing to watch a rich romance drama, sans any fanciness, that delved deep into symbolism and almost added a sense of forbidden in their love story. In the first image the power play - the financial and status difference is highlighted (brilliant framing) because Khushi literally looks up to Arnav, him unaware of her. And you’re sure that this might be an innocent love, a hidden attraction that is not returned.

Yet, once Arnav leaves the elevator (and is aware that no one is looking at him), he turns to catch a glimpse of her. So he was aware, very much so, of her gaze. And boy oh boy, the feelings aren’t just returned - they’re intensified! And it’s this continuous push and pull that sets the course of IPKKND. She is wary of his approach, but does not believe his arrogance is all to him. He rebuffs her, but is always pained by her despair.

She wishes to love him, despite his apparent flaws. He wishes to hate her, despite her apparent perfection.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate that the shadows of rain fall on her, putting the torn photograph together. She treasures it and holds it against her heart, her eyes wide, afraid and lost.

While he is in the middle of nowhere, drenched in rain, holding a photograph in his hands. Unable to look more, he crumples the photograph, his eyes tightly shut as if he’s crushing something that’s causing him immense pain.

*chef’s kiss to this promo*

What does a person want apart from two rich characters in a rich storyline with rich layering? You are not just invested in the day the confess their love to each other, rather the journey that takes them there.

*dreamy sigh*

"Nafrat hai na aapko humse? Humari aukaad se? Humari shakal nahi dekhna chahte hai na aap? Toh khushi ho jaiye, hum aapki nazron se hamesha ke liye door jaa rahe hai. Lucknow jaa rahe hai hum, hamesha ke liye.” (S1, E45)

“So you hate me? My status? You don’t want to see my face, right? Then rejoice! I’m going to be out of your sight, forever. I’m leaving for Lucknow, forever.”

This sounds like a woman wobbling on the edge of feelings for a man. And it awfully sounds like a breakup (which is funny because the story hasn’t even started, or technically it did when their eyes met?)

One of the most interesting thing about this exchange is the way Khushi words her departure. She never says “I hate you,” or “I am leaving with my family to go back home,” or “my stay in Delhi has come to an end.” It’s almost like as if she lived in Delhi all along as was leaving to a new city because of him.

Her departure is attached to his hatred. To her, her status, her face - three things that has hurt Khushi the most. She literally says that she’s going away from his sight, forever.

It’s no wonder Arnav hears something else, that she’s not going home, she’s leaving him. In most waysIPKKND has been heavily biased to Arnav’s point of view - so when she declares the bg score quickly shifts to a soft, instrumental Rabba Ve.

The impact? His world stops for a second and he literally just says one thing, trying to get a hold of her, “Khushi, you can’t leave like this. Khushi!”

This conversation haunts Arnav till no end. He spends every moment henceforth playing everything wrong that he did with her.

This episode is my favorite because their inner struggles are so visible.

When Lavanya asks Arnav if he loves her the way she is, Arnav looks at Khushi’s desk and says “Yes, I like you the way you are.”

This is the first time Arnav and Khushi develop their sixth sense towards the other - something that manifests deeply over the months to come. Khushi tells herself not to look at Arnav but she does, and is unable to look away. Her feet gives away at his voice, her logic abandons her (talk about pushing a door outward when it opens inward).

When Shyam, over the phone, tells her how much he thinks about her she’s immediately alarmed until he covers his words. With Arnav she’s not afraid of the physical intensity but of his anger, definitely his anger.

It’s the first time Arnav sees how much he affects her, negatively as well.

And their romantic, delicate moments is a scene stealer. Her self respect does not allow him to take his extended hand. His awareness of her pulls him to return her dupatta to him, a gesture that means so much. When they’re both quiet, something else happens altogether.

And then both are disturbed by the thoughts of each other. She’s stunned by his softness. She had noticed when he stopped his rant. And the first woman Arnav thinks of when Anjali tells her about love is Khushi. It’s his anger and personality that prevents Khushi from thinking more about Arnav.

And it’s also his personality and beliefs (that are now on very shaky grounds) that stop Arnav from accepting the corner of his heart that has, unexpectedly, softened for Khushi. He only allows himself to completely think of her when he’s alone.

*double dreamy sigh - eating butter popcorn for the sigh*

“Khushi meri sagai ho ya na ho, kal ho ya ek saal baad ho, tumhe usse kya farak padta hai?” (S4, E10)

“Khushi, whether I get engaged or not, whether it’s tomorrow or the next year, how does it matter to you?”

The first thing that Khushi replies if, “Why should it matter to me if it’s your engagement?”

It’s not a no. It’s a question she asks him in turn. What does he expect? Why is he asking her this? Why… when it’s too late? And she quickly covers it up with “No, it makes no difference.”

It’s a lie. The minute she looks at him she knows he knows it’s a lie. Big props to the background scorers. We know the question hits Khushi hard because it’s the question she has been avoiding all along. We know that even though Arnav knows it’s a terribly hidden lie, he cannot help being hurt - a big credit to the soft, painful background score apart from the fantastic actors.

And when Khushi justifies her actions with scattered sentences and tears stinging her eyes, Arnav knows the truth. She knows the truth. And they both wait for the other to acknowledge it. And they both know neither can do so.

The most beautiful, painful and almost tragic part of this scene is that they’re both completely aware and struggling with the weight of their denial. His desperation, perhaps, is a mirror image to Khushi’s desperation when she wanted to know why he nearly kissed her on Diwali. But his desperation is also triggered by the fact that she is engaged to another man.

One might also wonder that once she can validate her emotions, perhaps break her loveless engagement (which he correctly assumes is forced), then he might get the strength to break his? One might also wonder that Khushi, at this point, has lost all hope for whatever it was between them - yet at his prodding she can only hope if he can ever speak up his mind. And his inability to do so pushes him farther away from her.

One of the loveliest things about Arnav and Khushi is that they can be interpreted a thousand ways. In one way Arnav’s fury post that scene does not really come from him believing that he does not matter, but rather on her denial. And he’s clearly not thinking clearly. Not ever since he learned her engagement. And Khushi, on the other hand, seems to have accepted her gloomy future, and seems to be sinking onto the thorn she has held onto.

If you see one of the promo posters, the creatives modified it to Khushi holding a thorned rose that injures her hand (so it’s bleeding) but her gaze is transfixed to the man behind her who’s staring at her too.

I think that is Arnav and Khushi’s journey. Poetic tragedy.

A story you’re almost afraid will not have a happy ending. A story where everything wrong happens. So it’s only a bigger pay off that they do end up together, in their happily ever after.

And honestly, Khushi’s refusal to accept her feelings post their marital status kind of prevents Khushi from seeming immoral or as the ‘third’ woman in Lavanya’s life. Also - I love Anjali at this time who is really the only person constantly worried about Khushi’s lack of happiness for her impending wedding. Not even Lavanya senses Khushi’s despair.

*I always, always tear up at this scene.*

“Haan ya na? Haan, ya na!” (S6, E4 - S6, E8)

“Yes or no? Yes, or no!”

The elopement episodes legit kill me. It’s so painful, and it’s painful because it was avoidable! And it’s all built of misunderstandings! There’s so much regret and what ifs that stem from here that this phase alone has inspired so many fan fictions across the world.

This moment reminds me of Shakespeare’s Othello on how Desdemona was painted as a lose woman by a jealous Iago. And convinced the Othello who had loved his wife endlessly that she was having an extra marital affair with Othello’s best friend and right hand man, Casio.

In IPKKND, Casio and Iago is built into one Shyam Manohar Jha - a man Arnav trusts immensely. A man so manipulative that it’s almost impossible to believe his vile side until we see it ourselves. It often makes me wonder what if we, the audience, never saw the conniving side of Shyam Manohar Jha? It’s frightening to realize that like Anjali, a lot of us might have had difficulty to understand what could be the truth.

There are so many reasons why this episode hurt. Khushi expected a proposal. Arnav wanted to propose. And it wouldn’t just be a confession of love, it would be marriage - it was hinted all along with the mehendi, haldi, new bangles for a bride to be and his duty as a damaad to look after his in laws’ relatives. He had behaved so innately as if he were already married to Khushi that it hurt to see their dreams of marriage come true, as a nightmare.

The push and pull between pain, empathy, betrayal is heartbreaking. Also, I believe it is also one of the few television shows to completely highlight the reason for a sudden, forced marriage. Yes, Arnav technically ‘gains’ agency of Khushi by claiming her as his wife - but that is never physical.

To be physically close to her is what they both wanted and dreamed off so it’s the first thing he shatters between him and Khushi. They wouldn’t be in the same side of the room, forget the bed.

Barun and Sanaya’s performance is impeccable in these sequences. Arnav’s constant shift from a cold, calculative monster a man whose heart breaks on his beloved’s tears is so visible. Khushi’s disbelief, to heartbreak to helplessness and ultimate ruin pulls the most of us to run and hug her for the longest time.

When Arnav asks Khushi to marry him, the pose is romantic - with her pressed against him, dressed in the similar shades - much like how they had danced a few nights ago. But it’s all a nightmare, the green tint adds the feeling of nausea, despair and gloom.

Of course, most of the anger shifts to an Arnav who torments Khushi endlessly for the months to come but most of my hatred at this point is fixed on Snake Jha instead. That man, singlehandedly, destroyed the most beautiful relationship out of his own villainy.

And if there’s anything I’m unsatisfied with in this serial, it’s how Arnav and Khushi never end up punishing Shyam directly for ruining their individual lives (and for perennially harassing Khushi over a period of seven months).

When he passionately dances with his wife. The woman he supposedly hates. (S6, E33)

“Bheegi bheegi si hai raatein bheegi bheegi

Yaadein bheegi bheegi baatein bheegi bheegi

Aankhon mein kaisi nami hai,

Aa ha ha ha ... aa ha

Sapnon ka saya palkon pe aaya

Pal mein hasaya pal mein rulaya

Phir bhi yeh kaisi kami hai

Aa ha ha ha ... aa ha Na jaane koi kaisi hai yeh zindagani, zindagani

Hamari adhuri kahani.”

The nights are drenched, so are the memories, the conversations. My eyes are strangely damp. A shadow of my dreams flashed before my eyes. It made me laugh, it made me cry. And yet, there’s something missing. No one knows what this life is. The one of our incomplete story.

This is the song that ran in my head when I watched them dance, painfully similar to way they danced when they were deep in love, in their Teri Meri. The steps are hauntingly same, but the emotions are vastly different.

For me in this moment Khushi is taken aback at her own feelings. She was so sure she had killed every memory, every feeling of that fateful night when he had danced straight from her fantasies into her heart. And boy she was wrong - those feelings rose back with a vengeance.

And for Arnav, it’s funny how the dance almost seems like a move to claim Khushi for himself, to exercise his possessive right over her in front of that vile Snake.

Once they start dancing though, everything fades away apart from the burning intensity they have for each other. This is something private. It’s the thin line between love and lust that they have always walked on.

His eyes are sharp yet intoxicated, drinking her face like nothing else. Her body is soft, and fluid, melting at his slightest touch. The wonder never leaves her eyes, neither does the sudden hunger.

Although the idea of the Delhi main Bali and Snake giving her roses *ewww, why didn’t she make an excuse!!!* and a part of me really wished that Khushi wore a pink saree instead of a salwar (she carries those so well - in that sexy, naive way!), and I wish that Snake disappeared from the planet - this dance was worth it.

The contrast between Akash Payal’s honeymoon night versus theirs does provide some much needed comic relief, it’s in the little moments such as a lit matchstick or them sharing a couch that kinda shows that the after effects of the dance lingered long in their heads.

Would I have been happier to have seen them directly carry out the palpable tension and angst that simmered during the dance to the privacy of their room? YES

Would that be possible on Indian television? Probably no

Do I respect the writers’ decision? Yes

Is this a perfect combination of angst and sexual tension? Heck yeah, why do you think I’m writing this!

Why do I love this scene - it has everything synonymous to Arnav and Khushi; the angst, passion, conflicted emotions and a hope that the fire hadn’t dimmed out.

*totally fanned myself and mentally thought that they were gonna blow up in flames or sexual frustration or the angsty thing of this whole situation at this point*

"Khushi, please stop crying. Khushi I... I love you.” (S7, E27 - S7, E28)

This was not a confession of love. This was a man’s last words. Arnav knew he would never get another chance to speak to her. As they say, death often brings about the biggest realizations and the biggest regrets. Yet again, this was a situation that could have been avoided.

If he listened to her.

If he had trusted her.

If he had allowed her to take him back home.

The ‘what ifs’ were too much. There was nothing more for Arnav to lose. And he couldn’t die without telling the only woman he ever loved that he never hated her. That he only, ever, loved her. Nothing else mattered.

On the other side Khushi had lost every hope of ever getting her love returned. His acerbic words and accusations had clawed her insides so much that logic, reasoning and even his hatred had fated away. He had to have known that she had always loved him. But she was so afraid to say anything that she could only cry when she heard his voice. And even before she could say what she wanted, he said the impossible.

He loved her.

Despite everything.

The angst is so heavy over here because Khushi’s joy and Arnav’s tragedy are so well put next to each other. On one end Khushi is floating with the thought of being loved and on the other Arnav is drowning for the very same reason. It’s one thing to verbalize your love, and another to never get the opportunity to live it.

True, Arnav wouldn’t have confessed his love if his life wasn’t in danger. He definitely would have come to that conclusion long after. It’s just that his brush with probably death broke away every hesitation, fear, doubt, betrayal he faced.

And nothing apart from an ‘I love you’ would’ve rendered Khushi speechless. It’s also disheartening that she realizes he would have never told her the same if things were normal.

The frustration, the pain, it’s beautiful!

Also one thing I found very interesting is that he cuts the call before Khushi can reply to him. Maybe her shock, her tears, her happiness (now that they are immensely in sync with each other), reveal that his feelings were returned (yup I’m an optimist!)? Maybe that’s why they didn’t need to say anything to each other apart from knowing that they’ve both been blind (once they meet each other into that legendary hug)?

It’s interesting that out of all the things that haunt him when he’s kidnapped - it’s how he reacted after knowing her version of truth. And Khushi, dear Khushi, she sees everything at his one confession - and perhaps it tells us all what she ever wanted to hear all along. Just like Arnav could forgive her everything at the possibility of never seeing her again, Khushi could forgive his anything at the slightest chance of him loving her back.

Also, one quick side note - I love how this parallels to the first promo. There Khushi held the torn photo together and held it against her heart. Here, Khushi’s belief in their broken relationship gets a 180 turn and she grasps her phone against her heart. There Arnav crumples the worn photo and closes his eyes in pain. Here, he cuts the call and grips the phone and closes his eyes in pain, again.

Full circle much?

*nope, totally didn’t cry when this happened, just some water leaks on the glands outside my eye ok*

“That I love you damnit!” (S8 , E30)

Isn’t it funny that the two most angsty moments in the show are the two times that Arnav ‘confesses’ his love to Khushi. And in fact it’s not that he’s confessing his love, it’s something they both know, it’s always more than that.

Totally negating the fact that there was an awkward-almost-forced-no-communication-what-the-heck-hate-it that-they-look-hot-weird-consummation sequence, let’s jump to Khushi overtly persisting Arnav about the necessities of marriage and rituals and Arnav finally breaking it to her that he loves her.

Given what happened (when he blamed her for everything wrong that happened in Anjali’s marriage) it’s perhaps easy to understand why Khushi would, again, need verbal assurance of who was she to him and what was her place in life.

In her mind it makes absolute sense that even if he proclaimed several times that he is her husband and she is his wife after that, she needed his words as his actions and words have contradicted a lot over time.

In his mind everything also makes sense. He married her (terribly, might I add), things were going better, they have shared a bed and are used to each other’s physical spaces and were always pretty close to kissing, if not sex (to be canon compliant, we can always imagine a much more eager Khushi and less creepy Arnav actually ready to bang in the hut).

So over here, in this scene, it’s the height of their frustrations and their differences in ideologies. Arnav has been a man of actions, Khushi has been a woman of words.

We can see how different they are, fundamentally and in a way it’s hilarious because both want the same thing. It’s kinda crucial to see that despite wanting the same thing - they really can’t understand each other at this point. He wants her to act. She wants him to say. And neither are getting the other in this process.

And even though he yells at her and stares at her with this intense release of their bubbling emotions - it was hot. Strangely it was because we’ve all heard of the calm before the storm, this was more like a calm after the storm.

And what’s sweet is that Khushi is always stunned. She stares at him and slowly lets it sink in about what he said. (I wish Arnav stuck around than swagger walked away because she went back into the room and positively glowed). So although this might not be my most favorite angst moment, the time when they just stare and Khushi goes through this phase of shock, understanding and a ‘why-didn’t-you-tell-me-before’ and he goes through irritation, understanding and then back to annoyance is the last bit of angst that they have against each other.

And for some reason, he does leave before he can hear her reply. Again.

*they looked so, so hot. Can’t believe this episode was nearly ruined by the forced suhaagraat. So glad she gets to tell him ‘I love you’ in this same outfit.*

“Jiji, agar woh waapas nahi aye toh hum kya karenge? Agar woh waapas nahi aye toh hum kya karenge?!” (S9, E30 - S10, E2)

“Jiji, what will I do if he never returns? What will I do if he never returns!?”

In this context it can loosely be translated to what will happen to me if he never returns as well.

Oh God these episodes tug my heartstrings so much. As I said, everything terrible seems to be happening to these two. And just as they resolved every bit of doubt between themselves, fate played them into the hands of the things that mattered most to them - family.

One of the reasons why I truly love this episode is because how ferocious Khushi is. She loves him, after the massive journey they’ve had, and heck will she allow anyone to destroy that. Her paranoia, fear and almost maddening level of love was such a refreshing change.

It’s not that she was just sobbing - no, she was constantly shifting between anger, denial, cries, yells, silence - everything. She nearly lost her mind at the thought of never getting him back again. And YES! This is my most favourite Khushi - the passionate, determined, vulnerable, strong, vocal Khushi.

And Arnav, oh God I truly cried for him. His struggles, his tears - I loved that he collapsed and cried his lungs out. I loved that he kept on trying to make sense of his life and collect the pieces of memory floating around to give an answer.

The angst, the fight against the past, the ultimate payoff - completely worth it. He made the right decision and he was still shaken by everything. Khushi, despite yelling at Dadi when that woman had the audacity of orchestrating this event, still murmured her apology to Arnav - respecting his family relations. They’re both quintessentially who they are, but at this point of time they understand each other in a completely different level.

(Which is why the future tracks don’t make much sense. Neither does the situation of Ek Jashn because no way would Arnav forget this day, out of everything.)

This day could have gone so, so wrong. But it does not. The angst of the two episodes builds up so well that I was crying when Arnav met with an accident - because he running his way back to his Khushi. The symbolism is flowing so heavily in these scenes.

It’s literally what keeps on happening in their lives. Khushi keeps her hope until it’s impossible and Arnav proves her wrong (delightfully so) by saying the most important things to her or even by making the most important decision. An optimist and a responsible decision maker - life looks good for them.

Kudos to the sound team for the way they handled the music - especially when Khushi rubbishes her thoughts of the broken bangles, is over excited at Arnav’s arrival and rushes down the stairs to meet him (breaking every single ritual cause rituals actually didn’t matter) and despite all the joy the dread in the background score is so good and effective.

Would I have liked if Arnav kept his hair up, if the phere flashback was omitted cause we just proved that pheres weren’t the issue and if the frothy pink white background was something different and darker - even like just the simple mandir as the mandir wedding aesthetic was prettier - definitely. BUT, that’s just minor irrelevant details.

*lets out a soft breath when Arnav kisses Khushi’s forehead after they marry... yes, angst is gone... totally gone. Thank God*

“Arnav aur Khushi hamesha saath rahenge.” (S10, E30)

“Arnav and Khushi will always stay together.”

Damnit, I’m getting emotional! Look at what the last angsty moment is between them. The first time I sensed angst, it was the impossibility of them getting together. And now, it’s the impossibility of them living apart.

That’s exactly why I am in love with this series - this is called growth.

I so sincerely wished the rest of the Aarav track was dealt with this much of maturity instead of the stupid comedy that was off putting. But you have to give the props to the writers, actors and production team for coming up with this soft, slightly angsty, emotional moment about the two characters who are so true to their nature yet fear another external force pulling them apart.

It’s a beautiful insight to the future. That Khushi would accept her vulnerabilities. That Arnav would reassure her and have his life knocked back into him when she would be next to him. That Arnav and Khushi would discuss everything together, now their differences remained superficial and their understanding was skin deep.

They understand all that without saying much. No humor, no belittling Khushi, no family harping on Arnav 2.0, no Khushi losing her maturity/intelligence/brains and no Sheetal becoming besties of Raizada for no reason.

This scene is such a beautiful moment between the both of them - precisely why the Mrs. India track felt like such a terrible downfall in their relationship. It didn’t make sense based on what was established in this episode.

Arnav and Khushi need each other. There’s no ego, no pride, just a deep level of understanding and a connection that rivals almost everything else. Over here Arnav isn’t angry at Khushi for making crazy connections, he’s speaking the possibilities with her and how futile her fear is because they are married and in love - she should be with irrespective of the consequences.

Over here Khushi isn’t hiding her thoughts or lying to him, she’s exposing her fears and worry. As an orphan she feels the necessity of making sure Aarav has a parent - especially if his father is hearty and alive. And she allows herself to be strengthened from the faith Arnav has in them and himself.

This one scene immediately made me empathize with both Arnav and Khushi. This is perhaps one of their very few soft conversations that happen on screen. Is there anything called soft angst? That hug made me weak in my knees. That’s love folks, that’s love. That’s how we envision Arnav & Khushi in future.

*imagines the soft kisses and moments these two might have had. Cries because it’s fluff meets smut and feels and damn they’re gorgeous*

PHEW! THAT’S THE END AND THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH FOR STICKING ONTO THIS ONE! One last, final, quick note - all of this is obviously from my point of view and no way am I even right in perceiving the show - everyone has their own opinions so feel free to add notes!

#ipkknd #iss pyaar ko kya naam doon #arnavsinghraizada #khushi kumari gupta #thought #hindi tv #tv analysis #too long #lots of thoughts

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amwritingmeta · 4 years

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15x06: Castiel

Is there anything more beautiful than turning points for a character? I don’t think there is. Cas has had a few of them throughout his journey (of course all of TFW have) but this episode he comes across a most likely enormous one, because this episode actually manifests his self-liberation in no uncertain terms, and given how far along we’ve gotten down the line with his progression, I’m thinking it’s most likely to stick.

It’s all about identity, right? Even this turning point that I’m so mysteriously hinting at. I’ll get to that.

Let’s take a look at the lay of the land this episode and it’ll bring us to why this turning point feels like it is shaking the very foundations of Cas’ core character traits and, hopefully, bringing about that needed change in the process.

Here’s the thing. When he was cast down from Heaven and turned human by Metatron stealing his grace, Cas was lost and was killed and then he was brought home to the Bunker only to be thrown out again, and so he named himself Steve and took a job at a Gas ‘n Sip because he couldn’t drape himself in the flag of Heaven anymore.

As a human, adrift and alone, he did the only thing he could think to do: he mimicked human everyday life. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. He could see no other choice.

Until he called Dean to tell him about a case in the town where he’d settled (using settled loosely here since Cas was basically squatting at that same Gas ‘n Sip because he didn’t have a home of his own btw) and Dean showed up and reminded Cas what is at his core: to help. And that this desire to help is there even if he’s scared of dying, because that is what gives him a sense of purpose. (which is why he threw himself into that human everyday life to begin with: in search of purpose)

After Dean drove off in 9x06, telling Cas to live his life, Cas made a decision, for himself, to get back into hunting. To insert himself back into TFW, whether Dean wanted him there or not.

This was an enormous turning point for him, because for the first time he truly considered what he wanted for himself, and he went after it without hesitation.

Which was then promptly followed by Cas seeing no other choice but to swallow Theo’s grace and get his powers back, readying himself for the war that most surely was heading their way, because how could he be of service, of help, to the brothers and to the world without his powers?

Right? Right.

Now then, in 15x06 we get Cas in a deep state of identity confusion.

This is most clearly given to us through the name he chooses for himself.

Firstly, Clarence is a beautiful callback to Meg and perhaps that’s all it’s meant to be, but it’s also tying in with those early days that lay the foundation for the identity confusion Cas is still grappling with. So it’s interesting to me that he’d use it now, when he should be moving on, know what I mean?

And yeah, that brings us to the second Clarence, which is a character name from True Romance where the character Clarence Worley is played by Christian Slater and Worley is a posturing, bi-coded renegade of a male and has a lot of Dean in him (and I’m headcanoning that Dean has initiated Cas to the wonders of True Romance and done so fairly hardcore) so for Cas to actually, literally, name himself after a Dean-esque character is delightfully poignant.

Because it serves to underline how Cas is still not acting from a place that is based in having enough perspective on himself that he’s aware of what he wants, but rather we’re given to understand, in no uncertain terms, that he left the Bunker, pondered what to do and instead of considering what he’d do, he thought: What would Dean do?

And Dean, to relax and regroup and get away, would go fishing.

So, essentially, Cas is still in mimic mode.

Only this time he wasn’t told he had to leave the Bunker and what he deep down has always thought of as home and family and safety, even if he hasn’t felt like he truly belongs there: this time he chose to go.

And, this time, yes, he goes into mimic mode because he’s at a loss of what exactly he’s supposed to do now, but when a case presents itself, he doesn’t call Dean, he goes into hunter mode and leaves the mimicking behind, leaning on his own knowledge and understanding of what hunting down a monster entails, knowledge and understanding he’s accrued over his years of inadvertent training.

Granted he’s not human and he’s not risking his life the way he would’ve been back in S9 -- which was the reason (well, one of them, if you want to read the subtext as being that he genuinely wanted to see Dean and he hoped Dean would come look him up) he called Dean -- but he’s not fully fledged, his powers are failing him, and he doesn’t know what that means or what it will mean for him in the long run.

What is evident is that he doesn’t need his powers to do his job and do it well. He correctly identifies the monster as a djinn and locates what is evidently its lair without using anything but power of persuasion and research skills.

I could - over-zealous that I get at the mere prospect - read all this as meaning that we’re getting foreshadowing for how Cas doesn’t need his powers to live his life. Actually, it feels a little more like Cas’ powers are hampering his ability to live his life this episode, as the pastime that relaxes Dean Humanity Winchester does nothing to relax Cas-Still Angelic and thus Tied to Heaven-tiel. But the powers do save him, and they do allow him to do what is at his core: help. He heals Caleb, even though it takes a lot out of him

The taking a lot might be foreshadowing that his powers are diminishing to the point of soon not being there at all, or it might be an underlining of how we should root for him being powered up again, so that the moment he is will feel truly gratifying, because we’ve witnessed the struggle.

The gunshot wounds to his chest might be a highlighter for how he still sees himself as ‘thing’ and always expects to be able to heal himself, which could be a plant for how, if he becomes human, bullets flying at his head will carry a completely different meaning because he’s always been someone who absorbs such situations without even really blinking at them (like how he didn’t even flinch when Ketch blew up that car with the grenade launcher back in S12), or it could be another underlining of Powers=Good because they allow him to do what this entire episode pushes for him to do: stand up to authority.

And so we land in the-->

Turning Point

Which is Cas standing up to authority and, if you look at the subtextual implications, in so doing, breaking away from how he’s related himself to Dean for a whole lot of their joint arc, especially during the latter half of it.

This turning point is enormous for his individual arc: letting go of his proclivity for making choices based in servitude to the greater good (manifested in God and then in Dean) (his servitude always skewed since he should be making his choices based in his own sense of morality) (not trying to do what he thinks someone else wants him to do) and starting to make choices based in his own knowledge and understanding of himself and his place in the world.

And this newfound self-insight could potentially hopefully have an enormous impact on how he relates himself to Dean moving forward.

Because instead of this -->

Leading to this -->

Ending in this -->

We’ll get Cas behaving based in this -->

And the parallels here are rich as well, btw. They’re not as violent as they look, at least not the way I see it, because not only is the possible S8 callback (it’s what I got in my head anyway) a tie-back to a moment where Cas bowing to authority brought about emotional trauma, which led to him standing up to said authority, but on top of this, Dean as authority figure isn’t working anymore.

Dean as role model, Dean as compass, Dean as charge and the reason Cas uses for why he’s even on Earth isn’t holding up anymore. It hasn’t for a long time now. And in this moment Cas not only knows it, but I would say he accepts the truth of it.

The sheriff is a toxic masculinity representative in the most classic sense and it’s beautiful how Cas uses the lines that Miriam threw at Dean in 13x01, almost to underline the parallels here, but also to tell us how little Cas is ready to bow down to this type of power.

As such, it’s not just a parallel to Dean, but to Chuck as well, which is why the turning point is so layered and carries so much weight: this moment is Cas telling a representative of what God now is in the narrative (and granted always has been) this his sense of entitlement, that his belief that he deserves his position and that he should be worshipped simply because he’s in that position, won’t convince Cas to obey.

This then morphs from a moment of empowerment to a moment of loss of control as the soldier mode takes over, yeah? The djinn needed killing, but slaughtering?

There are a myriad of possible implications here, but the sentiment of the scene itself is Cas breaking free and stating unequivocally that he sees through fake points of authority and will not follow blindly anymore. Cas sees through the bullshit now. He’s breaking free of his indoctrination once and for all.

Which is why the episode, for Cas, ends in that absolutely mind-blowing decision to contact Sam, which we’ll be privy to in the next ep, because Cas realises that staying away won’t solve anything and it’s not the way he can actually truly help either.

He felt he had to cut communication in order to make a statement, but ignoring Sam is neither smart nor does it serve his intention of making Dean understand he’s in the wrong and that he should stop being such a selfish douche.

Staying in the game, but making certain that Dean acknowledges he’s been entirely unfair and apologises, is more mature than giving everyone the silent treatment and missing out on vital information pertaining to the probable end of the world in the process.

All of this has me excited for what it means for Dean and Cas, without me expecting that it means anything! Dean shows how he’s ready to let Cas go live his life as best he sees fit, but he’s going to call Cas out for being a dumbass, yeah? Which is well-deserved. Cas is being stupidly stubborn and he really should answer Sam. Dean is letting go (while, you know, being forlorn without Cas but recognising that this forlornness is his own burden to bear) and isn’t going to tell Cas to come back.

I mean, unless Cas shows he didn’t mean move on as in remove myself forever from your presence and stays in contact with Sam, because then there’s a chance that what Cas wants and needs... is an apology. *slow eyebrow raise*

What it looks like to me is them being placed in a position to choose one another without needing the other to define their identity, or even to assist in providing perspective. They are moving into facing that final fear - their shared fear of happiness - and through facing it, beginning to believe that they deserve to be happy.

I am just way too curious now to know exactly where it’s all landing! We know Dean will give in, we know he’ll end up reaching out, but omg what will that mean overall? I mean... will Cas hear that prayer, is my foremost question, with his powers dwindling? #wewillknowafterChristmas

#spn 15x06 #spn meta #spn speculation #cas #darling cas #human!cas #what does the dwindling of his powers mean for him??#I'm dying to know!!#deancas #destiel #meredith glynn

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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not sure What It All Means, but i think it’s kinda interesting that when crowley and gadreel were in sam’s head, gadreel manifested as Tahmoh, and lucifer manifested as nick in cas’ head, but when michael was in dean’s head, he manifested as dean. oooh or is that more of the metaphor for repression everyone was talking about

I know you’re looking for a deep narrative reason for it, but I think this one is a lot simpler than that.

Let’s start with Gadreel. When we first met Gadreel, he was in the Tahmoh vessel. That’s the face we associated with Gadreel, even when Sam was possessed by him, if that makes sense. Before and after Sam was possessed, Gadreel returned to that same vessel, who remained his vessel until his death in 9.23. In the scene in 9.10 where Crowley went into Sam’s head to convince him to evict Gadreel, it just... wouldn’t make narrative sense for Sam to have to fight HIMSELF, you know? Gadreel had spent most of his possession of Sam keeping Sam tidily in the dark. Sam didn’t even KNOW he was possessed most of that time, and what he did remember, Gadreel had wiped those memories, saying it was for Sam’s own good. (which, yeah, at first it was so Sam wouldn’t evict him before he could heal him enough so that he wouldn’t just insta-die if Gadreel left)

So there was never any interpersonal conflict between Sam and Gadreel, no identification between Sam and Gadreel during which Gadreel’s goal was to “steal Sam’s identity” in that way. Not to mention Sam’s conflict in s9 wasn’t with himself. So a fight scene of Sam wrestling and banishing HIMSELF would’ve been narratively... a mess. :P

We had ONE episode of Sam possessed by Lucifer (5.22), wherein Lucifer used Sam’s face. For the purposes of this post I’m not counting 5.04, because it was either Dean’s dream injected into his head by Zachariah (if you believe canon as we’ve seen it through the present time where AU Zachariah’s abilities clarified OG Zachariah’s powers-- ironically enough by using them ON Nick-As-Lucifer in 13.07, as well as Jack in 13.14), or a time travel scenario that Lucifer would have no recollection of after the fact when that timeline never came to pass in reality. So either way, irrelvant to the point of this post. :P

Back to the point. The visage of Lucifer, over the years, has LARGELY been portrayed by and associated with the Nick vessel. That has been the face that not only *we* have identified on the spot as Lucifer, but that Sam and Dean have identified as Lucifer, despite the fact he has possessed numerous other people-- including Cas, Vince Vincente, and President Rooney. Somehow he always comes back around to Nick.

And in 11.18, again Cas’s issue wasn’t an internal struggle against himself. At least not like that. His difficulty was his resignation and self-worthlessness, his belief that only Lucifer could act, and the only important purpose he could serve was as a willing vessel who just got out of the way and let Lucifer do the thing. Even though the current face had truly and traumatically been established as Cas’s face during the latter half of s11, and even though he continued to possess Cas right through the end of 11.22, it wasn’t CAS HIMSELF that was fighting to either expel Lucifer or to keep Lucifer in residence. He was literally sitting across the room not even paying much attention to the fight at all, resigned to his self-worthlessness and wallowing as if he was irrelevant. That was the point-- that Cas didn’t put up a fight either way. So he needed another face, and again, the face we all identify as “Lucifer” is Nick’s. That’s Lucifer’s Antagonist face-- not Sam’s face, not Cas’s own face.

Using the Nick vessel as his face possessing Cas (as it did for Sam when he confronted him in the cage in 11.09 and 11.10) also doubled down on the fact that yes, Lucifer is still that Antagonist. And for a character whose signature move is using specific faces to gain the trust of his intended vessels via manipulation (tempting Sam to say yes by appearing as Jessica, tempting Nick to say yes by appearing as his dead wife, tempting Vince to say yes by appearing as his dead girlfriend, etc.), the fact that he didn’t attempt to manipulate Cas by appearing as someone to “trick him” into compliance says a lot. He didn’t NEED to manipulate Cas into compliance, because Cas’s own mental state was doing most of the work for him.

So that brings us to Dean and Michael in 14.10. For most of s14, when Michael wasn’t actively possessing Dean, the fear and trauma suffered by Dean because of that possession had been the underlying dread for him. That loss of identity was something that Dean had never had to face so directly before, making his issue with Michael as one of him “fighting his way to the surface” through a feeling of “drowning” inside himself. And yeah, that also does directly touch on ALL of Dean’s issues, but from the moment Dean said yes in 13.23, Michael effectively adopted Dean’s face as his own.

The struggle for Dean after Michael repossessed him in 14.09 wasn’t so much against Michael, but against himself. This had been portrayed all season via the flashbacks to what Michael did while wearing Dean’s face, Dean’s first confrontation against Michael where Dean appeared in the mirror himself, already fighting to evict Michael, for whom the “etiquette of possession” did not seem to apply. Even though Dean was DIRECTLY revoking his consent to possession, Michael calmly refused to gtfo, you know? They’d already established a MUCH deeper connection there, entirely against Dean’s will.

Because Dean’s battle was never one of deception, it was always a matter of human will versus divine manipulation. Just as we saw unfold in 14.20 with Chuck, where we learned that NO amount of free will applied to these sorts of cosmic situations could ever have won the day as long as Chuck was invested in manipulating their story for his own entertainment, you know? And his struggle against Michael was basically the Final Boss Battle for Dean’s will, with Michael wearing Dean’s own face, locked in a literal fridge inside Dean’s mind. Nothing that’s locked up ever stays locked up forever, as long as cosmic forces are around to pry open those locks again for the sake of the story.

In that scene in Rocky’s Bar in 14.10, this was Dean metaphorically confronting those parts of himself that were tempted to believe in the story, the parts that made him doubt his own will, his own understanding (because the things Michael tormented him with were pretty warped interpretations of Dean’s own memories, you know?). And eventually it did take Dean’s “mirror” to destroy Michael... who continued to manifest right through 14.14 with Dean’s face, when he sought out Rowena to possess her. Theoretically he could’ve chosen any face to do that, and yet... he picked Dean’s.

Because that’s what s14′s main point boiled down to in that final scene, setting up s15′s initial conflict-- that after a lifetime of Dean basing his his ENTIRE personal philosophy in the face of Cosmic Conflict on the indomitability of the human will... well, now he must confront that essential belief and truly understand who he is, and his true place in the universe in the face of this eternal divine conflict.

#spn 14.20 #spn 14.10 #spn 14.14 #spn 14.03 #spn 9.10 #spn 11.18 #spn 11.09 #spn 11.10 #that's what free will is #spn 5.04 #spn 5.22 #if you say 'mysterious ways' so help me i will kick your ass #dean is the center of the universe #spn s15 speculation #Anonymous

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incarnateirony · 6 years

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Regarding: “Original SPN”

And not a rant re: hypocrisy on "Kripke's vision", but the shift in tone in the show that draws protest from certain wings. In fact, some level of agreement, but not to the threshold they would want.

Once in a while I task myself to a ground-up rewatch; currently I have a review project to bulk out for a new SPN fansite a friend is running, involving that. So again, I booted up 1x1-2-etc.

Kripke favored a strong survival-horror genre. In the timeline we began, the "gamer dudes" of 1x2 had FRONT LINE technology in the form of the first brick of the DS and one of those blackberry looking abominations. Sam and Dean spent 1x1 huddled around a library computer using a search engine that looked like some webcrawler sh*t.

And that's just it. It was 2005. And while that doesn't sound that long ago to many of us - culturally, that's a short eternity.

Kripke chose wisely with David Nutter directing and producing his first two episodes. Nutter excels in taking a few episodes of a show and pitching it into a powerful tone that feels like its own movie. Most of us know him by his work in Game of Thrones, wherein he puts more work in than his normal tenure of 1-3 eps and moving on. And while some of our direction waffled, there's a distinct difference in the level of engagement Sam and Dean have in these seasons. HOWEVER- and most CRITICAL-

When Kripke started SPN, he had an idea: two brothers and the road, surviving in an intensive horror genre. But also, apocalypse was the end game, an issuance to divine and cosmic relevance of the characters. At first, Anna was slated to be Dean's hand and Ruby Sam's, but due to ... /issues/ - we'll put it like that - McNiven and Collins were traded, as were the intentions of their character arcs, within a few episodes.

By 2009 the world had already begun to change around SPN just as this advent kicked off. Social media had been rapidly expanding in a few years. Data-capable, mini-computer cellphones were becoming the commonality in the hands of the population with each passing day; laptops weren't 20 pound dreams for rich folk anymore. And horror was less the drive of the apocalypse story ridge, rather than a fantasy tilt.

This of course bears no relevance to my mention of Sam & Dean's engagement yet, but is instead setting the scene for the transition that happened.

As Kripke's vision began to manifest in its final chapters (S4-5), Supernatural tilted into a higher fantasy genre; and yes, it ran its course. While the show was successful enough to continue on past the original 5 year plan, several things had changed:

Technology threshold of the world, changing the survival scheme If Sam and Dean were going to remain any way competent, they had to upgrade, and suddenly, it's a lot harder to constantly have no phone/connection/way to search; as a result, our baseline tone graduated partially due to this but also,

Power threshold of the world has escalated, Because once you've made bundles of friends in high places, how do you expect to reset the show back to purely monsters of the week and have that be any kind of threat or interest to the GA?

In theory, one might say the moments would stay the same, but many stories ran their course: The struggle with Jess' death, the need to vindicate it by finding John The mystery of the demon, the deals made.

And in result, the moments that /drove/ our initial deepest, most intensive brother moments had gone up in smoke. And yes, we can always brew up new reasons for brother moments, but without the rosy glasses of nostalgia, looking in review, the deep and critical impact seeding under the initial moments drawing remembrance would literally never be there again. Trying to even draw another situation so deeply framed without calling on other bonds drawn through the show is, itself, a wildly critical error as at best we'd have to continue to retroactively patch in giant swaths of childhood history that was already very clearly framed and mapped out by the end of S5.

With the inability to set back to the original power threshold, the inability to realistically reset to the original technology threshold, the inability to reset to the original shared drive and struggle, and the inability to reset thus back to the original survival vein that motivated the characters, those moments would literally never be able to be framed the same way again. And that's not a problem - that's Kripke's vision. Kripke wanted S5 to escalate. And if you didn't want to watch the show after that escalation, and only want to hold to what is deemed the original vision, then it is advised to stop here. Stop trying to go back to S1-3. It is literally impossible.

In result, the only way to continue to build new drives for the brothers was to call on staple characters. While yes, I feel S6-7 handled that poorly in their management of Castiel, pretending we could just zap-back to the initial brotherly struggles and support is a distinct departure from the development and resolutions gained over the course OF Kripke's original journey. Sam's soulless? Cool, let's fix that - but past that, what does that leave? Yeah, crippling depression, we get that; Sam's in the trials? Almost hit the vein. It really tried. But it wasn't the same personal damages that initiated a shared fixation over the same topic. It was always a salve, and always needed another offset. And due to the chaos-ratings-crash that nuked out S7, removing Castiel as the offset - as an attempted solution to focus on brothers - clearly didn't work without the rest. Maybe if we could go back to 2005 where cell phones were bricks and we had to panic for library computers to get information, sure; maybe a few mental gymnastics to write some new traumatic backhistory into Dean to launch similar to how Sam launched early on. But even then, we can't turn back time. We can't erase season 4-5. It is what it is.

Kripke has since, repeatedly supported the show - so he isn't upset about its direction. But the question here is, if one is standing for the value of S1-3 we need to review what WAS the value. SPN modernized with the times and, by nature, survived. By S8, Carver tested permanent cast import and by S12, even Singer - the ultimate bro-stan - had come to acknowledge him as a lead; and that really is the dawning of SPN Part 2. It's almost a different series, as sad as it is to say. S1-3 is its own beast, extending as far as 5; the original vision. S1-5; S6-7 was a lot of chaos and figuring it out. And S8-13 is a high fantasy adventure show for all of the reasons listed above. But it literally can not be reset to the vein of 1-5. It can't. There's zero way to do it without losing the GA.

I can pitch all day into the acquisition of the phantom lead effect, the S8-9 uptick that slid us into position for S9 to be the highest season in industry curve, and talk on and on about the values of this modernization; but in a way, due to everything S4-6, 8-13 outperforming 1-3, it'll sound like I'm devaluing 1-3; and I'm not. 1-3 had a lot of great content, and in a way, I do miss those pure moments. But if I miss those moments, I turn on Netflix, boot up the old seasons, and watch it over again - because the characters, the show's world, and the real world have all changed in such a way that I know we can never realistically get that back - but I can enjoy it in nostalgia.

I just wish there was some way to really enlighten those that are literally violently nostalgic into understanding what caused this transition. That yes, I understand, and I miss those days, but if I want those days back... I just watch those days. If you don't enjoy the show now, that's... fine? Go watch the old show then. But they are literally incapable of producing a show with the base beat that's being demanded, these days. Because despite their best attempts at patching in brother episodes or moments, there's always a bundle of people saying it isn't enough, isn't the right direction - because it's not like how it used to be. But it can't be. It won't be. That is a literal impossible standard to fulfill.

So the question is: Do we continue to watch in bitterness? Can we not just go watch the seasons we love and leave others alone that like the new evolutions, leave the crew alone? If one does not want to adapt and expand, why are we here? This day can never come again; and if what is being given is not enough to fulfill them, then it may be time to consider these points. If every angle they've tried with the brothers ever SINCE the motions of the Silent Majority are not enough (5+ years), then perhaps it's time to just let it go. Since then we've had Sam and the trials, we've had Sam and Gadreel, we've had the Mark of Cain, and Amara - an equal shift of brother to brother centric storyline. S12 is a bit of a clusterfuck IMO for everyone on every side, but S13 has a different angle - and some don't like it. And that's okay, you don't have to like it, but there's absolutely no point in dragging it. Because if this modernization ruins it for you, there's no point in screaming about Kripke's Vision. Kripke's been quite clear about his support lately. This is in fact the direction his vision led. It always escalated, always ramped up, always hit a higher volume than scrubbing for ghosts and wendigos. And if that's where your interest ended... just let it go man. Nobody's putting a gun to your head to tune in or tweet about it.

The show stopped being that show at least 8, if not 10 years ago for all of the reasons above. That's an awfully long time to talk about a show being destroyed. Like... during the course of 2-3 times the amount of resulting content. It may be worth acknowledging that this is the show, period.

Have a good one, ya'll.

#Supernatural #kripke's vision #mine

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perpetualxfire · 7 years

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◈

◈ Share some headcanons that you have for a muse of your choosing.

(Well this is vague.)

(Let’s see… I headcanon that Lina had a little sister (one that people are far too happy to ignore 90% of the time), though I’m willing to change it to twin sister if it conflicts too much with a partner’s backstory…)

(I’ve recently started to headcanon that the Director wasn’t a bad father so much as an extremely depressed one struggling to take good care of his daughter(s) despite it all, and that Lina only ever wanted to help him feel better and felt inadequate when she couldn’t help him fend off his depression. (With an attitude like that, Lina, it’s no wonder you couldn’t help. Don’t make the man feel worse.) It’s the only way I could really make sense of her apparent ‘I always get what I want’ attitude - she’s spoilt in one sense, and neglected in another.)

(Lina grew up with horses. Maybe just a couple of them, but they’re still a part of her childhood that she lost a couple years after Allison died purely because Leonard couldn’t afford to take care of the horses, pay for the house, and raise his daughter(s) alone. In the same vein, she grew up with an apple tree, and for that reason (as well as personal taste of course) is very fond of apples.)

(She actually has a college degree. She went to college on an ROTC scholarship, and then attempted to make a career out of the military. When the project came up and she was the military officer of the crew, she’d thought she’d had it made; she was in a secure, well paying position over a large crew of excellent soldiers, in a place where she could still watch her father, where they could all do some good in the galaxy. It might not be the safest position, but she’d thought it was a pretty damned good one. Yay for false senses of security!)

(Project Freelancer soldiers show evidence of some degree of physical enhancement. Not as much as a Spartan, surely, but enough to definitely set them apart. They’re all taller, seem to have faster reflexes, tend to be stronger than the ‘unenhanced’, and so on. You could argue that this is their armor, but, if I recall correctly, for the armor to enhance their skills, it has to be compatible with them - meaning that they’d still need some modification to make the armor work (at LEAST in the form of implants). If you’re already there, you may as well take it the next step, yeah?)

(Carolina is naturally a very feminine individual. I personally only refer to her S9 face as canon (for a long list of reasons) and if you look closely, she’s very careful to tend to her appearance in a very feminine manner despite the helmet. Her hair is well cared for, she wears VERY shiny lip gloss, eyeliner, eye shadow, etc - and in the only time we see her in civilian clothes (an after the credits scene on the dvd) she’s wearing a very “floofy” skirt and high heeled boots. While these may not be exclusive signs of femininity, I like to think that they’re manifestations of it, and I relish this idea, as there’s this huge idea that if a woman is badass, she’s a tomboy or masculine in some other fashion. Feminine women can be powerful too!)

(Her hair is natural. Do not prompt this line of questioning, or you might get my infamous hair rant.)

#(I could talk for days but these are a few of the ones that have come up lately at least.)#>> Answered Asks;;#>> Headcanons;;

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

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I just hope that the first episode of Season 13 will have 1) Sam facing the Nephilim - and therefore his own powers and his own destiny and making peace with it and 2) Dean facing Cas' death - and therefore his feelings and making peace with it (or not.. try true love's kiss please, it'll work). It just seemed very deliberate to set them up like that apart from each other, each facing their own challenge.

Yeah. Because that’s yet another way that Sam and Dean broke the pattern…

Every season finale since s2 has alternated whether the brothers were together or apart.:

s2 together standing over the Impala’s trunk

s3 dean in hell so apart

s4 clinging to each other watching Lucifer rise

s5 sam in hell so apart (even though we see Sam looking through the window at the end, they are effectively narratively ‘apart’ for the next year)

s6 together kneeling before godstiel

s7 dean in purgatory so apart

s8 clinging to each other as the angels fall so together

s9 demon dean on the run so apart

s10 together in the impala as the darkness rolls across the land

s11 dean went off to blow up amara with the soul bomb so apart

s12 Sam left Dean by Cas’s body and ran alone to face the nephilim… breaking the pattern… because they are apart…

So much of this episode (as well as 12.22) was about BREAKING PATTERNS.

Dean FINALLY confronted Mary with the truth in 12.22, about how her deal with Azazel had affected his life. About how he’d been forced to become both mother and father to Sam, because John was too broken to be either of those things to both boys. This is the culmination of Dean’s not wanting to “overwhelm” her early on, of his discomfort at telling her the story about her life with John in 12.01, knowing all along that it was a pretty lie– but it was what Mary believed at the time. This was the final part of Dean angrily telling Mary that he’d never been a child in 12.14. That time his words had been intended to wound her, but this time he spelled the whole thing out in detail– not to wound, but to heal.

Like in 12.12, the lance that inflicted the wound was the only thing that could heal it.

So much of 12.22 was also Dean surrendering that obligation he’s always felt as Sam’s “parent” with Sam directly– trusting him to lead that mission to the BMoL headquarters. He let Sam take the entire lead over the group of hunters they recruited for the raid, and he expressed his trust in Sam in actual words.

(fyi I have 9.23 playing in the background as I type this up, and trust me when I say it’s like night and day, the dynamic between Sam and Dean…)

And that mutual trust continued and grew stronger in 12.23, and opened to include Mary as an equal partner in understanding.

When all three Winchesters showed up at the house, Cas didn’t even make a pretense of greeting the rest of the family. Just Dean.

And Dean’s first words to Cas are about how they’ll work things out between them as soon as they get Cas and Kelly to safety, reassuring him that things between them aren’t broken.

and then we had a visual confirmation of Cas’s motivations, his seemingly unconvinced “belief” in the future the nephilim had shown him. When Kelly asked him to tell her again, to reassure her that her sacrifice was worth it, Cas hesitated, and flashed back to the scene in 12.19 where the nephilim sent its power into him. It was like he had to shake something off and focus in order to remember that vision.

We even had Mary and Kelly talking about how they would die to protect their children. Right after Mary came to accept the fact that she DID die to protect her children.

The entire last ten minutes of the episode was like a dark reversal of the rescue mission to save Sam in 12.02, and the fight scene in that basement, but in an entirely jumbled up fashion.

But in an even LARGER scale, these “cosmic consequences” spiral back through every level of the story– from Mary herself and her understanding of the interconnected fate/choice of her deal with Azazel; through Amara’s influence of the story in s9 as the Winchester/Campbell family’s fate as descendants of Cain and Abel in taking on the original Mark of Cain, through her influence over s10 as the force that both kept Dean alive and was slowly killing him all the the same time, through s11 as she got to experience humanity first-hand and demand recognition from Chuck and her growth from wanting to destroy the universe just because and acceptance of the beauty it actually contained (and that Chuck’s love of the universe didn’t diminish his love for her), and then in s12 the Cosmic Consequences of her freeing Lucifer and resurrecting Mary (because her touch is chaos itself, and bringing back Mary and Lucifer HAD to be influenced by her essential chaos…). That kind of instability introduced into an orderly system that has always adhered to certain cosmic “rules” HAD to bring about this sort of fundamental chaos, you know? And hooboy do we ever have it.

The moment we learned that the entire Winchester Family History had been essentially engineered by Heaven to someday act as the key that opened the lock on the Darkness and force that confrontation and resolution of the Original Rift that created the universe, and the moment Dean orchestrated that resolution, it brought that cosmic-scale rift back down to Winchester Family levels. I know I’m not explaining it well, but it’s something Gabriel said way back in 5.08 when he was pushing Sam and Dean to accept their roles in the apocalypse– As above, so below. But now, post-resolution, that mirror’s been flipped.

Dean completed his task of balancing the universe again, but Amara’s “gifts” in the form of Lucifer removed from Castiel and the resurrection of Mary have both turned very bad. The wishes go very bad.

And they’re ALL interconnected– Castiel, Lucifer, Mary, and Amara.

And now the nephilim, as well.

The things Cas was saying about the nephilim’s vision of the future sounded appallingly similar to the things Amara had wanted in her perfect vision of the future, you know? The whole notion of remaking the world in their own vision, where there was never any conflict or hatred or pain or suffering. Amara’s ideal sounded very much the same, with her bliss pitted against the nephilim’s paradise.

It took Dean a long damn time to see that offer for what it was, to see how it wasn’t real, what Amara was offering. That it was the annihilation of self and the surrender of his identity that Amara was really offering.

Which is fundamentally identical to what the nephilim seems to be offering Cas…

Dean had to die and be reborn as a demon, then struggle through the trials of bearing the mark and eventually come to an understanding of the truth of all of it. I think that’s exactly the point in the narrative we are with Cas.

I know I am not explaining it well, because it’s taken me three hours to even put this much of it in this disorderly state, and I still don’t feel like I’m getting to the true heart of the matter here…

But once again, just like in 12.22, Sam’s struggle will be an external one, facing the nephilim as a sort of incarnation of his own life-long feelings and beliefs about HIMSELF, that he wasn’t pure, that he was a freak because of the demon blood and his powers, that he wasn’t truly human somehow because of that. And Dean’s struggle will be internal, like it was reclaiming Mary from the walls she’d been forced to construct inside her own mind in the name of self-preservation.

Sam’s walls have finally manifested into something physical for him to confront.

We’ve finally scraped the thousand layers of paint off the walls that Dean’s been putting up for the world his entire life, and he’s not trying to camouflage what’s underneath. He’s finally let something OTHER than Sam literally bring him to his knees. He’s finally shown Sam the thing that actually had the power to do that to him, too. And Sam had his little moment of acknowledgement before running off to face the nephilim alone.

And that’s the tip of the iceberg on how damn meta that finale was.

#spn 12.22 #spn 12.23 #spn s12 spoilers #spn s13 speculation #singular vs plural #anonymous

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