#on grieving and spnwin
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Strangely, I think the SPNWin finale rejuvenated my need to work on Feelings of excitement and infatuation. (I'm no writer. I just like to explore things clumsily I shoot from the fuckin' hip on everything i'm so sorry.) Some spoilers for The Winchesters below, and some shoddily written fic snippets I pulled out that tickle my fancy:
I often enjoy thinking of hunting in the context of the war of it all. or being cheated out of life. God, in The Winchesters tonight, Joan hit that for me SO well, and likewise that just reverberated down into Dean, like a bell that shakes up your entire brain.
And I just...adored that Dean is STILL struggling with meaning-making outside of saving the world. He's not ready yet to value his life as a basic deserving thing on its own, so he's looking for more work. He's bargaining for a glimpse of that perfect apple pie life, all while shedding his flannel and turning up the volume on different kinds of music. This was a journey of self-discovery.
Anyway, this has definitely hit the right spot for me. I'll probably reread and edit my shit this weekend, actually, because I have beans for my brain and take a stab at righting the very necessary Claire parts I need to finish the rest. Someday I'll pay a real writer to go in and make it flow, but today is not that day.
Egads. Eureka. Etc.
I think a lot of grieving is hard when life gives you a rough shake. It's something I tried to give a nod to a little bit in chapter 2 of the fic:
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“So if bringing people back from the dead is evil,” Jack whispers harshly, “and you brought me back, then it follows that we’re just like them. Evil.”
That shuts Sam up. Maggie gives him a painful wince. “Jack, family is different,” Sam tries again, and oh, he's struggling with this. “D-decisions coming from a place of love is not the same as a—a power grab.”
Jack gives a derisive little laugh that, horrifyingly, reminds Sam of Lucifer. “Like when Cas power-grabbed the purgatory souls to save our family.”
“Jack,” Sam says his name like a warning, and for the first time in all the time he's taken care of Jack, he can feel his own temper building, and that voice telling him to unleash his anger...sounds a lot like John Winchester.
He chokes it back. He's not John Winchester.
"Jack, you need to listen."
“No, you listen. You're not my dad!” His voice has enough force that it bounces through the entire kitchen, pinging pots and pans on weird frequencies like tuning forks.
It's a twisting knife into Sam’s gut, and he knows what that actually feels like.
This might be worse.
He watches Jack's chest heave—up and down, up and down—and then Jack thuds out of the kitchen. Sam feels his eyes water and he’s suddenly so irrationally angry.
Even though he'd offered to handle it, he's furious that Dean and Cas aren’t here, that they went fucking shopping when they knew Jack was like this. Sam's never had to discipline Jack. It’s just like when Sam got stern with Claire. They don’t—they just don’t take to Sam as well when he's the one doing it. Not like how they instinctually react to Dean or Cas.
It's not fair.
In his head, he’d imagined Jack opening up, tucking his head into Sam's neck, and maybe even crying, but this—
“Sam.” It’s Maggie. Sam had forgotten all about her. She looks so achingly sincere.
“No,” Sam chokes, embarrassed. He holds up a hand and tries to get hold of himself. “No. He’s right.”
“About what?” Maggie prods gently.
“About all of it.”
“No, Sam," she murmurs. "He isn’t.”
When Sam lifts his head, he doesn’t see a bubbly girl. Instead, Maggie is a battle worn young woman with sad, haunted eyes. Too worldly.
“I grew up in it. In war. It’s kill or be killed. You always choose your family. That’s the tragedy of—of war. You know? It is. It’s not like normal people.”
Sam, horrifying, stifles what might be the beginnings of something watery and weak. "Okay. Yeah.”
“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye, Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know, The hell where youth and laughter go.”
Sam thinks he sees a smoldering wasteland in her eyes. “Maggie?”
“It’s uh—my dad used to read us poetry. I was small. It feels different when you never got a normal, right? We hang on to our families because we got cheated, Sam. It’d be easier to let go if we hadn’t.”
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I’m absolutely obsessed with how they chose to have Jack still feel “Off” in The Winchesters, and as a result even more people are now noticing or taking a second look at the initial fuckery.
The spnwin finale / Dean’s narration is set within the context of 15x20, but Jack wasn’t even shown in 15x20. Jack was last shown to us 15x19, and we saw that he had very Fucked Up vibes after ostensibly absorbing Chuck’s power. Before that, we also saw that Chuck orchestrated Jack’s sacrifice throughout the season because it’s there if you look for it.
But the end of 15x19 is a fairly quick scene with little examination. And then in 15x20 we were TOLD (not shown) that Jack fixed Heaven, that all is great in that regard, and that Cas is back (🤔). So y’know, 15x20 is like… Dean’s death obviously fucking sucks, but cosmologically things are fine now at least! Right? Sure.
So plenty of people took what 15x20 told us about Heaven at face value, leaned into that as the final say, and let it supersede what 15x19 showed in regards to Jack. Even within fandom… I find that Jack being “new God” isn’t always seen as a vital element that needs fixing. (To be clear: I say this with no judgement because everyone had to process or fix the finale however they could 😵💫)
So in The Winchesters finale, they could have leaned into the implied veneer from 15x20 that Jack being new God is totally fine and then showed us that, aligning with what we’d been told. They could have had Jack act like his normal self again to really cement that things are good on that front, and that wouldn’t have necessarily been incompatible with how Dean is grieving and his story isn’t over. Hell, they could have avoided including Jack at all since he’s not in 15x20!
INSTEAD..… Instead they not only included Jack but also said “we’re gonna give you a longer look at how fucked up Jack seems.” They CHOSE to leave that door open and make Jack’s vibes consistent with 15x19 in a way that’s thrown the issues with him more into the spotlight, while mentioning how Chuck had more fail safes and plans than anyone knew. And what primary purpose or function did Jack serve in the episode? Telling Dean to stop meddling as if he has freedom and to get back to his ending of peace. That’s literally why he shows up.
This makes the Chuck won and finale mirroring throughout spnwin feel more pointed and I can’t wait to dissect it.
I love it!!!!!!! I LOVE that the fuckery is still afoot, and that the potential for making this allegory about censorship into a core plot is still in play for a sequel 👁👁 I AM OBSESSED
#SPNWIN#the Winchesters#spnwin meta#the Winchesters meta#Chuck won theory#I JUST WANT TO GNAW ON FURNITURE BUT INSTEAD I WRITE LITTLE POSTS ON MY PHONE WHILE AT WORK#sorry this isn’t groundbreaking I’m just seeing the Chuck won Renaissance on this website and THRIVINGGGG#once again my thesis with this show is ‘they didn’t have to do that but they DID’#my meta
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ok so here's why throwing Fae Lore into spn makes a revival/continuation possible
Here's the setup:
-"Blurrywife" is a Faerie, specifically a malevolent/vampiric one, definitely a Succubus type. The mimes are her human thralls, hence why they don't act like normal vampires.
-Baby, yes the car, is ALSO a Faerie, specifically a kind of shapeshifter called a Pooka. John captured her in the early 80s, and, being John Winchester, never told his kids about this.
-Chuck Won. duh???
-Jack is, and was always destined to be, the next Jack O' The Lantern, and after Chuck threw his flaming corpse out Heaven, he's been ruling his own spoopy little candy-coated afterlife. pumpkin boi
Here's the timeline:
-Blurrywife & Mime Crew are kidnapping kids, likely for The Fae's 7-year tithe of souls to Hell (a thing that exists in the lore), when the Winchesters show up. Sam & Dean, as usual, have NO idea how to identify or fight Fae, and get their asses handed to them, with Dean falling to some weird Gaelic cold-iron magic fuckery (points to Blurrywife & crew for figuring out how to fight with iron despite being unable to touch it. 10/10 fuck these guys tho fr)
-Sam, alone and grieving, is an easy target and she picks him off before he even gets to the car, taking (something close to) Eileen's form and trapping him in a dreamscape, similar to how Djinn attack in spn.
-Sam, Dean AND Baby (there's def some Fae Drama going on there, yikes) have been stuck the Fae Realms for THREE YEARS as of Nov 2023.
-Dean and Baby escaped at some point, staying with Jack for a bit before running off to the 1970s like a dumbass and getting EVERYONE, including Jack and Bobby (why is Bobby even here??? HOW DID BOBBY'S GHOST GET STUCK IN THE FAE REALMS WHAT DID HE *DO*) recaptured.
-Sam has had it much worse, being drained to a white-haired husk of his former self and left for dead within a few days/months. DJ is half-faerie, raised in the fae realms, and could be 3 years old or 50, who knows. I don't like thinking abt how he happened.
-Here's the setup for the continuation:
Dean (fairly intact besides the cursed stab wound in his back) escapes with Sam (nearly dead, white-haired, displaying more or less the typical signs of someone who was taken & drained of life by The Fae) and stumbles into Charlie's safehouse. the Fae Arc can continue from this point, w Baby's true nature being revealed, Blurrywife as a major antagonist/BBEG, DJ going from possible threat -> clearly a well-meaning and very brave kid -> newest Winchester family member who Sam fully accepts as his son (plus s4-cas-esque moments as DJ tries to adapt to living on Earth. DJ ilysm but most cars aren't sentient and you can't bring your longbow to community college)
also Cas is still in The Empty, and Jack & Bobby are still captured, so that's some major plot points right there
Destiel is canon.
...anyway, this is all still pretty convoluted, but it allows for:
-15x20 to have been "not real" without being retconned
-DJ to exist without either setting the continuation ~30 yrs in the future (how would that work), or repeating spnwin's time-travel-kid-ex-machina (that's just not good writing I'm sry)
-spn finally doing something w The Fae (& related lore) besides one-off eps
-human!impala as main character
-explanations of weird shit in the finale (rebar, vamp-mimes, etc)
-collective fandom catharsis at Blurrywife's bitch ass
-the full horror potential of a faceless woman in a long dress standing ominously in the corner while time blurs forward around you and you age to death in five minutes
-some VERY fun metacommentary & crossover easter eggs if you use certain bits of Fae lore
-still works w my other big finale theory/revival idea/if-they-dont-do-this-i-will-be-so-pissed, which is the whole Deanmon 2.0 thing. but that's a post unto itself.
(also yes. making Blurrywife a djinn IS simpler and requires 0 new lore and makes perfect sense in canon. however, I hate how djinn are portrayed in spn. it feels vaguely racist and makes me uncomfy to write/read. so um that's why I didn't do that)
#good lord i havent posted like this in YEARS#the revival rumors unlocked something* in me#*the need to scream these postcanon hcs into the void for as long as possible until an actual canon continuation replaces it#supernatural#gone from “i need to find a way to fix this bc the show wont even start again”#to “its gonna start again and oh fuck I'm overattached to what I wrote”
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Dean: If I could only find the universe where my family was happy...where they had a chance.
(They were deeply flawed / I loved them anyway)
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Here's Why I Want A Chuck Won Plot For The Sequel
Not to go the off about this on a random Saturday night or anything, but I have not stopped internally vibrating since the SPNWIN finale because the potential for a Chuck Won sequel plot line feels so implied and therefore so close I can taste it. I know that there are several people who don't like it as an explanation for the ending of season 15, and/or several people who don't like the idea of it being used as a sequel plot in the future. So I would just like to talk about why I, personally, am passionate about wanting them to use this particular avenue to move forward.
I'll likely unavoidably repeat some of the things I've said before elsewhere but... fuck it, I'm in my feelings, I want to get this out. Rambling on or whatever.
For the sake of clarity, here's a reminder of the POV I'm writing from: A) that Chuck's victory is canonically what was deliberately written as the plot of season 15, B) that it's meant to be noticeable and pointed out as tragic, and C) that even if you argue about the semantics of the literal order of events in the plot that add up to that result, Chuck's victory in some fashion is still the byproduct of the story's final execution.
The thing that I feel can and does get lost in a lot of fandom discussions about this concept is... D) the fact that Chuck winning is an allegory for and commentary on censorship.
I will go back to that. Follow me here.
With SPNWIN as a whole and especially the season one finale, we have already gotten step one of something incredibly subversive: it culminated very loudly in making it clearly canonical that Dean is some semblance of trapped. He is not happy, he is not at peace, he is not done. These are things that many of us in fandom who have brains all already kind of knew and took for granted, because we understand this story and this character and so we understand that 15x20 was not a good ending. But when you step back, what SPNWIN just established is actually a Big Deal in comparison to the fake veneer of happiness that 15x20 was (supposedly) trying to sell to us–and that it did indeed effectively sell to a large number of casual viewers.
Now, here we have canon openly demonstrating that Dean's ending was not okay, in general or to him. Objectively that wasn’t necessarily the case previously with 15x20 alone, but now it is the case.
That is a how-the-turntables level of redefinition of 15x20 in canon. Those crazy bastards fucking did it. They gave Dean Winchester back his agency and had him tell us for 13 episodes that the finale was inarguably Bad, and then they showed his sad grieving self still pining for his happy ending and his angel. That's fucking wild!!! Oh my God!!!
Whew. Okay, anyway:
So SPNWIN has made it clear that The Finale Was Bad, that Dean still needs and wants his happy ending, and that he knows what that happy ending should look like–as demonstrated in this whole hall of mirrors show, through the healing/romance/hope/future we witness the cast of The Winchesters getting to have.
If they stick with that vibe moving forward (which they may not. Continuity could get tossed), to me it then wouldn't make sense if they tried to move forward with any kind of sequel plot or angle that tries to say "okay, now Dean really will Find Peace And Be Done In Heaven." Because they seem to have made it clear that Dean doesn't want that. He wants out! He is fucking around and finding out!
To me, the next logical question to tackle in the plot as part of getting Dean back in the game would be this:
Why did those bad things happen to Dean in the finale?
Look, they don't have to answer that question with a plot-driven reason, obviously. They can go with the (boring) angle of nihilism that's basically like "Yeah Dean died and it sucked, but shit happens and that’s part of free will. It was an unlucky situation :/ he should get another chance at life though!" Or they can absolutely do something totally wacky and out of left field to explain lmfao. (I mean, hell, the Akrida were out of left field and that was only lessened when they tied them back to Chuck.)
Orrrrr.
They could go with a plot that's SOMETHING along the lines of explaining how Dean’s death and the fracturing of their family feels like an injustice to him because it is, and that shit did not just Happen, and that it wasn’t just arbitrary bad luck but rather he didn’t get his happy ending because Something Else was going on pulling the strings at least a little bit.
In that sense, Chuck- / Jack-related fuckery feels like the next natural through-line to me. I'm aware I'm heavily biased, but I want them to go all in on that angle so badly, and the point of this post (yes, there is a point!) is that I want to tell you why I want that.
The strength in the potential of an explicit Chuck won storyline in a continuation–other than the fact that it would be damn good television–is that, if done correctly, it would explain why the ending of season 15 sucked in the first place. And it would explain it not only in-narrative but also out-of-narrative.
Chuck exists to act as allegory, and that's what has always made this concept so significant, subversive, and compelling. Chuck's function and purpose is to be an allegory for producers and/or network executives, and thus the function and purpose behind a Chuck won storyline is to reveal the controlling forces of those figures. And because Chuck is the personification of the Original Creator's intentions that the characters are trying to supersede and defy, the fact that at the end of season 15 they do not get to grow beyond those intentions–aka the fact that Chuck wins and they don't get their full freedom–is indicative of the fact that the characters were not "free" or allowed to defy the Original Creator's real-world intentions either.
The idea that Chuck won is not simply a fun view on why the finale sucks or a fun plot idea for the future. It's because Supernatural is a censored queer text and higher forces won largely because Destiel was not allowed to be explicitly reciprocal. A pillar of the argument is that there could be no happy ending without Destiel; reciprocal Destiel was not allowed, and so the characters had to lose.
That is still the state of canon right now. Chuck's victory is amongst the many threads season 15 left dangling to potentially pick up and play with moving forward, and they don't HAVE to pick that thread up and make it into a central plot for a continuation. But if they do... Man. If they do, it would open the ending of season 15 to further examination for anyone who cares enough to pay attention to it, and that would also open up commentary on the censorship that caused it in the first place.
Here's what I mean:
SPNWIN has left us in a place consistent with 15x19, seemingly further highlighting that something is wrong with Jack. That's huge. Whether that "something" is Chuck possessing him or–potentially more likely–that the God power Jack absorbed has corrupted him, the point is that Jack needs to be freed because Chuck's influence endures.
Making the Akrida into a Chuck fail safe has already leaned into that idea, in a way. Even if Chuck is "gone," his influence wasn't gone entirely. The characters were not fully and entirely free from Chuck's lasting effects on the universe that they inhabit.
But now with the destruction of the Akrida, those effects are supposedly gone. But what if they actually aren't gone completely? What if something is wrong with Jack? What could that mean for Dean's story specifically and the happy ending he still wants and needs?
Apply that to the allegory: if Chuck's power has possessed or corrupted Jack, then Chuck's enduring influence that the characters still have to wrestle with becomes about the enduring influence of industry censorship.
It's then about the insidiousness of the forces that make it difficult for writers to let their stories and characters grow out of what was originally meant for them, especially when those stories are not meant to be queer narratives and yet are molded to have queerness centralized. It's about saying... you (the writers + characters) thought you'd be able to get free but you couldn't; you thought you could write the happy ending but you still haven't gotten to. How have higher forces twisted and shaped things into something unrecognizable? How do you make it back from that and rid the story of that negative influence once and for all?
Hypothetically, examining what Chuck's enduring influence fucked up in the story would then have to examine what censorship fucked up in real life. If they have to break out and return to reality, what does that look like? What is revealed? Dean and Cas could not reunite because their love was real and threatened Chuck's enforced unreality. Dean died and Sam got an apple pie life because that was always part of the ending Chuck wanted to see. Jack was taken over and/or corrupted by God power as part of Chuck's plan because he was powerful enough to help unite them all as a family, which threatened the classic "brothers only" focus of Chuck's story. Chuck's power was still personified in Jack and influencing the outcomes and that's why all of this tragedy occurred. They have to reunite, break the cycle, heal their family, and save Jack while getting rid of that personified God power once and for all, releasing it back into their universe so that power is now in everyone/everything rather than concentrated in overseeing forces threatening their freedom.
And when Chuck is an allegory for the censoring forces in real life... for anyone who cares to engage their brain cells, this could then make it abundantly clear(er) that the end of season 15 was not simply ~bad writing~ or ~cowardice~. It would retroactively redeem, explain, and redefine Supernatural's original "ending" as a backed-into-a-corner narrative gamble embedded with the ability to shine light on the source of its problems, the hope that in the future the story could be continued, and the keys to give the characters justice especially in regards to the queer narrative.
You can look me in the eyes and tell me you don't think that would absolutely rock, but then I will have to simply agree to disagree with you.
Because I would very much like to fucking see it.
It is literally ALL RIGHT THERE. It's THERE, it's so close, and this story could reach its highest potential and make several lasting, impressive points in the cultural realm for anyone who gets their heads out of their ass and stops ridiculing it or stops layering their interest in it under 1000 levels of irony long enough to look at how special it is!!!
[shakes the table with my hands]
AAAAAAAA
Okay, sorry, I'm devolving. But in conclusion: I want this. And though the prequel seems to be hinting towards it (QUITE LOUDLY), there is of course absolutely zero guarantee that any mysterious future sequel would go in that direction for several reasons, let alone the fact that it's objectively a ballsy as hell approach to take.
I still want to write a very long meta about The Winchesters' overall themes and its Chuck won propaganda (lol), so uhhh I reserve the right to plagiarize myself in the future from this post for that purpose. But I had to get this specific thought out sooner rather than later because, to be honest, I am simply going bananas.
JENSEN ACKLES, GIVE ME ONE PHONE CALL WITH YOU LOCKED UNDER AN NDA. PLEASE. PERCEIVE THE VISION.
#chuck won meta#the winchesters#spnwin meta#chuck won theory#the winchesters meta#I'm insane but it's fine. it's 12:46am and we lose an hour because of the time change tonight. things are fine.#my meta#I shouldn't post this tonight but fuck it I'll self-reblog tomorrow
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SPNwin & how Dean is on a road of self discovery and introspection, perhaps even trudging through the middling phase of grieving his own life
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Reeling from the end of his life
Following the existential crises and severe moral injury Dean was struck by in events of season 15, it appears that even in Heaven, Dean is still struggling with meaning making.
He's not at peace.
Jack gently chides him for not accepting peace, almost as if the situation went like this: Dean begged for work and Jack relented on the promise of NOT interfering.
So, what's Dean trying to puzzle out?
The core Dean question for me looms large:
Was my life meaningful? Maybe I didn't do enough.
Maybe if my life were different, more perfect and cookie cutter, my life would have added up to something satisfactory.
Dean does not yet believe what Cas told him in 15x18. Dean is still reaching for that ephemeral specter of "perfect" life. As Amara might say, he has not yet accepted his life as it was. Is it penance? Is it healing? I think it's a little of both.
It feels a lit like the bargaining stage of grief to be honest. "If only I could find a place A was possible, I could accept B.
Bobby and Jack are gently nudging Dean forward
I'm not big brain enough to sort out the plot stuff: portals and between worlds, but I loved seeing Bobby and Jack.
Bobby seems wry, careful--almost tiptoeing around Dean.
Jack feels a touch overworked, exhausted, maybe even annoyed.
I think the Chuck traps must be numerous, all throughout the universe. Also, Jack was "the calvary" in this instance that Bobby was running to get. :)
Jack is allowing Dean to "work" through his grief of living (and dying)
Jack's allowing Dean to stay busy and help but is clearly conflicted about the decision to do so. Dean's not in a great headspace, but he seems to be healing a bit, while at the same time reeling from the sum total of his life.
It's no accident that so much of The Winchesters reckons with hunting as a concept. In the end, AU!Mary finds the balance of choosing a life that isn't an "apple pie" fantasy. It's a little bit of everything. Integrated. Open.
And Dean, like Mary, is finding himself. That's why his musical choices are so adventurous and his manner of dress so wildly different from Dean prime. :-) Yes, we got Zepp at the end, but it felt a bit farewell to the perfect ideal of what life "should" have been.
We've recentiy seen Dean angry and in denial, and this whole series was a bit of bargaining and introspection. So, what now? If we're moving linearly through a grief cycle, what's next for Dean is depression and acceptance. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
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Where is Cas?
It didn't feel to me like Cas was in jeopardy.
It felt more like, in true Cas fashion, he's overworking himself and focusing on the new cause (extinguishing Chuck's fail-safes) and keeping moving. That seems very in-keeping with a lot I've written about how I personally view Cas as something of a tethered soldier. Tale as old as time (for Cas anyways)!
(Cas is busy. Cas is always busy.)
IN FACT, the fact that Cas was not grouped into the family-talk makes me think that The Winchesters might be not so clear-cut cancelled. You know?
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Is The Winchesters over? How could it continue?
IF The Winchesters were to continue (it feels quite wrapped up at present), I suppose because this universe is vulnerable due to the portal rip, and you could take the approach that this weak membrane serves as entry point for all sorts of trouble in the multiverse.
All you have to do to up the stakes is put Jack out of commission, really, and the danger rockets right back up to critical, you know? There can always be more monsters, more evil to be had.
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