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soullessjack · 3 months

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actually i think Jack’s whole psychotic meltdown after killing Mary makes a lot more sense when you remember that this was one of his worst fears:

i don’t have the exact scripts but suffice it to say, this is not the first time michael has insinuated that jack is his only equal/match/rival in terms of power, and it’s also not the first time he’s insinuated that jack would simply outgrow his sense of humanity and turn on everyone that he’s claimed as family; the fact that jack is even human to begin with is more or less a glitch in the system to all other angels. it’s “just a phase.”

and then on Jack’s response, all it says is that he doesn’t want to admit it could be possible. i feel like in most other scenarios like this, where the Hero has some connection to the Villain that’s used against them, the Hero usually just dispels the Villain’s claim of connection with some easy shit like “you’re wrong! i have confidence in myself to stay by my friend’s sides forever!” the villain is then defeated and the hero’s connection to them (and all that implies) is never brought up again. but here, with jack and michael, jack is clearly doubtful of his own humanity—I mean, he has been for a while, he’s just afraid to admit it to anyone because it holds too much risk of losing everyone he cares about.

jack has pretty much dedicated his life to proving that he isn’t evil, that he is trustworthy and safe and that he isn’t like Lucifer. however, while he and Mary are in apocalypse world you also get the sense that he now has to prove he isn’t like Michael—despite them being equals. but his dedication and determination are very much rooted in/responsive to fear, not just of losing everyone he loves, but for his True Nature to ultimately be evil and of his father.

so, of course killing his mother figure causes jack to spiral out of control and into psychosis, because he hardly understands what’s happened—he’s literally debating whether or not he intended to kill Mary while at Rowena’s flat—and he’s very jarringly faced with the potential reality that he had finally lost humanity and turned on everyone just as Michael had said.

and despite his literal subconscious telling jack that he’s as good as fucked, he can’t come back from this and he can’t call the Winchesters or the Bunker his home ever again, he obsessively tries to fix it and desperately denies that he could have actually wanted Mary dead or intentionally hurt her (remember he tells Rowena he just wanted her to “be quiet”) because how is he ever supposed to be seen as trustworthy again after possibly-deliberately hurting Mary (and later with Duma, the “nonbelievers”) when the entire reason he wasn’t trusted to begin with was the fact that everybody saw him as something dangerous/truly evil and merely choosing not to act on his true nature, and now if he can’t fix it, then he’s inevitably back in the pigeonhole of a dangerous monster, and Michael was right.

#spn #supernatural #spn meta #spn analysis #jack kline #michael spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #mary winchester #castiel #tfw2.0 #spn 14x19 #spn 14x18 #absence #rowena macleod #jack being literally psychotic with guilt is my Roman Empire like what do you mean he loved them that much and was so afraid of losing them #that he just went fucking insane #like okay then

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shallowseeker · 8 months

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Fuck, guys. I can't stop looking.

Just look at the state of the kitchen in Absence. The kitchen is supposed to be where the love is stored, and it's rusted. If Baby's state is a window into Dean's personal psyche, the kitchen is a window into his family life.

Dean feels like Cas let the kitchen die and fall into disrepair, the same way his doppelganger shouted about John, "All that crap he dumped on me about protecting [the kid], that was his crap. He's the one that couldn't protect his family!" (“He- he’s the one who let mom die!”)

Cas vacated the head-of-table chair when he went lone wolf to solve the problem on his own, so then Dean broke it. It's, "I was here, where were you?" all over again. And Cas was supposed to succeed as a husband in all the ways John failed as a father.

Sometimes, no one can protect you. Not your dad, not your spouse...but you still hold onto that expectation. They could at least be there for you.

#the kitchen is where the love is stored #or supposed to be #it’s where important spouse conversations SHOULD take place #spn absence #spn 14x18 #tfw + kitchens #the death of mary #spn + duty #tfw + deaths #dean/cas + marital dyad #cas & john #oh the ballad of failed family protectors #it’s a sad song indeed #cas & john and their familial obligations and expectations #what husbands are supposed to do huh #cas john parallels #failed fathers #failed protectors

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gracelyns · 2 months

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hate hate hate how they wrote mary in s14. literally just every man's therapist.

#mary winchester #mary campbell #spn #supernatural #spn s14 #spn 14x18

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restlesshush · 2 years

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People talk about how refridging Mary to make Dean want to kill Jack in the soulless Jack arc was a really shitty thing to do, and it was, but the thing is I don’t think that’s even quite what happened, writing-decision-wise. Refridging Mary is not only not necessary for the soulless Jack arc to work, it also actively makes it less effective as a storyline, specifically in ways that seem to clash with what was otherwise being set up. Which makes it look like they didn’t kill her to serve their plot, given they actively made their story worse by writing her out.

(Edit: I’m not going to speculate as to what was going on with Sam Smith because I don’t know, but approx 1400 words under the cut about what I think was happening writing-wise)

Anyway so this is all based on an initial theory from @autisticandroids (who also asked me to write this post, hi!) that the way Mary’s death was handled makes it look like the sort of character death that happens because of an actor having to be written out, rather than one the writers really wanted to do otherwise. And once you’re primed to be thinking about this, 14x18 especially does really come off as the show scrambling to try and make her death hit, which is sort of the opposite of what fridgings are for – they’re normally thought of as being a low-effort way to pack an emotional punch. But because we’ve kind of barely seen her all season (she’s in less than a third of episodes), and because this is Mary so if we’re going to kill her again it has to hit, they feel compelled to spend time giving us a couple of slightly on the nose flashbacks to try and make sure we care. It’s the sort of work you’d normally do before you kill a character, rather than slightly messily afterwards to try and make their death look worthwhile, which is really how it comes off here.

And the thing is, it’s not just that it’s kind of messy – it doesn’t actually help facilitate the soulless Jack arc at all really, instead it actively distracts from it. Obviously this is true in terms of screen time, because we have to take time away from Jack stuff for the flashbacks and for Mary’s funeral, but also in terms of the story’s focus. The interesting thread here is “someone we care about is ~dangerous now, what might we have to do to stop them??”, which is pretty decently well-trodden ground for spn, which you could easily have done just based on the snake and burning Nick alive on their own. And then in theory, this would all be made extra tragic by the fact that it was Jack saving them from Michael that even put him in that position, but we barely lean into this because we’re so focussed on Sam and especially Dean’s reactions to Mary’s death. Like, that thread does even still gets pulled on a little bit! You have Dumah's “he lost his capacity for good through an act of goodness” – and that’s what’s actually compelling here. But it’s barely touched on really, because if you’re going to kill Mary, that’s what you have to focus on, or at least that’s what the show seems to be convinced of. Nick even explicitly says it in 14x18 – “Buddy, you killed Mary Winchester. You cannot come back from that.” So we get hung up on an accidental death that could easily have just happened while Jack had his soul, instead of the actual implications of Jack’s soullessness beyond that.

Everything with Mary’s death also obviously makes Dean come off less sympathetically (and not in an interesting way), if he’s motivated by revenge, rather than genuine concern about what Jack might do. In part because of the revenge motive, he seems to take a genuine vicious satisfaction in tricking Jack into the box, for example, whereas if it was more a tragic last resort for how to deal with this very difficult situation, it would make for a much more nuanced and interesting situation, that would hit much harder.

And this isn’t the only way in which the restructuring of the arc to accommodate Mary’s death has implications re Dean’s character. It does look like they were setting Jack up as a Dean parallel here, which obviously if he’s killed Mary, it’s hard for him to be in the same way anymore. There’s a really good post somewhere which I’m annoyed I can’t find about how good leaders don’t ask their subordinates to do things they wouldn’t do themselves, and how Dean would do insane things and so thinks it’s reasonable ask his subordinates to do them too. The post explicitly cites Jack in the Box and iirc also Moriah (edit: it was this post and it cites Jack in the Box and Unity) as examples of this, and while it’s a really interesting piece of character analysis, it’s kind of striking when trying to think about writing decisions that 1) this stuff would be strengthened if Jack was still in the category of people Dean could see himself in, which because he’s killed Mary, he can’t be and 2) by drawing the parallels it draws, it also points out that “oh hey! The writers have chosen to put Jack in situations that Dean has also notably been in! What does this tell us?”

Moriah is probably the less strong of the two examples re just the situation, but the thing is that in addition to Dean effectively asking Jack to be prepared to die for the good of the world like he has before, the obvious thematic use of a mechanic like the Equalizer is “by killing this person you are killing yourself not only literally but also figuratively”. Like, something something supernatural and wasted potential goes without saying, but they did presumably come up with that object for a reason, y’know? But then Mary’s death and the revenge motive means that Moriah doesn't come anywhere near to playing like Dean killing himself on two levels even though like… what is the point of that gun otherwise? It almost feels like a fossil from a different story. And then the situation re the Ma’lak box is very similar. @autisticandroids pointed out to me separately a while ago that Jack is becoming Dean in ouroboros – “I am a winchester + eating michael + being destined for the box” – and also that were it not for the vengeance motive things would very much more come across as “oh my god dean’s putting himself in the box”, which y'know would be both hard-hitting and also the sort of thing spn loves to do.

And it’s also what they’ve been setting up! Like, you go from Dean having something dangerous inside him that means he might have to be locked up or killed, to Jack ending up in that position instead, specifically via him fixing Dean’s issue! It's even him specifically who directly argues for killing Dean to protect the world from Michael in 14x02! There’s a lot of groundwork there for them as parallels in s14 which Mary’s death undermines – the season is just structurally way tighter and more thematically resonant if you take it out. Getting rid of Mary’s death and the revenge motive for Dean (leaving a tension between concern about Jack vs concern about the world in its place) also meshes way better with the way they originally set up the stuff with Jack’s soul too, where it’s meant to be a sad thing for him, that he would no longer be himself etc. And like, that’s arguably partly because it’s Yockey handling it and he’s the only writer who cares about Jack, but it is still what was being set up. “Jack died –> the mechanism we used to bring him back allowed him to burn off his soul to be useful –> he’s dangerous as a result of this and oh god we have to do something about it” is way neater and more compelling as a trajectory if you don’t throw in “also he accidentally killed our mother and so Dean sort of wants him dead because of that too”. There’s a disconnect between the obvious route to take this story and then end result, and Mary’s death seems to be the thing lying behind it.

So yeah, Mary’s death was a bad writing decision not just because it’s not worth refridging her for the sake of the soulless Jack arc (which it definitely isn’t), but also specifically because it actively makes the soulless Jack arc worse. Obviously misogyny was frequently a driving force behind writing decisions on spn, but it doesn’t look like it was here in the way people seem to assume. It doesn’t look like they were killing a woman in order to serve our story – instead, the story has been actively derailed by them killing a woman. Which does really make it seem like that’s not why they wrote her out.

#also stream the secret good soulless jack arc that exists in my head #where i make it way better in part by not killing mary #jack kline #mary winchester #dean winchester #spn s14 #spn 14x20 #spn 14x14 #spn 14x18 #spn 14x19 #spn meta #suicide mention #worded thoughts #spn

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deanwasalwaysbi · 2 years

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Define "comfort show"

spn 14x08 Absence | spn 15x03 The Rupture

#destiel gifset #destiel divorce arc #spn feels #my gifs #original content #dead to you #dead to me #deancas #spn 14x18 #spn 15x03 #spn the rupture #spn absence #bobo berens #dean was always bi #destiel was always canon #the writers know what they did #deancas gifs #deancas gifset

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angelfishofthelord · 2 years

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CRYING THROWING UP (X)

#spn scripts #spn 14x18

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mlobsters · 2 months

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supernatural s14e18 absence (w. robert berens)

DEAN Well, hey, here's to another miraculous Sam Winchester survival. Got to say, man, if Jack hadn't have healed you…

one might say it's getting a little absurd but whatever

i have zero idea how this is gonna shake out, with the kinda accidentally killing mary because she was gonna rat him out to the boys situtaion.

DEAN You know, lately, it feels like we'd be up the creek without that kid. I mean, first, he takes care of Michael and then Nick. SAM Kind of sounds like you're bummed about it. DEAN No. "Get out of jail free" card? I'll take that.

don't think it's the case here really because killing nick seemed pretty darned justified at this point but have noticed when there is a moral quandary to be had over killing someone, it's usually someone else that actually does it these days. if blog search actual functioned, you could get a number of results for quandary :p

so the cas not telling sam and dean about jack being clearly not right has come back to bite him in the ass.

LUCIFER Yeah. I'm your, you know, subconscious or whatever. Y-You whipped me up to help you figure this out.

so does jack get a hallucifer too then? (transcript says nick but it's lucifer)

LUCIFER All right? Buddy, you killed Mary Winchester. You cannot come back from that, and you know it. All right? You've been flapping your wings all around, trying to run away from what you did, and where'd you wind up? Right here, right back to the scene of the crime. JACK No. LUCIFER Yeah. Yeah, because somewhere inside, you realize that the sooner you accept it, the easier it'll be. JACK No, it's -- It was an accident. LUCIFER Okay. Tell Sam and Dean that. I'm sure they'll understand. It's not like family isn't everything to them

subconscious makes points

music while they're searching the cabin for jack/mary/dead nick is good. reminds me of hmm. modern thriller during a spooky/unsettling scene music. lol (it's christopher lennertz and tim wynn on music this ep. confirming yet again i am scores more likely to enjoy lennertz's score vs jay gruska's)

moments like this where it's like i can see the promise of what this show could be. a scene that's genuinely unsettling. slowing down and not focusing on this breakneck knee deep plot machinations, but setting a scene where the emotional tension that we know mary is dead and we're dreading them finding her, and finding this instead. dunno. it was very effective (and the music continued to be appropriate)

CASTIEL I know you know this, Mary, but, um, Sam and Dean -- they're -- they're glad to have you back. Whatever you still have to deal with and however long it takes, you should know they're happy. I mean, finally, they don't have to be so, um, so alone. MARY Castiel. They were never alone.

um, i think that's a bit of a stretch lol. cas was not around that much, and when he was it wasn't always good. they had bobby, lost bobby. have jody but see her even less. they've been hobbling between meager support systems for a while. cas only seems to really qualify in that way visibly onscreen in the past season or two at most? they talked him up but we didn't see it much.

DEAN Might have been Lucifer. Nick was trying to bring him back. SAM Yeah, but Jack said-- DEAN Who cares what Jack said? We don't know what happened! But I swear, if he did something to her, if she is -- then you're dead to me.

well. we know dean gets over shit pretty fast when it comes to the core group all things being equal, so i imagine he'd come around in a moderate amount of time. not like cas is ultimately culpable, not like when he broke sam's wall, for instance. it was a fuckup, but would jack have done something awful inadvertently-ish even if sam and dean knew right away when cas found out he definitely was off? ehh. everyone knew he wasn't acting quite right. but all bets are off when the person getting killed is mary (or heaven forbid, sam)

DEAN No, he knew. He knew something was wrong with the kid. He knew it, and he didn't tell us! He didn't even tell us! CASTIEL I was scared. I believed in Jack for so long, I I believed that he was -- he was good. I -- I knew that he would be good for the world. And he was good for us. My faith in him, it -- it never wavered, and then I-I saw what he did. It wasn't malice. It wasn't evil. It was like Jack saw a problem, and in his mind, he just solved it with that snake. DEAN The snake?! CASTIEL What he did wasn't bad. It was the absence of good. And I saw that in him. But we were a family, and I didn't want to lose that, so I thought I could fix it on my own. Felt like it was my responsibility. So I left. And I didn't tell you. If I could go back and just -- just talk to him right then and there, I would. But I can't, Dean. I failed you. And I failed Jack. And I failed --

cas, friend. you do not have a great track record with fixing stuff on your own. but i get it. but also, if you're trying to keep your family together, gotta communicate!

gonna try to resurrect mary with rowena, ok. i didn't see that coming

JACK I killed Mary. I-It was an accident. I-I didn't mean to. I just -- I just wanted her to be quiet. I just wanted her gone, but only for a second. And I just. I thought it. It all happened so fast. I need to undo it. You need to help me undo it.

you know i was thinking about this last night. and i think about the same kind of thing fairly regularly. mary could see she had reason to be scared of jack after the cruel way he killed nick (which everyone is a lot more upset about than i anticipated but ok). yet she still wouldn't lie to him about not telling sam and dean. an unstable, infinitely powerful child, essentially. and i think about the way that some people respond to people that are being aggressive or whatever. and you know, when you're someone that has been abused (like myself) sometimes you come away with a pretty ingrained fear of anyone acting off to do anything to avoid setting them off. i know that's not everyone's experience, for sure. but that was kind of an essential survival coping mechanism for me that's carried through. it doesn't serve me well in a lot of every day social conflict potential situations, but it is one that i think can sometimes keep you from getting killed 🤪

MARY Sam, everyone here understands what you've been doing and what you've been putting yourself through. SAM Yeah, I know, but Jack's been through a lot -- you know, losing his powers.And I haven't really been there for him.Sorry, Mom. I don't mean to lay all this on you. MARY No. Are you kidding? It's nice knowing I'm not the only one with parental guilt. How much did the two of you go through when I wasn't there for you? And even when Amara brought me back and I got a second chance, things got complicated. I got complicated. SAM Mom. MARY No, I'm just saying parenting is always a struggle.

heard. it's a struggle even when not these extraordinarily complicated and bizarre situations they're in.

SAM Dean, it wasn't just Cas. It wasn't. We knew Jack was dangerous. We always knew. Long before he killed Michael. You more than anyone. I mean, from the very beginning, you knew. But, you know, we fell for him 'cause he had a good heart and a good soul. Then he didn't. And that's on me, too, by the way. I mean, I'm the one who made the call to bring him back. He didn't ask for that. I decided for him. And you warned me. DEAN No, you didn't know, okay? We didn't know. SAM Exactly. We didn't know. But -- he had become our family. You know, after Maggie and the other Hunters died I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left. I knew. I mean, I knew something was gonna I just didn't know it'd be this. DEAN I did it, too. When I talked to Donatello about Jack, he said he was good as far as he could tell. But then he talked about how powerful Jack was and that he could never really be sure. And it was a warning. I just couldn't see it.

i appreciate that they're both taking accountability

well. i guess they get some closure at least, having a body. i think by rights this should be upsetting me, but it isn't? nothing like the this season's absolute disaster of jack dying originally and dean hellbent on committing suicide/eternal torture. that was like. 3 solid episodes of ugly crying my way through them.

LUCIFER Well, I warned you. It's worse -- trying and failing. There's no going back. You realize that now. Cas, Sam, Dean they're never gonna trust you again. And you know what that means. What? You can never trust them.

the flaming hoops this show will jump through to keep pellegrino around!

is that mary with the baby one new? can't recall. they've added a few here and there past several seasons

glad they kept it to just the 3 of them, writer's 2nd draft script linked on wiki

SAMUEL WINCHESTER you better have a copy of that picture elsewhere before you burn it. you have so little of her! see, there you go, that's how you made me upset. thanks, show. push straight into the weepy montage of happy mary moments

?? that felt very... forced. whole scene did to me, but that was the icing on the cake

i liked mary, but never really connected with her i don't think. kind of like bobby, but even less to go on. don't blame samantha smith in the slightest, i think it's how they wrote her. she was great at the emotions. but this episode largely left me feeling 😐

#supernatural #spnwatch #spn 14x18 #robert berens #christopher lennertz #tim wynn #spn musical score

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