Subtext : What We're Not Saying

                Subtext in writing is everything characters don’t say. If you’ve been following me for a while you know one of my favourite things to say is “Characters never say what they mean” that’s subtext—it’s the implied, the unsaid, the hints picked up by readers, and it’s one of the most important parts of creating meaning in writing.

                Let me explain. A parent and their child are talking over the phone, maybe the context is the child moved out after a particularly bad argument and this is the first time they’re speaking since it happened. The kid says, “I really miss you and the rest of the family, I’m sorry for what happened, let’s not fight anymore.”

                The scene kind of falls flat. Where’s the conflict? The dynamic? The challenge? Through the child just saying exactly what they mean, we lose out on a lot of meaning—kind of ironically.

Instead, maybe they say, “They have daisies growing in the garden here, I think Clara would like them.” Better—we’re implying this kid is thinking of their sister, that they’re feeling a little homesick, or nostalgic for their old life. We’re saying they miss the family, they’re trying to connect again with Clara so they’re sorry for what happened, they’re calling because they don’t want to fight anymore.

                But without saying that, the parent can reply, “She’s into roses now.” A rejection of that connection, the portrayal that whatever that old life was has been tainted forever—it can’t just come back.

                That’s a very quick example, but there’s so much subtext you can create with the simplest of scenes. One of my favourite scenes I’ve ever written was two friends walking through a museum talking about the exhibits, but really they were talking about legacy, and their fear of their own morality, all without ever saying that out loud.

                People never say what they mean because saying what you mean is scary. Had the child asked outright for that connection, they would have been opening up to outright rejection. Instead, the relationship can hide behind this implication—words between words. Subtext.

                Good luck!

I love this.

[ID: a Twitter thread by Jennifer Lynn Barnes @jenlynnbarnes "One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her to balance writing and kids, and she said that the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass. And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters, so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones. Nora was not talking about juggling five balls. She was talking about juggling FIFTY-FIVE balls. The balls don't represent 'family' or 'work.' There are separate balls for everything that goes into each of those categories. 'Deadline on Project Y' or 'crazy sock day at school.' And her point, addressing a room full of women, was not 'prioritize kids over work.' It was 'some kid stuff is glass and some is plastic, and sometimes to catch a glass work ball, you have to drop a plastic family one, and that is okay.' I think about this ALL THE TIME. I dropped one more ball today. It is hard to drop any ball, and I hate it! But they were plastic, and tomorrow, it will be okay." End ID.]

So let’s talk about this gif and 15.10 for a moment. Because this moment, from early SPN, is probably the one I’d always reach more the most when people ask “show me Dean Winchester.” Because it’s so iconic. It’s a beautiful shot (which, iirc, was an accident of filming—it was getting late, and the light happened to hit just so, and they grabbed that shot). It does embody a lot of what drew me to the character in the first place.

But in some ways, Dean now is so much more real. That shot of early Dean shows how idealized these characters are. Sure, Kripke talked about sweaty, dirty hunters. That was the gestalt. We were shown they did things with training and spit and duct tape. The thing is, it was never truly gritty, they were also idealized heroes, the show running in the superhero narrative mode, drawing on pop culture that came before it. “Star Wars in truck stop America.” Star Wars is a universe that shows magic sword fights and the grit of everyday life, and it is idealized despite showing the grit. It’s a fantasy/sf world, and it is in the heroic narrative tradition, same as SPN. SPN also owes a lot to Buffy, The X-Files, The Nightstalker…all shows with their own kind of hand-waving glamor.

Break down what’s in that shot though. What Dean we see there. Wearing a leather jacket too big for him. Trying to be his dad, not himself. The bad boy thousand yard stare. The romanticized camera eye. The lens flare. It’s a fantasy.

What fascinates me so about 15.10 is that SPN showed Sam and Dean as tripping, barfing, walking disasters and they still didn’t give up. That is heroism, that is brave. Chuck cursed them. Either somehow dropped them into a “normal” world with their skills—which were always over-idealized on the show to begin with—no longer functioned when they encountered too much realness—or cursed with extra bad luck rather than just making them “normal” — either way, it’s the same effect in the end. They were disasters and overwhelmed in 15.10, yet still brave, still ready to go out swinging. Still doing all they could, together. That’s what real heroism is.

I look back at that gif, that Dean, and think yeah that was beautiful. That’s a moment that can’t be recaptured. An era of the show we can’t go back to except in rewatching. But I think about all the Dean, and Sam, and everything, we’ve had since, and how many more facets of these characters, of Dean, we have seen since that early shot. Where his facades are stripped away, where he’s been making choices more and more about who he wants to be instead of trying to be a facade or become his father. Somehow a fuller character now than where it started, more tactile. We know him better. He’s not a romanticized icon. Or a superhero. He’s just Dean.

dean ↳ cas, i hope you can hear me

Okay, is anyone out here talkin bout Swayze? Look, just the invocation of Swayze’s name imputes a certain amount of homoeroticism, particularly when there are such clear allusions to Road House, which is known to be one of the most famously homoerotic movies of all time.

Take away the bi lighting and the gratuitous male/male touching and the prolonged looks and Dean’s preference for Lee over Lorna and the hard fact of a shared erotic experience and the intimacy of a man knowing Dean’s secret desires in a way a woman never will and the physical claiming of a private place on Dean’s body that a woman tried and failed to claim before and the concluding (standing) “o” after the men came together in the exertion of performance and the supercession of violent male/male physicality in the place of violent male/female physicality and the thrill of male/male bondage and the phallic imagery of beer bottles and guns and the way Dean knows the feel of Lee’s legs straddling his waist and the final penetration complete with tender touches and grunting and emotions brimming over

We’re still left with Swayze’s road house. And that, my friends, is gay. All on its own.

In case any of y’all don’t know why das gay: This is the movie where you see nakey Swayze from the back AND the front, it’s said you can see his b*ner through his sweatpants after the title fight, which he does shirtless, in fact he spends much of the movie shirtless, some of it oiled, he watches a man have sex and is watched by a (heavily queer-coded) man while having sex, there’s so much gratuitous nudity that it’s basically impossible to watch this movie and not be turned on if you’re capable of being turned on by people, he has a close relationship with the hottest version of Sam Elliot ever, and the main point of him is to be a “good guy” that just, like, beats bad men in dirty full-contact wrestling while they whisper homoerotic things to him like “your ass is mine” and “I used to fuck guys like you in prison” so

It’s a movie celebrating the virulent virtue of the ultimate manly man and actually it’s been said that it’s one of the only true bisexual action movies of the time period bc unlike many of the homoerotic movies of that time, the hero seems to actually like his female love interest instead of actually hating her. So I take it back, it’s not gay, it’s bi, and so perfect for Dean.

I keep seeing a lot of discussion about Dean and Cas having fallen out of love. And rewatching s14, I just cannot agree.

But there has been a carefully maintained distance. A distance is that managed by emotion. When things are good, the distance looks like normal bros just doing their thing and occasionally gazing longs longingly at each other because fucked if you can look at this shit and tell me otherwise. But anger - any tiny little thing that can broaden the distance - is instantly latched on to.

In my professional experience, wanna know why? Because that's what people do when they're scared.

Anger manages fear. Anger makes you feel in control, bigger, stronger - even fleetingly.

And I can pinpoint the moment. When Cas said yes to Lucifer. Dean thought that was it - he'd never get Cas back. And then the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing happened and Dean got mad because he's fucking terrified of losing him for good. And then he actually did lose Cas. And he wanted to die. He was ready to die rather than live with all these FEELINGS, with all that terror of surviving. But then Cas was back and now he knows exactly what losing him for good feels like and fucked if he can go through that again so there's distance. And the anger - ohhhhh the anger. The more anger, the greater the distance, and that's okay because it's just getting more complicated and more distance is SAFE.

I'm sorry, but Dean Winchester is in fucking love with Castiel and their story may be a tragedy, but it's raw and real because it reflects many of our own very real relationships. That's why we're here. Because we identify. I don't give a fuck about the writers' intentions - it's real to us because we feel with them. And that's my Ted Talk on deancas kbye

“The more anger, the greater the distance, and that's okay because it's just getting more complicated and more distance is SAFE.” <—— One million times this!! Both of them, but especially Dean, are scared of feeling so MUCH.

And what he’s used to coping with a lot of, both from himself and from others, is anger. So transmuting other feelings into the relative safety of anger is a coping mechanism. Too bad it hurts so damn much though!

Oh my god. This shot. THIS SHOT. This is one of my favorite shots in the entire show.

Film buffs might recognize the reference to “Citizen Kane”, one of the best classic movies most people have never seen. (Seriously, go watch it. It’s one of the most captivating movies I’ve ever watched.) At the end of the movie, there’s a legendary shot of the titular Charles Foster Kane walking between two mirrors; and like in the above shot with Zachariah, we see an infinity of Kanes reflected — a long line of reflections that look like the real man, but aren’t.

It’s a metaphor for the film’s story, in which a reporter tries to unravel the mystery of Charlie Kane’s dying word (“Rosebud”) by sussing out who the “real” Charlie Kane was. Was he a publishing tycoon drunk on his own success? Was he a hero forced to give up his ideals for the American dream? Was he a failed politician whose dreams were too large for reality? Was he an awful husband who never learned how to love properly? Was he a success story? Was he a failure? A monster? A hero? Who is Charles Foster Kane?

The reporter fails at his task, by the way, because he just can’t get past all the mirror reflections of Kane back to the real man who projected them. Or maybe he fails because Kane, like all of us, is a man of infinite versions, infinite perspectives. We know at the start of the movie exactly what we know at the end: Charles Foster Kane was the richest man in the world, and also the loneliest; who did some great things and some not so great things in his life – as do we all. The reporter sums up Kane’s life thusly:

What Kripke (the writer and director of “Lucifer Rising”) does here is draw a parallel between Kane and Zachariah, one that puts Zachariah’s character in a whole new light.

Consider the conversation Dean is having with Zachariah right now – this is when the angel reveals that he and the rest of the top brass had wanted the Seals to fall, that they wanted to jumpstart Armageddon. Dean sees Zachariah as a monster, one who doesn’t care how many humans he has to sacrifice to get his paradise.

But that’s just one reflection in the infinite mirror, isn’t it? Because lots of people saw Charlie Kane as a monster too – especially once he’d begun to sacrifice his ideals for his political cause.

Charles Kane was just a man, and Zachariah is just an angel; neither of them monsters – or, at least, neither of them only monsters. Charles Kane had his positives, and Zachariah has his too. We just don’t get to see many of them, because our POV is that of the Winchesters. How do the other angels see him (besides Cas, who is rebellious)? How do the religiously faithful see him? We’ll never know, though of course, if you think about it, to his fellow angels and those hungering for Judgment Day, Zachariah must have seemed a hero – maybe even a savior.

Zachariah is the Charles Foster Kane of Heaven: the delusional political power; the tycoon who built false paradise; the fallen idealist; the monster, the hero. He is an infinity of Zachariahs trapped between two mirrors, neither of which revealing the true angel underneath.  And like Dean, we might fall into the trap of thinking we know him; we might think that if only we can figure out what “apocalypse” meant to him, then that will tell us everything we ever needed to know. But would it? Or would it only show us one more reflection?

So who exactly was Zachariah then?

Well, I suppose Zachariah was an angel who got everything he wanted and then lost it. “Apocalypse” was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost. And anyway, it doesn’t explain anything. No one word can explain an angel’s life. “Apocalypse” is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle – a missing piece.

I’ve been side-eyeing responding to this for a couple days now, and I know this is very old meta, but since we’re due to see Zachariah on screen again in a few weeks after a very long time absent, and this is actually going around again, I’d like to offer a different interpretation for consideration.

Zachariah wasn’t the Charles Foster Kane of Heaven. He wasn’t the power directing events behind the scenes. He was a middle-management functionary, and not a particularly successful one, at that. The scene in 4.22 with the mirrors makes him appear that way, as one potential facet of interpretation, but looking at the whole picture, this revealed his reality and the duplicity behind his actions in s4.

Comparing the shot to the one from Citizen Kane, we can clearly see and easily distinguish the “real” Zachariah sitting there as he pulls back the metaphorical curtain and reveals the misdirect that was all of s4, but the Kane shot requires you to do a double-take. Which one is the man and which the reflection?

That shot immediately follows Kane’s personal meltdown after his love left him. He has just had a tantrum and torn Susan’s room apart, which only stopped when he picked up the snow globe from the first time he’d met her. The snow globe, and the memory of happiness and the idealized life he’d pinned to Susan, broke HIM, snapped him out of his frenzy. It’s the snow globe he drops and shatters on his deathbed in the opening scene of the film. But the mirror scene shows HIM fragmented apart as his entire staff watches on in horror as their boss breaks.

Aside to explain a few things about Citizen Kane here: While the characters in the film never get the full picture of the man, never understand the significance of the snow globe that drops from Kane’s hand when he dies or the meaning of “Rosebud,” we the audience do. The snow globe shatters, fragmenting the lost love of his life. Rosebud was a memento of his lost idealized childhood that he could never recapture.

Certainly the film itself as a whole doesn’t reveal every possible detail of the man’s life, but the audience has a much fuller picture of the man and his motivations and his internal struggles and regrets than any single character in the movie. Which brings me to who Zachariah actually was, because I don’t think it was as deep as the original commentary suggests. The ongoing Citizen Kane imagery around Zachariah serves to reveal the truth in a shattering fashion in 5.18.

Aside to explain a few other things about Citizen Kane… Kane was based on William Randolph Hearst, famous for declaring, in 1897 after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” The public doubted the reports that the Spanish would attack a US warship unprovoked, but Hearst knew the power of visual evidence. He used his newspapers to provoke the American public into outrage that escalated tensions with Spain and literally drove us into the Spanish American War. He DID have power, manipulating events behind the scenes, colluding with government officials in a mutually beneficial (Hearst sold papers and made money, the government got their war and Westward Expansion). All over a complete falsehood, because… The Spanish had nothing to do with the sinking of the Maine in the first place. The entire tragedy was manufactured for fun and profit.

Because that’s the same sort of game Zachariah had been running up to that point. He was selling a false narrative for fun and profit. But it wasn’t his narrative. He was just following orders, as much as Cas believed he was following orders, or Uriel, or Anna, or any of the rest of the angels were. They were all just playing their roles.

It was actually the mostly-unseen machinations of Michael (and probably Raphael) directing the entire drama. Which becomes very clear in 5.18 in the opening scene where Zachariah is drinking at a bar and complaining with another patron about how they were fired from their jobs.

Moments later, the earth shakes, there’s a loud noise, the glass ceiling shatters and poor Stuart is fried to a crisp when Zachariah’s “boss” shows up. He expects to be smited for failing in his duties, but is mercifully given one last chance to prove his worth. He pulls a chunk of glass out of his drink, finishes his whiskey, and goes back to work.

(the glass light fixture shattering like Kane’s snowglobe at the moment of “death,” or at the moment he expected to die)

(his broken glass of whiskey, again like the snowglobe, offering a contrast between the real “unknowable” force puppeting Zachariah and Zachariah himself)

(he’s unbothered entirely by this fragmentation, because he’s just not that “deep.” He takes his orders, is happy to have a job again, and moves on like nothing has shattered at all. Because he was nothing more than the mouthpiece for the true force behind all of this. In terms of Hearst, Zachariah is the guy down in Havana who’d reported back that there was no unrest, no reason to stick around because there was nothing to report on, and Michael was Hearst telling him no, stay, here’s how you agitate to keep the war we are fabricating on track.)

The truth of that comes by the end of the episode, when Dean confronts Zachariah with the absolute truth of his own position and importance:

Zachariah was the furnisher of images, not the Grand Storyteller. His first episode (4.17) lays out his role, and how he fulfills it. He manipulates Dean’s experience at Sandover, furnishing an entirely false narrative as “proof” that Dean would always choose hunting if given the opportunity, even in a life of relative comfort and ease.

He does the same with Chuck at the end of 4.18, the implication being that Zachariah implanted the “vision” Chuck received about the future and then threatened him to secure his compliance with the plan. Again, Zachariah’s furnishing the pictures and thinking that Chuck is going to faithfully report on them as ordered.

He lays down the cards in 4.22, because he believed that the plan was already on track and unstoppable at that point. He believed that war was inevitable, and that Sam and Dean both would just… give up and follow orders at that point, which he proved in 5.01:

He showed his hand, and played himself. And he still has no idea how badly he’s already lost. Not only do his actions backfire at every turn (even at the end of 5.01, where he expects the revelation that Dean is in fact the Michael Sword to break Dean into saying yes), his attempts to continue his propaganda machine only cause Team Free Will to dig their heels in deeper and deeper, to the point they tear up the pages and cancel the war entirely.

His vision of the future in 5.04 has much the same effect on Dean, and his efforts to trap Sam and Dean in heaven in 5.16 only further our understanding there. He’s silenced and overruled by a gardener. Not a powerful ruler or an influential politician, but the figure in Heaven who tends to the central garden from which the rest of Heaven springs.

Zachariah may have thought he was Kane, or aspired to be Kane, or at least seen as Kane, but all along he was nothing more than an expendable flunky. And looking at all the facets we have of the real Zachariah gives us the truth of his picture and his place in the pecking order of Heaven.

#god he was a self-important twatwaffle 

#supreme middle manager of the lord >.> 

Dean & Cas

Ouroboros

So, I just found out that 14x14 (which was written by Steve Yockey) is called “Ouroboros” and it has a interesting meaning: “It’s an ancient symbol frequently used in alchemical illustrations to symbolize the circular nature of the alchemist’s opus. Often represents self-reflexitivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly recreating itself thus illustrating the Nietzschean concept of eternal recurrence.” [x] or “ The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness.” [x] 

In an episode where Rowena returns to help the Winchesters, it has an ominous presence (and title!) that is going to be interesting to watch when it airs. 

Very interesting. I wonder if we’re going to be looking at a “history repeats itself” sort of scenario.

Yeah, it has that look and seeing all the callbacks this season had put on, the possibility has increasing extensively 🤔🤔

It is SPN though and Yockey is the writer for this one I believe, so you can bet they’re going to put their own little spin on the idea. Like history repeating itself but also by history repeating itself, it creates a new circle of life, a new path to take our characters on.

Oh yes, it’s Yockey’s. I’m really interested of how he’ll handle the theme of repeating actions and how will affect this to the characters and plots 🤔

reblogging to take note – ouroboros is a huge hermetic symbol and one of my specialties so I shall enjoy gorging on this in the next day or two, but my net went out at like 8 PM so here I am, about to go to bed.

Okay if this turns out to be the title of the ep…holy crap.

Did those who are a fan of the tv series 12 Monkeys and spn just have all their hair stand on end or is it just me? No spoilers on the end-game reveal twists on 12 Monkeys here. I’m just waving my arms around wildly and throwing some stuff on the table for possible motifs SPN might pick up on, although I don’t mean that it will be heavy or direct plot correlations. Just…fun with parallels. 

Yes, what they said, about what the ouroboros symbol means. Intriguing in itself, but spn also is a pop culture genre text that enjoys nodding to other pop culture genre texts. It’s having its MCU season right now with echoes to Infinity War–the countless possible outcomes, the finger snap, the arrogant merciless villain who wants to remake the universe.

12 Monkeys heavily used the Ouroborous as key imagery and as a plot device. It is premised on countless possible outcomes (involving time travel) and is all about the consequences of saving the ones you love or lost and found family and the struggle between do you save the one or save the many and a small rag-tag band of heroes working out of an abandoned industrial space preventing an apocalypse.

It happens a main cast member from 12 Monkeys guest starred in Advanced Thanatology which was written by Yockey, where he introduced the concept of countless possible outcomes into SPN, and had a visual easter egg for 12 Monkeys in it. (More than one regular or recurring 12 Monkeys cast member has appeared on SPN btw.)

12 Monkeys (which was based on the movie but went its own directions) aired on syfy channel and has a neat, tightly plotted, fast-paced, 4-season canon, with short seasons.  The whole thing is still streaming on the syfy channel website.

If I see red leaves on SPN any time soon imma hit the ceiling.

I’ll just leave off here with part of the poem/puzzle/prophecy that was often repeated on 12 Monkeys:

Oooh alll great stuff - in addition, SPN is in the very privileged position (from a writers’ point of view it’s just catnip gold) of having such a long tail now that it can turn around and deconstruct itself, i.e. fold back on its own tail, like an ouroboros.

And it has been doing just that, ever since Amara “unfridged” Mary Winchester at the end of S11. Because Mary’s fridging was the orign point of the narrative. 

Take me back to the start…

Examples of this ouroboros-like structure are:

1. The many, many mirrors for the ghost of John Winchester in S12 haunting the narrative (“monsters of the week” that season frequently explored, in refracted mirror form, the residues of psychic trauma that particular ghost has left on the Winchesters).

Lots on this in my S12 meta masterpost below, as well as on the new circular narrative structure of the Dabb era:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/160914002489/drsilverfishs-s12-retrospective-meta 

2. The return of the Michael vs Lucifer storyline - using refraction to disinter the original narrative and hold it up to the light differently, via the device of an AU universe version of the conflict, now bleeding into this one.

3. Jack the Nephilim, who is used as a mirror to refract elements of all three main characters’ past struggles e.g. Castiel’s struggle re losing his powers, Sam’s belief that he could harness dark magic, i.e. the demon blood addiction, for a positive purpose, which the soul-destroying magic Jack now posesses thanks to Lily Sunder is clearly going to test all over again. 

Jack also gives the narrative the opportunity to explore the impact of Sam and Dean’s childhoods on their choices as surrogate parents. Dean was initially hostile, resentful, punishing and angry - yes, understandably because of his grief over Cas - but also, unconsciously, perhaps because he had to parent Sam when he was himself a kid, he’s initially claustrophobic about the responsibility of parenting again. Additionally, we know John was a hard-ass to his kids and so we can see, in his intitial treatement of Jack, that Dean has internalised some of that (which he eventually manages to overcome, partly thanks to Jack - see their emotional bonding fishing trip just before Jack’s death). 

So, in addition to all the previous posters spec, I’d expect some meta-narrative (commentary on the SPN narrative itself) re circular narrative in Yockey’s upcoming ep.

It’s really interesting to me, because not only am I obsessed with the spiral narrative of the series, but the ouroborous itself was something we were discussing back in s10 when Metatron made the “river ends at its source” comment, and after 10.23 when we were speculating on the darkness.

So the meta-narrative has already begun, just from the title. :D

It’s also ironic that we’re talking about ouroborouses when we’ve literally just ended an episode on a mirror of this:

where they’ve given Michael the ole Doc Benton. Of course his book had one on the cover because he dealt in alchemy and eternal life.

The other one that springs instantly to mind is Charlie’s armour in 8x11:

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/118862041893/justanotheridijiton-3x15-10x21-oh-wait

Claire had one on her hunting wall back in 11.12, too:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/138678487985/i-find-claires-hunting-wall-very-interesting

They are really drilling it into us to read subtext and parallels this season. This is the second episode so far, where the characters have, not only pointed out the parallels between their situations and the case of the week, but assigned themselves an avatar to represent them in the case. In 14x04 it was the aptly named Dirk and Sam, and in 14x06, Sam not so subtly draws a comparison between Charlie and the musca, to which Charlie replies:

‘’Ok I get it, I am just like the bug and I shouldn’t go off on my own, but your nifty metaphor has holes’’.

She then goes on to highlight the differences between their situations, further explaining how the show uses parallels. They are not perfect mirrors of our characters, more like distorted reflections. 

Sam’s concedes: 

‘‘Ok I know I know..how about this?’‘

and straight up explains the moral of the case of the week, and how it applies to what Charlie is going through. Charlie wanted to give up and isolate herself because she lost the woman she loved, but like Sam said the only way through is helping people, like the man they just saved. 

‘‘and that’s worth it. Even through all the tears and death, it’s worth it’‘.

Just in case Charlie and Sam’s words weren’t anvil heavy enough, this whole conversation is intercut with clips of the musca hive, mourning their fallen family member. Which brings us to the end of the conversation with Charlie

‘‘just to be super clear, I am not like the fly monster…but I’ll think about staying.’‘

Once again reiterating how parallels are not exact copies. Charlie is not going to end up like the fly monster, she’s aware enough to pick up on the similarities between them, but she has also learned her lesson from the case and the MOTW. This is exactly the formula Sam and Dean’s (and Cas’) hunts and subsequent character development undergo in MOTW episodes for the past 13 seasons, only now it seems like the show actively wants us to pay attention to subtext, parallels and other tools they use to tell the story.

It’s been a running theme in the Dabb era, that the subtext all seems to eventually begin creeping to text, and I’m very intrigued and delighted by where this narrative is going. As much as I loved the subtlety, and at times ambiguity, of seasons past, this new approach of still making use of parallels and subtext to tell the story but also acknowledging this is what they’re doing, is refreshing. I’m here for everything season 14 is giving us so far, between fascinating character explorations, emotional growth and Dean turning a cock away from himself in Dick’s diner, I’m really excited about what’s still to come.

Ho ho ho 13x17 subtext galore

Sooo Davy Perez joins Nancy Won in team “(Compulsory) Heterosexuality Is The Monster” and provides a nice metaphor where Dean escapes the clutches of compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity because some things are exclusively nice in fantasy (porn) form but in reality not so much. (Notice how, in the previous episode, Daphne also was a fantasy - back then a fairly innocent, mostly romantic childhood fantasy, now this episode metaphorically deals with a more… adult fantasy of a classic porn trope. This episode imo offers additional insight for interpreting the Dean/Daphne dynamic in 13x16, in terms of heterosexual relationships/sex being only good in theory/in fantasy form at this point of Dean’s life.)

(Just in case you need it, to brush your memories - Nancy Won wrote The Chitters that was about monsters possessing men and women and making them breed, in a not-so-subtle metaphor for heteronormativity - and homophobia, as the gay couple plot subtly provides - being monstrous.)

Dean frees himself from being… involved in the tentacle monster breeding ritual (slightly out of topic, we’ll see if Dean escaping possession is foreshadowing for him escaping it again or failing to do it the next time - heck, there are a few options for what this episode might foreshadow, although I am not a fan of some ideas I can gather - either way, it is obvious at this point that Dean arc this season is leading straight to angel possession or at least the possibility/threat/idea of it. It is also likely that he’ll be separated from his own lover by a interdimensional rift if “they shut the rift before he could make it through” is foreshadowing for lovers being separated like that again) because tentacle rape is only nice and good in hentai and whatever but in real life it’s not exactly his first choice. Out of metaphor, heterosexual scenarios are nice and good in his porn consumptions, but in interpersonal relationships, at this point, not so much.

On a more extradiegetic level, Dean frees himself from the shackles of compulsory heterosexuality ¯\_ツ_/¯

(Notice also how Dean puts the bisexual flag color shirt - that he wasn’t even wearing! he just conjures bisexual colored things out of his ass, I suppose, er, I mean, he probably has bisexual colored things in his car at all times… it’s not really any better, actually, is it - on Sandy, and she loses the shirt when she prepares the ritual to reunite with her lover.)

(Also notice how the first victim of her feeding is the guy who went outside to impress the waitress he had a crush on - subtextually, heterosexuality kills him. Sorry dude.)

(I am not sure if we are supposed to interpret the entrance of the Men of Letters Rhode Island mini-bunker as a metaphor for a vagina - it’s where the heteronormativity monster is and where the heterosexual breeding is supposed to take place, after all -. I mean, the interdimensional rift as been a metaphor for a vagina/birth canal before… is that trapdoor supposed to be read as…?)

This is a gorgeous analysis and it made me think of the other birth canal we’ve gotten this season, which was in 13x06 when Dean crawls into a ghoul-made tunnel. He hesitates a bit, but once he’s crawling through it we finish with him here -->

I think this is true and I’m in no way disputing this reading, but I’d just like to add the angle that you could also view his death as being caused by love, right? He wanted to protect the girl he was in love with so he went out to see if there was anything he could do. Now, if this is foreshadowing for anything to do with all the love thrown at us in the narrative text since 13x12, well, it makes me hopeful. Because I do believe it’s time for Dean to fess up to his feelings for Cas. And I have a suspicion this declaration will come - if the two are to be separated by Dean saying yes to Michael - right before this happens.

Which this moment is a possible plant of. 

I’m only suspecting this because the character progression is being pushed forward in such a remarkably evenly paced way and I can’t see them slowing down now. I know they have a history of slowing down now, but the thresholds this season are completely different to any they’ve put the characters on before. So I’m hopeful that they won’t see any fun in separating Cas and Dean on the same basis that’s always informed their separation before: miscommunication.

Perhaps this time what makes it necessary to separate them is, instead, honesty at last.

There’s also this:

She sucks out his heart.

And what I find intriguing with how they use the tentacle-as-penis visual metaphor (which is almost hit-you-over-the-head in the scene with the rift opening in the ceiling and long slithering tentacles coming through it) is how these phallic symbols are what attack Dean, right?

Is he afraid of the penis? Should he avoid the penis? Is the penis a threat to him? No. Because in the visual narrative the tentacles are tentacles, right? That’s the threat. In the subtext, the tentacle-as-penis metaphor serves to tell us why Dean keeps resisting what’s now actually physically attacking him to make him fucking own up to the truth of how much he really does adore the penis, because in the subtext of the visual narrative we get the above image: tentacle-as-penis attacking the HEART.

It’s all about the love!

(and the fear of rejection) (and Good Things Don’t Last) (look at what happened to innocent in-love guy moments after he’d finally gotten up the courage to ask the girl of his dreams out!) (heart sucked out of his chest!) (this is Dean’s fear manifested)

Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there because you inspired me!

Thanks for the great read!

Again , a reminder that when demons/Angels call CAS pretty/sexy , they don’t refer to his vessel, they refer to his true from because CAS is a hot angel . Never forget that Demons and Angels can see his true visage.

Whilst Lucifer is ugly and scary af

True .