InsaneJournal

Current mood:	sympathetic
Current music:	"Right Kind Of Wrong" -- Leann Rimes
Entry tags:	fandom: supernatural, my deer is very teal, rpg, rpg: parabolical

SPN 4.11, now that I've watched it
Sweet Jesus Christmas.

THE IMPALA TALKS HAVE GOT TO STOP. THEY ARE KILLING ME.

All right, no they don't have to stop because I have a need to know, a need to see Dean's decline and then him rise again (because he will, goddammit! HE IS DEAN WINCHESTER), but Dean is ripping my damned heart out. The constant driven need to save people to the point of do or die determination, the "everyday" comment about the smelling blood/dead things/rotten things, the REFUSING FOOD, the admitting he liked torturing others because it made his pain stop, and THE HOLE HE CAN'T FILL. HEARTBREAKING. He is so messed up, in ways that even typical messed up people will never be, and god I want it to be made better RIGHT NOW. AND IT WON'T BE.

And Saaaam. Those confused puppy looks of I HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO HELP MY BROTHER really make me want to hug him, or pet him. Either one. At least they are talking, though, even if this episode is what, a month later than the first talk? (Sam said month in the beginning, I think? Or did he mean a month since Dean was brought back?). I thought he rolled his eyes at Dean at a really bad moment to do it, and got frothy, but then I watched it twice more and I think it was just a not-quite-perfect 'I don't know what to do, let me look away and look back' actor body language thing on Jared's part. And ouch, the negativity of 'don't get a free pass' earlier, which is very Sam, but very absolute and came back to bit him in the ass when Dean spoke at the end.

Yes. So, the other 95% of the episode. I was disappointed the ghost was a real girl, because it went from spooky and win to DISGUSTING AND UGH AND SAD. Seriously, the girl ripping into the rat in front of the boy was repulsive. Give me ten beheaded bystanders over THAT crap, thank you very much. I really wanted an old fashioned hunt episode and it was shaping up to be that and then boo. I like twists, but I was disappointed this episode had to be one of them, even though I understand they needed the twist to further Dean's arc and given Sam more of the 'talking' he wanted.

There were a lot of good witty retorts in this episode - poor dead Ted got some good lines early in with the Deliverance remarks AND THE FONZIE THING, HAHAHA. Dean is totally the Fonz, omg. I did lulz at Dean and his Nell reference, because I don't see him sitting through that movie. I did, it was an excellent movie, but he must have been half drunk, on a dare from Sam to watch it or seriously had no porn at 4 a.m. and nothing else to do.

However, failing marks to Kripke for not giving us a few minutes of Sam-centric stuff after getting the Dean-centric Impala talk stuff. I know, I know, they've got a big arc for Sam in this second half of the season, they still need to keep dealing with Dean's struggles post-Hell, but they need to lead into the thing for Sam, otherwise it's going to look half-assed and slapped on when it comes out of nowhere.



As I've done for a bit now, I also analyze Dean's journey post-Hell for my purposes with John, after I'm done with my primary tearing of hair and rending of clothes over poor, poor Dean and how much this is horrid for him.

With the one month rule of NO SPOILERS PLZ, I (nor Dani with Dean) cannot have John bust out with a "I LIKED IT" unsupported, but I think that how I've played John all along, the natural assumptions of Hell, how the pieces of peripheral conflict have fit in (like being possessed by the Ethros) gives me room to allude to it in the scene as a natural progression and have it be canon now, rather than just something I assumed. But I may hold back on that for now, I don't know. This does need to be a progression, and Dani and I can do a narrative general handwave over 'and then they discussed even more' if we later want to have them tell others after the month is up for each revelation and just say they DID talk about it in that scene. I'm not about to edge close to the rule line, as that would be a bad example to everyone else, so we'll likely go with the latter.

I am really pleased that Dean is being shown as so driven, especially to do something GOOD while still feeling it's never enough, as I think that perfectly backed up what John has been doing (and especially his point about things worth fighting for, as they have so much worth fighting for, rather than just the general greater good). John keeps trying so hard to be a good dad, gets frustrated when it's not right and tries to guess at what they 'need' again, rather than at what they want, he was willingly possessed because he was trying to save Sam and save whoever else might have been in line to be the host body, and all these tiny actions that he does that you don't think a lot of until they connect to the bigger picture (and John really writes himself, so I take no credit for that). It still makes me sad in the face when people think John's not sane because then I get all paranoid he's OOC, but he's really not sane when you traditionally define it. He has a LOT of healing to do and he's not going to be magically better just because some things in life are good.

That's one of the hardest struggles, having a cast of characters around your broken character who, when times are not danger-drama-angst, are goofing off and having fun and knowing your character is struggling some days to just FAKE being the happy guy they're all expecting. John started out happy there - he was back from the dead, he had his sons, he got his wife back, and life was good - until the memories of Hell showed up and started explaining the ways he felt and couldn't pinpoint. Now, with a LARGE portion of those memories back, John's not happy - there are things that MAKE him happy, things he can enjoy, like teasing his sons or making love to his wife, so he has happy MOMENTS, but he's still not, in the end, a happy guy right now because he's remembering nearly a HUNDRED YEARS of Hell. John, however, is much more of a mums-the-word guy than Dean, so his continued refusal to talk about it with anyone (save, really, Mary, and even then he was shielding her from the worst of it until very recently) unless he's pushed to it - it really fits that, I think.

The hole that can't be filled is great, developmentwise, as is really puts Supernatural versus Parabolical into stark light. In SPN, the boys just have each other and while that can be enough in most ways, right now it's obviously not yet. At Para, John and Dean have their whole family unit in having Sam and Mary there and they keep ADDING to it by Bobby and Jo (and peripherally, Cox) being there, Sam being with Heather (so Harry being there) and Ben being there and Sam being BFF with Faith and Dean BFF with Claire. So I'd argue that, even though that hole exists for them in Para, they have SO MUCH MORE that, over time, that huge wound of all that was done in Hell can start to heal. They do not have to be broken forever, even if it takes months and months of RP time to see them fall and rise again.

So, A FREAKING PLUS to Dani for being true to Dean and doing what she's doing in game now, as it was perfectly reflected in this episode with Dean.

And this whole thing makes me feel REALLY BAD ABOUT MY PLANNED ALASTAIR PLOTS. He's doing stuff that is just going to make this worse for Dean before it can get better. AGH.

GOD, GUYS, WHY DO I TALK SO MUCH? THIS IS RIDICULOUS.