Because bunking in with two GROWN-ASS MEN–WHO INCIDENTALLY ARE OLDER THAN YOU– even though you understand they’re your sons, seems a leeeeeeetle on the weird side, you ask me…
Well, I suppose. But if your funds are limited, paying for another room when, actually, it makes you more comfortable to know where everyone is at all times so you don’t panic, doesn’t make much sense.
I think it does, though, point out the implications of a hunting lifestyle, that because of these practicalities it is going to promote very enmeshed relationships. When weighing the pros and cons of your resources and risks, lots of boundaries get busted in the service of maintaining the family’s mission and keeping everyone safe.
I would have given good money to see that fight over the rollaway, though.
For @samprincesschester, who asked for Sam, Dean, Gadreel, and “closure” for this prompt post. I’m sorry, I’m sure you wanted Sam & Dean closure for Gadreel, but that’s something that eludes me, so I’m afraid all I’ve got is Gadreel and making things worse.
Heaven’s prison had been narrow, a strait, unendurable corridor of time, stripped of the loops and folds and points his Father had created His angels to travel. That had been punishment indeed. Gadreel misses his brief guardianship of the wonders of Eden, he misses his even briefer return to Earth, despite his erroneous choices, and he misses the moment of certainty, sacrifice, kinship that ended it all. But this Empty with its featureless expanse is at least no prison. It is unconfined. It is not terrible. Gadreel is content.
He nods gravely to the shades of his brothers and sisters when he encounters them, but they don’t speak. It’s not that they shun him. He’s achieved that redemption. It’s just that there’s nothing to say. Even the arrival of two human souls excites no remark. The Empty is knowledge without contemplation. Everyone knows why Sam and Dean Winchester are here. It was a reasonable step. They need to be outside the reach of purpose, anyone’s purposes. The Empty is purposeless.
That decision must have been handed down from Death’s court. God would have gone with something personal and dramatic, reward, punishment, both.
But while God is free to be arbitrary in his partiality and Death in his justice, Gadreel is bound. Not by a prison, now, but by an obligation. He goes to find Sam and Dean.
“You!” says Dean. Sam is silent.
“I owe you a debt,” says Gadreel. He had betrayed Dean, with whom he had a bargain. Perhaps he had also betrayed Sam, even while he healed him.
“What do you want?” says Dean. He sounds angry, unfriendly. His emotions were always gaudy and easy to manipulate. The Empty hasn’t yet bled him grey.
Sam just watches.
“I want you to remember me kindly,” says Gadreel, because it’s the truth. Sam and Dean’s memories don’t mean as much as those of his brothers and sisters, but they still matter for his honor.
Sam stirs.
“You helped us,” he says, “I’m, uh, to be perfectly honest I’d rather not think about the whole thing at all. But I know you helped us. You don’t have to, like, apologize. Really. I’ve done stuff. I’m not out for revenge or anything.”
“I didn’t think you were,” says Gadreel.
“Why don’t you shove off, then?” says Dean. “No hard feelings, no offense, whatever, but you heard Sam. You’re not someone we want around here.”
“I apologize,” says Gadreel, though Sam had asked him not to. But Dean has a claim as well. “I’ll withdraw.”
And he does, to a careful distance. That encounter was less than satisfactory. But it’s hard to say what more he could have done. After all, he can’t sacrifice his life again. He doesn’t have the option of closure.
But he can still manipulate mortal memory.
The Empty has none of the warm pockets of heaven, or the cruel concentrations of hell. Sam and Dean’s memories stretch all around them on a level plain, none more important than another, without the inflections of landscape. But there are some that they would prefer not to have. And those are also things Gadreel would as soon see expunged from the record.
It will be a kindness — Sam has said he prefers not to remember.
Gadreel sets to his work of unmaking. He had charge of a garden, once. He still remembers how to weed.
11×12 “Don’t You Forget about Me” The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Not going to lie, as beautiful as these shots were. There was something very unsettling about them too – and that even though it was in birght daylight, no shadows, no creepy corners. Maybe it’s the way the lights pave a clear path, sheer endlessly, guiding the way. In the other shots of Sam and Dean together we had the big bright EXIT looming in the background every time. It’s missing here and yet I personally cannot shake the feeling this is a little like this moment from 11×07 “Plush” with Sam in the hospital. Dean, walking down this corridor, it just brings me back to the moth. Nocturnal creature always striving for the light even though it may mean death… So yeah, somehow this twistedly this feeds to the thoughts of Dean not making it out alive, just to the light at the end of the tunnel…
I pretty much knew I wanted this screen cap and that the theme color would be red. I mean, how could it not be? The RED mark and all.
I started off with the screen cap:
Played around with photoshop until I had the base I wanted:
And then red… red… how to use red:
Interesting, but where exactly am I focusing the threadwork. Alright, trying the opposite:
Innnnteresting. Not quite right though. Let’s try making the colors a little cooler.
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!
Wow, yeah, that was it.
Look. I mean seriously, look at this part:
Look at all that depth of color! And incredibly intimidating. Unlike the Contemplation photo where the ideas preceded the image, the image preceded the ideas. How the heck was I going to do this?
I did some trials. I wanted to get that sense of depth, so I laid down a layer of small, random-y cross stitches.
and then a layer of thinly placed straight stitches over it.
Okay, okay. So far so good, maybe I can do this. Here we go.
Working on the plaid while I could think some more about what colors I wanted in the lighter spaces.
Tackle the face. Teeny tiny stitches.
I used the blue thread as a guide to guide the straight stitches.
Okay, take a deep breath. Time do do the over layer. BTW: it cracks me up that the primary red I used was this color:
This is an earlier version. You can get now why I ripped it out and worked on the face instead of proceeding. Needed some time to think about it. The straight stitches were just covering up all that glorious cross-stitched color.
Plus, something was bothering me. The literal translation of the color was working well. But something was lacking. The color was gorgeous but the picture wasn’t SAYING anything. So I bugged meesasometimes and basically just vomited my concerns all over her. You know how a beta can sometimes just say something and it sparks an explosion of thought? That happened. She said that she could see how the plaid would need straight stitches, but the rest of it wouldn’t. AHA! I had been so focused on the image and not the idea that I’d pinned myself into a corner.
I knew I wanted to give the impression of being stretched and pulled to the point of snapping. You ever see ferrofluid and it’s effect under a magnetic pull?
THAT’s what I wanted. That lead to a trial in photoshop.
I took the plunge. Here we go:
I liked what was happening, but it needed a greater degree of contrast of color to give sense of depth and more randomness. After much dint of adding lighter colors underneath and adding and clipping out too many dark ones on top, this is the final version.
That… went surprisingly well. Dang.
It was the last piece I tackled. I saved it for last because of how intimidating it felt. I figured I’d need the skill development before I got to this one.
Here it is getting ready for photographing.
I got some really good advice from bflyw about camera settings and setup for photographing something that’s so dark. Apparently your automatic settings assume that nothing could possibly be that dark, so it ends up overexposing the image. I played with the manual settings to underexpose the image as she suggested and got more strategic about reflecting light onto the surface of the work.
Chickcheney wrote a lovely series of vignettes that do a wonderful job of capturing the emotions I was trying to portray. Where I built on a base of images directly taken from the show and added thread to evoke a mix of tension, horror, helplessness, sadness, and longing, she did something very parallel to that with words. She took the events toward the end of season 9 and added to the narrative so that it emphasized that complex interplay of emotions. The story she tells is very evocative. Go read it.
Oh, man, this one gave me fits. I’m still not fully satisfied with it.
I have a tendency to fall into a “Grand Plans” mindset where I’ve got all kinds of ideas that sound good on an intellectual level, but in reality just end up muddying things.
I knew I wanted to evoke energy, a sense of clashing and binding that contrasts sharply with the separate and contemplative nature of the original screen cap.
I did the usual bumbling about in photoshop. Initially, I was considering a green theme, given that I had blue, gold, and red themes already.
But, nothing “popped.”
I thought maybe black/white and then introducing color to specific parts to highlight them. I thought it might evoke being drained of color and vitality and the only energy and life being the connection between.
I dunno. Green against the black and white didn’t accomplish that, however.
At the same time I was casting about for inspiration for what exactly I’d be adding to the pic. I looked at nebulae, fire, and angel wings and finally ran into this pic:
So much energy in the line work. A couple things struck me about the use of color, too. One was the use of gradation of warm colors. I’ve been wanting to do something with halation for a while. See how the gradients of color set next to each other make them seem to glow?
There’s a reason why and it all has to do with how our brains process color and contrasts. See where the colors butt up against each other? Look for a faint brightness along the edge in the lighter color and a faint darkness along the edge in the darker color. That doesn’t really exist. In reality, each bar is a solid color. Our brain pumps up the volume on contrasts because edges are so important in being able to see how this thing we’re looking at is a whole object, set aside and different from the stuff around it.
So, I hoped that using a gradient of color like this would give it some energy.
Which I thought was all kinds of appropriate for Sam and Dean’s relationship. When combined, cancel each other out, but when placed next to each other create strongest contrasts. That really fit with the theme of Ties that Bind. Bound together, with both the negative and positive connotations of that connection.
I ran some tests.
I struggled to get a focal point. I was noodling around on the internet, looking up meiosis and mitosis on the inspirational thought of growth and separation. I ran into Fluorescence Microscopy. OOOF!
I liked the sense of this cocoon around the action.
Here’s my first attempt at it.
meh. I didn’t much like the rays, either. There’s just too much going on. I was hoping to evoke the complexity of clashing and binding by where the rays come together in the middle, but it’s just a mess. No focal point. Bleh! Grand-Plan-itis.
I ended up cutting away the brown and replacing it with couching – so texture but not enough to draw the eye away from the middle.
Took out the lighter rays close to the guys. I loved them, but it drew the eye away from the middle. Replaced the middle with a more even "explosive” set of rays in the lighter range of colors.
So, this is the end product. It’s an improvement, buuuuut. Still lacking something. I may cut away the brown couching and replace it with a web of straight dark threads, browns at the bottom grading up to black on top to give it depth. Maybe it’ll highlight the sense cocooning and claustrophobia. We’ll see.
Btw: This is what happens every time I try to take pics. Lil Ms. Diva Kitty herself.
This is something that I’ve wanted to talk about for a while, and I think I’m finally in a place where I can express it specifically.
I came to Supernatural in late Season 1 because it was a story about two brothers who saw family and each other through the lens of their father’s values. John defined the family and the roles that were served in it. In the first few seasons we saw two brothers discovering that they weren’t quite what they had thought, that there was more to them that they could discover about each other once they were out from under John’s authority. They were starting to reconnect. It gave me hope in the belief that we can heal each other. That we can remain true to who we are, be valued for it; that we don’t have to sacrifice large parts of ourselves in order to be accepted and loved.
Whether or not you agree that Dean’s behavior has been abusive, at some point in the last season his behavior tipped over a very scary line. While I can sympathize with his heat of the moment decision to more or less violate Sam’s DNR wishes, I have a much harder time with the gas lighting, ongoing violation of Sam’s body and memory, assumption of control over Sam’s will by not allowing him to decide, and only looking for a way to overpower Gadreel’s control when DEAN decided it that what he wanted out of the situation wasn’t enough to justify the escalating risk. That’s just far too much of a pattern of treating Sam like an object and less like a person.
And that assumption that you are something that belongs to me, that it is okay to ask you to sacrifice your autonomy to preserve this relationship is one of the primary beliefs that lay the foundation for abuse. Ironically, it’s also the belief that underlies what John asked Dean to do, to sacrifice essential parts of who he was in order to preserve the family. It’s how John defined family for Dean and why Dean defines family the way he does. It is both why Sam and Dean have survived this long and why they are as broken as they are. So many images of double-edged swords in this season. I can only hope this is the reason why we’re seeing them.
But at this point, two things have happened that discourage me. In the past couple seasons some of the lessons have been quite the opposite of what we were being shown early on.
Sam experienced the one thing that so many of us who have been physically or emotionally abused fear. That if we speak up and insist on our right to be ourselves, to not allow ourselves to be violated to meet someone else’s needs, it will destroy the family. What happened in season 9, is that essentially Sam sticks up for his autonomy, his right to hold people responsible for facilitating his physical and psychological violation, and his family is destroyed. Dean goes off the rails, spirals off into despair, shuts Sam down and out, and puts himself in a situation with no support and gets himself killed.
As well, whether the writers intended it or not, now we have season 10 where Sam’s POV, his willingness to fight for the right to not be lied to, to call Dean out when Dean needs someone to call him out, in the same way that every other female character this season has called Dean out, has essentially disappeared. In it’s place, Sam is being incredibly emotionally supportive of Dean. That’s lovely, in it’s way, but it’s coming of the cost of Sam’s autonomy, again.
It’s like we’re rehashing the message that the best way to heal someone who has done awful things to you is to just accept them and love on them. WHICH IS SO WRONG. This is exactly the message that someone who has been abused gets all the time. It’s the message that YOU are the one who is responsible for the relationship and the psychological state of the other person in it. That hope that maybe you can do something about it and heal the other person. Maybe if I could just love you enough, put aside my needs, thoughts, and feelings enough, you’ll be healed. It’s essentially the very belief that John reinforced as being the foundation of family that lead to where we are. You must sacrifice essential parts of yourself in order to be in this relationship. And if you don’t, the family will be destroyed.
Does Dean need to forgive himself? Oh yes, very much so. But he also needs to be held responsible. Does Dean have a huge emotional hole that needs healing because he sacrificed so much of who he was for so long? Yep, but if it comes at the cost of someone else’s autonomy, then we’ve just robbed Peter to pay Paul and changed nothing of significance.
Here, in Russell Wellington, we have a character who has tried to put his ugly past behind him. Like Celeste Middleton, he’s split himself in two. He’s hidden away the monster, but the duality remains.
It can be seen in an office split between stark black and white. Symbols of wealth, prosperity and recognition housed alongside alcohol and cars.
It can be seen in a handshake between figures in dark and light hovering just over his shoulder.
He is a man who builds homes. He’s created his own environment. He lives in a cage of his own making. We can see it in the bars that shutter him in.
Charlie, too, has found a way into the cage.
But also a way out, busting through the bars. Wellington and Middleton – both city names. The town of Welling and the town of Middle. Russell chose the path to rejecting his duality. It did not end well for him. Celeste accepted a middle way. She accepted her duality and forgave herself. She destroyed the cage and found a way out.
Charlie: “I forgive you Dean.”
Dean: “Yeah, well, I don’t.”
Charlie: “I know. That’s kind of your move. How’s that working out for you, huh?”
Dean: “I’m so sorry, kiddo.”
Charlie: “Then prove it.”
Will Dean?
In Darkness and In Light:
Both brothers in yellow, red, and grey/black shirts.
Hearseeno 