Has anyone talked about Claire’s tattoo? The one on her wrist? I believe it’s a rose and a lot of star. The rose is a flower, and flowers have obviously been linked to Cas for a while now, but I believe it was you who was keeping track of all the star symbolism? Thought it was relevant! :)

larinah:

I’ve seen several people mention the tattoo, but I haven’t seen much analysis on it.

The star part does bring to mind all the other stars we’ve seen this season. I’m thinking they mean more than one thing: shining stars as guiding lights, fallen stars as poorly chosen paths, hope, destiny, the renewal and rebuilding of Heaven and angels, even something to do with the Americana/patriotism/civil war stuff. As the season progresses, maybe they’ll coalesce into a tighter meaning, but for now I’m keeping all those ideas on the table. There’s also the very real possibility that they go along with all the sun and moon stuff happening in the last couple of seasons.

The rose part is an interesting addition. thevioletcaptain wrote a very nice meta about Cas and his connection with flowers (which I can’t find the link for at the moment).

Roses, in particular though, have shown up several times that I can recall off the top of my head, especially this season. Rowena had an orange rose near her when we first saw her.

The guy in the roadhouse in Paper Moon had a red rose on his jacket.

Colette the maid fell into a bowl of white roses when Olivia killed her.

A couple of times I can remember in past seasons are that Mary had red roses embroidered on her shirt when Dean went back to the past, and Cas used a red rose to cut his hand so he could make a sigil to get rid of Ephraim.

I honestly don’t know what to make of all these roses showing up all of the sudden in different colors and associated with very different people, victims, friends of victims, and villains. This is the first time I can recall that the stars and the roses have been presented together.

So….uh….I guess at the moment, I got nothing. I do think you’re right that they are very relevant to the story, though. If anyone has any ideas or interpretations they’d like to add, please feel free!!

I guess I’ll butt in here.

Yeah, so I posted that meta yesterday about how Supernatural has a long history of using flowers to support mysteries and hidden things in the narrative. Their use waxes and wanes across the seasons, but they’ve come back in a big way with season 10, a season which is all about fronting, lying, and not wanting to peer too deeply at what might be hidden underneath the surface.

Specifically, in the examples above:

White is often strongly associated with death in the Supernatural visual lexicon. Think Death and his white carriage and white stone in his ring, and all the way back to the Woman in White and Mary and Jess in their white nightgowns. And so white roses around the murdered Collete visually emphasize her death and the theme of death in the episode.

~*~

Hmm, the guy in the roadhouse with the red rose. I have to admit I had to go back and watch his scene again because I didn’t remember him specifically. Turns out he’s an interesting one:

Guy: Yeah, Barker and I have been raising hell and chasing tail and riding for a long time.

Sound like a set of brothers that we know?

Guy: Part of him always knew when his clock ran out it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Yeah, that’s sounding a lot like Dean’s pronouncements of it ending “with a gun in [his] hand” or “bloody and sad.”

Guy: To go out like that? By some animal? Just ain’t right.

Okay, ow.

Red is often associated with demons and danger in Supernatural. Think way back to Nicki Aycox’s Meg and her red leather jacket. Here’s a meta from way back in Season 3 on the use of yellow and red in Supernatural by Bowtrunckle.

So if flowers hint at something hidden and yet to be revealed, and red is commonly associated with demons and danger, and a character who is wearing the flower is talking about a bloody and sad death for a character who parallels Dean… well, shit.

~*~

Rowena is also interesting. An orange flower was associated with her.

Orange has been associated with temptation into evil and/or the monster hunter becoming monstrous in Supernatural. I first noticed it when orange flowers started showing up around Sam in Season 3 once Ruby started him off on his path. And the who pops up wearing orange (who has never worn orange before) but Bobby, on the very episode that Ruby shows up and teaches him how to rebuild The Colt.

Rowena has been manipulating and attempting to tempt people into alliances that would no doubt lead them on a slow slide down into something evil. I’ve read some speculation that she may target Sam in his vulnerability and desperation to save Dean. I also find it interesting that the narrative made a point of differentiating witches with “natural abilities” versus those who have sold their souls for power or those who can pick up a few things under guidance. It reminds me of the speculation way back before we knew about the angelic bloodlines that the YED targeted Sam because of some innate abilities that he had that the demon wanted to enhance.

~*~

And then flowers and Claire: I did a bit of screencapping of that scene in Randy’s house and boy, once you lighten the images, they are EVERYwhere.

So, yes, here in the room with Claire, there are red/pink roses, but there are yellow roses as well.

That wallpaper in the background has red and yellow roses taking into account how orange the lighting is. I’m betting those lace curtains have flowers on them too, but I can’t tell from this pic.

And there are red and yellow flowers on that area rug under Salinger.

Someone noted (I wish I could remember who), that his blood seems to be black where the others’ was dark red.
I find it really interesting that, sure red flowers presage danger, but also demons?
Yellow flowers were initially associated with the psychic children, but have gone on to be associated with supernatural beings more in general.
Then we have the character name “Salinger,” whose most famous work is a story all about someone who loses it in the midst of an identity crisis.
And then we have the fact that this all came down because Randy made a deal, which has all kinds of history in Supernatural.

I wonder if this whole thing with Randy and Claire wasn’t a setup, that there isn’t some supernatural element to what happened there. Hmmmmm, I wonder what Crowley has been up to lately?

Visual Motifs – Flowers: Mystery, secrets, and things yet to be revealed

Flowers unfold. As buds, their inner parts are hidden, secret, until they come to their full bloom and reach their peak of potential. Supernatural uses many, many visual motifs to reinforce its narrative. Flowers are one of them.

Let me take you way, way back to the beginning.

~*~

Way back in season 1, I believe it was sadelyrate who pointed out the associate between Mary and roses.

They were first introduced subtly in Home. First on the wallpaper of Sari’s room, where it was later revealed that Mary had been residing in the closet.

In Home, we learned that Mary’s death was even more complicated than we had known before. But that just introduced more of a mystery. Why had she hung around after her death? Why did she tell Sam that she was sorry?

~*~

Once we reached What Is and What Shall Never Be, roses were found everywhere in the Winchester family home. Mary is the only family member still living there.

Everywhere Mary went, pink and red flowers followed.

~*~

Their last appearance associated with Mary was in In The Beginning.

All the pink and red flowers around Mary disappeared once it was revealed just how she came to be linked to the mytharc through the Yellow-Eyed Demon. ( After that, she started showing up in blue with white flowers or white with blue flowers. White=death, blue=sacrifice.)

~*~

Mary isn’t the only character with whom flowers were associated. Mary’s flowers may have been pink and red, but bowtrunckle pointed out that blue roses were associated with Ava.

When we first meet Ava here in Hunted, she seemed one thing, but then she disappeared without a trace. Where she had gone and why were a mystery. When we met her again, she was something else entirely.

~*~

bowtrunckle then pointed out that Sam and the other children were associated with flowers the color of Azazel’s eyes

Once the narrative started focusing on the mystery of Azazel’s children, yellow flowers showed up around Sam. Note the bedspread in The Kids Are All Right. It’s yellow damask. Damask is a fabric weave which is strongly associated with roses.

Note also that this is the episode in which Ruby truly entered Sam’s life and started Sam on the path that would ultimately end with him opening the Cage. At this point, orange and red flowers entered the mix. Red on Supernatural is usually associated with danger and demons. Orange in Supernatural is usually associated with temptation or something akin to what happens to you when you look to long into the abyss, going along with the theme that when you hunt monsters you run the danger of becoming monstrous yourself. But that’s a meta for another day.

~*~

They appeared in front of Dean at his first visit to a crossroads in Crossroad Blues.

There they hinted that something was yet to be revealed regarding the fate that would bring Dean directly into the mytharc associated with Sam and the YED’s children.

~*~

Red, blue, and yellow roses are associated with Mary, Ava, and Sam, respectively. The commonality between all of these three characters is that something was hidden, secret, yet to come to full bloom. Secrets surrounded Mary. How did she know the Yellow Eyed Demon? Just what was she? Much about her was hidden and not revealed until the 4^thseason. Ava had a hidden potential, too. Who knew that that sweet and quirky secretary from Peoria would develop into a manipulative, cold-blooded murderer. Sam, too, had his hidden aspect, that deep mystery that ran through the first five seasons of what had Azazel done to Sam and why.

~*~

At first flowers followed along behind characters. Then they started appearing along the key points of the mysteries associated with the primary mytharc of the narrative.

For example, in the early scenes in Croatoan, where they appeared before the reveal of the virus and Sam’s immunity.

A red rosebush made an incongruous appearance in the window behind both Sam and Dean in Lazarus Rising, where both brothers had something they were hiding.

They appeared in Changing Channels. Once Dr. Sexy morphed into The Trickster and we learned his agenda related to the main mytharc, we didn’t see them again.

The flower color combinations were a hint, too, of The Trickster’s true nature. They’re blue and yellow, a color combination associated with angels (perhaps first introduced by Bowtrunckle?). But, that, too, is another meta for another day.

Flowers appeared in Jump the Shark prior to the reveal that Adam and his mother were long dead. Later, Adam too entered the mytharc by virtue of being John’s son.

~*~

Once season 5 ended Kripke’s grand mytharc, flowers still make their appearance and signal that things aren’t quite what they seem, that something is yet to be revealed.

For example, they appear in the last scene when Dean and Sam part ways in Exile on Main Street, presaging that reveal that was Soulless Sam in season 6.

Blue and yellow (angelic) and orange (temptation to a long slow fall) flowers appear around Castiel once the story of Season 6 hints at just what’s been going on in heaven. At the very point in The Man Who Would Be King that Castiel expresses grave doubts, their presence hints at more happening than meets the eye.

Even Crowley gets in on the act. Here he is in First Born putting the first step of his hidden agenda into play, tempting Dean to follow him to Cain.

White (death) and red (demons, danger) flowers litter the mansion in Ask Jeeves, an episode all about fakers and liars and the things that they hide.

~*~

Even now, flowers hint at more to come:

Here we have Claire in Things We Left Behind and her tattoo. The red (demons, danger) rose, on the same arm as Dean’s Mark, and first presented in an episode in which Claire is clearly placed in parallel to Dean lay down some pretty strong hints that there is much more to be revealed about the role that she will play.

~*~

And here I shall leave you with the now infamous scene from Things We Left Behind in which Dean and Sam tell a tall tale in which the shadow of their father looms large.

I can only wonder what next is to be revealed about John Winchester and the effects of his parenting.

~*~

ok, so i picked the trailer apart a bit, because i clearly have no life

kelpiethethundergod:

venusdebotticelli:

really curious who these guys are. hunters?

we see a rifle and what looks like the Impala in the corner. anyone recognize the location?

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We can guess the promo is for the next three eps, or at least next two. The only…

I like that it’s not a knife like Dean’s usual blades of choice. Which means that it’s distinct from prior weapons in that it’s literally a double-edged sword. *grin*

ok, so i picked the trailer apart a bit, because i clearly have no life

kelpiethethundergod:

really curious who these guys are. hunters?

we see a rifle and what looks like the Impala in the corner. anyone recognize the location?

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*squints* I’m betting that’s a tornado through a doorway in the bunker, given the Oz elements that are likely to be in play when Charlie makes her return.

And is that a rifle? or very short oar? Cricket bat? Some type of “blunt object.”

The (Partial) Fall of the House of Winchester: Deconstructing Ask Jeeves

rainbowshoelaceswag:

susurrantpetrichor:

rainbowshoelaceswag:

twistedsardonic:

Honestly I was downloading fanfics for my new fandom for most of this episode thinking to myself, “wow this is boring and not nearly as subversive and clever as the Clue movie upon which it is clearly based,” (I mean the pipe & rope props were cool shout outs kinda, but w/e) but then something made me pause. I heard a phrase spoken almost verbatim by Sam as the title of my Reichenbach meta on demon!Dean:

“Being a monster is a choice”

and bingo! I got it. Olivia is a Dean parallel. Which is really interesting when you take into consideration that she’s lived in what amounts to a closet with a bunch of outdated memorabilia from someone else’s life and a literal skeleton (I mean the corpse of the maid, of course). Hello Bunny/ John Winchester parallels and how a monster may have a choice in becoming something vile but he also has a lot of help along the way. Two people who live in the relics of someone else’s life who must pay for discretions not their own and hide who they really are while desperately trying to justify that it was all done out of love for them? One could say Dean and Olivia were raised to be monsters.

It’s a classic Greek tragedy in which the very attempt to stop something actually ensures that it will happen. We call that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But are they really monsters? Olivia didn’t come across as evil, just a little drunk at being finally released from her prison, she was never taught to reign in what others deemed monstrous, just shoved aside and hidden away as a shameful secret like some sort of hysterical woman from a 19th century novel (bring on the Jane Eyre parallels!). When she finally came out she was confused, desperate, jealous, scared, and fighting with animal instincts to survive and protect her mother’s memory, to salvage whatever she could of the identity her mother had given her which was the only thing that should have been of any worth in a hollow home filled with all the ostentatiousness of wealth but none of the literal value. Costume jewelry and stainless steel masquerading as gems and silver that are only a nominal step up from Lucky Charms (Something Wicked) standing in for nutrition. Love is the true treasure but it came with conditions when it should be unconditional and there was never enough of it. Nothing nourishing enough to grow and sustain a healthy, emotionally functional adult.

And remember Dean gave most of these crumbs of love to his brother. He probably didn’t even get much of the soggy pieces of tasteless cereal that make the marshmallow charms so appealing in contrast.

And yet that love shared with his brother is in many ways what saved him and why Olivia died. She had no one. Is untethered and unable to sift the real from the fake, while Dean has both Sam and Cas to help him see true worth, not to mention the specter of Bobby.

But we all know that since Dean has been ostensibly released from demonhood he is a bit of a ticking time bomb. I’ve written before that in many ways demon!Dean was a healthier person because he allowed himself to be selfish and angry in a way human Dean has swallowed and internalized for forever. Human Dean got shoved back into his closet, his place in the world, his prison. But the true bit of hope in this episode, all bits of allusion to what ‘coming out of the closet’ means colloquially and also character-growth wise after an episode wherein Destiel was canonically acknowledged aside, is that it isn’t without symbolism that Dean was given Bobby’s key, the one who found Olivia’s hidden attic, and unlocked it.

Do you understand what this means? It’s pretty big.

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This is lovely, and I hope it’s okay if I tack on some meta to the end.

There are so many levels of meaning to the attic. One, like you said, is the representation of a cluttered mind. Connected to that is a more modern meaning; the attic is where we put the things we don’t use anymore. In this episode it’s filled with childrens’ toys, things that the characters have outgrown and perhaps forgotten, but yet remain. On those levels the attic is not a prison, but merely a sectioned, isolated area.

Third is the Madwoman in the Attic, typified in Jane Eyre. I’m using this excellent essay as a reference on this subject. The Madwoman in the Attic metaphor was vitally relevant to the psychology of the women of that era –

Jane and Bertha illustrate “the psychic split between the lady who submits to male dicta and the lunatic who rebels.”

To survive in the society that set such strict rules for women, women fragmented themselves into these two parts, and metaphorically locked one part of themselves away. *

And oh how I love the way they’re using this uniquely feminine metaphor for Dean.

Typically the family locks away the shameful secret, the “bad” Madwoman, but Dean’s family is different, and they locked away everything good in him. The caring, loving, feminine side of him can only be expressed through the masculine pursuit of hunting (like in this moment , when I fell in love with Dean). He’s split between being Mary’s son and John’s son.

It’s no coincidence that our Dean-Gone-Dark parallels are so often women.** Like Olivia, Dean has been deprived and isolated so long, and hurt so much, that like in Hell he wants to dish out some of that pain himself. John’s side of him broke after thirty years in Hell. Now it’s been thirty years on Earth, and Mary’s side of him is breaking too.

And Sam doesn’t know. Sam doesn’t know. He knows the attic exists, perhaps, but he never saw it, and he doesn’t hold the key to it, and he doesn’t have the right tools to deal with what’s hidden there.

—-

*Look at the contrast against The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, from the same era. It also features a shameful secret that’s locked away; but the secret here is a young boy, whose only shame is being too physically weak to inherit, and instead of being locked in the attic, he’s placed in a garden, a place of growth. He’s cut off from society, but not from life. What would Olivia have been if she’d been in that story instead of Jane Eyre? What could Dean have been?

**Tasha the werewolf; Adina; Tessa; Abaddon; Joy, the werewolf from 9.12; and Alex and Mother in 9.19; just to name a few.

FOOTNOTE: This isn’t the only feminine metaphor they’re using for Dean! Dean is the cheating wife, too, like Mindy and Amber — but he thinks he’s Lester. He’s a mother for Sam and a handmaiden for Charlie, but becomes a knight for Crowley. He thinks he’s Han Solo – the uncaring flyboy, the rolling stone – but the truth is he has a crush on Han Solo, and he’s actually Leia. He’s the Princess Buttercup to Castiel’s Wesley, but everyone thinks he’s the six-fingered man. (Crowley is Prince Humperdink. It really, really fits.)

and guys, Dean becomes a woman in act two. Temporarily. Marie said so.

!!! Thank you @rainbowshoelaceswag for bringing my attention to this—I got to 10.06 kinda late and missed all the meta on it! Both OP and this addition are super awesome and insightful, and thank you also for referencing my meta! I’m going to just be super self-aggrandizing and comment that I also wrote a meta about Dean as the angel in the house instead of the madwoman in the attic a while back, so this makes a perfect companion to it. Dean and female-coding, always always alwayssssss. Like I’ve talked about a little bit before, Dean’s MoC/demon storyline is a path for Dean to bust out of the passivity and obedience of his feminine-angel self. He is totally 100% doing the angel/madwoman duality thing, and I’m so into it. I actually can’t believe that I didn’t write that in my “Reichenbach“ meta when I was talking about Dean acting in opposition to the masculine caricatures of Lester and Cole, and the tasks set him by John—

Even the most apparently conservative and decorous women writers obsessively create fiercely independent characters who seek to destroy all the patriarchal structures which both their authors and their authors’ submissive heroines seem to accept as inevitable. […] Indeed, much of the poetry and fiction written by women conjures up this mad creature so that female authors can come to terms with their own uniquely female feelings of fragmentation, their own keen sense of the discrepancies between what they are and what they are supposed to be. (Gilbert and Gubar)

Yeah, yeah, “keen sense of the discrepancies between what they are and what they are supposed to be,” ugh, Dean, sweetheart.

(excuse me while I go back into my metas to add links to these things!)

OH YES. I just remembered, we had this “madwoman in the attic” metaphor back in season 4, too – or something similar at least. In 4.11 “Family Remains”, it was a shameful-secret girl who’d been locked in the basement her whole life, and Dean explicitly told us that she was a metaphor for what happened to him in Hell.

But now it’s connected to his actual life, and there’s nothing else it could be a metaphor for. mmmmm I am so here for it.

Interesting stuff.

I would add another use of the word "attic” that opens up even more of the parallels being illustrated.

Attic can be used as a metaphor for what is going on in your head. Which implies that in this metaphor, Olivia, as the monster, was released from her cage of the attic and created a little havoc. Philip the butler covered every thing up, literally slipping it under a rug, and packed the monster back in its attic/cage. But it was only a temporary solution. Without knowing it, Dean let the monster back out of it’s attic/cage, where she proceeded to systematically destroy the people around her.

All this implies that “the monster” is still in Dean’s head and has potential to be released, perhaps without strict intention to do so.

It also ties nicely into all of those metaphors we’ve been seeing about decapitation being associated with Dean. That losing his head (haha) isn’t to be interpreted quite so literally, but that he’s at risk of losing control over what is in his head.

And with that, I’ll leave you with this image:

Shapeshifters, Fakers, and Liars: Full of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Don’t let that masculinized facade crack, Dean.

That’s Bunny’s closest family, right…. noo… oops.

Interesting book that’s actually a latch.

Oh, hey, look. A shelf… nope, it’s a door.

The family togetherness is all a facade.

The picture of riches that’s all a pretense.

Fake jewelry

Fake silver

Even the hormones are fake

Uh, that’s no way to hold your hand if you don’t want Sam to see it. Oh, you’re playing a game alright, it’s just not a card game.

A lustful embrace? Or maybe not.

Is Sam giving himself up as prey? Or was he willing to play bait?

A well worn ghost in the armor trope? Or the abyss staring back?

larinah:

The Star-Brite Drive-In Theater intrigues me. It intrigued me even more when I saw Jensen’s tweet about it being visual effects rather than an actual ruined theater, because that means there’s no chance shooting there was just because it was a spot that looked cool in the background. It was absolutely intentional and the state of the screen and sign are also very much intentional. (I’m not sure whether or not the sign is visual effects, but it was surely brought in even if it was practical.)

The name Star-Brite makes me think of the old rhyme:

Star light, star bright,

The first star I see tonight;

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.

Stars, the things Hannah never gets tired of looking at, are sometimes thought to be magical enough that one can wish upon them. Jiminy Cricket sings about dreams coming true for people who wish upon a star, in Pinocchio, a movie about a puppet who wants to be a real boy. Some people think stars guide them or unite them across great distances. They can help people know where they are and where they are going.

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I was thinking about what yarnyfan was saying about the screen as a visual callback to the punch card, evoking the theme of angelic programming. Here it’s disused, abandoned.

And then we also have the red, white and blue combo that appears when episodes have heavy themes of choice and exerting free will.

I wish I remember who started talking about stars. Was it you, larinah? Given that Hannah keeps getting lost in this episode and Cas counsels her to not “lose her way” in terms of her priorities, she seems to be on the verge of questioning what it means to be an angel. So, I keep thinking of stars as those things that guide. Of all things, they are relatively steady in the heavens and have been used for navigation when we have nothing else to give us direction.

The Ol’ Red White and Blue

Not only that, but combos of red, white and blue keep showing up in

Signs:

Props:

Lighting:

Clothing:

Flags first made their appearance in Season 5, in which the main theme was Free Will. That and the use of red, white and blue combinations have come and go across the seasons afterward, but here in the beginning of Season 10 flags have made their presence known in a big way again. And again, the theme is Free Will. What will you choose?

this-looks-interesting:

Guys! The Siren in “Sex and Violence” names itself after Disney Princesses! HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS BEFORE!?

LOL! Yep! I had some thoughts about that way back when about deep unfulfilled desires for something the adult world cannot provide, and how it links to the Myth of Hyacinth evoked by all of the hyacinth flowers found in the episode.