their sibling dynamics are so fascinating to me bc i have a similar parentified dynamic w/ my own younger sister, like to the point where it's the "joke" in the family that i'm literally her second mother / third parent like people say that about me. anyways. but we're also like, besties ??? and we have a bigger age gap than dean and sam, double their age gap actually. and we both make fun of each other and "fight" and have our own inside jokes and can make each other riot with laughter from just a single look and we can have whole conversations w/o saying a word and we have overlapping neurodivergencies that just make us go "same brain!" but then also she has sensory issues that i just do not get and vice verse and we tease each other abt them but if anyone else were to do such a thing obvs it'd be like wtf dude??? but we're allowed to be extra mean to each other (and no one else can) bc we love each other and it's unconditional and we're literally besties. but then at the same time, she'll be a huge baby and not want to do something or do it wrong and i'm just like [exasperated sigh] "give me that" and just do it myself. or she won't want to order at restaurants. or ask for help finding something in a store. and i also do not want to do that but my older sibling "mother-mode" kicks in and i'm like ok fine i'll do this for you. and i always give her the bigger portion of things if it's not evenly cut or distributed. and i'll leave the last of the pink lemonade in the fridge for her and drink water instead. and it's just, a weird complicated dynamic of "i love you like my own kid but also you are my sibling and we will have these sibling moments of getting on each other's nerves but i'm also always going to put you first in the things that really matter" and that's how i see the sibling dynamic from dean's POV really. and sometimes the show manages to show that dynamic but a lot of times it flops hard on getting the sibling-isms right and it's very frustrating lol
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boomers n X'ers are mad that millennials Gen Z have woken up to all the child abusive norms in our society and we no longer give our parents respect just because they're our parents and teh bibble says so.
We also woke up to the fact that their politically passive and materialistic youth, where they took out a bunch of cheap usury loans and did nothing to stand up against central banking, has destroyed the economy for future generations. they have the audacity to call us lazy conspiracy theorists and essentially gaslight us for noticing such things.
A friend once told me she thinks that boomers and gen X are competing with their kids in this weird gross game to prove they're more successful and better, and I have to agree. They show no empathy for their own children's suffering, it's a generation full of casual and normalized narcissistic personality. I think this is a direct consequence of their culture which didn't encourage them to question their parents and see the humiliation and abuse they faced as children for what it is, unlike our culture today does. They actually believed that parents had kids out of virtue and selflessness and that the kids were obligated to repay the parents, not the other way around.
I notice a lack of individuation from the parents in most of Boomer and Gen X individuals. a "children must obey their parents" mentality. or... replace "obey" with "please" or "impress". Anyone with this mentality is primed for the narcissism demon. They will feel the constant need to prove themselves to the parents, to prove that they're successful and more worthy of praise, because in their eyes the parents can do no wrong and it is always their fault if the parent is abusing them or neglecting them. Then they project this gross mentality onto their children.
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Sam is more autistic coded in the present than in the past (her friends confirm it but the flashbacks don't), how could it be?
Anon, this is exactly why I call her autistic-coded and not just straight up autistic! Because I've noticed the same thing.
I would love to hear what other neuroatypical and specifically autistic folks have to say (to be clear: I'm the former not the latter, and really reaallly don't wanna speak over anyone!), and I'm not sure exactly what the text is going for, but for me there's definitely a masking/abusive behavior management narrative in what Sam's grandma does to her, and in the differences between what Mon saw in her as a kid and what she's like as an adult - except instead of Sam learning how to socialize/behave neurotypically, what her grandma instilled in her is a repressed non-expressiveness so that her resultant, masked behavior is what pings many of us as autistic/neuroatypical.
So it's almost like the real life direction of abusive behavior management and/or masking has been kind of flipped on its head? Adult Sam has learned to completely reconfigure how she expresses emotions at excruciating personal cost, but in the direction of being less interpretable by neurotypical people around her, and more familiar and recognizable to us neuroatypicals watching, instead of the opposite.
None of this means younger Sam and thus Sam herself CAN'T be straight up autistic - we definitely haven't seen enough of young Sam to know, Mon's memories seem to contradict Sam's friends' narration so who knows what's true, and there is so much more to autism than facial expressions - but certainly in Mon's recollection, Sam went from smiling naturally (and expressively-for-a-neurotypical-person) as a kid, to her forced fake smiles that terrorize the office. And Mon seems to bring the natural smiles back out, so regardless of whose memory of past Sam is correct, we know how Sam expresses happiness when she's not being pressured to produce a specific facial expression for other people, and it's very readable by any neurotypical person.
Like for ME Sam's textual story is one of abuse and trauma and repression, while the autistic story is in coding/subtext, but that autistic story is very very there, down to an arc about completely reconfiguring everything about how you hold your face or move your body or say your words at excruciating, exhausting personal cost, to satisfy your guardian and her determination of what society wants from you. Sam's arc feels autistic/neuroatypical, Sam's struggle to interpret everyone else around her and the blunt yet indirect/"inscrutable" ways she communicates feel autistic/neuroatypical, and I don't think there's a hard line between what's text and what's subtext. So for me, esp as a non-Thai viewer, there's so sooo much to read into and connect to about her, but I don't really have a clearcut grasp of what the text is saying about her yet.
EDIT: OKAY RIGHT AFTER THROWING THIS POST UP INTO THE ETHER it occurred to me that Sam's entire arc can be read as how abuse to try to force neurotypicality (and heterosexuality) on someone actually makes them infinitely less capable of functioning or socializing, fullstop. Like it's not that Sam expressed herself neurotypically as a kid but that she expressed herself naturally, and then her grandma came along and Fucked Her The Fuck Up and now all the things she's trying to do to meet expectations, from sexuality to neurotypicality, have left her absolutely chaotic socially/emotionally/sexually. Behavior Management DOES NOT WORK. Terrorizing your kids into straightness DOES NOT WORK. Look at queen Sam and reconsider your stupid, stupid fucking tactics, guardians of the world.
This is now my preferred reading! Apologies to anyone who had to read through the wall of text above to get to it kdlfjskdfsd I still wanna know what other folks (esp specifically autistic folks) think thooooo!
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