#i am an early-seasons deangirl 4lyfe but GOD s11 turned me into a samgirl through sheer desperation to fix what they gave him

[shinelikethunder]

like i know I've probably said it before, but. as much as s11 is my favorite of the late seasons of SPN, Dean's half of the season plot is boring and any potential it ever had is consistently squandered, and Sam's half only works if you're seeing the shrimp-colors cage-trauma version that jarpad is acting, not the "enemies to reluctant team-up to celestial-family reconciliation" nonsense that the writers think is a neat way to arrange their toys in the Big Epic (Unspeakably Stupid) Arc Plot dollhouse.

and i can't speak to how much of it was really intended or by whom, but there IS a throughline in there that may not be well developed or resolved, but still reawakens the good old "oh right that's why i ever went apeshit feral over either of these guys to begin with" feelings. the one where every step along the path of the Lucifer plotline is one of the most pants-shittingly terrifying things Sam has ever had to do, and every encounter brings a fresh kind of betrayal and violation that he somehow was not expecting, and every escalating step of the team-up is far too much to ask of anyone with the kind of history he has with this fucker. and he does it anyway, even though it's unbearable. and it just makes him more determined to stay capable of faith and charity and trust in the face of all this, because he needs to, because it's been foundational since season 2 that some kind of faith in a benevolent higher power is a psychological need for him to keep going in the crapsack world they inhabit.

that's the version jarpad is acting, the one where okay fine, sam will do it, but he'll look like he wants to fucking die the whole time. and the instant he (visibly! you can see it! like a switch got flipped between episodes!) gets told to stop harshing the vibes of their stupid "god and lucifer do family therapy" comedy bit with all that buzzkill Resting PTSD Face... that's the exact instant s11 dissolves like tissue paper. and i stop being able to suspend my disbelief that it's anything but a collection of unusually solid one-off episodes held together by the dumbest excuse for an arc plot on god's green earth. like oh, shit, this entire time they were literally just finding neat ways to arrange the toys in the dollhouse without any attempt to delve into what makes these characters tick in that configuration. even though it is RIGHT! THERE! and at least one of the actors is serving it up to them on a platter. they TOLD HIM TO STOP SERVING UP THEIR UNDONE CHARACTER WORK ON A PLATTER.

so yeah. entire season arcs propped up by jared padalecki's acting. who'd've guessed.

#supernatural #spn s11 #meta #sam winchester #spn!lucifer #i am an early-seasons deangirl 4lyfe but GOD s11 turned me into a samgirl through sheer desperation to fix what they gave him #the secret good s11 that lives in my head is so good and the sam whump is so delicious