#mothermartyrsaint

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The way people hate on the Mary arc of later seasons like "why did Dean have to lose his image of his mom" that was the POINT. Like??? That image he had of his mom was never real! Nobody is that perfect, least of all a traumatized hunter kid who was orphaned at 19 and made a desperate deal to save at least ONE person she lost so she wouldn't be completely alone in the world. The Mary Dean knew and idolized was a fiction cobbled together from grief and a four-year-old's hazy memories. She wasn't real!

And the loss of her is where it all started. All Dean's trauma. All of his hangups and issues and fears began the night Mary died. And to some extent I don't think healing was possible until he fully grappled with the fact that his mom was just a PERSON. Not a saint on a pedestal he should worship and sacrifice everything for and could never live up to.

Like!!! Sooooo many of Dean's Issues started with her death and the way John turned her into a martyred saint to justify his actions. Dean was mourning for a woman who didn't even exist and an idea of a perfect life he never would have had! His "perfect mom?" Their "perfect family?" Never. Existed. That's literally the point. He was never going to be able to love any life he could have if he was always comparing it to some impossible idea of perfection that was never even possible.

Sorry but Amara was right, he needed that false idol to be shattered.

#supernatural #dean winchester #mary winchester #mothermartyrsaint #dead mom trope #dean studies #best damn thing the show ever did and people would really rather mary stayed dead and sainted #like if that doesn't fully sum up the spn fandom's overall issue with women i don't know WHAT does

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One thing I can't let go is people trying to claim Dean didn't have any mommy issues until the writers "shoehorned" them in to make the Mary resurrection arc work. Like did we even watch the same show??? You can see that man's mommy issues from SPACE.

Like yes, his daddy issues are closer to the surface and a result of active fuck-ups rather than total absence, but the mommy issues are still very much there. Starting with being forced to become her substitute at the age of four and ending with being lowkey despised by his dad for being kind of good at it! Just the simple fact that he's never made any sort of peace with her death qualifies, but it's far from the only issue Dean has around his mother.

As far back as season 2, enemies and his subconscious LOVE to dangle specters of Mary in front of him. The djinn in 2x20 What Is And What Should Never Be, for example, primarily uses Mary to keep Dean compliant. John is dead in the dream. Dean and Sam appear to have a strained relationship. But Dean is close to Mary.

Or consider Dean's first journey back to the 70s in 4x03 In The Beginning. Of course that journey served one purpose, as stated by Castiel, of catching Dean up on what Azazel actually did to Sam. But it also served Heaven's secondary purpose of beginning to drive a wedge between Sam and Dean, primarily using Mary to do so. Partly by having Dean witness all of this alone, and giving him yet another personal tie to Mary that Sam lacks. But also attempting to tie Mary's death more securely to Sam in Dean's mind, and establish Sam as tainted from the beginning to weaken Dean's sense of brotherly love and obligation.

This latter, of course, didn't work, but that they made the attempt at all speaks volumes IMO. If Dean didn't have any issues around Mary, she wouldn't be such a handy lever for antagonists to pull. Dean's desperation to save Mary in this episode is so directly tied to Dean's lifetime of trauma, his idea that the weight of the whole world rests on his shoulders, and his abandonment issues. His conversation with Castiel in this episode even explicitly confirms this: should he succeed in undoing Mary's death, he will undo his entire life up to this point. He knows this, and it isn't a bug in his plan, it's a feature.

In Dean's mind, everything that has ever been wrong in his life stems from this one moment. Mary's death. If he can fix that, he can fix everything. If he saves Mary, he can save John, save Sam, hell maybe the entire world while he's at it. And buried much deeper: if he saves Mary, maybe he can fix himself. Remember, at this point Dean is freshly returned from Hell. He feels broken, in brand new and terrible ways. But maybe, if he saves his mom, whatever it is in him that's wrong gets fixed. Maybe it never breaks at all.

The fact that he tries again in 5x13 The Song Remains the Same, even knowing already that it won't work based on his previous experience, is just heartbreaking. There's still a four-year-old child in Dean's heart, holding his baby brother as he watches his childhood home burn down. He's so fixated on that night and the life he might have had without it. Even knowing that the dominoes that wrecked their lives started falling long before that, it's still all about that night for him.

Then of course, we have 5x16 Dark Side of the Moon just three episodes later. We first see Mary in Heaven in their old home's kitchen making Dean a pie, then getting an upsetting call from John. Echoes of abandonment permeate the scene as Dean comforts her and promises to never leave her. Dean knows even as he says it that they had very little time left together by the time this memory happened, and knows too that he will have to leave her soon as they try to find their way out of this maze of memories. These echoes are brought home when, in the next scene with Mary, Dean attempts to leave her only to have the illusion turn harsh and cold, taunting him with the idea that he was the one that was left.

"I never loved you," she taunts him. "You were my burden. I was shackled to you. And look what it got me."

"I was dead. The one silver lining was that at least I was away from you. Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. Sweetheart. Even Sam. You ever ask yourself why? Maybe it’s not them. Maybe, it’s you."

And there it is. Underneath the grief over Mary's death, the missing her, the inability to accept any life that he could have because it won't be the life he would have had if she never died...the feeling, that he beats himself up over, that she left him. Not died. Left him. Abandoned him. Deep down, a part of him feels like his mom left him. That her dying was an act of abandonment, a betrayal. And he CANNOT look directly at it, because that feels like a betrayal in itself, of the memories he has of the loving mother who tucked him in at night and sang him "Hey Jude" instead of a lullaby and made him soup when he was sick.

And buried even deeper: the fear that she never wanted him in the first place.

Dean's issues with Mary go so far beyond "simple" grief at losing her. Mary is at the root of all his other issues, all tangled around her and the night she died. Exacerbated, even actively cultivated, no doubt, by John's A+ parenting. But Dean's hazy memory of Mary, the loss of her, and his fixation on that loss are at the core of his fear of abandonment, his lack of self-worth, and his feeling that he has to save everyone. As well as his deep fear that the thing wrong with his life isn't some childhood trauma or hunting or his dad, or even his time in Hell. But that it's just him, and has been all along.

That's why the resurrection arc works so well. With Mary back from the dead, Dean is forced to confront the feelings of abandonment he pushed aside in favor of preserving her memory. When she fails to live up to that memory, it catalyzes that confrontation even further. He doesn't blame Mary for everything that happened to him and Sam because she's actually to blame. He blames Mary because, deep down, her death has always been the root of everything else in his mind. The one thing that, if he could only fix it, he could fix everything else as well. And seeing living proof in front of him that this isn't true just forces him to face everything he's buried his entire life. Forces him to actually confront the mommy issues at last. And it hurts, and it sucks, but like I said in my other post. It was so necessary.

#supernatural #dean winchester #dean studies #mary winchester #mothermartyrsaint

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#supernatural #the winchesters #spn #spnwin #mary winchester #mary campbell #blood cw #my edits #born in a burial gown #woman in white #mothermartyrsaint

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Okay to be clear (because there are people in my notes asking if Dabb era is even worth watching), there ARE things I love about Dabb Era and the show wouldn't be the same, *I* wouldn't be the same, without those things...but they very much fall into the camp of "great concept, awful execution."

Like. Mary and Cas's friendship? Great! Bringing Gabriel back? Great! Sabriel baiting? About time the Samgirls got some queerbaiting of their very own! Cas becoming a father? Great! TFW coparenting? Increasingly domestic and dorky Dean? Eileen Leahy and Saileen? Alternate universes? Leader!Sam? Witch!Sam? Samwena mentorship? Rowena redemption? Empty deal? Destiel confession? Deconstructing the mothermartyrsaint? Making the authorfathergod the final boss? All Outstanding!

I watched seasons 12-14 more or less live (next day on the app because I don't have cable) and I looked forward to every episode each week. I enjoyed the show during those seasons like I hadn't enjoyed it since season gr8. It was damn entertaining even if it was messy and inconsistent and, yeah, infuriating in retrospect.

I will say that aside from an episode here and there out of context (mostly rewatching First Blood and Scoobynatural when I'm sad), I haven't watched those seasons AGAIN. Like I've seen every other season of the show at least twice, but not those. They're best on first watch and start to fall apart more and more as you think about them.

So maybe watch Dabb's seasons, but only once? And be ready with headcanons to cover the nonsense.

#galaxy brain concept small brain execution #supernatural #dabb era #lizawords #tbh when i think of dabb era and feel good about it i'm 99% thinking of the glowy feeling i got watching them all become a family #and ignoring nearly everything else #pasting over the plotholes with headcanons #ignoring all the bad dean writing in davor of what i know he'd actually do if being written well #et cetera