SPN 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be

[ivyfic]

I now understand the term "being kripked." It was like Raelle Tucker and Eric Kripke scanned my brain and wrote a story I hadn't even had the plot bunny for yet. Let's just say that had I written this episode, it wouldn't have been any different. (Except that I probably wouldn't have had Dean tell Sam anything. Sam: What did you see? Dean: Nothin'.) Creepy. Examples:

-Without the constant pressure of John making sure Dean looked after Sam all growing up, Sam and Dean wouldn't actually be that close. That was my entire purpose for writing "Semper Fi." (Bonus is that Sam is kind of a tool. Though apparently still goes to the gym a lot.)
-Dean steals Sam's girlfriend. Hello, "Morning in the Evening."
-Dean is a mechanic. (Yeah, OK, everybody got that.)
-This is where it gets to be incredibly, ridiculously self-indulgent squeeing, but when we saw Carmen, I almost hit the roof. That's how I pictured Deb in "Crazy Faith," down to being hispanic. And that she completely absolutely has got Dean's number. (If they'd made her a stripper, I may well have died.)

I'm going to chalk this up to consistent characterization and succesful extrapolation on the part of fandom in general.

This episode was watching Dean's heart break into tiny little pieces over and over and over again. I love so much that his (almost) perfect world, Sam has the exact life he wanted and Dean is an alcoholic fuck-up who lives like five blocks from the house he grew up in with some random chick that he apparently never says "I love you" to (extrapolating from her reaction when he is affectionate). I love how quickly he starts playing into everyone's (especially Sam's) worst expectations of him. He doesn't try to defend himself, he just starts saying, yes, I'm looking for a drink, I'm stealing from Mom, I'm a compulsive gambler. And Sam doesn't look at all surprised by any of this. Disappointed, but not surprised. And that's Sam and Dean all over.

I also think that when the djinn offers him a choice at the end, it's not much of a choice. It's everything he wanted, yes--everything he wanted for Sam. Not for himself. If it had been leaving Sam here obliviously or waking him up to their reality, he might not have done it. But I think it's so entrenched in Dean to give up what he wants for his brother that it was no contest once he knew that his Sam was out there, watching him die. He wouldn't give up like that. Though all that talk about a rest--oh, Dean.

Now I'm just waiting for the fic in this AU-verse. (It's inevitable, right?) I wish we could have seen Sam's djinn-created universe. I have a hunch it would be very similar, but more selfish. Instead of wishing "Mom lived," he'd wish "I have a normal life," or something like that. So maybe Mary's dead, but John remarried and Sam had a normal happy childhood and went to Stanford and is engaged to Jess and is going to law school and he's not cursed by a demon and there's no supernatural and everything's perfect. In Dean's universe, the thing that struck him as wrong was all the people he hadn't saved. I think for Sam, it would be seeing that in his perfect world, Dean is an alcoholic fuck-up. I mean, that's practically canon--Sam tries for a normal life and it fucks Dean up. For Dean, the cost of normal is the job. For Sam, I think the cost would be Dean.

Now somebody go and write that for me. Pretty please?

One final thought (a paraphrase since I don't have it dl'ed yet):
Dean: And you and I would never have been... you know.

Supernatural, what did I tell you about leaving blanks for fandom to fill in? *tsk, tsk*

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I now understand the term "being kripked."


Isn't the term "being Jossed"? Because a) Whedon came first, and b) he did it more fucking often. Like all the time often. Because Buffy, like Farscape became its own crackfic after a while (hello season six!).

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Being kripked is the opposite of being jossed. Being jossed is having your fic directly contradicted by canon. Being kripked means having something you wrote show up in canon.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I see. 'Cause I didn't really get it from the context of the rest so much as that would require knowing stuff about Supernatural.