You! Yes you! No, actually, I don't think I've read that story. But you know what I'm talking about—the preponderance of post-TSbBS stories where Blair leaves and Blair or Jim (or both) become weepy, hollow shells of themselves. Sometimes when I'm bored at work, I go and find one just to cheer me up through its ridiculousness.
Dean goes to ground, all his focus on Sam's body. Sam turns to fight, taking care of Dean's body is something he needs to do before he can take up arms. I hadn't thought of it quite like that—funny how you can step back from your own story and suddenly see all this stuff you didn't mean to put in there? To me it was about both of them in a state of shock, displacing their grief. For Dean, he focuses it onto an object that represents Sam (the ashes) and continues protecting the object as he would his brother. Of course, this clearly isn't enough to keep him from feeling the loss acutely. Sam, on the other hand, almost denies the grief entirely, focusing on a problem to solve instead. Had Dean actually been dead, when Sam defeated the dryad, I think he would have been even more devestated than Dean, in a lot of ways. Dean knows how important Sam is to him; I think Sam has the little-brother benefit of being completely myopic about his family. I think a lot of what Dean does for him (not just emo sacrifices, but in little subtle ways supporting him and trying to nudge him toward happiness) is invisible to Sam. If Dean died, I think it would be a process of years of Sam discovering more and more new ways that he misses his brother.
Clearly exploring the grief of these characters is an obsession of mine—my very first SPN fic was character death.
If you excuse the nattering on, I also wanted to show Dean not being the hunter in this story because I think a lot of the reason Dean hunts is because of his family. John was clearly driven to hunt, Sam is driven to hunt, but, though Dean may not think so, he's very different from either of them. Right now, hunting is the way he stays with his family. It's clearly something he enjoys, but if circumstances changed, I think he'd give it up in an instant. It's almost like Dean has no dream of his own but to follow someone else's—he gets completely consumed in first his father's and then his brother's wishes. If Sam's desire changed, Dean would follow. Which is why I'm so fascinated by trying to examine Dean when he has no one else's dream to guide him. If you cut him off from people he cares about, what would he do? I think the answer given to us by "Route 666" is that he'd find someone else to care about and adopt their dreams. But now we're getting into why I wrote "Crazy Faith"...
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Dean goes to ground, all his focus on Sam's body. Sam turns to fight, taking care of Dean's body is something he needs to do before he can take up arms.
I hadn't thought of it quite like that—funny how you can step back from your own story and suddenly see all this stuff you didn't mean to put in there? To me it was about both of them in a state of shock, displacing their grief. For Dean, he focuses it onto an object that represents Sam (the ashes) and continues protecting the object as he would his brother. Of course, this clearly isn't enough to keep him from feeling the loss acutely. Sam, on the other hand, almost denies the grief entirely, focusing on a problem to solve instead. Had Dean actually been dead, when Sam defeated the dryad, I think he would have been even more devestated than Dean, in a lot of ways. Dean knows how important Sam is to him; I think Sam has the little-brother benefit of being completely myopic about his family. I think a lot of what Dean does for him (not just emo sacrifices, but in little subtle ways supporting him and trying to nudge him toward happiness) is invisible to Sam. If Dean died, I think it would be a process of years of Sam discovering more and more new ways that he misses his brother.
Clearly exploring the grief of these characters is an obsession of mine—my very first SPN fic was character death.
If you excuse the nattering on, I also wanted to show Dean not being the hunter in this story because I think a lot of the reason Dean hunts is because of his family. John was clearly driven to hunt, Sam is driven to hunt, but, though Dean may not think so, he's very different from either of them. Right now, hunting is the way he stays with his family. It's clearly something he enjoys, but if circumstances changed, I think he'd give it up in an instant. It's almost like Dean has no dream of his own but to follow someone else's—he gets completely consumed in first his father's and then his brother's wishes. If Sam's desire changed, Dean would follow. Which is why I'm so fascinated by trying to examine Dean when he has no one else's dream to guide him. If you cut him off from people he cares about, what would he do? I think the answer given to us by "Route 666" is that he'd find someone else to care about and adopt their dreams. But now we're getting into why I wrote "Crazy Faith"...