fannishliss

Kalliel brings up a great point in her meta: that Supernatural has been destabilizing the human/monster binary since day one.
This is so true! I'm not sure I can add to her essay, but I guess I'd like to try to get my own heart out there as well.

No spoilers beyond 10.02 please!

Over the years watching Supernatural we've slowly learned that sometimes monsters aren't really monsters, that sometimes humans are the worst. We see that Angels are rigid and full of cruelty and despair (but not all of them). We see that demons run the gamut from brutal to playful, they have the capacity for devotion and for love and for self-interested betrayal. We tried to understand Free Will.

But now we have Dean to worry about.

I have to admit, my first impulse is to deny that Dean is all demon. If Crowley wants him to choose a side, doesn't that imply that he has a choice? Doesn't that make him another class of thing altogether? Maybe, I'd like to think, a Knight of Hell is something other than a run of the mill demon?

As Kalliel points out, no -- that's not it.

I also bear the headcanon that this is not the first time Dean has been a demon. Of COURSE he was a demon when he got off the rack. He tortured souls in hell, and he enjoyed it. Then Castiel, with the power of Heaven behind him, stole that tattered soul back from Perdition and helped him back into his humanity.

But now Dean has black eyes! And he's really mean! So maybe he IS a demon? But they can cure him now?

I think Show started at least when they introduced Casey the Bartender with the idea that demons are people, just like us. They fall, they get tortured, they get angry, they want revenge, they bear the gamut of human emotions.

Crowley said, "he's a demon, I'm a demon -- you were a demon -- we've all been demons" but he also said "choose a side." I still think the Blade is a cursed object and I still think the Mark goes to Dean's soul and binds him in such a way that makes him crave the blade and embrace his demonic thirst for blood in a way slightly different to other demons. Dean may in fact be different in kind to other demons.

But what's important is that because we love Dean, we want to forgive him. We may not have loved Meg, or Ruby, or Crowley (tho I certainly did and do), but we love Dean and we yearn for his redemption. We want peace for him when he is done. If there were ever a demon Sam would confess everything for, a demon he would give every drop of blood in that righteous body to save -- it is Dean.

But if Demons can be saved -- if Dean can be saved -- what this means is that Demon is no longer an absolute category. But it also means -- it never has been. Demons have ALWAYS been capable of finding redemption. When Ruby (and Lilith) died as martyrs to a cause they absolutely believed in, not everyone could see that as redemption -- but when Meg died while the Boys got away, didn't that look like redemption? Was it any different?

I kind of like the Cas and Hannah show. I admit, I enjoy watching an Angel figure out what's of value in human existence, primarily because I want to watch her try it on for size. I super hate Metatron and his weasely face, and I'm really glad Cas was there to stop Hannah before she made an awful mistake (like poor, deceived Gadreel). I want to get inside Hannah's head and I fully plan to fic on her very soon. :) The compelling theme around Hannah, for me, is mutability. Angels can learn, they can change. Actually demons can learn and change too. Back in my career as a Romanticist, I would have been pointing to William Godwin's ideas about Political Justice -- that the concept of punishment is inherently unethical and also practically useless, and therefore that the only good/ethical response toward bad behavior (crime, evil) is education towards change. (Godwin is known as the father of political anarchy and more famously as the father of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and was one of the earliest Progressives.) Demons are the recipients of the worst possible punishment -- an eternity spent suffering in Hell, capped by the eradication of who they essentially are. Dean is right there, right now. He is lolling about, drinking and stabbing and sexing his way through his Hell. As Mephistophilis would say,
"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, [read, puppy eyes of my brother]
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?"

Dean can't bear the possibility that he might tear Sam's throat out with his teeth, and he knows that the Blade can and will drive him crazy with wanting the violence. So he tries to drive Sam as far away as possible. Even abandoning Sam to his death at the hands of someone else -- Dean would still prefer that to killing Sam himself.

Show is asking us this: Dean is your hero, your unerring moral compass -- so why is he swinging wildly? Is being a demon something that happened to him? something that he is? something inescapable at the core? or something he could somehow overcome?

Is being a demon (a monster, an Angel) something ANYONE could somehow overcome?

If Dean is NEVER cured -- can't he somehow fight his way back to still being Dean? and if so -- what is a demon?

Joining Team Free Will looks like an existential choice -- choosing not to be ruled by what appears to be destiny.

BUT there is an element of theology here that goes beyond existentialist thought -- located in Sam -- it's the LOVE that Sam bears toward Dean, the unconditional love that insists that Sam will do whatever it takes to bring back his brother. In theology, the LOVE that brings us back, unearned, unmerited, to righteousness, is called Grace. hm. Cas needs some of that. Hannah, getting a clue? (if they do that right I will PLOTZ.)

okay, that's all I got for now.