spnanonhaven

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#84

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Not the ayrt, but I suspect they're referring to an overarching cultural narrative that describes a "normal" and happy life as marriage, kids, house, etc.

That said, it's clearly Dean's idea of a normal life, and it might be Sam's.

ayrt

Oh, I see. Well, personally, I've always dreamed of an ending like that for Sam. Like him settling down and building a life with someone, etc.

I've always wanted Sam to have that ending since the very beginning. I still think that Sam craves it deep down. Sam has been through so much and he never really had a family. I would think that is something that Sam still would want for himself.

na

I wouldn't quibble with you over Sam settling down and building a life with someone, I would quibble over that being called normal, like the nonnie above did.

/does not want to get married

na

Thank you.

This cultural trap that dictates what's normal and what's not is so wrong. Happiness = getting married and having children? yeah? because there's no other option right? Because, of course, every married couple is full of happiness and joy, and singles are always sad and miserable.

Calm down, to me getting married and having kids would make me happy. Nnobody is saying everyone should do it.

*rolls eyes* Here we go. Should we all say we want them to be unhappy and in pain for the rest of their lives so you feel okay?

da

I think "not curtain fic" =/= "unhappy and in pain."

It's frustrating when people assume you want certain things because that's "normal." I'm indifferent to marriage and pretty certain I don't want children, and it's not an issue that comes up all that often, but it is a little awkward when people assume I want both and/or think it's totally strange that I wouldn't and/or think I'm judging them for wanting either.

That said, normal = marriage, family is the definition the show has seems to subscribe to, so I don't think it's a huge leap to want curtain!fic for the brothers because that's what both Sam and Dean have been shown to want for themselves. Maybe those desires have changed. Maybe they haven't. I do wish the show hadn't dismissed long-distance Lisa/Dean so quickly.

ayrt

But I don't see anyone in this thread telling you normal=marriage. Personally I doubt SPN will have a happy ending of any kind, to me it'll be pretty depressing if the show ended with both guys still hunting and being isolated, but I accept that others wish to see them married and/or having kids. I know society has made us feel that if we don't marry and/or have kids we're a failure but I don't see the problem with some nonnies projecting thier dreams (or whatever) onto Dean and Sam.

ayrt

I doubt SPN will have a happy ending, and personally, I wouldn't want the end to be "both brothers settle down."

The conversation started because one nonnie said she wanted a normal life for Sam and then described a normal life as marriage, as if that's what "normal" means. I have no umbrage toward that nonnie or anyone else in the thread who wants a curtain!fic ending, but I understand the nonnies who object to marriage being conflated with normality and happiness, as if you cannot have a "normal" happy life without it.

I'm pretty sure the curtain!fic nonnies don't actually think happiness is impossible without marriage(/kids), but since there is a big cultural narrative that says it's so, it probably wouldn't hurt to be a little sensitive to that. That's all. Of course, SPN ain't Disney, so the chances of the show ending in a double wedding strikes me as a bit unlikely. :D

SPN ain't Disney, so the chances of the show ending in a double wedding strikes me as a bit unlikely. :D

Art!nonnies, where are you? We need the Disney double-wedding ending illustrated! :DDDDDDDDD

To be fair, she didn't describe normal AS marriage. She said she wanted him to have a normal life AND to get married. It'd be like me saying, "I want to have a party, and drink mojitos." That doesn't mean all parties must involve mojitos or risk not being true parties at all. It just means a mojito is something I'd like to have at my party.

da

Well, in your analogy, you're forgetting their descriptor "normal."

If someone said to me, "I'd like to have a normal party. I want there to be strippers and beer," I'd assume to that person, normal parties = strippers and beer. Not to say the party can have only strippers and beer, but that it wouldn't be what they envision as "normal" without that.

da

The sub-thread started with someone equating 'normal' with married. What kind of ending individual nonnies want was never the problem.

I think that nonnie's point was that Sam or Dean not marrying or having kids would not necessarily mean their being unhappy and in pain for the rest of their lives. It's fine to make an argument that that is what would constitute happiness for those two characters (though it helps if it's an argument specifically grounded in canon as it's developed), but not to construct an argument that Sam and Dean should be happy, happiness is defined by marrying and having children, therefore Sam and Dean should marry and have children.

Maybe Sam will go back to his school play days, join a traveling avant garde theatre company, and find happiness in a loose mesh of friends and lovers and family defined as a troupe rather than a household. It would be kind of random, but it wouldn't be being unhappy and in pain for the rest of his life, and it's not impossible that the writers could sell it just as well as they could sell the version of happiness Sam was thinking of in the Pilot.

+ 1

da

I believe that's their idea of normal life as well, but I think they're not pursuing or craving it anymore, especially Sam. He's changed a lot from S1 Sam.

Harder to tell in Dean's case, since he's a big mess lately (well, both are, but Dean a bit worse, imo).

DA

I think they both grew up with a dichotomy they inherited from John, of their family (which was identical with hunting) and normal family (which was a highly idealized version of their family's pre-fire life) as the two mutually exclusive options. Both of them in various ways have lived out that dichotomy: John himself reinforced it with the insistence that Sam wanting a different life equalled rejecting and being rejected by his family. Both of them also lived and feared John's vision of ideal family as an innocent paradise invaded and destroyed by evil (Dean's fears of that were blatant in his djinn vision in 6.1, and when he saw Lisa and Ben harmed by the intrusion of the supernatural again in the vamp ep and then 6.21, he ended up enacting the barrier between the two spheres by cutting himself out of not only their lives but their minds, because he saw himself as the vector through which bad stuff would get in and destroy them).

One version of recovery from that John dichotomy would be Sam or Dean able to have hunting as a choice rather than something imposed on them in John's choice-exluding way, and another would be Sam or Dean feeling able to have a version of 'normal' family without seeing it in those terms of lost paradise and endangered innocence. But in some ways I think the best recovery would be the breakdown of the dichotomy, either in a compromise like what Dean tried to work out with Lisa of having home and hunting, or by having versions of domesticity that were integrated into the hunter world (a more benign Campbell family compound, or a Roadhouse like deal.

DA - This is very astute, nonnie. I like you :D

Sam concealing his hunting family from Jess seems like an aspect of that dichotomy as well.

ayrt

Yes, I think so. I think the lying to Jess also had to do with his experience of having hunting concealed from him as a kid, and discovering that what he had been led to believe about his family was a lie. Sam's had a lot of experience of reality construction, and a very complex history of both lying and being lied to.

Dean in the Pilot argued that a hunter was who Sam was and that lying about himself to Jess wasn't healthy. Of course he was right about the last part, but Sam was arguing that he wasn't a hunter, wasn't the person John had raised him to be, so to him he wasn't exactly lying about who he was -- he was lying about, or at least concealing, his past and his family because he wanted to think that that WASN'T who he was.

And there's the dichotomy again; apart from the risk that if he told the truth Jess would figure he was mentally ill, I think Sam had a genuine cognitive problem believing that he could be both his past and his Stanford present, because John had hammered home that he couldn't be both, that he was walking away from his identity as a member of the family when he walked away from hunting.

This has nothing to do with your (very good) points, but I've noticed you metaing around meme a lot and I hope you write fic. I always find your word choice very interesting yet unpurple and imagine your prose would be full of crunchy deliciousness.

Heh, thank you! I have been known to write fic, but I don't know if it is crunchy and/or delicious fic.

Hunter domesticity. I'm so glad that I have a phrase now to describe my burning desires.

But in some ways I think the best recovery would be the breakdown of the dichotomy

Yes. Wholeheartedly agreed.

ayrt

I'm not sure about Sam. I think Dean may still want it but has accepted that it's never going to happen for him. It's hard to see him trying again, considering exactly how he ended things with Lisa. D:

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#84

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