#84

[spnanonhaven]

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Comments

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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).

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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

Yes. Wholeheartedly agreed.

Re: What would be a happily ever after for SPN?

[(Anonymous)]

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: