Let's See. Jensen Worked For A Vast Majority Of His Acting Life On This Character And It Is Probably

Another day, another school, where the kids all have different names but are all the same. The teacher, also different and also the same, asks her class if anyone collects things. Sam frowns. If he was old enough to know better, he’d say he collects sorrows.

Kids raise their hands and talk excitedly about stamps, flowers drying between book pages, dead butterflies pinned like trophies in transparent showcases, Yo-Yos. Sam raises tentatively his hand, because he wants to melt in this classroom, wants to be just a name, to have a bedroom, a favorite crosswalk, and the luxury to collect things. So he says the one and only thing he can think of: “motel rooms”. Because this is true, somehow. An eclectic collection of dusk in nowhere towns and first days everywhere.

She tries to explain to him that it isn’t the same, because Sam can’t carry motel rooms with him, doesn’t even own them. She sees the light dim in his eyes, as kids start to giggle around him, glancing at him like he just said something hilarious. There’s nothing funny about this. She asks him if there is anything else that he keeps somewhere safe, anything that makes him happy and that he carries with him everywhere, that he can’t get enough of, and Sam thinks about it long and hard, makes a list of everything that fits the description. 

In the end there is just one thing, but the moment he thinks it, Sam’s heart swells in his chest and the kids’ mocking gazes fade in the classroom’s background, because his collection is the coolest in the entire goddamn universe. And none of the kids here can claim to have something as great as him. They can keep their lifeless butterfly wings.

“Sammys, I collect Sammys”, he says with a big grin, and she ask “What are Sammys?” but Sam just laughs. No one in this school deserves to know. No one in the entire town deserves to see his collection. So Sam just laughs and when the bell rings, he leaves with his bag on his shoulders and his teacher’s eyes on his back. 

She’s walking to her car, thinking about dinner and going for a jog maybe, when she hears a loud and boisterous “Sammy!” behind her. There’s so much unfiltered joy and love in those five letters that she feels a half second of jealousy before she can stop herself. She looks around and sees a boy, sun bleached hair and vibrant green eyes, who must be 8 at most, waving at little Sam who is running toward him at full speed, a private smile she’s almost ashamed to be a witness of spreading on his cheeks. 

That’s when she gets it, and as she watches Sam throw himself at the other boy, who just laughs and hugs Sam just as hard, she hopes Sam’s collection will never end collecting dust on the shelves of his memories.

So they have almost managed to beat Jensen into submission (Not that I think he is ever going to fully agree). Their "keep asking him until he says what we want" strategy seems headed in the right direction. Poor Jensen can't even now say that interpreting his art in a way that is completely opposite to that intended is offensive to him as an artist. He has to behave like everything is abstract and open to what you take from it.

And Jared is going to hurt because of that answer, because he isn't giving in to them. I hope they just leave the boys alone. The new cons should prioritise questions on ongoing projects.

Fan: People find slivers of connection to your characters in vastly different ways. What you make is art, and what is art if not a mirror? So really, interpretations are more of a reflection of the viewer than the creators. And the nature of cons is that you're asked to say this or that about your character and sometimes that becomes the definitive thing, and sometimes fans use that against other fans, to be like, 'Well, Jared said' or 'Jensen said'. So how do you feel about the way your characters and scenarios are interpreted differently by other people that might not be the way you all see it. I know Jensen you said something about 15x18, where you said we're artists and the artist doesn't stand next to the painting and tell the viewer what to think about the painting. So do you think it would be a good caveat to say, these are - kind of the death of the author kind of thing - so how do you feel about how people interpret your characters so differently, is my question.

Jensen: I kinda still stand by that comment of we are creating - this is an art form that we get to do and luckily we have found an audience, so we get to do it more. But it is, yeah, I wouldn't wanna - I think early on I maybe took a little ... a little umbrage with what people were reading into maybe certain characteristics or certain storylines or whatever and then I realized that nononono that's not up to me to tell them how to interpret what they want to interpret. Or it's not up to me to be disappointed if they're not inspired by what I thought was y'know an inspiring - whatever it might be. And I realized, and I think we've talked about this, that it's like yeah, you don't go into a gallery and have the artist standing next to you and going, "This is what you need to see, and if you don't see it then there's something wrong" - or whatever. Because it's like, no, it is up to interpretation. And if it inspires you or if it makes you feel anything then I think that's the whole point of art and that's the whole point of entertainment is to bring feeling into escapism and feelings and connectivity, all of that should be a part of it but we shouldn't have to tell you that, that's a gift that we give to you and you get to do what you want with that.

Jared: Yeah, we can't tell you that.

Jensen: No, everybody's different.

Jared: I think the artist shouldn't stand next to the paining in this proverbial situation, but I think also the critic shouldn't come in and go like, "This is what that episode was about, this is what the relationship was about, this is what it means to me so this is what needs to mean to all of you." [Jensen nods] It's all incorrect. So whether it's art or life, some people listen to Stairway to Heaven and think it's about uh, you know, this mortal coil that we live with and some people think it's about Lord of the Rings and then you're like okay you're both right. But you don't - you shouldn't tell somebody else that they should think something about that because it means to you what it means to you. And that's great. It means to us what it means to us and that's great. You know, there are objective - there's objective and subjective, right? So if you say, 'Hey, Jensen, Jared, I just love the way y'all deal with aliens and their space ships on Supernatural". I'm not gonna say, "Hey, we didn't have any aliens and spaceships". You know if that's what it means to you, that's great! I'm gonna say that's not - we weren't talking about aliens and spaceships. Um, and so I think that's the wonderful part and why we're here after almost twenty years to talk about - it means something similar to a lot of us, but it means something very unique to all of us as well. It means something different to me than it does to him, even though we have much of a shared experience and probably everybody in this room. And so I think that's the wonderful part of -

Jensen: My answer is there's no wrong answer.

Jared: Yeah, yeah, it means to you what it means to you.

🤠

“How did you find us?” | SPN 12.12

Dean Winchester Icons

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Listen are there any more fans who are literally into supernatural BECAUSE it was about monsters and horror and creepy folktales that they were already into? Cause that’s me.

My favourite thing about supernatural outside of Sam and Dean was the urban legends, the cases of the week where they would hole up in a motel and dig into the lore before going out in the fucking wild or into the strange local histories of small towns. I’m fucking obsessed with all this creepy shit. It wasn’t just about Sam and Dean for me- every podcast I end up obsessed with is about obscure local histories, folky monsters and secret societies.

Sam and Dean are weirdos. They are the things that go bump in the night just the same as the things they hunt. I LOVE them for that.

It makes me sad that the show attracts so many people that are like ‘ooh I skip over all the creepy stuff because I’m here for the drama and the homoerotic story I made up in middle school’ girl, I wasn’t gonna say it. But you’re appropriating goth culture. The creepy shit is literally the point here.

Go watch cutesy stuff lol. I wanna talk about cryptids and curses and backwood towns and ‘missing under mysterious circumstances’.

This is why the episodes of the week were so special.

I would actually say the less it focused on folkloric monsters of North America, the more boring it got. Like imagine Sam and Dean encountering MothMan and stopping a local disaster episode. Like, a Beast of Boggy Creek episode. A ‘Not Deer’ episode. Or even one with scary little cave gremlins, or ‘black eyed kids’. Even one where they explore a skin**lker case. (I’m obscuring it because the more I know about them the more genuinely terrifying they become lol) There’s just so many places they could have gone with scaling it down and making it more interesting, and keeping the brother dynamic going smoothly - which was when it was it’s most entertaining.

In the later seasons the writers kept making them talk about working cases but then interrupting it to play bullshit Angel demon corporate nonsense and inserting British villains. Like Red Meat was a fucking BANGER for a reason. It wasn’t set inside a magic building full of people strategising. It was in a cabin in the woods. It was the isolation that made it scary, the wilderness, vs a controlled environment, that made it feel like even though your characters are strong- anything could happen.

'Still Beautiful, Still Dean Winchester.'

Pencil drawing of Dean Winchester in moleskine sketchbook – 1/24

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Cheesesteak day

While I've revisited eps to make gifs, I haven't done an attentive rewatch in many years. So, I rewatched the pilot. The boys look so young 👶😄. There's a ghost story, or maybe there are two ghost stories. One is the obvious, the woman in white. The other is Sam being haunted by his past, with Dean like a link to an older era. He pulls back the curtain to an American Gothic horror tale, with his vintage car, and vintage cassette tapes, and vintage persona. Sam is the modern young man, about to head to the future, but just when he thought he was out...

I wouldn't say Dean pulled him back in. That gentle tug wasn't enough to do it, in fact. Dean has bravado, but is surprisingly soft-spoken and tentative in the way he watches for Sam's reactions like a hawk. Even when he pushes Sam on the bridge, his eyes are wide and hurt, and his hushed, "Don't talk about her like that" is not so much angry as it is a plea.

Sam seems completely self assured. He's worldly, smart, decisive. I feel as viewers we're following him from the respectable suburban world to the bad place. With John leaving a vacuum behind him, literally the empty motel room, both boys seem to fill that space -- Sam immediately connecting with John's research, while Dean dons the mantle of John's protective coat. Pleasing metaphors of inheritance.

Speaking of inheritance, Jessica's death in the same manner that killed his mother is what pulls Sam back in. He's now on the same path as John. He's the one who commands the "we" in "We got work to do." Another pleasing story parallel.

Dean is the older brother, but I'm always struck that at this stage he's almost delicate. The eyelashes, the bracelets, the too big jacket. He's positioned in this trope as the bad boy, yet Jensen always has an inherent good guy quality. He's so funny, but it's like a vaudeville act. He's insanely charming and devil-may-care, but you get the sense he's also down on his luck. He's odd and fun and intriguing.

The desaturation and shadows of the cinematography never get old. J2 are beautiful and immediately as watchable as Mulder and Scully. There are some stunning women and recognizable character actors. Of course some of it seems dated, now even more retro than intended lol, yet the Americana parts are mythic and hold up as a motif. Bonus points for including a public library for research. They're searching for a shade of a father; they can't go home, there be ghosts; home is an empty husk of trauma. Still love this pilot.