![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ariadnes_string“I’ll eat when I’m hungry, I’ll drink when I’m dry
If moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live ‘til I die”
(Moonshiner, trad., Alison Moorer's version)
I liked the episode, though possibly not as much as the two other Edlund eps this season (5.04 and 5.10), but I don’t have much to say about it that hasn’t already been said better by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oselle (here), yourlibrarian (here) and smilla02 (here).
Just two things, then.
Thing one: to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, I rejoice to concur with the rest of the (Dean-loving segments of) fandom in finding Famine full of shit when he says Dean is “dead inside” (for all the reasons beautifully articulated by the writers above).
I actually liked Dean’s own explanation better—repressing the hungers of the body has never really been his issue, and how can something you’ve never suppressed come back to torture you? Now it would have been nice if Edlund could have come up with a physical correlate for Dean’s emotional hungers (for approval, companionship, etc)—as with the lovers eating each other up—but since we just had an everybody-goes-crazy episode (5.11), it was nice, for the narrative, to have one character remain cogent throughout.
However, to indulge in a bit of fanwank, it was interesting that it wasn’t just that Dean didn’t feel any unnatural hungers—it was that some of his usual hungers--hungers he had recently experienced-disappeared: for burgers, for sex (something he had been hungry for just last week, in his dreams, anyway).
It was if Famine was affecting Dean by playing on his hunger not to hunger, as it were—giving him his desired state of being free of desire; the common wish of people who feel too much not to feel anything at all.
I think this works for Dean not so much because his problem is that he feels/wants too much (though that too), but because his most secret yearning (though not so secret to us) has been for death (cf. 4.15) or at least a release from whatever feelings/drives are motivating him to get up and shoulder the burden of saving the world every day (cf. WIAWSNB, 5.11, etc.).
Of course, once Famine is vanquished, he’s back to the agony of caring too much—about his brother, about the fate of the world…
I really don’t think this is what Edlund intended—I think it was supposed to play as broken!empty!Dean. But that’s a hard pill to swallow, doesn’t make sense in terms of character arc, and is certainly not the way JA is playing the character.
Thing two: Like everyone else, I loved the return not just of teamwork between Sam, Dean and Castiel, but also of mutual concern and support. I also liked the glimpses of Dean/Cas shippery. So, where, I ask those of you more up to date on the Dean/Cas fic, are the fics in which Cas makes Dean feel again? I don’t mean in a cuddly, supportive kind of way; I mean more like this amazing 4.16 tag. If I were capable of writing a PWP I would do it myself. But it doesn’t even have to be porn—just Cas in his wall-slamming mode. Send me recs!
If moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live ‘til I die”
(Moonshiner, trad., Alison Moorer's version)
I liked the episode, though possibly not as much as the two other Edlund eps this season (5.04 and 5.10), but I don’t have much to say about it that hasn’t already been said better by
oselle (here), yourlibrarian (here) and smilla02 (here).Just two things, then.
Thing one: to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, I rejoice to concur with the rest of the (Dean-loving segments of) fandom in finding Famine full of shit when he says Dean is “dead inside” (for all the reasons beautifully articulated by the writers above).
I actually liked Dean’s own explanation better—repressing the hungers of the body has never really been his issue, and how can something you’ve never suppressed come back to torture you? Now it would have been nice if Edlund could have come up with a physical correlate for Dean’s emotional hungers (for approval, companionship, etc)—as with the lovers eating each other up—but since we just had an everybody-goes-crazy episode (5.11), it was nice, for the narrative, to have one character remain cogent throughout.
However, to indulge in a bit of fanwank, it was interesting that it wasn’t just that Dean didn’t feel any unnatural hungers—it was that some of his usual hungers--hungers he had recently experienced-disappeared: for burgers, for sex (something he had been hungry for just last week, in his dreams, anyway).
It was if Famine was affecting Dean by playing on his hunger not to hunger, as it were—giving him his desired state of being free of desire; the common wish of people who feel too much not to feel anything at all.
I think this works for Dean not so much because his problem is that he feels/wants too much (though that too), but because his most secret yearning (though not so secret to us) has been for death (cf. 4.15) or at least a release from whatever feelings/drives are motivating him to get up and shoulder the burden of saving the world every day (cf. WIAWSNB, 5.11, etc.).
Of course, once Famine is vanquished, he’s back to the agony of caring too much—about his brother, about the fate of the world…
I really don’t think this is what Edlund intended—I think it was supposed to play as broken!empty!Dean. But that’s a hard pill to swallow, doesn’t make sense in terms of character arc, and is certainly not the way JA is playing the character.
Thing two: Like everyone else, I loved the return not just of teamwork between Sam, Dean and Castiel, but also of mutual concern and support. I also liked the glimpses of Dean/Cas shippery. So, where, I ask those of you more up to date on the Dean/Cas fic, are the fics in which Cas makes Dean feel again? I don’t mean in a cuddly, supportive kind of way; I mean more like this amazing 4.16 tag. If I were capable of writing a PWP I would do it myself. But it doesn’t even have to be porn—just Cas in his wall-slamming mode. Send me recs!
no subject
Date: 2010-02-14 04:05 am (UTC)Hmm! That explanation works for me, too. After all, that was what he expressed to both Sam and Anna, the wish to be free of any feeling at all. And yes, unfortunately it's often impossible to fathom what the writers are intending because, this season in particular, they have gone so off the rails in terms of consistency and logic that there's no telling what we'll see from episode to episode.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-14 01:10 pm (UTC)Because, absolutely, the characterization has been so inconsistent this season it's hard to know what else to do (I'd like to think that JA has given it more consistency than it would otherwise have had, but you know I have a bottomless well of goodwill towards him :))