Bro-yay!
A Supernatural/Boondock Saints songvid
music from Last of the Mohicans
songvid by angstslashhope
Spoilers for all of Season 1 of Supernatural, and Boondock Saints (duh).

- View/Download here


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Okay, I admit it: quite possibly the biggest kink-button SPN hits (or rather, pounds with its mighty fist) for me is its playing around with prodigal narrative. And when I say kink-button, I mean kink-button. Like, when I talk about it in posts like this? What I can actually examine and articulate is the tip of the iceberg. The massive, unaccessible giant hunk of ice below the surface tends to make itself known in pretty much any creative endeavor I undertake, and the extent of it is not something I am consciously aware of, that much I know for sure.

Anyway. Supernatural and the prodigal narrative.

Lawrence, Kansas. Aside from (or should I say, as well as) Dean's whole "I swore I'd never go back there" stuff, I am freaking head-over-heels for the Winchester family's relationship to Lawrence. John's diary talks about how after Mary's death he stayed with Mike (the guy he co-owned his garage with) and his wife, how they were increasingly disturbed by his behaviour, and how he eventually left them - without saying goodbye, before they were even awake.

In other words, John Winchester disappeared. John Winchester and his infant children disappeared. This is something that would not be taken lightly, despite the fact that the police closed the case of Mary's death and ruled out foul play.

In 'Home' we see Sam and Dean talking to Mike, and he mentions a police investigation following John's disappearance, that the case was never closed.

And in 'The Benders' we see Dean & Sam's names come up on the police record search, but not John's (ignoring, of course, the fact that there are more Winchesters than 3 in the world anyway). And hey, why isn't Mary's name on there? Does John have any other relatives? What happened to *his* parents? (and no matter what the answer to that one is, it's completely relevant.)

I like the concept that John leaving Lawrence signals *that* John Winchester ceasing to exist - at least in that world. That Sam and Dean come up in the police search because they are so totally removed from their childhood identities, pre-fire.

Because really, police records? Open (albeit old) police case? There would have to have been some severance there to ensure the connection between the Sam and Dean Winchester in the police records and infants Sam and Dean Winchester who disappeared from Lawrence in 1983 was never made.

I am totally pinged by Sam and Dean visiting Mike, visiting Lawrence, and Lawrence (and Mike, with whom they lived with some twenty years earlier) not recognising them. That is the most ... stimulating part of the prodigal narrative for me: the return from the other world, changed. How the pieces won't fit together anymore, how that effects the players on both sides (those who left, those who were left behind). What happens when the surfaces of each are pressed to the other.

The "I can never go home" refrain of the Pilot is something that echoes throughout the very elements of the show, I think.


And speaking of homes, ( minor Dead Man's Blood, Salvation & Devil's Trap spoilers )

That is to say, the nomad lifestyle isn't par for the course for hunters. Why does John choose this lifestyle? Ostensibly he's chasing the demon, but he said that trail had been cold for nearly 20 years before he goes 'missing'. Are we to assume that they did, in fact, spend the past 20 years on the road? In the draft pilot, they had a home base they roamed from. There's certainly no mention of a home, or base, in what we see aired, but was that always the case? It *is* nice to think, and possibly more likely than motel after motel for 20 years, especially with schooling, that they rented places here and there.

How long they stayed in each and what made John choose those places and choose to move on is something many a fic-writer has speculated on. Maybe they were relatively stable, if moving around a lot, before school ended and Sam left? And then Dean and John took well and truly to the road.

Some things to think about, anyway.