You're watching the John Winchester Is An Asshole Show (With Bonus Dead Women)! I will be very excited to hear your thoughts on it as you watch on.

I am trying to remember to resent the dead women. Which - ack, haha, is a terrible thing to say, but they point I'm trying to make is that it just becomes so normal after a while, I've stopped registering as outrageous. And - just because you know it's a cheap gambit to manipulate you emotionally does not mean you can avoid being manipulated emotionally. I watched one of the infamous single-sparkling-tear-of-manpain episodes (for the record, Dean shed a single tear, Sam bawled his eyes out) and almost cried too. Because - and then they - and she was a monster - and they had to kill her - and so sad!

I wish I had your ability to take gleeful delight in his assholeness! Every time he shows up on my screen I start shouting things like "would it kill you to explain your plan, you bastard!" and "for fucks sake just man up and tell your boy you love them!" and, most often, "diaf you obnoxious son of a bitch".

Oh - yes, that is *clever*. Women's Work always makes me angry, and I suspect it'll work even better now that I'm at a point in canon where I actually know who all of these women are. (The Price is also excellent beyond reckoning, but I'll always resent the inclusion of that clip of Laura Roslin's grave; fuck you, her death was the end of her journey, and that is not invalidated by the fact that it made Bill really sad.)

See, I really enjoy the Sam and Dean Are Not Functional Humans show, especially when they awkwardly try to talk about their feelings or point out to each other how much their childhood warped them. But I think what I'm enjoying most is how they're working things out now that John is out of the way and they can't just operate my automatically obeying (Dean) or disobeying (Sam) his orders. They actually have to make decisions for themselves! They have to evaluate the world and come to their own conclusions! They have to make incredibly stupid decisions based on their epic co-dependence and inability to even pretend to be functional humans without the other person in their life!

I mean, okay, they don't have to do that last one. BUT STILL. And then John shows up and suddenly they're like kids again, and Dean's just obeying and Sam's just rejecting, and while that's... probably pretty true to, you know, psychology, I just can't get into it as much.