What song did you personally like the best out of this round? Did a song make an impact right away or did it require the full version? Did the artist/series reveal change your opinion for better or for worse? Tell me in a reblog! :D
(note: this is not a popularity contest or to vote for a favourite animated series out of loyalty π itβs still about the song.)
β¨ Please reblog to make it reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind π Artists and titles will be revealed after the pollβs conclusion, check the original postfor an update! β¨
Can I ask a possibly dumb question about Supernatural?
You see I haven't actually watched the show, I'm just on tumblr and ao3 enjoying people ramble about the good bits of the story and one quite common theme of fix-it fics for the episode that shan't be named is Dean retiring (more or less willingly, usually with Cas) while Sam and Eileen keep hunting. And I've been wondering why is that, considering Dean is generally the hunting guy, meanwhile Sam is the one that wanted to and actually got out (twice?).
My apologies if I'm bothering you about something that should have been obvious (β -β _β -β ;β )
hi! no worries, itβs not a bother at all! i always appreciate it when someone sends an ask with a question like this in a genuinely curious and nice way (rather than some i get where people just tell me how im wrong). also apologizing in advance because im pretty sure this is gonna get a little long
now having not watched the show before, i can totally see where you would have gotten this idea that dean is the one who wants to be a hunter and sam is the one who wants to get out. itβs a pretty common fanon belief but im honestly not sure why so many people believe it. maybe because in the pilot dean is the one who is hunting and comes to stanford to pull sam out of his βnormalβ life back into hunting? or it could be because dean says at least a few times that he wants to go out in a blaze of glory? whatever the reasoning, itβs simply not true!
one thing we learn over the course of the show is that dean, especially in the earlier seasons, is putting on a performance of who he thinks he supposed to be, who others expect him to be. so i think the only reason that dean is βthe hunting guyβ is because he has spent a lot of his life being that guy for his father and/or his brother. his dad raised him to be a weapon so dean became a weapon. he was told that his job was to protect sammy so he did everything he could to protect sammy. and as for sam wanting to have a normal life, i think thereβs a pretty good argument that he at least partly wanted that because it wasnβt what his father wanted. and sam spent most of his life right up until john died fighting with him. not hunting and instead going to school was samβs rebellion against their father.
and thereβs also a lot of people who believe that βdean dragged sam back into huntingβ in season 1 but if you watch the pilot youβll see dean wants sam to stay to help him look for their dad. but when sam refuses, dean brings him back to stanford. it isnβt until jess is murdered and sam sets off on his quest for revenge that sam leaves stanford for good. and the only times that sam ever actually gets out of hunting after stanford was when he was grieving losing dean in season 8 and post series. i doubt sam would have stopped hunting in either of those instances had dean still been alive.
and as for dean, as early as 1x06 we see that maybe this isnβt really the life he wanted after all. when the shapeshifter becomes dean (and as a result is able to see into his thoughts) he tells sam:
ALT
in contrast to sam leaning into hunting after their father dies, in season 2 we really start to see dean show that he wants to get out:
2x20 deanβs djinn dream is a world where he got to have a normal childhood and a life where he never became a hunter. and even though the dream has its issues, he ultimately only leaves because heβs figured out itβs all a lie:
i have less examples that come to mind from the later seasons cause itβs been a while since iβve watched them, but i think thereβs plenty of evidence throughout the series to support the idea that post series dean would retire with cas and sam would keep hunting with eileen.
Drowning this because a) really donβt want to make a long post longer and, b) this isnβt the type of person whoβd respond well to constructive criticism of their worldview from someone familiar with the topic.
Since Iβm not looking for an argument, I thought Iβd use it as a learning exercise for everyone else. Also under a cut because it got very long and I started quoting papyri because I was annoyed.
I love history and archeology but I was scandalized when in a museum in Firenze, they displayed the funerals clothes of a couple of Medici. They dig out those people and strip them of their funeral clothes to Β« preserve Β» it.
I get that clothes are important and all but for me, this was a step too far.
Right, so, this didnβt seem right to me so I looked it up. Turns out the tombs of Cosimo I deβ Medici and his wife Eleanora of Toldeo were discovered in 1857 not by archaeologists but by the state. They had already been plundered and all that was left were their bones and these clothes. The idea that they βstripped the bodiesβ of these clothes is sort of a misunderstanding. In order to remove the bones and rebury them, they had to move them, and in order to move bones that are no longer connected, they had to remove the clothes. Thatβs not particularly difficult on a 300 year old set of bones. They slip right out. It was decided at the time, to rebury them without the clothes. This is likely because the people who reinterred them placed no value on the clothing rather than thought 'hey we must preserve them in perpetuityβ. You canβt put clothes back on bones anyway. We wouldnβt necessarily rebury clothes with bones now either, mostly for reasons related to beetles and potential infestations under a Basillica that no one wants. (You want rats in your crypt? thatβs how you get rats in your crypt). Anyway, no one looked at the clothes themselves until they were conserved in the 1980s (at that point they were shapeless rags that were almost destroyed) and they were brought back to life as you see them today.
This post is about Modern Archaeologists and why we do what we do, so comparing the exhumation of the Mediciβs and the taking of their clothes in 1857 to what modern Archaeologists do and then saying itβs bad is exactly what this post was reinforcing as a 'not great thing to doβ. What youβre attributing to archaeologists here, which is what this post is about, is actually the work of a) the state and b) Antiquarians. Antiquarians are the predecessors of Archaeologists in that they often made surveys of sites for the preservation of history, but they had no formal training and often did damage to sites. The work of these people is often ascribed to Archaeologists because formal Archaeology with rules and ways of going about things developed in roughly the 1820s but still existed alongside Antiquarians. Early archaeologists are not great, thatβs long been established, but, not to beat a point to death, people canβt keep tarring modern Archaeologists with the same brush as Antiquarians or even early Archaeologists. Weβre not the same people. We donβt do the same work. We cannot change whatβs already happened.
Iβm glad we have those clothes on display because uhh..the crypt (after reinterrnment) was opened in 1944 (I think everyone knows what was going on in the 1940s so I wonβt mention that) and then flooded in 1966. Weβre lucky Cosimo and Eleanoraβs bones still exist, let alone their clothes.
No one deliberately dug them up to strip them of their clothes for the 'preservationβ. Their place of rest had already been largely destroyed. What happened was they were moved, reburied, and the clothes they were in (rotted as they were) were deemed worthless and kept in a box until 1983, when they were then conserved.
Can we please stop attributing grave robbery to Archaeologists as if this is what we do 'for the knowledgeβ? Thatβd be great.
