andromakhe001 asked in the comments for "Visual Framing in Croatoan (2.09)":

What do you think they are implying though? Inquiring minds want to know. :)

So rather than sticking this large-ish chunk of my blithering in the comments for that, I'm making it a new post.



The Screencap (for reference)


What is being implied by the framing? Hm... well... without getting specific...

Imminent seperation. Dean in denial but having no escape from the facts anymore. Events in Croatoan are pushing him to an extremely hard realization, that whatever he knows won't go away by denying it, and he's just realizing that he can't protect Sam by not telling him, that things will happen regardless of what Sam knows.

Sam will leave his brother, either physically or emotionally/metaphorically or both for a while to take a path which leads away from Dean. It appears to be a good path but it's indefinite where the path eventually leads, and given that this is Supernatural and Kripke, I don't think the green, leafy, sunshiny path will stay that way for long.

Extending it further, Dean won't understand the path Sam takes, because he is still resisting and being pushed into revealing/accepting the whole whatever the secret is thing. (Sorry, I just have to add a note here regarding Joseph Campbell / Hero's Journey, if you aren't keen on that, skip to the next paragraph :-) I totally, all-caps, 48-point, screaming red blinking letters love that Dean's resisting, because of the whole "Hero refusing the Quest" thing, and if this is what is happening with Dean now, then he might be getting his own Hero's Cycle to complement Sam's already in progress one, which, frigging *YAY!* because I so want them both to be, you know, mythic and archetypal and stuff. Hee. Yeah, I'm a dork. :-D )

Where was I? Yes. As a result of Dean resisting/denying/looking the wrong way, he will likely be blind-sided by something that happens because of the path Sam is taking, possibly by something attacking Dean to get to Sam. There will be a critical incident that will shock Dean out of denial and resistance whether he is ready for that or not, and he will begin dealing with the path Sam is on and all the things he has been in denial over.

I like this cap in particular because it has Sam still sheltered/blocked by Dean and looking toward Dean, not towards the path. Sam is still very worried about what's going on with Dean, but doesn't know at that point that what's going on with Dean is about what's going on with him. But that's going to change when Dean tells him. (It already had at the end of Croatoan. I love how Sam's tone of voice completely shifts in the last few lines he says there, after the 'Dad told me something about you'.)

Also, no matter how far apart the Winchester boys get in the next while, they will return to each other. In the screencap, they are as visually together as it is possible to be, and still be two people. They are the center of each other's orbits, no matter how eccentric or unstable those orbits get. They share the same core, and regardless of what is revealed or undertaken in upcoming episodes, or how dire things seem, they will return to that shared core.

Heh. Anyway, how's that for what I think is implied by the framing? What do you think?

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