I think all three of the last eps emphasize that Dean has no idea of how to be a "normal" adult. Both the movie production and the prison set, where he did fit in, are far from normal adult populations, in their own way, and in his dream world, he wasn't really acting as an adult.

He doesn't go to work, he never really connects with Carmen (and never has sex with her), and he has no real adult relationship with Sam. Instead, he spends his time in his mother's house, eating food she prepares for him, and doing "kid" stuff like mowing her lawn. Even before it turned out not to be real, it wasn't a sustainable adult life; it was more playing catchup on all the stuff he missed because she died.

Jack! Look! It's Jack!

Jack! Look! It's Jack!

And no I need to unsub for a few hours. I was going to thinky about SPN but that can wait until ... whenever. It's SciFi Friday!

Wow, once again I've got to say RE Shroud: What a WEIRD EPISODE. I mean, just, badly constructed, and then every now and then Daniel would do a weird little chair dance and I'd start giggling helplessly, because WTF?

I mean, it was awfully nice to see Jack, though sadly enough he was most himself in the scenes without Daniel in them. But chair dance/hair ruffle/fruit basket WTF? (No, that's not fair; the fruit basket thing I wasn't surprised by. Cameron's reaction of "THIS is the man I idolized for years and can't fill the shoes of?" cracked me up, though.)

It was weird. And I was really noticing how much time they spend sitting and glancing at each other. What's up with that?

And I was REALLY tired yesterday and fell asleep in the middle of SGA and then again in the middle of Numb3rs before I gave up and went to bed. So I saw that Rodney didn't die -- but I didn't see how they figured out how to get it so he wouldn't die. Did he retain his superpowers? Or did he lose them so that he could live?

So I saw that Rodney didn't die -- but I didn't see how they figured out how to get it so he wouldn't die. Did he retain his superpowers? Or did he lose them so that he could live?

God, can you imagine Rodney with permanent superpowers? They figured out how to revert him.

I... each time I think I cannot adore him more: [link]

Shroud was worth the price of admission for the scene with Daniel and Jack in the, um, piloting room? ::memfault on actual name of room::

I really enjoyed the wishverse episode of SPN. But why are we assuming that the wish was constructed by Dean? I think it's just as easy to figure that the djinn's magic was working from two principles: what Dean secretly wished for, and a way to plausibly keep his victims hallucinating/dreaming for the duration of time they were fed on. That doesn't necessarily have to do with what Dean's own dream may actually have been--there were just as many things that surprised him, from Cameron being a nurse to his relationship with Sam being strained to having to work, at all. Those are things I don't think, even in idle fantasy, Dean would have fully thought out, and so extrapolating how he feels about things he didn't think up is a stretch, for me.

It seems to me that the djinn's magic is what constructs the alternate reality based on the information gleaned from its prey, and that they prey itself would have little involvement (consciously or unconsciously) in how the alternate reality actually turned out. There's a point where you just have to handwave, I think, because you can't really claim that Dean influenced how things were constructed because he couldn't have without cluing in far faster that everything was perfect.

Take John being dead, for example--setting aside the fact that Jeff probably couldn't be had for the ep (though all the photoshopped pictures of JDM and actress-Mary and the boys were cute, if colored wrong), it didn't occur to Dean that John would be dead. If this was his wishverse, and it were constructed by him, surely John would be alive. But in order to make it seem more real, thereby keeping its prey more docile in the fantasy, John was dead. Making the wish, as it were, doesn't make things perfect--it just makes it a different flavour of real.

Regarding Sammy, I'm surprised he went to Stanford at all. Part of what drove him to Palo Alto was its seeming far-ness from wherever his dad and brother hunted. (And probably the big scholarship.) But with two parents to support him through school, the relative stability of his household, and staying in one place long enough to potentially earn other scholarships, why didn't he go to, like, Northwestern or something? It's not unusual that people go far away to go to college, but he didn't have the incentive to do so as he did in the real reality. (Sigh. Only in shows like this do I have to use such clunky terms as "real reality.")

Either way, it's a moot point, because the fantasy was constructed around Dean's expectations for what a world with their mother would be like, and given his knowledge of how much being without Jess tore Sam up, it's a logical conclusion that Dean's wishverse would include Sam being with Jess. Of course the flip side to that is that Sam and Dean aren't close. But it still aligns closely with what Dean would believe, in order to remain in the fantasty.

To use a not-perfect example, in BtVS' Wishverse, Xander and Willow were best friends. Crazy vampire best friends, but still. Something expected, something not, to maintain the construct that what is being experienced is real. Or at least, how it should be.

It was nice to see Jess/Tyra, anyway. Her hair was very curly.

But why are we assuming that the wish was constructed by Dean? I think it's just as easy to figure that the djinn's magic was working from two principles: what Dean secretly wished for, and a way to plausibly keep his victims hallucinating/dreaming for the duration of time they were fed on. That doesn't necessarily have to do with what Dean's own dream may actually have been--there were just as many things that surprised him, from Cameron being a nurse to his relationship with Sam being strained to having to work, at all. Those are things I don't think, even in idle fantasy, Dean would have fully thought out, and so extrapolating how he feels about things he didn't think up is a stretch, for me.

For me, because it fits in with Dean's "supernatural acid" hypothesis, where the djinn's magic is a catalyst that sends him down the rabbit hole, but is not an active player (it wouldn't have to be, most of the time, and doesn't make sense that it would have to constantly be in there fine-tuning), and because so many of the blank areas that get filled in are filled in from things that make the most sense if they're being filled in by Dean's own subconscious.

So he's sitting there, eating the sandwich, and something hits the "huh, don't I have somewhere to be?" button, "Shouldn't you be at work?" (which can be seen as both filling in the normal and a warning). And there where's filled in with "at the garage", which, of course, makes sense if Dean's mind is sort of making it up as he goes along, because it falls into line with following in his father's footsteps.

There's a point where you just have to handwave, I think, because you can't really claim that Dean influenced how things were constructed because he couldn't have without cluing in far faster that everything was perfect.

I'm not sure I follow that. Given his speech at the end (the one frelled on the DL) about how all he can think about since Dad's death is how much the job has taken from them, and how much they've lost ("I know, but I wanted to stay. I I wanted to stay so bad. I mean ever since Dad…all I can, all I can think about is how much this job’s cost us. We’ve lost so much. And we’ve sacrificed so much."), it just makes the most sense to me, both in terms of what we see and how it ties in to the overall emotional arc of the character this season, that it's his construct.

t sits next to Plei I totally see it as Dean's subconscious determining what went into the universe, once the djinn did its magic whoozit. Also, I had a suspicion that the djinn wasn't all that smart... Like, it knows enough to do what it needs to do to keep its prey under control, but it isn't interested in the inner workings of their brains.

I'm back to the X-Files comparisons: "Field Trip", not "Je Souhaite".