melancholia

True facts about what happens when I watch Heroes with my friends:

1) We all call each other racist at least once
2) My male friends (who are straight) cheerfully admit they would bang Peter like a screendoor
3) My friends sadly admit that Sylar is in love with Mohinder
4) We go gaga over the beauty that is the dysfunctional Petrellis
5) Much hate for the whiny Claire.
6) An epic fight over whether Peter belongs to with Nathan or Sylar (guess who should-be-able-to-but-can't choose here?)
7) Much love for Sylar \o/
8) A lot of comparions are drawn between Supernatural and Heroes
9) Hushed explanations for anyone else who has not seen every single episode, which generally don't make a lot of sense
10) Did I mention that we call each other racist a lot?

So, I've been thinking. A lot. About the parallels between the Petrellis and the Winchesters, and which family is more fucked up.

Honestly? I think the Petrellis are more inherently fucked up. If not for Azazel and Mary's death, the Winchesters would have been completely normal (as we saw in 2.20). All of their dysfunction is adaptive as a result of that major trauma, and then the years of hunting on the fringes of society.

The Petrellis, on the other hand, are fucked up with or without powers. Peter and Nathan were raised with no knowledge of their abilities, they have alternatives and still choose each other, which is why you could take them out of their show setting and transplant them to ancient Rome and still have the same dynamic. Arthur Petrelli was clearly not the nicest guy in Vietnam before meeting Linderman, and I'm willing to bet that Angela Petrelli was a stone cold manipulator long before she discovered her power, as well.

Dysfunction is the language the Petrellis speak. They manipulate, they play mind games, they hurt each other on purpose, and honestly ought to occasionally doubt if their family truly loves them. Even though the Winchesters pretty much failed every communication seminar ever and can hardly say what they mean (nevermind ever being on par with the layered, edged, all true and all false communication of the Petrellis), their emotion is a lot more honest. It is what it is, and they never use it for their own agendas.

(Though, Angela's style of emotional manipulation is much, much higher for Nathan than it is for Peter, probably because Nathan on some level does believe that love is conditional. So "I won't love you if you don't do this" is a pretty effective threat on Nathan, and great when bolstered with "You were born for greatness, don't disappoint." Whereas Peter is fully aware that you love someone or you don't. Arthur doesn't love him, and he knows that. It's upsetting to Peter, but it also means Arthur can't manipulate him. There would never be anything to gain from it; at the same time, Angela does love him, and that is probably why Peter is able to cope with the horrible things she has put her family through--which, by the way, is fucked up in a special way. Peter only takes your crap and lets you fuck him up if you really do love him first.)

However, the Winchesters are more fucked up on an individual basis. Dean has a very skewed idea of self-worth, dependent on pleasing his father and taking care of Sam, as well as a martyr streak a mile wide because of the responsibility John laid on him when he was way too young to handle or understand it, and is perpetually self-sacrificing to the point of being pathologically self-destructive. Sam has his guilt (guilt over the wrong things, granted, but still guilt) and the revenge obsession that John had. He's also arrogant and bullheaded and proud and has a superior complex, he's a control freak and he's alpha male and a lot of this is because of John and the life they lead. John was so consumed by grief and revenge that he couldn't have fucked Sam and Dean up harder if he'd tried. They are all three incapable of relating properly to the outside world, let alone truly living in it.

Peter and Nathan are perfectly functional outside of their family relationships. So Mommy likes Peter better, and Daddy likes Nathan better. Does that mean that Peter and Nathan have no sense of self-worth, or feel that they are living solely for that parent's approval? Of course not. Their parents' expectations clearly shaped both of them, but not much more than parents shape anyone. Their family issues don't haunt every single day to day experience they have.

A note on possessiveness: both families have this in spades, although obviously coming at it from different angles. Dean, somewhat healthily, doesn't want to own his family. He just wants them to always be together. Living out of the same car, living in the same town, whatever. They have to be in proximity, or they aren't really a family anymore. Sam, somewhat unhealthily, is a lot like Peter in this regard: he wants Dean to choose him over everything, be it Daddy, the angels or his own morals.

The Petrellis are about ownership. Peter is Nathan's. (Or Angela's, if you ask her first.) This expands beyond the family in a way that Dean's possessiveness doesn't. Sammy's got a girl? Awesome. Pete's got a girl? WTF, step off, bitch! Whether Nathan viewed Simone as a rival for Peter's attention, or simply didn't approve of her personally, it's still a matter of his territory being violated. At the very least, he wants to be allowed to veto Peter's girlfriends ahead of time.

I mean, come on, the Petrellis are disturbing. They are canonically jealous people (Peter watching Isaac and Simone hug) and possessive of each other (Nathan cutting Simone off to kiss Peter's cheek) and they will compete and play family members against each other to get closer to one (Angela telling Peter Nathan doesn't really love him; Angela telling Claire her boys are "getting along for once" in the wedding pic). (Then there was Nathan looking so bitchy at the thought of giving up Peter's body so that Claire could get her time to mourn and cuddle in 1.19, which is a special kind of disturbing, right there.) So, as there is competition between Nathan and Angela for possession of Peter, there seems to equally be competition between Peter and Arthur for possession of Nathan. We got evidence of that in The Eclipse, with Peter's distress that Future!Nathan chose Arthur over Peter (that moment felt so much like little kid-hurt: Peter loves Nathan more, dammit, so it's not fair that Nathan would choose Daddy over him). Everyone in that family uses touch to manipulate, and the only real way to avoid it is to just never engage at all. Peter falls into the trap because he's Peter and Nathan avoids it because he's Nathan.

(What I did think was really cute, though, was in 2.07, when Angela was keeping it together, even in the face of Peter not remembering her, up until he didn't remember Nathan. And then, in 2.08, Peter willingly imprisoned himself as punishment for killing his brother. Not for nearly destroying the world. Who cares about that? For killing his brother. And knowing, instinctively, that when Adam talked about the person most important to him that he needed to remember, that it was Nathan? Oh, Petrellis. Seriously, how do you get more fucked up every episode?)

Then there's the fact that 2.08 made sexual abuse subtext canon with the Petrelli family. Plz check back later on that one, I still flail at the mere thought of all the juicy meta. I mean, Angela and Nathan were meant to be based on the canonically incestuous relationship in the original Manchurian Candidate, and let's not forget Kring and the writers outright stating that Angela "bad touches" Nathan; the sexual abuse metaphor/subtext between Arthur and Peter was rather blatant (primarily the physical affection turning into violation/literal power-stealing, but also the chaining to a bed, Peter's seemingly inexplicable and immediate terror of Arthur, Arthur's casual, sadistic, and utterly uncaring treatment of Peter, Peter's difficulty in telling Nathan that Arthur had hurt him, etc.) and then there's the age difference between Nathan and Peter. I mean, sure, they were originally conceptualized as twins and largely still written as twins, but they have this huge gap in age. They didn't grow up together. Just trying to figure out how a 24-year-old became codependent on a 12-year-old still fascinates me. Man, but I do wonder what this show would've been like on cable!

To continue from above, I'd say Supernatural and Heroes are quite alike when it comes to sexual violence. They never pull their punches.
SPN: (1) Azazel!John pressing Dean to the wall and invading his personal space with a long, lingering stare; (2) Nick the Siren, who was extremely sexualized himsel, slipped Dean a drug via his drink that caused him to lose his inhibitions, spat in Sam's mouth, and then forced the brothers into a duel to the death to win his affections; (3) Alastair practically personified a creepy stalker ex, complete with sexually charged references to non-consensual past actions: he sang about dancing "cheek to cheek" and mused on how "daddy's little girl" would want revenge for "all those prokes and prods"; (4) there was also the guy from 2.09 with the Stepford smile who tried to force Dean out of the car, the one that Dean called a handsome devil but declined on account of not swinging that way; (5) then there's Zachariah who keeps going on about how Dean will "let Michael in" and how he "will say yes to [him]"; (6) Henriksen outright stating that John touched Dean "in a bad place"; (7) vampire!Kate forcing Dean into a kiss; (8) Meg forcing Dean into a kiss; (9) Meg crawling into Sam's lap while he's beaten and tied up and kisses him while Dean watches; (10) Azazel TK-ing Dean into a chair and then proceeded (again) to slink in close and smell him, this time.
H: Well. There's not quite as much here, but there is, as mentioned above, (1) Arthur/Peter and (2) Angela/Nathan and (3) Nathan/Peter (I mean, there's playing with subext and then there's...dub-con wrestling in the living room, I don't even know) subtext; (4) there's also some Linderman/Nathan (Linderman took the phrase "seduction to the dark side" pretty literally, albeit without actual touching, just with talking, invading personal space and the like); (5) four months of Peter being sexually tortured by Elle (her calling him a "toy", persistently touching him even though he flinches away, tells him he will learn to like pain, and is blatantly turned on by combining a kiss with violence toward him) ending with him being pretty into it (then again, Peter's masochistic/submissive and sadistic tendencies could not be more blatant if they tried); (6) the very, very blatant Sylar/Mohinder subtext is fucked up beyond words; (7) Peter clinging to the closest, most authoritative person (Adam) and letting him make all his decisions, (7) Peter climbing onto Sylar, beating him bloody and nailing him in the balls over and over again (shame it involved actual nails, but I'll take what I can get) etc., etc.

Kripke & Co. and Kring & Co. are eerily similar sometimes. (And I still can't figure out who are the most slashy: Jared & Jensen or Adrian & Milo. Seriously, how do I get so lucky with my fandoms?)

On a final unrelated note: can we please get over thinking of Peter as a fluffy bunny? Peter has always been a masochist, but it's wrapped up in a fluffy little package so some people just don't see it. (Or they choose not to.) Peter is the good guy, the hero. He cares. He wants to help people. He's loving. He has a big heart. Yeah, those things are true. What's more true: he's insane. He's a masochist. He's emotionally fucked up in every way imaginable. He had an unhealthy codependent relationship with his brother. (Did you see Peter's take on the Sylar-is-Nathan/Nathan-is-Sylar drama? "...and?" That's my trainwrecky boy. Totally on board with preventing Sylar from jumping back into the body in the moment, and totally in denial that there could be a serious problem after. Because he has Nathan, you see. Who cares if it's a cheap rip off. Peter's not even going in deep with philosophy about souls or consciousness. Nope. He's got Nathan. He's going to keep him. You're not taking this one away. Mourning? Oh fuck no. Peter is not equipped to mourn Nathan. Pretty much ever.) He's distrusting. He's been through a fucking lot of shit. Now, it seems he's got some sadist in him, too...which may be new, but not surprising. So please, stop with the Peter/Sylar fanfic in which fucking Sylar introduces Peter to the wonderful thing called BDSM. Please.

tl;dr: the Petrellis, as a family, are more fucked up than the Winchesters. The Winchesters, individually, are more fucked up than the Petrellis. Glad we got that established.