#(I also relate to Dean Winchester)

[wigglebox]

Suptober - Day 24 | Branded

[quietwingsinthesky]

thinking about how dean’s character gets simplified in fandom, or more specifically, the very black and white lens that gets applied to him. because integral to dean, from my point of view, is that he is both a victim of abuse and a perpetrator of it. that these two things do not cancel each other out or outweigh each other to the point that only one matters. he’s both, you cannot separate him from the fact that he’s both.

but very often, people do. dean is either a victim. or he’s an abuser. it’s like it’s hard for people to hold both those facts in their heads at once. dean went through incredible amount of trauma as a child and an adult, is routinely faced with violence, has resorted to alcohol abuse to cope with it. he’s also a violent person, someone who retreats into tactics of emotional abuse and control when he feels threatened, who hurts the people around him constantly and the people who are closest to him (ie Sam, Cas, later Jack) get the brunt of that abuse. these are just facts. they’re things that happened on the screen and cannot be denied.

and it’s. idk it’s weird to me (not unexpected, because he’s hardly the only character to ever get this treatment) that dean of all people is the one portrayed in such an either/or way when one of the defining moments of the show for him is that during his stint in Hell, he was tortured and then became a torturer to escape that, to feel like he had some control again, and he relished in it. it’s baked into who he is.

[lonewolf638]

the thing sam does where he leaves dean alone so dean can have that heart-to-heart moment. idk the way most of their friends are deans friends before they r sams

[m1zumono]

dean winchester and autism because this man is autistic and i will not accept otherwise:

his reaction to sam giving him the giant slinky at the end of 7x14 'plucky pennywhistle's magical menagerie'

actually physically stimming when he enters the bunker with sam in 15x14 'last holiday' and sees the christmas decorations

the boxing episode, 11x15 'beyond the mat', where dean spends the entire episode fanboying and (for lack of a better word) plays in the boxing ring

wearing the same thing (flannel, jeans, in earlier seasons the leather jacket) almost all of the time while not in disguise to work cases

eating the same thing (cheeseburger with extra onions or pie) at almost everywhere they go, as often as he can (about dean winchester and food, i could talk about that for hours he has so many issues with it and it's all john winchester's fault)

his ability to recite movies line for line, and his tendency to communicate almost entirely through references and movie quotes, and expecting people to understand what he means

about references, he makes jokes and references when it's not appropriate, he doesn't understand that something isn't appropriate in a situation where it isn't specifically pointed out to him, and he generally has a pretty messed up sense of empathy and inability to 'read the room'

‘you’re always calling me a geek, but you know every word to every led zeppelin song, backwards and forwards. you can discuss in detail every major rock drummer between ’67 and ’84… and you watch ‘jeopardy!’ every night.’ - directly quoted from sam winchester in 14x20 'moriah'

in 13x06 'tombstone' when they go into the motel and dean talks about the cowboys, identifying all of them and going into quite a bit of detail about a few of them, even though nobody asked him about it and he is absolutely infodumping. 'he really likes cowboys.' 'yes. yes, he does.'

his knowledge of cars, particularly baby, and how he takes her for a ride when he's sad because of the comfort she provides him. also about baby and comfort, the way he offers to let people drive baby when he realises that they're sad, thinking it'll make them feel better as she makes him happy and he doesn't understand how else to help

in 1x03 'dead in the water' he talks to lucas about how he didn't speak as a kid, he plays with the toy soldiers and it doesn't come across as playing with them to make lucas trust him, it actually comes across as him finding genuine enjoyment in it

in 1x15 'the benders' when he's talking to the kid who mentions godzilla, dean brightens immediately and goes off topic talking about his favourite godzilla film, and has to be reminded that he's working a case by sam

the entirety of 14x04 'mint condition', how dean gets to express his interests and be himself and how a lot of people have mentioned that he seems to be genuinely himself in that episode instead of the act he puts on

larping with charlie, no explanation needed

he shuts down when things go badly, often blasting music and ignoring everything and everyone around him

he always picks scissors when playing rock, paper, scissors, and it's actually something that comes up multiple times within the show - in 2x17 'heart', sam says, 'dean, always with the scissors,' and along the same lines, his excitement both times he actually wins the game

in 1x04 'phantom traveller', dean is terrified because of the plane and sam points out that he's humming metallica. he replies that it calms him down, and that just seems very autistic

[imsaunteringvaguelydownwards]

Has it been long enough that I can safely say I relate to Eddie Munson without it being social suicide

[ananke-xiii]

A spell goes wrong and somehow Dean travels back in time to when he was 7 or 8 years old and Sam goes well into his future, a few weeks prior to his final death. The only way to go back to their timeline is for Dean to find someone who loves him unconditionally and for Sam to establish a real, meaningful connection with another person.

It takes them some time to get it but they eventually manage:

Dean understands that no matter how hard he tries whatever happened, happened, the damage is there and yet there's a way to change the past, you don't need to change events but you can change your relation to them. He understands that the only person who will ever unconditionally love that child/him is himself, he can heal his own wound by pouring all the love he has to give to that scared little child who'll forever live beside him.

Sam understands that he doesn't have to be the spectator of his death as he thinks he is of his life, he can take matters into his hands by establishing a real connection with that old man/his own self. Whatever happened, happened, the trauma is there but he has the possibility to take it slowly to the foreground, to talk about it, to talk with it because it is a part of him that will never change, sure, but he can modify his relation with it in order to take control of his own story. He can create a connection with himself.

Dean goes back to the future after he's hugged himself as a child and told him he'll forever be loved and Dean will never forget about him, it's a promise; while Sam goes back to the past by holding his hand as his future self dies and telling him not to be afraid, that they still have time and Sam will do whatever he can to make every second count, it's a promise.

[flugame-mp3]

what do you fucking mean that's how charlie dies. THAT'S HOW CHARLIE DIES??? i mean i know the show has a penchant for killing off every character who's not a winchester brother or an angel of thursday but good god. what the fuck. charlie was such a good and enjoyable recurring character, and she had such a fandom impact that i've seen, and she's only around for THREE SEASONS?? (sidebar: it's amazing she has the presence she does for only being around for a couple episodes in the long run!) but: was this necessary? and she just dies offscreen after her skills are utilized to progress the plot of decoding the book of the damned?? oh my god. what in the actual fuck. i'm finding myself getting genuinely very upset at her death. she did not fucking deserve that. and i can absolutely see why the fan response to her death is what it is now. completely fucking unjustified and throwaway and useless.

[fizz-pop-thwip]

Can someone thrust Sam into fatherhood. Dean always gets the sad lost kids to impact positively, how about we let Sam in on some of that action pleeeease

[kidrat]

in 'a very supernatural christmas' dean starts pretending to be a carol singer as a diversion, and he sings very badly. however we KNOW that jensen ackles sings properly later on the show, meaning *dean* canonically can sing (ie. it's not just a case of jensen playing a bad singer). so, either a) dean was being a little shit here, or b) by season 15 (episode seven) (lee episode) he had given himself singing lessons from youtube videos or something (very possibly in the bunker, when he had privacy, soundproofing (torture dungeons), and was teaching himself other things (cooking)). I also enjoy option c) John told dean he sounded gay so he panicked and pretended to be daddy's flat instrument

[youchangedmedestiel]

I wish I had watched Supernatural live and also I'm glad I didn't

Let me explain. I have the impression that I missed the best hours of SPN when everybody was totally into it, I feel like being late to the party.

And at the same time, it seemed like a weird party, with not just great experiences, as a Destiel shipper myself in the year of 2023 (and this since less than a year), I think I would have felt bad about being one at the time, because even going through a big amount of convention videos, reading comments, searching for analysis about the show and some against Destiel, I doubted myself and the ship sometimes. (I don't anymore because I just don't care, even if I was the only one shipping them, which isn't the case AT ALL, I would do it anyway with all my heart without thinking what others think, because for me it's the greatest love story ever told and I cried so much for that, so if I stop believing in it, it would be like denying the emotions I felt and still feel about them).

Anyway I don't care. And I really wished I was there to see how November 5th was, especially after seeing how Destiel trended and how everyone went crazy in the last few days about the not-so-rogue translator. But also I'm glad I wasn't there during November 5th because I would have had bigger hopes about the two last episodes and I would have been disappointed. Because when I watched it I just had the time to eat between 15x18 and 15x19 and then watched the end the same evening. It allowed me to appreciate the end at the time, I don’t anymore, since I got the time to think about it (but I will write about that in another post later).

[muchemoaboutnothing]

x

[quietwingsinthesky]

soullessness as a concept in general in spn is better to me when its more about what that simple change (lowered empathy) does in how a person interacts with the world. soulless sam for example again but it makes him a better hunter, yes, in some ways. he's also far worse at being able to interview people because he has trouble a) not filtering out his tendency to just insult people when they get on his nerves and b) figuring out how to mask empathy as well as he once did/also not wanting to. he makes the call to put dean in danger during the vampire hunt and damages his bond with dean in the process, and when he realizes that might happen, he lies about it to prevent it and makes it worse.

idk man! that's interesting to me! exceling in some things because his empathy is shut off and failing miserably at other things! it's part of why he makes the decision (before being informed how much damage it might do to him and going 'actually i think i'd like to remain not braindead from hell trauma, thanks') that he thinks he would do better with his soul back, going back to being the old sam.

[threefuckencrowsinaleatherjacket]

I’m never gonna get over the guy in s3e15 who, when asked if he wanted to catch the guy who stole his kidney, asked if it would get him his kidney back and when he was told no decided he didn’t care that much ab catching the guy bc what’s the point

[devnmon]

rip dean winchester you would’ve loved red dead redemption

[buckleydiazmp4]

i hope you can hear me...