#I mean I love how intricate the conversation about subtext and reading the story is this season but

[that-curly-haired-lesbian]

The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo + Taylor Swift: a master post - Part 2/6

Hi guys, welcome to part 2 of my masterpost regarding parallels between Taylor Swift and Evelyn Hugo, the fictional actress from the book The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo by author Taylor Jenkins Reid!

Before proceeding please be aware that there will be 

**MAJOR SPOILERS**

for the book ahead and please also read my disclaimer!

It’s very important that you read these in order so if you haven’t yet go ahead and check out the previous part right here, thank you and enjoy!

Monique goes home for the weekend consumed by the question “who the hell was Evelyn Hugo in love with?” This goes to the point that she finds herself no longer dwelling on her own relationship problems, but instead focuses on Evelyn’s love life for the whole weekend. (pg. 37)

This of course is similar to how Taylor’s fans and media instead of relating songs to their own love lives and experiences or writing about the quality of the music are obsessed with finding out who in her life she wrote the songs about. (x)

Essentially Taylor’s stories substitute or overpower fans’ own love lives and her love life overshadows whatever could be written about her in a professional sense…Apparently??

Similarly instead of wanting to ask Evelyn something regarding her remarkable career (or her childhood, or what have you) Monique finds herself immediately drawn to (both as a journalist and a consumer, she’s sure to point out, just like how both the fans and the media are drawn to this aspect of Taylor’s public persona) asking about the men in Evelyn’s life, which is frankly, a very sexist angle to take.

When it comes to Taylor fans and media seem especially interested in (or unable to let go of) Taylor’s “relationship” with Harry Styles and likewise Monique’s best guess for who the love of Evelyn’s life could be is the appropriately named Hollywood producer Harry Cameron aka beard/husband #5. A man who we later find out (pg. 72-73) is not only very flamboyantly gay, but also Evelyn’s best friend and closest confidant, the friend who she trusts to tell everything without fearing it might get out.

At her second wedding Evelyn and Harry have an interesting conversation, Evelyn asks Harry why he’s never tried to flirt with her (like most men she encounters in the industry has after all.) He asks Evelyn if she ever wanted anything to happen between them (since she’s the one asking him about this) she says no, but Harry catches onto the fact that Evelyn wanted him to want something to happen and she offers:

  “’And what if I did? Is that so wrong? I’m an actress, Harry. Don’t you forget   that.’   Harry laughed, ’you have actress written all over your face. I remember it     every single day.’ ” (pg. 72)

In response to why nothing has ever happened between the two Harry vaguely implies that he’s gay and Evelyn immediately gets it, but says nothing about it until years later when Harry is the first person she comes out to after realizing her own queerness. After which the two agree to always tell each other everything.

Harry’s vague coming out at the wedding is however not what interests me about that scene, instead it is the use of the word “actress” of course in Evelyn’s case this is literal, she is in fact an actress, but it’s Harry’s response that causes me to reach…

On the surface his comment seems to be him admitting that despite his preference for men he can see that Evelyn is an attractive woman (like actresses generally are), but if we are to put this in a different light let’s consider that Taylor often either uses the word “actress” in her songs:

   She's not a saint and she's not what you think She's an actress

                                                   //

                I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams

or implies that she’s playing a role a few examples being All of Blank Space, and I Did Something Bad and parts of Don’t Blame Me.

I’ve gone on record in my analysis of the song Better Than Revenge as saying that the acting theme may be a reference to bearding and if we are also to look at the fact that Harry comes out to Evelyn in this scene it reads to me as if the underlying subtext is someone who beards (like Taylor) asking a gay male friend why they have never bearded together despite this friend’s knowledge that this Someone (Taylor) beards a lot (or is an “actress”) the friend agrees that he knows she is indeed a prolific bearder and that anyone with eyes can see she’s gay (the fact that she is gay and beards, or “is an actress” if you will, is “written on her face”.)

This might seem like an extreme reach even for this context, but given the fact that Evelyn and Harry actually end up bearding together later in the book and Evelyn does mention shortly before this conversation with Harry takes place that she sometimes feels like her public persona is someone she’s pretending to be (aka a role she’s playing, just like Taylor implies she feels about her public persona in the songs mentioned above.)  I just found the conversation and Taylor’s bearding-connection to the word “actress” interesting in this context…

--

On Monday Evelyn tells Monique:

   “People have so closely followed the most intricate details of the fake story of    my life. But it’s not…I don’t…I want them to know the real story. The real     me.’” (pg. 38)

Similar to how Taylor told us:

“We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us.” 

“When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory” (x)

Monique responds:

  “’Alright, show me the real you then and I’ll make sure the world understands.’”

Like I said before people like Evelyn and Taylor are famous enough that this flies, they call the shots. Just like we are agreeing that Taylor is coming out in her own time, Monique agrees to listen to whatever Evelyn has decided she has to say. Meanwhile we’ll keep speculating and so does Monique.

At one point she even questions if Evelyn is capable of telling the truth after all those years of hiding it? (pg. 38)

I’ve personally had more than one anon questioning why Taylor keeps “lying” about her personal life and whether she’ll be able to ever stop and just come out? (For my thoughts on all that, please read this.)

--

As Monique agrees to Evelyn’s terms she’s put in a bit of a bind, given that Evelyn contacted her through Vivant when the story was truly never intended for the magazine but for Monique this basically means that one of their writers is about to steal a story from one of the most famous magazines in the world and she could of course be fired for this. With a sinking stomach Monique realizes that the only plan she has is to lie to her boss about how the story is going and act as if she’s still doing the original piece for Vivant in order to save her own career. (pg. 32)

She even points out later that being fired from Vivant for stealing a story would be disastrous for her reputation in the industry.  (142)

I imagine that Monique’s confusion about what to do with Vivant mirrors a young Taylor’s initial unwillingness to “lie” to us (the public and the fans) regarding her sexuality at risk of losing her contract with a label.

Being let go from a contract and a label for making her sexuality publicly known would’ve been disastrous for her reputation in the industry and probably harm her chances at ever being mainstream famous/get on the radio. Had she gone against the advice she was getting at the time and made her sexuality public knowledge/decided to sing about girls or whatever she could’ve lost her career, her job.

In Monique’s case she would literally be fired form a job, in Taylor’s case it’d be more in the sense of falling from grace in the court of public opinion, or being left out of the community in Nashville. Something that country singer Chely Wright has mentioned was a legitimate fear for her upon coming out. (x)

 When Frankie does find out what’s going on this is what happens:

  “’She used us to get to us?’ Frankie says as if it’s the most insulting thing she     can think of. But the thing is she used me to get to Evelyn, so…” (pg. 142)

This scene is yet another reminder that it’s all power play, a game and lowkey blackmail in the entertainment industry and that everybody does it, even the media.

…Baby let the games begin

--

 And so Evelyn’s story starts once and for all. She tells us how she wanted to run away from her abusive father after her mother died and how she at fourteen romanticized Hollywood and believed her life would get better if she could only get there:

  “It would take me years to figure out that life doesn’t get easier simply because   it gets more glamorous. But you couldn’t have told me that when I was   fourteen.”

New to town with a made up name in the angel's city,

Chasing fortune and fame.

And the camera flashes, make it look like a dream

You had it figured out since you were in school.

Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool

                                     //

  Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now��                              I didn't know who I was supposed to be at fifteen

14* but close enough, right? What I’m saying is, major Lucky One/Fifteen mashup vibes…

--

Evelyn does eventually get to Hollywood, by seducing a dude named Ernie who is a light technician on movie sets, she doesn’t love him and she lies about her age (she says she’s 16 when she truly is 14) but she gets a ride to Hollywood as she puts it, out of their marriage (pg. 44)

Having arrived in The City of Angels Evelyn does what she has to in order to launch her career and that included doing something rather bold for such a young, inexperienced actress:

“I did something not many other actresses at my level would have had the guts to do, I knocked at Harry Cameron’s door.” (Pg. 47)

This of course reminded me of:

   “Hi, I'm Taylor. I'm 11; I want a record deal. Call me.” (x)

At this point in the book Evelyn is 16 or 17 and not yet explicitly queer, so that isn’t what Harry (here representing the movie/music industry) points out they have to “get rid of” when it comes to Evelyn’s image if she wants to make it. Instead, when Evelyn does get her audience with Harry Cameron she’s immediately told she has to get a more American-sounding name (her maiden name was Herrera, and now being married to Ernie her name is Diaz which in the industry’s eyes isn’t much better) and dye her hair blonde.

Instead of her queerness it’s her Hispanic heritage that has to go, in Taylor’s case however, it was of course the queerness, even in the early days. Moving to Nashville at 14 (just like Evelyn and Hollywood) Taylor signed with Big Machine Records at 16 and after seemingly previously being out she was back in the closet by the time her first album was being recorded.

--

To begin with Ernie is supportive of Evelyn’s attempts to make it in acting, but eventually he gets resentful when she doesn’t wanna be a house wife or give him children. This understandably frustrates Evelyn:

  “I’d told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he     couldn’t see who I really was.” (pg. 47)

Of course I wouldn’t truly know, but I don’t think Taylor has ever used someone as a beard/for PR without their consent the way that Evelyn does to Ernie here, but if it is to be claimed that Taylor Swift did what she had to get her career off the ground then the obvious example of this would be her closeting, she told us she was someone else (with the aggressive heterosexuality of The Old Taylor™) she thought the closeting was a price worth paying for the professional success, at first…and then it started to frustrate her that she couldn’t be open to us about who she really is.

Just like Taylor though, Evelyn is all too happy to agree to the studio’s bigoted terms if it means she’ll get to be an actress, so she agrees:

  “And in so doing I set the star machine in motion.” (Pg. 50)

Hmm, interesting choice of words, Evelyn…

As Evelyn’s image is starting to take shape Harry introduces her to the concept of bearding or in this case, since she hasn’t realized she’s queer yet, “dating” for publicity:

  “The studio thinks it would be a good idea if you were seen around town with     some guys…*proceeds to list various fictional male celebrities*” (Pg. 52)

So Evelyn Swiftly (pun intended) divorces Ernie and starts being seen around town with fellas of New Hollywood™

Here she shares her thoughts on those early days of bearding:

  “I was OK with it for it for two reasons. One I had no choice but to be all right     with it because I didn’t hold the cards. And two, my star was rising. Fast.” (Pg. 60) (x) (x)

  “Don and I had been seen around town, our photos taken at every hot spot in     Hollywood. … And we knew what we were doing, parading around in public. I     needed Don’s name mentioned in the same sentence as mine, and Don   needed us to look like he was part of the New Hollywood. Photos of the two of     us went a long way toward solidifying his image as a man-about-town.” (Pg. 68)

Bearding 101…

It’s not just bright sides to the bearding and PR though, on page 56 Monique calls Evelyn “calculating” that word (or a less kind option, “manipulative”) is often thrown around by both media and antis when describing Taylor both in her professional life and in her love life…. (x) (x) (x)

There are also dark sides to not just the bearding but to fame and Hollywood itself as we’ll soon find out.

At this point in Evelyn’s story she has genuinely fallen in love with one of her PR boyfriends (she’s bi and don’t you forget that) and so they decide to get married and at first Evelyn’s second marriage is going swimmingly (again, pun):

  “We had pool parties nearly every weekend, drinking champagne and     cocktails all afternoon and into the night.” (Pg. 74)

*TIWWCHNT plays loudly in background*

However sadly Evelyn is about to learn just why they can’t have nice things, it turns out her new husband Don is both physically and emotionally abusive and it doesn’t take long for him to start regularly hitting her and this ruins the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

  “I’d made my way three thousand miles from where I was born, I had found a     way to be in the right place at the right time. I had changed my name. changed    my hair. Changed my teeth and my body. I’d learned how to act. I’d made the     right friends. I’d married into a famous family. Most of America knew my name.   and yet…And yet.” (Pg. 78)

  And they tell you that you’re lucky.

But you’re so confused,

'Cause you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used.

   “I got up off the floor and wiped my eyes. I gathered myself. I sat down at the   vanity, three mirrors in front of me lined with lightbulbs. How silly is it that I   thought that if I ever found myself in a movie star’s dressing room that meant   I’d have no troubles?” (Pg. 78)

The same sadly seems to go for a singer’s dressing room I’m afraid…

--

Just like in Taylor’s case it’s not just Evelyn’s personal life that gets affected by various PR strategies though, her career does too. Ever since Evelyn heard that the studio was planning to adapt Little Women she’s been pushing to get cast as Jo and Harry is saying she will get that role, if she agrees to doing a few more run of the mill movies alongside her famous boyfriend. Evelyn all but rolls her eyes and asks Harry if he’s saying she should be predictable in her career choices, Harry denies this:

  “I’m saying you should be predictable and then do something unpredictable,   and they’ll love you forever” (Pg. 67)

This strikes me as very similar to what Taylor did in her transition from country to pop, she put out three full-on country album and then came RED and Taylor famously said that album isn’t “sonically cohesive” why? Well, it straddles the line between the two genres, but not enough to make anyone uncomfortable, it’s still country, she’s still being “predictable” and THEN she dropped 1989 her first 100% pop album and just as Ha-I mean Big Machine probably predicted, we loved her forever!

Evelyn agrees to not doing Little Women right away and admits she didn’t have much choice in the matter:

  “My contract with Sunset was for another three years if I caused too much     trouble, they had the option to drop me at any time.” (Pg. 67)

While I fully believe that Taylor is in charge of her PR these days we cannot forget that she was a minor when all this started and back then I think she let “the adults” handle her PR, she would do whatever they thought was best as long as it’d get her on the radio long-term, including staying closeted. However, now that the contract with her old label is up  and the Rep tour has basically been one giant glass closeting event we’ll see what’s to come in terms of bold PR moves.

--

When she finally gets to do pop Little Women Taylor Swift Evelyn Hugo meets Karlie Kloss Celia St. James. Celia is an actress too and they become fast friends complete with Celia calling Evelyn out on her bullshit over milkshakes:

  “So many women around here are full of crap in everything they say and do. I     like that you’re full of crap only when it gets you something.” (Pg. 97)

Just like Taylor Evelyn is genuine…for the most part and Karlie and Celia know this.

      Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me

      Flashback to my mistakes

     My rebounds, my earthquakes

    Even in my worst lies, you saw the truth in me

                           //

           You must like me for me

--

Both Evelyn and Celia realize that Celia is a better actress than Evelyn while Evelyn is better at playing the PR game than Celia, so the two agree as their friendship blossoms to teach each other what the other knows better.

Evelyn says about Celia:

  “She did teach me to find moments of emotional truth in false     circumstances.”  (Pg. 101)

This is of course in regards to acting, but it made me think of what Taylor’s early girlfriends and her exposure to PR games and bearding must have taught her, to find moments of emotional truth in false circumstances. That’s how she can write and sing songs with the wrong (male) pronoun and make it seem so genuine, she projects the feelings she has for the women she dates onto these wrong pronoun, it’s like I pointed out before, to some degree Taylor has always told the truth about her own emotions, even when she’s hid them behind male pronoun and false heterosexuality the emotion has been real all along. Moments of truth in false circumstances.

--

Even genuine friendship can be played up for PR in the world of celebrity and when Evelyn has to deal with some bad publicity Harry suggests using a shopping spree with Celia to get Evelyn back in the tabloids’ good graces.

It has been speculated over the years among Kaylors and non-Kaylors alike that parts of Kaylor’s 2014 glass closeting could have been played up to “get Karlie’s name out there.” Even genuine friends (or girl pals) call the paps from time to time, but in this case Harry’s suggestion that they could “call Photoplay and let them know Evelyn and Celia will be on Robertson” is shot down by a scheming Evelyn with a better idea, she is going to fake a miscarriage to get some sympathy and make the press eat their words about her “not giving Don a baby.” (Pg. 102-104)  

  “’How did you learn all the underhanded, sneaky stuff you know?’ Celia asked.   ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said coyly.   ‘You’re smarter than you let on to just about anybody.’ ‘Me?’ I said.” (Pg. 109)

We play dumb but we know exactly what we're doing

Taylor is smart, she knows just how to play the game. See: Blank Space.

Similarity Evelyn has learnt the industry by now, she manufactures her own scandals, playing with her own narrative for professional benefit.(x)

--

One night when Don is away somewhere (probably in the club doing I don’t know what) Celia comes over to Evelyn’s and they drink some wine…As you can probably tell it’s about to be gay up in here! Celia calls Evelyn the most gorgeous woman to have ever been created and Evelyn immediately counters, saying Celia is a KNOCKOUT with her BIG BLUE EYES

(Karlie’s eyes do look blue in some lights…See: “Oh damn, never seen that color blue”)

The night continues and as it gets chilly the girls decide to make a fire…Yes, seriously:     “I asked her if she knew how to make a fire.    ‘I’ve seen people do it,’ she said, shrugging.    ‘Me too, I’ve seen Don do it. But I’ve never done it.’    ‘We can do it,’ she said. ‘We can do anything.’”  (Pg. 109)

 (s)he built a fire just to keep me warm

--

What follows is all from page 111-112:

As the night progresses Celia spills some wine on herself and has to borrow a clean shirt from Evelyn, they go into the bedroom and Celia decides that now is the right time to get personal. She asks Evelyn if she loves Don, Evelyn is caught off guard and finds herself answering that she used to love him but doesn’t think she does anymore. Celia asks if it’s all for publicity and when Evelyn denies this Celia asks if she’s sexually attracted to Don (and by extension, men in general) Evelyn says yes, Celia is jealous and uncomfortable and she seems to feel she’s said or asked too much. The scene that plays out embodies:

  Is it cool that I said all that?

  Is it chill that you're in my head?

  'Cause I know that it's delicate (delicate)

  Is it cool that I said all that

  Is it too soon to do this yet?

Just like these lines from Taylor’s song could (in my opinion at least) represent sneakily trying to find out if your new crush is gay too and worrying that the questions will make them uncomfortable as the subject is delicate. Celia’s awkward question seem to really be her trying to ask Evelyn if it’s cool that she thinks of her in a gay way and that she talks about that fact?

The word delicate even shows up in the scene when Evelyn describes Celia as being more delicate than her when trying to find a clean shirt that might fit.

--

Finally she does find a shirt and hands it over to Celia who comments on how gorgeous it is, Evelyn agrees and confesses she stole it from the set of one of her movies and asks Celia not to tell anyone. As she takes off the soiled shirt Celia says:

  “I hope you know by now that all your secrets are safe with me?”

Evelyn comments on how she’s sure that line was something Celia said casually, but that it meant a lot to her nonetheless. Because as Celia said it Evelyn realized she believed her and she’d never had that with anyone.

  “People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When     you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to   them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘You’re safe   with me’ — that’s intimacy.” 

Secrets and truth (and intimacy) are, of course a huge theme on Reputation:

1.    “No one has to know” (…Ready For It?)

2.    You've been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks, so here's the truth from my red lips (End Game)

3.    But when you get me alone, it's so simple/ But when I get you alone, it's so simple (So It Goes…)

4.    “Your love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep” (King of My Heart)

5.    “I loved you in secret” (Dancing With Our Hands Tied

6.    “Our secret moments in a crowded room” (Dress)

7.    “Even in my worst lie you saw the truth in me” (Dress)

 “I wondered if this was what it felt like to love someone?  […] To throw your lot in with theirs and think, ‘whatever happens, it’s you and me’”

  Don't read the last page   But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared   And you're turning away   I stay when it's hard, or it's wrong   Or we're making mistakes”

--

Celia goes to put on the shirt and says that she’s not sure it will fit her, Evelyn says that if it does fit Celia can have it.

Other people we know share/wear a lot of similar clothes too.

--

Just as Celia gets her own shirt off and Evelyn starts checking her out (spoiler alert: it’s really gay) Don enters the room and teasingly asks just “what is going on in here?” Just like that the spell is broken and Evelyn hurriedly assures her husband that “Absolutely nothing” is going on in that bedroom.

Here Don represents the shippers and the media alike starting to question the nature of Kaylor’s relationship during the height of their glass closeting forcing Taylor to assure “Don” aka us that “absolutely nothing” is going on between her and Karlie, but I’m getting ahead of myself, more on #Kissgate later…

Anygayyyy, let’s just say that those two pages are, as they say A LOT™ for my Kaylor feels!!

--

Thanks for reading, please read part 3!

[elizabethrobertajones]

SAD TIMES! so when dean says that the boys home with sonny wasn't so bad because nobody bad touched him, burned him or beat him with a metal hanger? does that mean he's comparing his time there to all the other times he did get bad touched or burned etc? i bet that's it. like he could actually enjoy hid freedom from his father and freedom from responsibility in general and he was finally free of all the bad things that happened to him?

I’d read it as going under Dean’s pop culture knowledge of what’s “supposed” to happen in prisons or foster homes - the kind of abuse and violence that depictions of these often focus on, or of course sometimes are actually happening and you get horrible news reports about… (Honestly the fact they trawl the news for weird stories all the time means they must read some truly hideous news stories about regular people doing awful shit >.>)

I sort of file it under the same thing as what I was talking about in this recent post:

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/155634477583/i-wonder-why-this-harmonica-thing-is-never-a-part

about Dean’s jokes about being in prison. Basically, he’s always projecting that defensive mechanism, and in these cases, trying to fit into the pop culture prisoner persona in a very genre-savvy way. In the end of season 2 you get those two episodes very close to each other (back to back?) where Dean is a PA on the movie set and in prison, and both times Sam calls him out for getting way too in character, but that’s sort of how Dean operates :P He’s very good at shedding personality skins and trying on a new one, possibly because 90% of Dean’s on screen time is Dean under one personality or another that’s not really who he is, whether because he’s acting as a persona obviously on the job, or because he’s deflecting and acting up a version of himself for emotional reasons… 

That conversation was Sam challenging him about what it was like at Sonny’s and how Dean liked it, so he had a reflexive response to continue protecting Sam under the old rules of “the story became the story” from however John originally told Sam what happened (and Dean went along with it willingly or not) but obviously with the rules changed now that Dean’s in charge of the story and Sam’s found out it even happened… Dean doesn’t really want to share the truth of it, probably because it took a huge emotional toll on him to leave so the fact he was happy there and sacrificed that for family would get a really bad response from Sam (who Dean’s watching closely the whole time protective of John’s part in this and knowing Sam is liable to go off on one about how terrible John was - thanks Sam :P), and we get to see a lot more than he ever tells Sam through Dean’s POV and the flashbacks to understand WHY he is defending his time there so carefully and weaving this non-committal story about it to Sam, as if nothing there mattered.

So he gets flippant and makes references to stuff he knows can be connected to the situation to remind Sam how awful it could have been, and come at it from the negative perspective which is a good way to sort of establish that it was at a bare minimum not, like, literal Hell. Which changes the way some one thinking about it from that would imagine the experience, because Dean’s setting up “not beaten or molested” as the baseline, rather than selling something like that it was peaceful and quiet and boring but he didn’t enjoy it, because that would still be too fishy for Dean to risk it, never mind trying to pass off, it was great and I had a girlfriend and was learning to play guitar but don’t worry, it was actually totally crap here and I couldn’t wait to leave. 

(He kind of fucks that up that their next scene is Sam finding out about Robin existing, but patching over the issue for that one conversation, at least :P)

But I guess because it’s Dean and if you like angst, there’s no reason that you can’t assume he’s drawing on other traumatic childhood memories, whether that’s an exaggeration or not of what he describes, because he does just comment this out of the blue, and it’s sort of… the fact he associates it with himself? Actually, this reminds me of the other moment in this episode that’s really close to the surface text, talking about Dean going through abuse, and it’s the same point I made in my rewatch notes about the ambiguity of that moment so I’m just going to copy and paste that >.> 

okay whoever did this superwiki transcript is actually fascinating me half as much as the episode… I normally delete the stage directions but:

Sitting in front of YOUNG DEAN, SONNY takes his cuffed hands to open up the cuffs. YOUNG DEAN’s forearms are bruised and red, as if bruised or abraded by bindings or ligature marks.

SONNY (noting the marks with concern)Deputy do that? (YOUNG DEAN scoffs and shakes his head.) What, your old man? (YOUNG DEAN shakes his head no.) Well, then, how’d you get it?

YOUNG DEAN (turning back to SONNY, somewhat defiantly)Werewolf.

SONNY looks at YOUNG DEAN for a long moment, realizing he’s not going to get a different answer from the kid.

SONNYOkay.

There’s a whole ton of discussion on this moment already out there - the “did John hurt his kids physically” argument is long and old and no stone left unturned etc (well, I have found relatively un-turned stones on this rewatch but shh) but I’m amused by the way the transcript takes pains to describe how the marks look, suggesting specifically that Dean was tied up e.g. making it much more likely this was something that happened on the job.

[Note from present!me realising I never quite finished this thought: which isn’t to say that this interpretation automatically decides definitely what the marks looked like and how they were made, just that this is how that fan read them… Writing it that way in the transcript removes any ambiguity from what the surface text is telling us despite the fact it’s just presented as an ambiguous visual clue that the fandom’s been arguing about for ages about how those marks could have been made, and the fact of this lack of ambiguity is what amused me…]

The actual dialogue is an interesting example of the season 9 storytelling theme - and of course “the story became the story” coming from this episode we know it’s hard at work. In this case though I’m looking ahead to 9x18 and Metatron asking what makes the story work and citing subtext. This moment is intentionally given as an ambiguous moment. Sonny thinks Dean was hurt by John (or the deputy) and has no reason to believe “werewolf” because that’s blatant fiction because to him monsters aren’t real. Dean is being this much snarky and deflective enough that even for us, knowing damn well that werewolves exist in their universe and that Dean was already hunting them at this tender age, Sonny’s speculation on it changes the flippant rely and can offer a crack through which to wonder for ourselves how else Dean might have got the marks, and just to weigh the possibility.

And then of course from there you can make your opinion whichever way takes your fancy, like writing stage directions to imply it was the monster, or assuming at the very least having Sonny suggest it might be a call to think about how John treated them, in an episode that’s already repeatedly underlined his emotional neglect/harsh emotional punishment to Dean - if not to assume he did hurt him, then to take it as a prompt to consider it emotional abuse being depicted in the episode. And then some John fans will take Dean’s line as total exoneration of John from ever hurting Dean, and probably go with all his surface level comments telling Sam not to get all weird about John and Dean saying that he deserved it…

http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/148015532758/9x07-rewatch-or-i-love-this-kid-but-i-find-deans

Of course however Dean got the bruises, John at the very least comes out of this episode with another mark against his name for child endangerment and deliberate neglect, but the point I’m looking at here is that thought about Sonny thinking it was just run of the mill no supernatural stuff involved physical parental abuse. That creates an association in the story LINKING John to said abuse, whether the show is implying he did or not, his actions are equated to physical harm coming to Dean. I guess in the same way, this comment from Dean might not be directly implying that that ever happened to him, but it also makes an association between Dean and that kind of abuse happening to him as a kid, which again leaves you at least that avenue of thought to wonder how deep that implication goes… 

(I think from Dean’s comments in that scene, he’s definitely more trying to guide how Sam thinks about what Sonny’s was like for Dean, and not getting alarmingly real about that sort of thing, as it was a fairly flippant comment even if for a rather grim emotional purpose… I’ve never thought about it inverting that he wasn’t talking about that sort of thing happening TO him there but instead being about it NOT happening to him specifically there, but it’s an interesting thought when it comes to interpreting it… 

idk, I’d like to think that that didn’t happen to Dean, ever, and that he was mostly just run of the mill supernaturally neglected and endangered. :P)