#The “secret good” fanon Dean might be Mary in a different font (in a nearly literal sense too) but canon Dean is not | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

castielmacleod · 2 years ago

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''Same person different font'' thing regarding Mary and Dean's characters irk me so much lmao...

RIGHT omg like. On one hand we have a person who is authentically compassionate, is capable of acting outside of her own self-interest more often than not, doesn’t take out her emotions on the people around her, and owns her mistakes and shortcomings. On the other hand we have a person who is none of those things, and is furthermore a violent control freak who categorically abuses those closest to him. These are fundamental differences in the way these two characters interact with the world and others, which is far more significant in a comparison than any surface-level similarities. Liking cars and jerky does not a “same person different fonts” make.

Like lol I mean… I won’t be wholly disingenuous, I’m not going to pretend Mary and Dean have no commonalities whatsoever, because they do. In my take I’d say they both have something of a lying habit that they view not as necessarily harmful but as protecting others, as well as a tendency toward self-destructive behaviour and definitely some kind of saviour complex(?). But those similarities are still not nearly enough, in my opinion, to overshadow the fact that these two characters are otherwise, as outlined above, pretty much morally and socially disparate people. Which is to say, very much not the “literal same”.

It also just feels so reductive and honestly lazy to just write Mary off as just Dean: the Prequel or whatever and leave it at that. People do much the same with Claire (Dean 2: Simba’s Pride) and even with Max Banes (Dean the 3rd), and honestly it’s kind of. Dismal. That these characters can’t just stand on their own for a significant portion of the fandom and have to be reduced to “Dean mirrors” to warrant any thought, and are then only really thought about through that lens. Like I’m sorry that is NOT the deep character analysis you think it is 😭

#It’s not even that I think parent-child comparisons in character analysis don’t have merit because I do #Like from my perspective Crowley and Rowena share some fascinating similarities that I like writing about #But it’s also not the be all end all to either of their characters for me #And more than that I don’t think it’s a stretch to say they’re similar people in the first place.#But it’s really obvious to me that Mary in situ is actually so much closer to how people wish/pretend Dean is #than Dean in situ is actually is.#The “secret good” fanon Dean might be Mary in a different font (in a nearly literal sense too) but canon Dean is not #That’s just my opinion anyway #Ask #Dean critical #Also. Maybe a character has some overlapping traits with Dean but that doesn’t mean they have to be “mirrors”??????#I swear these people would have you think that every character in the entire show is just a version of someone from t/f/w #Not that I want to give the writers too much credit for anything like originality lol but like. Please #Even if the writers WERE just hitting control-V on Dean every time they came up with a troubled character or whatever #I can’t imagine a more boring lens for analysis.#DeangirIs talk like they’re trapped in Naomi’s Dean clone warehouse because every character is Dean to them #EXCEPT DEAN. WHO IS AN OC THAT THEY MADE UP 😭#Anyway lol. Anyway #Mary Claire and Max are running circles around DW as we speak

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