#dean meta

[thefableddestiel]

“Something always goes wrong”

“Yeah, why does that something always seem to be you?”

This but it means like, Dean could’ve ignored his sexuality if it wasn’t for Cas. Dean could’ve stayed in hell like he deserved if Cas hadn’t pulled him out. Dean wouldn’t have had to experience losing the love of his life time and time again if Cas just hadn’t come along.

[deanwasalwaysbi]

Dean's nothing about our lives is real speech? When he says "everything we are is because of chuck"? He was speaking privately & directly to Castiel when he said that.

Not to Sam. Not everything I am. Everything we are. Dean was having a full on crisis.

"You asked, 'What about all of this is real?' We are." Dean didn't know how right Cas was.

Like no baybee. It'll take 15 episodes, but god himself will tell you Cas defied him and his plan to love you, actually.

[dotthings]

Ways Dean and Cas are alike:

stubborn

impulsive

self-loathing issues & self-perception: Daddy's blunt instrument/Hammer of God. Only a killer/only an obedient soldier. Always failing/always failing.

speaking bluntly or harshly

feeling very deeply, deeply caring. Dean is more perceptive than Cas, and Dean's emotional IQ is higher, but Cas is compassionate, perceptive, notices things. Both of them care so much it gets overwhelming. Dean is expressive and not repressed, but was taught to suck it up and play through the pain. Cas is repressed and taught emotions were a doorway to corruption, but still feels the feelings.

Believing they have to be useful/save people/protect people to be worthwhile

Don't like having to ask for help. Dean does it far more readily, more instinctively and easily connects to people and reaches out when he needs help, but he also does sometimes withdraw and get into a headspace where he feels driven to do things alone. Cas, first from hubris, then due to other issues, often believes he has to go it alone and take care of things himself and it's all on him and doesn't ask for help, but over time he does learn to ask for help more often

Self-recrimination and pulling guilt onto their shoulders

Deeply appreciative of things. Dean and his love of pie and music and movies and TV shows. Cas and his appreciation for the things humanity creates and the earth itself.

Abandonment issues/fear of rejection

Wanting the other one to stay/wanting to be asked to stay

Communication problems. Altho Dean is the one who will reach out and Cas is the one who goes out of contact

Self-sacrificing

Thinking they aren't worth saving

Not knowing how deeply the other one loves them

Clever, strategic, snarky. Outwitting enemies. Trickster qualities

So protective!!!!

They aren't the same person. They often don't understand each other, and they are different in many ways. But they're similar in many ways too.

[princessmadelines]

DEAN WINCHESTER : HOW TO BECOME THE 21ST CENTURY MARLBORO MAN

Do you want to be become The Man? Do you dream of being the perfect Action Hero? That's easy enough, kid! All you need is your Father's leather jacket, his vintage muscle car, and his cassette collection. And if that isn't enough, look no further than 80s action movies. Save the day, get the girl... yes, it's that easy! Just follow the script, and you'll be the perfect Red-blooded American Man.

or a study of dean's performance of masculinity

[t00muchheart]

season 4 dean and cas are so 🤌 🤌

just… cas saw dean stripped bare of his defenses and at his lowest and touched his soul to raise him, his voice ringing out that dean winchester had been saved, and at the same moment, cas was lost to the angels because his path had changed course.

and as a result, cas knows more ABOUT dean than almost anyone at this point, he has seen past all the lies and masks dean uses to the truth of him, BUT he doesn’t KNOW him, really, because he lacks a fundamental understanding of how people work and what drives them. and it just becomes the two of them tearing down each others’ perceptions of the world, dean showing cas what it really means to have humanity and how significant emotions are while cas teaches dean that he’s worth the effort that went into saving him

[freakwiththeknifecollection]

Jo is a Dean mirror, but not in the way people think like their stories being the same, but in a literal sense of the word like bizarro world. Dean lost his mom and was raised (I use that term extremely loosely) by his dad, Jo lost her dad and was raised by her mom. Dean never got to be a kid and was forced to grow up too fast, Jo was always treated like a kid and never allowed to grow up. John brought Dean into hunting, while Ellen kept Jo out of it. Dean was in the hunting life and only wanted a normal life, Jo had a normal life and only wanted to hunt. Etc. They're both twisted but in different directions

[calibrationneeded]

Tdlr: me projecting onto Dean probably lmao

It’s hard to articulate, which I think is ironic once you read this post, but I think that Dean isn’t emotionally stunted or unaware of his own thoughts and feelings but the exact opposite.

Dean has spent a absurd amount of time by himself driving in his car or just during the Stanford era, that in itself makes it pretty hard to not be familiar through your own thoughts and feelings. being someone who spent a lot of time alone in my adolescence I am very familiar with myself on an internal level and I think Dean is probably the same way, not to mention the fact that he has demonstrated a very large amount of emotional intelligence towards characters, especially in the early seasons when he’s empathizing with children. ��

What i think Dean struggles with is the ability to articulate the way he’s feeling because of the depth in which he understands his own internal workings. How do you condense a whole series of novels to a word and still keep the level of impact? How do you condense everything you are down into a bite sizable introduction to give to a person so that they don’t horribly misunderstand who you are? It’s easier just pretend to be what people think you are so you don’t have to risk being misunderstood or becoming so vulnerably raw with people.

The same thing goes for things like identity and sexuality in this context because I think to some degree Dean is aware that he is not straight, I don’t think that it is a thought in the forefront of his mind, because often times when you have a moment of realization that you are something that is going to complicate your life and possibly cause you to lose relationships and make people look at you differently, sometimes it’s easier to just put it on the back burner and pretend it doesn’t exist. There’s a special kind of denial that I myself have also experienced where if you just ignore something with enough intensity, you can convince everyone of something, including yourself to some extent. 

That’s part of the beauty about his friendship and relationship in general with Cas. Cas see through all of the bullshit and because he rebuilt Dean he has a better chance of understanding the million layers of fucked up performance he puts in

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

Thinking about Dean's motif of corruption. "The very touch of you corrupts". Heaven, and Dean himself, see this corruption as rot. Hellfire. Moral decay, and, inevitably, destruction.

However, "corruption" can have other meanings, especially when defined by spn's (or most modern versions of) Heaven. "The very touch of you corrupts" when Cas first touched Dean, something took root. Dean's love, his protectiveness, the rugged life he was more or less forced into, his stubborn insistence, against all odds and in all circumstances, to prioritize family, food, hearth, a safe place to sleep and a planet that won't fall apart on him. Those roots spread- but not in any evil sense.

Tree roots.

Strong and unrelenting and vibrantly green, fed on tears, soil, blood, ash and salt, and on red meat and love. Wriggling through the cracks in Cas' celestial being, curling around the divine light and leaving rich earth behind it. Is it corruption? Is it decay? Yes. But nothing, angel or demon or antichrist or anything else, that Dean touches can help but become a creature of Earth. Most humans don't notice, humans are already Earthly beings, and most monsters are as well. Angels though?

Heaven and Hell are two sides of the same coin. The opposite of both is Earth- Earth with no care given to an afterlife, kindness and love existing for its own sake, no hypotheticals. Dirt, rot, messiness, food, hunger, tiredness, laughter, love.

and that scares the SHIT out of Heaven

they've seen angels fall, either living as humans or truly Falling, their grace charred and covered by hellfire

they've never seen one turn into a physical being before. even an angel reborn as a human is still an angel. Cas isn't becoming human. He's still an angel, but-

if the other angels can see the roots piercing through his true form, churning through grace like a sapling in new soil

what other word would they have but "corruption"?

(obligatory SAM IS NOT EXCEMPT FROM THIS. HE'S ALSO WEIRD THIS WAY follow-up bc yall will just hate Sam for no reason istg)

[emeraldsummers]

Smoker!Dean headcanons (aka if Dean was a smoker throughout the series)

As a teenager, Dean would smoke whenever he could get his hands on a cigarette, but it was pretty rare. Money was too tight to buy them, and it wasn't worth the risk of stealing them, but occasionally, Dean was able to trade for loose cigarettes. He loved the head rush and loved feeling like an adult.

Pre-series, Dean didn't start smoking in earnest until he started doing hunts without his father. John didn't like the smoking, so Dean hid it from him. Still, money was tight, so Dean only smoked a few cigarettes a day at most. His favourite thing in the world was being whiskey buzzed and sharing a cigarette with a girl.

Dean never, ever smoked inside the Impala.

Seasons 1-2 Dean is still smoking a few cigarettes per day, properly addicted at this point, and irritable when he isn't able to get a smoke break. Sam is constantly bugging him to quit, and Dean pretends he could quit any time he wants to. Sam gets non-smoking motel rooms whenever he can, which annoys the hell out of Dean.

Season 3, with the demon deal looming, Dean starts smoking more now, and by the end of the season, he is fully chain smoking regularly. Sam finds it gross but generally allows it to slide because he knows Dean needs it.

Season 4, Dean comes back from Hell with zero physical dependence on nicotine and decides to treat it like a fresh start. He doesn't smoke. He uses his experience with smoking to try (and fail) to empathize with Sam's blood addiction.

Season 5, Dean starts smoking when he's drunk, which turns into smoking when he's stressed, which by the end of the season, when he almost says "yes" to Michael, turns into him smoking all of the time again.

When he lives with Lisa and Ben, he tries to quit for their sake, but he still sneaks a cigarette outside on really bad nights. Lisa pretends not to notice.

Season 6, the smoking continues, but not as heavy as season 5. Sam is actively annoyed about it at this point, and Dean has long stopped finding smoking to be fun.

Season 7, as Dean spirals downwards after Cas' betrayal, he smokes much more heavily. It's starting to affect him physically, especially without Cas to heal him. He starts saying things like, "I'm getting too old for this." Since he isn't able to drive the Impala for most of the season, he smokes in the cars they steal, which really bothers Sam.

In Purgatory, Dean has no choice but to quit cold turkey, which is miserable, and once he's home, he continues that streak into seasons 8 and 9, his longest smoke-free period.

Unfortunately, demon!Dean picks up smoking again, and even when he's cured, smoking becomes one of his coping mechanisms for quelling the Mark.

Seasons 11 and 12, he struggles with trying to quit, going anywhere from days to months at a time without smoking before falling back into it. When Cas dies at the end of season 12, he begins chainsmoking again along with regularly getting black-out drunk, and Sam really worries for his brother's health.

After Cas returns in season 13, Dean begins working to quit again in earnest, creating a system with Sam, Cas, and Jack's help. This time, it sticks through the end of the series, but Dean does heavily consider starting up again as he spirals towards the end of season 15.

Post-series Dean is trying to maintain being smoke-free, especially since Cas is gone and Jack is hands-off. He knows any damage he does will be permanent this time, and he doesn't particularly feel like dying of cancer. But it turns out the boredom of the world not ending is worse for his cravings than the stress was. He starts smoking weed, trying to convince himself it's a proper substitute, but eventually, he just smokes weed because he likes it.

[sweetpapercroissant]

“dean winchester is a misogynist because he lies to women to get them to sleep with him and therefore clearly doesn’t respect them”

then you actually watch the show and every time dean sleeps with a woman he’s soft and there’s a gentleness even in his passion and he always makes sure his partner’s satisfied/comfortable and he does form genuine connections with the women he sleeps with even if he lies about his name and job (which is completely understandable and actually the sane thing to do considering most of america knows him as a serial killer and there’s not a lot of people around who’d bother talking to a guy who claims he hunts monsters for a living) (or for fun ig since there’s not a lot of ‘living’ in this profession) and he spends time getting to know them and offers the little bits of himself that he can and most of the time that dean has sex with a woman he sleeps over and they see him off in the morning with a goodbye kiss and genuine affection for him and if they ever run into him again they’re clearly fond and look back on their shared memories with satisfaction if nothing else and. this is the guy who doesn’t respect women? how? by believing they are adults who can want and enjoy a night of sex with no strings attached (something he’s always straightforward about btw)?? and more importantly it’s always consensual and they like him as a person and they’re clearly both enthusiastic about it (in fact there’s actually instances where dean isn’t completely enthusiastic but never the other way around).

also any time he’s been in a serious relationship where he was going to be a part of the other person’s life he tells them the whole truth, about hunting and monsters and his role in it and what being with him would entail. so i’d say he respects women just fine but maybe you need to seriously evaluate why you feel having casual sex with women is inherently disrespectful of them.

not to mention that the sex does mean something to him. even if he didn’t it wouldn’t be “wrong” or “misogynistic” to want to have sex with a woman without a relationship BUT. the sex does mean something to him. because he craves intimacy and human contact and affection and being liked and wanted and so often when he’s going through something he’ll open up to these women (jaime, anna) and they’re willing to listen to him without judgment and they’re gentle with him, with his grief, his trauma and the sex is a way for him to connect on a deeper level with them and it helps him and he’s spent almost his entire life isolated from society and can’t form long lasting relationships for much of his childhood and youth but he actually cares about them as human beings and he feels affection for them and it fulfills his desire for tenderness that he can’t expect from anyone else. and there’s nothing wrong with any of that.

[mrcowboydeanwinchester]

sometimes you watch late seasons supernatural and you're like yeah okay the colours are bright and i feel no fear and the only person trying is jensen ackles. other times you watch late seasons supernatural and you are vibrating in your fucking seat because dean winchester says something as insane as i'm furious. to know that all my life, i've been nothing but a hamster in a wheel, stuck in a story. and it ain't just me. we're all trapped. sam and cas and jack and even you. and he's saying it to god's sister as she's paying the bill in a shitty restaurant

[chevroletdean]

Sometimes I remember that Chuck AND Amara both had a fat crush on Dean Winchester. Light AND Darkness. Literal God AND God's Sister. AND the angel that resurrected him. AND the King of Hell. Incredible.

[dotthings]

"Since when do you read" isn't spn authorial voice saying Dean is stupid and can't read. That's a clear instance of Sam either purposefully trolling Dean, or Sam's own set misconceptions about Dean, and so he's surprised Dean reads Huffington Post...because Sam has an idea about Dean in his head and when he comes up against proof he's wrong, he seems surprised, no matter how many times it happens. I think this was purposeful, and something that happened across showrunners. Sam and Dean's brotherhood isn't a perfect relationship. They bicker, they argue, they sometimes fight bitterly, they see the world in different ways, they don't always get each other, or they have their perceptions of each other. But Sam does seem particularly stuck in his idea that Dean doesn't read much.

Maybe the facade Dean constructed for himself when they were kids got lodged in Sam's brain, but with all the time they spend together as adults, with Dean repeatedly showing he's not what Sam perceives, the fact that Sam can't seem to let go of that perception is interesting.

[wheretosearchforsnow]

Destiel in Season 4 and 5 of Supernatural and Death of God

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s well-known phrase “God is dead,” introducing the idea of the missing God, laid the foundation for one of the most important topics in the 20th century Existentialist Movement. The possibility of God’s non-existence means that everything that is possible to happen can happen, and if everything is allowed, how can man choose? How can man know how to live? If everything is allowed, can we define right from wrong?

Such questions are asked on Supernatural, with the character Castiel first appearing at the end of the first episode in the fourth season, which marked the series’ introduction of Christian mythology as a central them ever since. Castiel, an Angel of the Lord, initially shows complete devotion to God and identifies as servant of heaven:

CASTIEL: We have no choice. DEAN: Of course you have a choice. I mean, come on, what? You’ve never questioned a crap order, huh? What are you both, just a couple of hammers? CASTIEL: Look, even if you can’t understand it, have faith. The plan is just. SAM: How can you even say that? CASTIEL: Because it comes from heaven, that makes it just. - 4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester

This argument on the morality behind the act of “purifying a city” or “taking one thousand two hundred fourteen lives” between Castiel and the Winchesters is not dissimilar with Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard’s discussion on Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. When Abraham was told that as a result of God's will that he must sacrifice his son Isaac, he was in a kind of either-or. If the message is genuinely from God, then he must sacrifice Isaac and it is the right thing to do; but if the message is not from God, then he would be committing what would be the very worst possible crime judged on the basis of Abraham's own view of human ethics.

The dichotomy here, between Castiel’s and Dean’s rationales, is that while the former believes there is a God and God and religion (in other words, heaven’s plan for earth) are the most important things, and man must do nothing but obey heaven’s command, the latter insists that there is no God and it is for man to take the total burden of responsibility for the world and for himself upon his own shoulders, with no one to give him any sign.

Though the former seems to suggest a lack of agency or necessity for decision making in moral judgement, as the plot unfolds, we see Castiel demonstrate a sense of uncertainty, the very secret he voices in the conversation with Dean in the episode’s epilogue.

CASTIEL: I’m not a… hammer as you say. I have questions, I have doubts. I don’t know what is right and what is wrong anymore, whether you passed or failed here. But in the coming months you will have more decisions to make. I don’t envy the weight that’s on your shoulders, Dean. I truly don’t. - 4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester

This mirrors Kierkegaard’s Abraham in his questions on God’s will. Indeed, how is one to know whether the command is from God or not? If an angel speaks to him, how does Abraham know it's not a hallucination? And if God himself speaks, how is Abraham, or Castiel, to know whether this is really God or whether the command is their own inward evil wishes? Nobody but Abraham, or Castiel, can decide and they cannot tell within his life whether he has done the right thing or not.

Perhaps it is this introspective nature in Castiel that draws him close to Dean, the human in his charge, and by implication humanity. Dean, a firm non-believer and what many, including himself, perceive to be as farthest from being servant of God as possible, detests the idea of God even in face of angels walking the earth.

DEAN: God? CASTIEL: Yes. DEAN: God. CASTIEL: Yes! He isn't in heaven. He has to be somewhere. DEAN: Try New Mexico. I hear he's on a tortilla. CASTIEL: No, he's not on any flatbread. DEAN: Listen, Chuckles, even if there is a God, he is either dead—and that's the generous theory— CASTIEL: He is out there, Dean. DEAN: —or he's up and kicking and doesn't give a rat's ass about any of us. CASTIEL glares. DEAN: I mean, look around you, man. The world is in the toilet. We are literally at the end of days here, and he's off somewhere drinking booze out of a coconut. All right? - 5.02 Good God, Y'all

Dean has no intention of trying to prove that God does not exist, as one cannot prove a negative, but the very specific objection to the traditional concept of God above parallels with the simple objection in many existentialists work that is based upon the injustice of the universe. Albert Camus has given this same type of criticism in his novel, "The Plague", in which the priest, Padalu, confesses that he is not able to understand how there can be any justification so that even eternal paradise could cancel out the sufferings here on earth of one innocent child. Why, Deans asks, if God is all powerful, does man have to suffer? If God is merciful, then how can he sentence man, any man at all to eternal damnation?

There is an optimistic side to this. As the repetitive occurrence of the term “free will” on this show suggests, if God exists, man is nothing; but if God does not exist, then man is free to choose what he wants to make himself. But for Castiel to arrive at this destination, it first takes him to undergo a two-season long crisis.

ANNA: What do you want from me, Castiel? CASTIEL: I'm considering disobedience. ANNA nods. ANNA: Good. CASTIEL: No, it isn't. For the first time, I feel... ANNA: It gets worse. Choosing your own course of action is confusing, terrifying. ANNA puts her hand on CASTIEL's shoulder. He looks at it; she drops it. ANNA: That's right. You're too good for my help. I'm just trash. A walking blasphemy. ANNA turns to walk away. CASTIEL: Anna. ANNA stops. CASTIEL: I don't know what to do. Please tell me what to do. ANNA turns back. ANNA: Like the old days? No. I'm sorry. It's time to think for yourself. - 4.16 On the Head of a Pin

If God isn’t out there, then Castiel has nowhere to turn. This dreadful realization may best be articulated through Hazel Barnes’ analogy that as if one would try to judge a Ford car without any Mr. Ford. So long as there is a Mr. Ford or one of his agents, then one has a model, one has a blueprint and one can say that the car which is coming there off the assembly line is a perfect Ford or an imperfect Ford. But without a plan, one cannot judge a car, and without God, there is no plan for Castiel and there is no final point of reference by which he can judge his values, or right or wrong, or declare that he has lived up to his possibilities or not lived up to his possibilities.

Yet despite “choosing your own course of action” being “confusing, terrifying,” Castiel is not in total despair. Dean, the human equivalent of the burden of a self-creative life, provides reference for Castiel on how to live a life as if there were no God. I have concluded thus that in the context of existentialism Castiel seeks Dean and humanity for answers and view them as his destination.

Note: this article is MOSTLY arguments in Hazel Barnes’ Self Encounter 2: The Far Side of Despair.

[t00muchheart]

John in 1x20 apologizing to Sam for stopping being a Dad at some point and becoming a drill sergeant, letting the mission become everything, and then immediately getting sucked back into that mission and not understanding why Sam didn’t kill him to get to Azazel in 1x22, framing it as I thought you of all people would understand, because when Sam told him that they were alike, that they understood each other, he accepted that Sam was all in, at any cost

VERSUS Dean seeing that Sam is in at all costs and reminding him that his life has worth too, telling him that just because they couldn’t get back the people they lost didn’t mean they needed to lose more people. When John tells Sam to kill him the scene is framed as Sam being ready to do it until Dean’s appeal convinces him not to, and Sam looking back at Dean before telling John that family is more important emphasizes that it is Dean holding things together, like he has since he was a child.

Because when John stopped being a dad and became a drill sergeant, Dean stopped being just a brother and became a dad.

[sammwitch]

Purgatory isssss Vietnam and i will not be convinced otherwise!

in this essay i won't because i'm not american and am not equipped to root through the various generational traumas the vietnam war inflicted on america and how that impacted American Masculinity but like,,,,, it's there! it's super there. idk if this comparison is super obvious if you are american but i'm going to explain myself anyway

(before i start, i will be talking about the idealised and fetishised idea of the vietnam war, not the actual realities of the actual real conflict. this post is about how the spn writers are weirdo american men, not geopolitics)

eye mean,,, obviously the racism that runs through all of spn- there are creatures living alongside us who look like us and talk like us but are actually Dangerous Monsters Who Must Die- but keyed up to 11 because this is a land of monsters/non-humans/them-not-us

and as a part of that, we never see any child monsters in purgatory despite child monsters existing and also dying. because this is the Ideal vietnam which is only a wild battleground and not a place people, families and non-combatants live. only populated by savage non-americans who are hell bent on killing 'Our Boys'

benny fits into this too. being Other but also an ally. not someone whp can be entirely trusted at first and definitely in it for the personal gains that Fighting For the USofA could bring him, but through their shared experiences bonding. y'know, he's one of the good ones! like the (north? i think?) vietnamese allies america had on the ground

even washing all the colour out of the scenes until it's almost black and white??? like the footage that was broadcast to americans of the war?? i'm connecting the dots

purgatory not as something you beat but something you endure and then escape?? literally it is an idealised vietnam war were you don't have to confront that america super didn't win because the victory and horrors came in getting out

the way post-purgatory dean is treated like a Movie Veteran with his new brotherhood forged in blood and his thousand yard stare and his sullen drinking (all portrayed by jensen ackles who mustn't look any worse than slightly dishevelled or muddy in any shot) and that whole 'it was purer there' bullshit that i have definitely seen in other media portraying vietnam vets. they really gave him glam war trauma and it feels uncomfortable. it feels fetishy

not going to go further than "i think american men who didn't go to vietnam for whatever reason (including age! the lack of a big existential war to go fight in has really done a number on the self-perceptions of generations of american men) have a real chip on their shoulder about it and a resulting pretty gross mythification of the vietnam war because of it. maybe it's because they felt isolated from the Manly Men they idolised irl because of that lack of trauma?" when theorising WHY they did this because, again, not american.

TLDR later season dean winchester really was the writer's fetish doll to be The Most Masculine American Man and it's weeeeeeiiird!