#dean meta

[worrynoodle]

There's something about deans first solo hunt (on his 17th birthday) being about a queer couple that fell in love with one another who committed suicide because the alternative was so much worse and the fact that when Dean loses Cas his usual instinct is to commit suicide or get himself killed.

He said that he doesn't remember much between the ages of 17 and 28

John said in his journal that the hunt was simple enough to send Dean in on his own but it affected him so bad that he wouldn't let Dean go solo again.

There's a lot to unpack here

[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.

[im-some-lionheart]

I know we say it a lot but jfc Dean is so fucking smart and this stupid ass show his him zero credit for it.

In 5x02 he hears about a contaminated river and a shooting star and immediately knows which part of the Bible to look (which he probably remembers from s4 when Bobby made him read up on angels). And once the priest confirms those omens are about the horsemen, Dean remembers the red car and makes the connection to the red horse bc he deduces surely the horsemen would have updated to new technology.

Meanwhile, Sam "the smart one" had to literally watch War use his ring in front of him and then have him spell it out for him to figure out who he was lol

And???

It just makes me so mad bc Dean is so fucking smart, and not him nor the people around him nor the fucking show ever acknowledges it!!

But if you pay attention, it's right!! there!!!!

If you're with me watching the secret good spn, it's beautiful bc... the information he can retain, the connections his mind makes, and in a matter of seconds too, god, he's brilliant I love him

[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.

[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.

[theboykingsmichaelsword]

SUPREMELY fucked up that the angels sent dean and dean alone back to the day of mary's deal because it's just further evidence of how family is weaponized against dean

sam has this thing about being excluded because he's the youngest and had to be protected even when it left him by himself while john and dean were out hunting. then he voluntarily leaves the family unit because he wanted normalcy and safety, understandably couldn't bear the thought of the people he cared about getting hurt and so chose to run from all of it. meanwhile, dean can't leave because he can't leave john to hunt by himself--has been raised his whole life to protect and keep the family unit the family peace take care of sam take care of dad make sure sam eats even if you have to starve make sure dad's injuries are patched up help dad with research teach sam how to research keep the guns clean make sure there's enough salt shells learn how to credit card scam the list goes on--and dean canonically takes it as a personal failure if things go wrong even when it's not his fault. sam leaves and dean has to remain even if going would kill him just the same as staying does.

and then, all the minutiae of s1-s3 aside, dean spends 40 years being tormented in hell only to be resurrected because there's another thing people need him to be responsible for. heaven wants him to stop the apocalypse only no heaven doesn't actually, heaven wants him to stop sam from taking demon blood only no heaven doesn't actually, heaven wants him to prevent mary from making a demon deal ONLY NO HEAVEN DOESN'T ACTUALLY

dean goes back in time and comes face-to-face with the monster that killed his parents and ruined his and his brother's lives. dean, being only human and working off deliberately limited information, thinks "i'm here because if i kill azazel now, i stop all of that, we can all live normal lives together no one has to die" EXCEPT

if heaven never sent dean back, samuel and mary never would've gone to the whitshire farm the night azazel's there to organize another psychic child conception. if heaven never sent dean back, azazel wouldn't have met mary and decided he liked her enough to fixate on making sure she'd give him one of her babies down the line. if heaven never sent dean back, azazel never would've worn samuel as a meatsuit, stabbed himself, and then killed his own wife. if heaven never sent dean back, azazel never would've made sure to kill john THAT NIGHT to get mary to make a deal

so to dean, he essentially watches both of his parents die again in front of him and this time he's 'directly' responsible for it because he failed to stop it. only dean didn't actually fail because heaven was never going to let him interrupt because he and sam needed to be born and raised exactly the way they were. dean succeeds in doing everything heaven wants from him...by failing. he protects heaven and hell's plan for the apocalypse by doing the thing he's been raised to do--hunt and love his family. heaven watches him damn himself by being exactly who he is: someone taking on the weight of the world inevitably at the cost of himself. dean breaks his back on his own goddamn cross because that was always the plan AND he has to live with it because he's the only one who can because he's alone and because heaven doesn't sympathize (even if one angel does)

when he's back in the present, cas tells dean "you couldn't have stopped it, destiny can't be changed" but the truth is dean was never supposed to stop anything and maybe destiny can't be changed but that's weird because they sure needed his involvement to shape it the way they wanted didn't they?

then cas, also working on limited information because heaven is a bureaucracy, tells dean "your brother is headed down a dangerous road and we don't know where it leads so stop it...or we will" which we know to be false because this was always the plan BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY places the responsibility once again on dean's shoulders. dean bears the burden and the blame when he fails like they need him to because he and sam are players on a board with both heaven and hell bearing down and closing in

dean gets to meet his parents when they're younger and gets to have a sit-down family dinner with his mom and their grandparents only it's more like he has to meet his parents when they're younger and he has to have a sit-down dinner with his mom and their grandparents because it has to happen exactly like this and dean has to watch them die and sam isn't there because sam is once again excluded while dean is kept painfully front-and-center so it's just him it's all on him the way it always has been. dean meets his family he kills his family his family kills him

[lovelessloverboy-dean]

Okay Dean's whole "I'm not well adjusted, I'm just well fed" thing with famine isn't working for me, and not in Famine's he's empty inside way. Because if he just wasn't affected, he would be acting like normal. But he clearly isn't-he's eating less than normal, drinking less than normal, not going out to bars on Valentine's Day like normal. Which has to be a famine thing. So my interpretation is that what dean hungers for in this episode IS deprivation. He's starving himself, denying himself his own wants and needs (as he often does) as a form of punishment because his hunger is for pain and guilt. And it feels natural to him just like it does to all the people in the town because it's so in line with his usual instincts, he's just indulging it more visible (i.e. not putting on a performance for sam)

[vendettasfanfictioning]

Tell me how Dean fucking Winchester became a vampire, a demon, and an angel and somehow still managed to be a better dad figure than John.

[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

[beautysurvives]

pre-series Dean wants his father to save him but knows that he won’t, so he goes to Sam. He wants his brother to save him but he knows that he can’t. Then an angel saves him instead, and Dean won’t let himself believe it.

The angel saves him over and over and over — and Dean is sure that at some point the rug will be pulled out from under him, because it always is. Cas dies for him and comes back to life — and Joshua says that was God saving Dean by saving Cas.

And then after Sam and Adam fall into the cage, after Cas dies for him again and is brought back for him again, Dean goes from not thinking he deserves to be saved to not wanting to be saved. The way he’s been “not wanting” anything all season — pretty much his entire life. The person who really changed that for him — gave him hope — was Cas. But he’s only part of the equation! Dean has to do some of the work in valuing himself too, but like Lisa says, he has a habit of thinking that everything has to be either or. All or nothing. Wanting it to be simple. “Pure” like purgatory.

And it’s just. Like. The entire concept of “being saved” — knowing that a relationship with a specific person outside of your family could be the thing that saves you. in almost every case, for Dean, it feels like someone’s life was exchanged for his — and that’s not really being saved!!! That’s its own kind of cage!

Being truly saved in spn is being free!!!! Getting a chance to determine your identity for yourself!!!! Being with someone who will let you make your own choices and support you through them!!!! But you won’t let yourself have that because of all the people who are not free “because of you” ie for your sake — because you think that enjoying your life would be an insult to them. Because you think you’re supposed to repent forever. So he goes to Lisa’s door—

Being with Cas would’ve freed him!!!!!!!!!!!!

And it’s only after Dean accepts that he can be saved without being punished for it that he starts trying to live his for himself (tw season 15)

Once again, Cas died for him without demanding anything in return, and Dean can finally accept that he is worth it and allowed to appreciate it by doing whatever he wants because he knows and accepts who he is now

When he was with Lisa, he knew he was not being his authentic self, and she knew it too. It was another transactional relationship

The show is about saving Dean!!!!! It’s about allowing him the freedom to figure out who he is and not forcing him to choose between black and white. It’s about what it means that he’s drawn to the aspect of the hunter lifestyle that’s constantly moving, constantly changing your name, constantly pretending to be someone else, living off the grid.

It’s about his queerness, and his gender and him knowing that he doesn’t have to choose between becoming either his mom or his dad — not having to conform to the traditional roles that they killed themselves to squeeze into — and allowing himself to finally fully actualize his identity by not just leaving Chuck’s story once and for all, but leaving behind his role as “older brother” to Sam. Leaving his physical body (to maybe be born again?)

And at the risk of sounding pro-finale (because don’t get me wrong I do truly hate the bury your gays of it all and I think there were a million better ways to do what I’m about to accuse them of doing) — his death is his freedom in the sense that it’s his transition (yes, this whole post was written in service of my transfem Dean headcanon)

He has always been a person that doesn’t easily fit into one category or another, and that’s always been in his DNA as a character!!!! He is ambiguous and hard to label and saving him is freeing him from the confines of the narrative, the expectations of the audience, and the narrow definitions assigned to him by the patriarchal heteronormative container of network television!!! It’s letting him leave and most importantly it’s allowing him to make his own show (The Winchesters perhaps…..)

Okay now read this quote from I saw the tv glow (spoiler warning):

I told myself… “This isn’t normal. This isn’t normal.” This isn’t how life is supposed to be. I thought about running away again. About moving to Santa Fe and changing my name one more time. But I knew that everywhere would be just the same. I had seen how it ended. I knew where I was. A little bit after my 22nd birthday, I paid this burnout kid who used to hit on me in the food court $50 to bury me alive. I mean… he didn’t know he was burying me alive, but I doubt he would have cared too much even if he did. I bought a coffin. I dug a hole. I got inside and I closed the lid. I said to myself, “This is crazy.” “What you’re doing is crazy.” But another part of me knew that it wasn’t. That it was survival. And that I didn’t have much time. That what felt like years in this world was actually just seconds. So I waited. And then finally, the first spadeful of dirt hit the top of the box. And then another. And then another. I sang songs to myself. I counted to 10,000 without skipping any numbers. I pissed and I shit my pants and I forced my mouth to produce whatever saliva it could muster just so I would have something to drink. I screamed as loud as I could for help. I apologized for the whole thing. And I begged God for someone to come along and save me. I tried and tried to claw my way out, but that burnout guy had packed the dirt in too tight just like I had asked him to do. And then, after I don’t know how long, I felt myself start to leave myself. And it was like I was watching myself on TV from across the room. And I was moving further and further away from the screen until the screen was so small that I couldn’t even see myself anymore.

And then I was clawing my way up out of the ground. And then I was at the surface, gasping for air, rain pouring down on me. Thunder and lightning. And I was finally back there. Back at our old sleepaway camp. And just like I was waking up from a bad dream, that whole life… that whole reality where I was Maddy Wilson…drifted away. Like a brief hallucination that, after a few moments, I could hardly even remember. And all those memories that had felt so real washed away with the rain back at our old sleepaway camp. And I was me. I was finally me again. And it was the season six premiere. I tried looking for you, but Mr. Melancholy had covered his tracks too well. I knew you must be buried somewhere close by, but I didn’t know where. And your signal… That signal that I used to be able to close my eyes and feel so vividly… was nowhere. I wasn’t picking up anything on the psychic plane. I found my heart. Isabel, oh, my God! I found yours, too. And it was still beating, stored indefinitely in… (breathing heavily) In an industrial freezer! I left our hearts there because I knew I wasn’t done yet. And I found Mr. Melancholy’s cauldron. I found the Luna Juice he used to send us to the Midnight Realm, then I took a big sip straight out from the ladle. And I laid back down… and I waited to fall back asleep. I knew I needed to come back here. I knew I needed to come back and save you. So that the show can continue. So that we can get to season six.

Okay and now this quote

Jane Schoenbrun creator of I Saw the TV Glow):

To get Owen to a place of true self-love and self-acceptance would take at least another movie. I knew that I wanted it to be really honest to the fact that just because you've now finally seen yourself clearly doesn't mean that half a lifetime of damage that repression has instilled in you is going to go away. I don't view it as a cautionary tale or a definitively sad ending; I just think it's truthful to the fact that if you've been taught your whole life to think of yourself as an imposter or apologize for being yourself, like many trans people are, that instinct doesn't go away overnight.

[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

[dotthings]

This cannot be said too often--Dean reached out again and again. Dean cared the most about Cas personally. Dean went through the most anguish over Cas. Dean is the one who related to Cas and saw a kindred spirit and when Cas was hurting, it hurt him, when Cas was vulnerable, it scared him, Dean kept reaching out while Cas often ran away, Dean kept showing Cas he wanted Cas to stay, Dean forgave Cas again and again. Dean has the high emotional IQ and Cas, who is very loving and feels too much but doesn't know how to process the emotions flooding through him, is the one who has the most to learn about relationships and the emotional impact of his choices on others. Dean who had to explain to Cas he wasn't mad, he was worried when Cas doesn't answer voicemails and texts. Cas who thought he wasn't loved, who discovered how loved he was all along.

Don't tell me all Dean does is yell and how he's so ~mean to poor helpless Cas. Dean's heart was bleeding out on his sleeve for Cas all the time and he cares SO MUCH and I'm tired of how Cas stans are the actual biggest denialists in the fandom about it.

[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)