#here you may find a rare acknowledgment from me of season 8 sam being a real person

[scoobydoodean]

Just finished S9 and had a thought occur to me... Why is it that the scarier Dean gets and the further from happiness he gets driven, the more sensible and non-douchey Sam suddenly becomes. If Dean's happy and generally feeling pretty good about himself, Sam's always there to start shit and be kind of a drama whore. But the darker Dean gets (Mark of Cain, specifically cuz that's where I'm at now) the more logical and "hold on let's think this through" Sam becomes. He goes from "we're not brothers, this is a business" to "that's my brother and I have to save him" pretty damn quick there after Dean gets a murder boner from the blade

I don't personally believe Sam wants Dean to be unhappy in general (See: Cassie, Lisa, Sam's desperation to save Dean in season 3 and in 4.12 and in 8.14). However, Sam does want Dean to be unhappy in season 8 and in season 9 in specific contexts for specific reasons, and neither reason is actually because he doesn't care about Dean.

In season 8, without getting into a very long-winded explanation, Sam's attitude toward Dean having friends is the result of control issues specific to that season, manifested from an emotional breakdown Sam had after his volcano of life-long abandonment trauma exploded between 7.23 and 8.01. Losing Dean was the catalyst for all of it. This framing may seem confusing or counterintuitive to some, but I can explain why I have that perspective. However, it’ll get extremely long-winded and divorced from this ask if I start talking about that in detail. (I might tack an addition or make a separate post to explain more.)

Sam does care about Dean in season 8 despite appearances from how he abandoned Dean in Purgatory. But Dean doesn't get a lot of the context we do as viewers (and even with context…). Previous experiences and his own abandonment trauma make it easy for Dean to connect Sam's statement with several previous experiences (that also weren't actually about Sam not caring about Dean but felt that way to Dean) and accept that Sam does not care about him. Sam also knows Dean doesn't think Sam cares for him, and in season 9, Sam uses that to his advantage. He wants Dean to hurt. He wants to punish Dean and he understands how to do so—with a lie about who Dean is to him (9.23 gives it to us directly: "I lied").

The Mark is a wake up call. While Sam is not responsible for Dean's deep, long-standing self-worth issues, which make Dean highly susceptible to the idea of taking on an evil murder mark to kill a Knight of Hell and damn the consequences, I'm sure Sam can't help but connect Dean being willing to dive off the deep end to the fault line running through their relationship that he's been working to widen. He widens it to hurt Dean's heart, but also finds his own facing issues, because he does care about Dean despite trying very hard to stop doing that. Dean is in an incredibly fragile state and cannot handle any more pushing, and Sam softens in response.

More generally, I think like anyone, Sam gauges what he thinks people can handle. Sam and Dean's relationship involves a lot of snarky and bitchy banter, but they'll generally chill out on it when they sense genuine fragility—at least for a little while. In a more serious context, Dean is a default springboard Sam has bounced anger off of for a lot of his life, and occasionally projected his own emotions and experiences onto, and occasionally scapegoated for his own choices, but season 8/9 is as far as he ever pushes it without backing off, and he eventually feels he went too far, and I think he feels bad about it. Sam will rarely apologize directly (well—maybe for one thing—years later) but he'll curb his behavior and start doing things that show his care... sometimes in sort of messed up ways but... well. I don't want to spoil season 10 and 11 for you.

The good news is, while Carver wanted to unbury and explore how Sam and Dean genuinely feel about their relationship, which initially results in some of the most painful brother drama in Supernatural's history, he tears it down to the studs in order to build it back up into something still flawed, but a lot more mature and genuinely companionable. 

[mittensmorgul]

My boyfriend admitted yesterday after finally watching 13.1 that Dean and Cas DO love each other. He has no doubt in his mind that if Cas were female, Destiel would have happened. BUT he sees Dean as straight and doesn't believe anything could happen with Cas in Jimmy's body. I told him that this is heteronormative bi erasure and that as a bisexual, I find it offensive that he makes that assumption. What if these sorts of casual viewer opinions keep Destiel from ever happening? I'm losing hope.

Hi there! And congrats to your boyfriend for seeing the love there. :D

First off, no offense to straight dudes, but the straight dude I’ve been married to for 20 years has absolutely no sense of bifi. Or gaydar. I mean, if he sees two dudes kissing at Pride he’d pick up on it (and there are a few famous people who came out that he wasn’t surprised at all about– George Michael, Rob Halford, he was shocked that anyone was shocked…), but when it comes to closeted bisexuals who deliberately do not want to be detected, especially the way Dean performs dudebro heterosexuality as well as Dean does especially in early seasons, he just has no clue.

*insert that gif of Sam telling Dean he’s overcompensating*

The things about Dean that have been screamingly obvious because I relate to them from personal experience just don’t register to a straight dude who has never once questioned his sexuality (like Sam, for instance). To a person who has experienced it first-hand, a lot of Dean’s behavior reads as signal flares as bright as day. If it were only used for the occasional joke, or rare random things that didn’t fit into a much larger pattern, or if it were just enough to make me sit up and notice once or twice a season, I’d assume it was just a coincidence. But… it’s not a rare random occurrence. It’s something we see in nearly every episode, more and more blatantly as the seasons progress.

I tell everyone to read this:

http://destielhiseyesopened.tumblr.com/post/102023741956/slash-and-subtext-series

It’s a lot to read, yes, but it’s incredibly thorough and the sort of thing your neck will be sore from nodding along in agreement the entire time. :P

As for whether or not the show will go there, which NONE of us can say for sure, the one thing I can say for sure is that it will not be casual viewer opinions that will influence Dabb’s storytelling. He’s said it multiple times, that he’s going to tell this story his way, whatever that might mean in the end. Dude’s not telling. I mean, look at him:

So while it’s great to have hope, because we DESERVE representation in blatant and clear terms, there is no guarantee that we will actually GET it. I mean, that is a very real possibility. It’s why I personally don’t watch the show with any expectation for ANYTHING, you know? Then every new hint that they are taking this somewhere is a pleasant surprise. For me, watching from the standpoint that I EXPECT a certain outcome is just not an enjoyable way to live. It’s just too much to stress about.

And as I’ve said over and over again, just like Dabb, I personally couldn’t give a flying fuck with the mysterious “general audience” sees when they watch the show. I watch because of what *I* see in the show, because I like analyzing the story, writing meta (with the friendly reminder that “meta” has exactly zero to do with predicting the future of the story… that’s speculation, and aside from being able to read obvious twists and turns in near-future plot points, or understanding general character development arcs and where they could potentially be headed in vague general ways, I DO NOT ENJOY SPECULATION, especially when it involves the sort of detail that a lot of more casual fans seem to expect of meta writers. I AM TIRED OF FOLKS HAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT SPECULATION AND POSITIVITY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE SERIES AND CHARACTERS IS “”””META”””” BECAUSE IT ABSOLUTELY IS NOT.

Sorry for yelling, I needed to put that out there. Comments of “I love your meta!” when referring to headcanons and speculation about endgame destiel is just… missing the entire point. The meta is the long academic character analysis, the comparisons with the current arc to past canon, the examination of episodes THAT ARE ALREADY PART OF CANON. Looking to the future to make guesses about what COULD happen in the future is SPECULATION. NOT META.

I’m so tired of people who do not understand that giving meta writers hate and dismissing EVERYTHING we’ve written because a “prediction” didn’t come true on the show exactly as someone wrote it… A guess of what will happen in the future that doesn’t quite pan out doesn’t invalidate all the ACTUAL meta we’ve all written over the years. Because just like pr is not showrunning, speculation isn’t meta.

*even when the speculation is attached to the bottom of a really long meta post. The speculation bit isn’t the tl;dr of the post. it’s the interesting and fun little bonus bit after you’ve consumed the factual part of the analysis. It’s the little blop of whipped cream on top of the pie that is the actual important content. It’s mostly decorative and just a bit of fun.*

Thanks, this has been a meta writer PSA.)

The point of all that is that none of us have a crystal ball, none of us have some secret insider information into Andrew Dabb’s brain. Despite the fact that we’ve been watching his storytelling over the last 8+ years (yes, he’s been writing for the show since s4, and has written more episodes of Supernatural than any other writer, so we have A LOT of history to look over, not to mention all of s12 and the back ~third~ at least of s11 after he silently took over the showrunning from Carver to look at when trying to understand his pet themes and how he writes), the best we can do is make educated guesses.

I’m not basing my hope for canon on some ability to read the future, I’m basing it on MY ability to look at the entirety of extant canon and be objectively logical about where the story started, where the story is NOW, and as far as individual character development arcs based on having watched them all evolve over twelve plus seasons already…

Well, let’s just say that for *me,* I can see the characters have been on a logical emotional progression over the course of the entire series (that would be the “meta” part of things). As new canon unfolds, and characters continue to develop and interpersonal storylines continue to evolve… here’s a metaphor. The writers are walking the characters down a long hallway with loads of doorways open to potential future development arcs. As they walk past each doorway and don’t veer off course, it’s like they’re closing off logical possibilities to detour into alternate routes. They’re slamming and locking those doors up forever. The closer we get to the end of canon (in whatever nebulous future that the series will reach its end, and NONE of us know when that will be right now), the fewer doorways are left to walk past, and the less logical any detour from what looks (again, from reading the meta and looking back at the entirety of past canon) like the steady progression of development would be.

Does that make sense? I mean, they’re writing themselves into a corner (or into the end of the hallway where there’s only going to be one last exit door to walk through). But again, as long as there’s still hallway ahead of us, they could take an “easier” route or just decide to stop walking altogether and just sort of set up camp at their current point in character development. It wouldn’t really be sensible for the STORY as it stands right now for them to do either of these things, because if they start backtracking looking for a different door the entire narrative falls apart. Whatever they do, they must keep writing forward.

*stops and scrolls up and cries a lil bit at how much I wrote*

Point is, we just don’t know. I’m hopeful, I feel like we DESERVE to be seen and this love story absolutely DESERVES canon acknowledgement for what it is, and that every sign in past canon and every sign the writers are continuing to carry on down this hallway is pointing to it happening at some distant point in the future… but as of right now none of us have any idea what that eventual resolution will look like. What even is canon?

I mean, your boyfriend said he sees that Dean and Cas love each other. Is that canon? What would “qualify” as being legitimately canon? I love @bluestar86′s spec post about how easy it would be to make Dean’s bisexuality textually canon, but I have no idea if we’d ever get an episode stating it so blatantly. We might, though. We did have Dean asking a gay married couple what it was like settling down with another hunter…

The point is, even trying to speculate on what will happen in the future– especially something so unknowable and distant as “endgame,” is honestly impossible. We have no idea what will happen in canon between now and then in specific terms. In the meantime, I’m perfectly content to point and flail at what is actually happening in canon right now and paying exactly zero attention to what “casual viewers” think they’re watching.

I know exactly what I’m watching, and I love it.

Will they ever make it undeniably obvious and clear in canon? I mean, it is undeniably obvious and clear to *me* but everyone has their own personal biases and wishes and checklists of things they feel must happen, and no matter if the series ends with Dean and Cas getting married there will still always be people who deny it was “enough” to make their relationship obvious, you know? I just… don’t have the energy to deal with that level of denialism. It just stresses me out to worry about what “endgame” might look like specifically when as far as we know, “endgame” isn’t even on the table yet.

So by all means, if you can, take that small step back and try and enjoy the continuing story, and don’t put too much stock in anyone’s opinion of what may or may not happen in the future. But most of all, don’t put much much stock in what random straight dudes in the general audience think. Because Andrew Dabb doesn’t. :P

Wow okay that turned into a treatise…