Here you have a person who excellently captured the spirit of the entire DeanCas dynamic in two pictures :’)

10x22 | The Prisoner

What always gets me about this (once I’ve moved past the initial HOT!HOT!HOT! stage) is how professional and efficient Dean is about the murders. Cas will later call Sam and say how “brutally” Dean killed the Stynes, but what we see is brutal efficiency. Dean is 100% in control and carefully uses everything he’s been trained to do right from his earliest childhood. It’s a far cry from “Look at me, bitch!” And that’s what makes this so incredibly scary to watch.

This is something I’ve thought about as well, but particularly relating to demon!Dean.  What’s interested me for a while is the efficiency of movement that demon!Dean has that human!Dean normally doesn’t.  Demon!Dean walks like a predator (in the jungle cat sense), stalking efficiently and moving with deliberate purpose.  Movements are very restrained, brutal and efficient.

And here, we have a human!Dean who is on the edge of becoming a demon once more, of losing that soul once more as he becomes consumed by the Mark of Cain, and we see the resurgence of demon!Dean’s predatory movement patterns.  Human!Dean doesn’t normally walk like a predator.  But he can.  As @frozen-delight​ points out, this is him in complete control of his body, using everything he’s every learned from childhood until now.

I’ve speculated in the past that losing a soul doesn’t necessarily make one violent, but it does cause the loss of impulse control.  Additionally, I have also commented that the process of becoming a demon is through the destruction of the soul.  So when the Mark of Cain starts to consume Dean, it’s similar to when it turned him into a demon, but this time, it was a lot slower, here is Dean as his soul is dying and he is becoming a demon.  He’s losing that impulse control, that ability to restrain himself.

Now, where I thought it was interesting that Soulless!Sam was no more violent than the situation called for, in general, Mark-of-Cain!Dean, while brutally efficient is more violent than necessary (for example, killing of the Styne boy who was no threat, or his attack on Cas).  I had hypothesized that Sam was not interested in rampant violence because he leads a very violent life, so he has no curiosity about it.  However, Dean is a lot more violent.  Where does this violence come from?

I think that Dean is generally a very repressed person.  He has a habit of repressing his own wants and desires.  When he was a demon, his personality was fueled almost entirely by his ‘id’, as it were, whereas as a human, he can be considered to be controlled by his ‘super-ego’ (to borrow Freud’s terminology).  As the Mark of Cain starts to consume his soul, so goes his super-ego, and starts to be replaced by a brutal id.  This violence comes out of the part of Dean that has been entirely repressed by over-the-top and excessive guilt.  His own wants and desires have been repressed to the point of not even understanding that he has them.  He feels responsible for the entire world and that translates into guilt.  So when the guilt gets removed, through the erosion of his soul and his impulse control, with a catalyst like Charlie’s death, it’s like a shaken pop bottle.  The removal of the guilt causes everything he’s repressed to explode out of him, including a lifetime of anger, fueling a rage and violence that manifests as a predatory, brutal violence.

But that was a very rambling and round-about way to get to my central point!  We almost never see fully human!Dean move like this.  Occasionally, usually when he’s acting with a purpose, there are flashes of this, but he just doesn’t move like a predator.  

Normally he moves like above.  There are wasted movements.  There’s violence, for sure, but it’s not efficient.  The closest fully human!Dean gets to the movement style of demon!Dean or Mark-of-Cain!Dean is in Purgatory, where he was in a 24/7 combat environment.

But he doesn’t normally move like he does as a demon or when he has the Mark of Cain.  And it’s because no matter how much violence and anger there is in the pit of Dean’s character, he’s not a predator.  He’s a protector.  He’s a protector because of what his father put him through and the responsibility that was foisted upon him in his childhood, but he is a protector nonetheless.  He’s a Hunter, but he’s not a hunter.

I want to make this it’s own separate post (from here) since I’ve really come around to this particular scene:  The last time Dean and Cas “talked,” it was their fight in 10x22. Where Cas called himself Dean’s “friend.” Where Dean shot back “what kind of friend are you?” And a whole season went by where they didn’t talk about that fight, where what they said still hung in the air… until Dean came back to him and said, “No, you’re my best friend, and you’re my brother.” Taking the last two seasons into context, it really is a big deal for Dean to say that. Cas has never heard that before from Dean, and it was important that Dean say that, to finally make clear what Cas means to him. Maybe not what he truly means to him— Dean’s still holding keeping that card close, obviously — but when we gotta get the end-of-the-world hands-down summary of Dean’s feelings out in the air? Cas is not just his friend. He’s so much more than that. 

Plus my tags:

#extremely touchy-feely ‘brothers’   #see this scene really bothered me at first too   #why dean said that   #why those were the words he chose to say   #that at the end of the world he wants to say ‘that’   #and maybe his thoughts were back on their fight and the words they said there   #and not to mention that argument with sam   #where sam called cas (specifically cas’s body) an ‘it’   #and dean was so offended by that   #because cas   #body and all   #is not an it   #he’s family   #and maybe dean spent a long time thinking how he’s never said that to cas   #and now that he has the chance   #he damn well is   #supernatural   #spn spoilers   #actually i’m kind of getting teary-eyed about it all   #and kind of excited about what comes next   #what doors are they opening now that cas is firmly dean’s family?   

(gif credit)

This scene bothered me when I first saw it. Cas is bleeding out on the floor; why is Dean’s first reaction to look at Sam instead of, say, rushing to help him?

I just recently realized what was actually going on. As many, many people have pointed out, Cas is in almost the exact same position as the last time Dean saw him. While it’s been a few months since that happened for the audience, just remember it’s been, like, three or four days tops since that happened for Dean. Just yesterday, he was having guilt hallucinations about a bloody, beat-up Castiel in his mirror.

So here he is, in the same spot as three days ago, seeing a bloody, beat-up Cas in the same position he was when Dean beat him up, but this time asking him for help.

The look he’s giving Sam isn’t “what do we do now?”. It’s “are you seeing the same thing I’m seeing?” Is Cas actually here, or is this a residual hallucination still following him around?

Yeah, the tag’s meant to be funny, but no, seriously, look at Dean fall in love in the third GIF. Because Dean has this tremendous fear of abandonment, right? Everyone he’s ever loved, or allowed himself to get close to, has left him in one way or another. Mom, who abandoned him by dying. Dad, who abandoned him for the Hunt. Sam, who abandoned him for Ruby. The friends, the teachers, the mentors, the girlfriends, maybe the boyfriends too. Everybody. And it eventually got to the point where Dean started taking charge and doing the abandoning first — with Cassie, with Lisa — so that he wouldn’t be the one left behind anymore.

And then in swoops this guy, this angel of the Lord, who saves him from Hell, who saves him from Heaven, who saves him from Fate, who saves him again and again and again, and Cas saves Dean again right here, right at the nick of time — this guy who, Dean now knows, for a fact, wouldn’t leave his side even if Sam said yes and the Apocalypse came to pass and everything that could ever go wrong actually did — this guy who is (at this point in the show) demonstrably the one and only person in Dean’s entire life who will never, ever leave him — and when Dean tries to express his appreciation for that, Cas’s only explanation is, “well, duh, of course I’d be here, of course I’d get you out, of course I’d never leave you behind, because we made each other a promise, because we had an appointment”. 

Everyone you love.Everyone except me.

“I’ll just wait here, then/ That’s what I’ll do...” 

destiel’s traumatic bookends

So, crypt scene and reverse!crypt scene. Both bloody, violent, agonizing affairs. Dean is being pushed by the MoC, while Cas was trained and brainwashed by Naomi.

From Dean’s point of view, the 8x17 crypt scene doesn’t do much. Sure, he stops Cas from killing him, barely, and Cas heals him and apologizes, but then Cas still leaves, still doesn’t trust him. And instead of trusting Dean, Cas ends up barreling right into another bad call, going along with Metatron’s plan (which included killing an innocent young woman) and Metatron’s plan eventually ends up killing Dean in 9x23.

From Cas’s point of view, this 10x22 scene doesn’t do much. Sure, he stops Dean from killing him, barely, and Dean leaves with a warning and not a death blow, but he still leaves, and now Dean feels betrayed and doesn’t trust him. Instead, Dean tries to continue his own personal mission (keep hunting until he can’t do any more good in the world) alone before he gives up and finally decides to call in Death to try to end it all.

How much does a hesitation mean?

The 8x17 scene was a bloody capper to a season that came across to many people as unrequited love from Dean’s side. The 10x22 scene was a bloody capper to two seasons that came across to many people as unrequited love from Cas’s side. 8x17 was not a romantically triumphant moment for Dean, not from Dean’s perspective – it was a failure. He told Cas, flat-out, that he needed him, and Cas left anyway. Because Cas wanted to protect the angel tablet from him (the angel tablet that, in one season’s time, Cas will destroy in an attempt to save Dean). Dean was left understandably bitter by the experience for several episodes and, in 8x23, we see him essentially saying goodbye to Cas, slowly beginning the process of trying to let him go. A process that continued into S9.

Dean’s death at the end of S9 seems to be a similar wake-up call to Cas that being in Purgatory was for Dean. He missed Dean deeply and was willing to admit as much. But just like being with Sam re-ignited Dean’s toxic bond with him, being around Hannah re-ignited Cas’s guilt and need to ‘fix’ the problems of Heaven. Cas then spent much of S10 flitting around trying to figure out where he belonged – with Hannah, helping the angels; with Claire, relieving his guilt over what he did to Jimmy’s family; trying to recover his grace; trying to save Dean. He always came running to help out with Dean’s stuff when needed but then would immediately run away again, like a scalded cat. As soon as he felt like he wasn’t needed, he was gone.

And much like 8x17 was a failure from Dean’s perspective, 10x22 is a failure from Cas’s. Neither of them are able to stop the other person from leaving. In 10x23, Cas heals himself up and goes back to Sam, argues briefly about the consequences of the spell but gives in, because this is Sam’s arena. Cas has generally yielded Sam & Dean problems to Sam and Dean (despite their truly terrible track record) and he’s been treating the MoC as a ‘Sam & Dean’ problem pretty much from the start. Cas then makes the same mistakes here that he made with Metatron back in 8x22/8x23, but now for a much less grand purpose – a single man, rather than all of Heaven. The terrible things he was willing to do for Heaven are also the terrible things he’s willing to do for Dean (this is not me endorsing it as a good thing; just pointing it out).

So, now Cas is in the place that Dean was post-8x17. The “I wish he felt the same way” place. Cas is willing to do anything to save Dean but, from his perspective, Dean neither wants nor needs him around anymore.

And now, a word on pacing. I watch The Vampire Diaries in addition to SPN. This season was the last season for my wonderful Elena Gilbert as a main character. The endgame pairing that Elena is a part of – Damon/Elena aka Delena – is one that I’ve compared to Destiel before (basically: we see the same kind of privacy desires & missing you scenes with both, only with Delena as a heterosexual couple, it gets to be overtly textually romantic and sexual, while Destiel’s scenes have been subtextual). For a lot of this season, things were being very drawn out about the two of them getting back together as a couple – first Damon was ‘dead’, then Elena had erased her memories of him because it was hurting too much to miss him, etc. Many obstacles. But then, all of a sudden, it was like a dam broke as we got all the scenes we’d ever wanted with them – kisses and love declarations and dancing and what amounted to a proposal. Significantly, this would have begun to be written right around when the writers knew for sure that Elena’s actress was not re-signing for S7. When they still thought they had a chance of having Elena in S7, they drew out the pacing of the love story, but once they knew the end was coming for her character as a regular, the pace quickened. That’s just how TV works.

So, we’ve had the pace slowed twice on SPN, in general, during the Carver seasons. First when they found out they were going to be renewed for S9, and then when they found out about S11 (iirc, they never acted like they believed S9 would be the last season, so I think they were pretty sure they’d get S10 no matter what at that point). Now, Destiel is a subtextual romance at this point, rather than an overt textual one like Delena, but I still see the telltale signs of the big slow-down when it comes to their interactions – how they’ve been few and far between this season but always impactful when they happen, and how many obstacles have been thrown between them.

We’ve seen those same signs when it comes to the breaking of the toxic bond of the brothers – slow down, add more complications, make it take longer because we’ve got plenty of time. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on a viewer’s personal preferences, I think, tbh. It can definitely lead to wondering if anything will ever happen at all, which can be a big issue! But, generally, if you see something (anything in general, but especially relationship-related stuff) get significantly slowed down after a renewal would have been known, then it probably is an important endgame element, otherwise they’d just burn through it at a normal pace. It’s the endgame stuff that you don’t want to use up before you reach endgame. Of course, this can mean that if you do get cancelled without warning, then you might end up without your endgame at all. But that’s television, too. There’s always a chance you get cut off before you get to make the big speech.

I’ll just wait here then. That’s all I’ll do…

“Everyone you love, could be long gone… everyone except me…”

I’m still not over how many times Cas grabbed Dean’s shoulder. Like he’s trying to pull him out of hell again. 

Well he is, though, isn’t he 

He’s not leaving this time, Dean.

ripping up the pages

oh damn I totally forgot!

did anyone flail yet about the fact that instead of stabbing Cas, Dean stabs A BOOK?

it hit me how cool that is just before I feel asleep last night

because it’s maybe symbolic of how instead of keeping to the narrative written for him (ie. the legend of the Mark, Cain’s prediction of what he’ll do under the Mark’s influence, the person/story John made/wrote him into, his and Sam’s destructive cycle, hell even the wider spn narrative of the show as a gothic tragedy) Dean is currently destroying that story and starting something new…

y/n?

YES! Oh yes. I’ve been pushing this notion since the beginning of the season, and especially hard since Cain’s prediction. Since S4 this has been a show about Free Will, and the fact that it is the thing that makes humanity special. Free Will subverted the apocalypse. Free Will HAS to prevail here. Which means Dean must subvert Cain’s statement. He’s been fighting against it. He chose not to kill Crowley (instead they had a drink and talked about the nature of family). He almost killed Cas (and for a fraction of a second he looks absolutely terrified that he DID). Instead, he walked away with what could be seen as a threat (the next time I won’t miss), but I heard it more as a warning. He knows he might not be able to stop himself next time.

Dean thinks he’s poison. Dean thinks he’s not worth saving. He believes he only hurts the ones he loves, and Cain confirmed it with his little prophecy, no matter how hard Dean’s been trying to act like he’s okay. He’s been fighting it by trying to understand his own worth. He killed Cy because even though he was technically an innocent manipulated into a bad situation, he was guilty by association with his family.

Dean stabbed that book, like he wanted to stab the Book of the Damned (or burn it or destroy it however it could be destroyed). He’s changing his own story, and won’t rest until his life is truly his own. Free will. Now he just has to believe he deserves it. He will have to write his own story for once.

I’m so sorry I blarghed all over your perfectly nice post, Holly. :/

Ugh, you can’t compare the crypt scenes to actual domestic violence without at least acknowledging that mind control and demon curses don’t exist in the real world.

Like, if you want to say “EVEN THOUGH he’s under the influence of the Mark” which I’ve seen some people do, that’s cool. Write your meta. Tell me how & why you think Dean or Cas (or who else has been through this …. Sam, Bobby, John, right? And Bucky Barnes …… lol) should still be held accountable for their actions. Totally cool. Say how scenes like this can LEAD TO people being more accepting of domestic abuse because it normalizes it. Say how it’s a metaphor for this, that, or the other problematic thing. Cool. Write your meta. Being triggered by it and asking people to tag it? TOTALLY FINE. But flat out demonizing (heh) people for liking the “broke out of mind control because of you” trope because it ~romanticizes abuse is just rude. Real life abusers aren’t under the influence of MAGIC. There is no real life version of this trope.

I’m so glad someone else get it! The ‘broke out of mind control’ is not only a very imperfect parallel to domesitc abuse, it is also a trope as old as time that *all * the time is being considered the highest proof of a strong bond between people.

I have written way too many words on this subject by now in my “Drafts” folder, but basically they all boil down to:

1. In real life, abusers who claim to have “lost control” are always lying. They are lying liars who lie to avoid being held accountable. They use this particular lie because we have a long philosophical (and legal) tradition that people should be held less culpable for harm that stems from actions they did not intend to commit or that they could not have reasonably anticipated would result from actions they intended to commit. That abusers “lose control” is a myth; they are always 100% aware of their actions and and the consequences of their actions, and they regularly hurt their victims because deep down they personally believe it’s right or morally justifiable to do so. Lundy Bancroft has written about this pretty extensively. As such, in real life, there’s never anything to “break through.”

2. In the power of love trope, it’s not a lie. In Supernatural, the scenes in 8x17 and 10x22 are not the first time a supernatural force has assumed control of someone’s body–demon possession occurs regularly, for example, and the show has talked about how the “meatsuit” is innocent.** As I see it, the Mark/Lucifer and Naomi had taken full control of Dean’s and Cas’ bodies, respectively, during 10x22 and 8x17, which makes “Dean’s” and “Cas’” actions not abuse in my book because, well, mens rea and every philosophical concept of culpability to which I personally subscribe.

(**Angel possession is slightly more complicated because the vessels consent, but it’s not always informed consent, nor is the “yes” necessarily granted without coercion. I think it’s important to remember this when thinking about Dean’s consent to the Mark. I don’t believe he could have reasonably anticipated that the “burden” and “cost” of taking the Mark would include it overpowering his free will and compelling him to kill, and I also believe the circumstances under which he said “yes” to the Mark amount to coercion and thus mitigate his culpability for events that follow. He also took what I think were generally reasonable steps to prevent harm to others when he found out what the Mark was doing, so I don’t think he’s been a fraction as negligent as people have claimed him to be. I digress.)

3. I think we must be responsible about how we incorporate and consume the power of love trope in narratives, because lots of people do believe the myth that abuse is about “losing control.” To me, this responsibility means that when the power of love trope is used in narratives we consume, we fans must re-emphasize to members of our community that in the real world, “I lost control” is always a lie and no amount of love can ever magically “fix” anything. I think these conversations interrupt any normalization of the idea that “I lost control” should be a valid defense in real life, or that love can make someone “regain control” that was never lost to begin with. (We should be having these conversations and educating ourselves about abuse anyways.) I do not know what ethical responsibilities I think writers of narratives that include the power of love trope have; I think I tentatively believe that writers should make it crystal clear that a supernatural force has completely overpowered the character’s agency.

4. The pervasiveness of the myth that abusers “lose control” and the way that abusers regularly use that lie to attempt to avoid accountability means that there’s a valid case for reading these scenes as metaphors for abuse, as causalityrules​ points out. 

I think that’s my take on the whole matter. That scene was brutally hard to watch. I’m happy that Carver opted to include a piece of narrative symmetry that suggests a romantic relationship between Dean and Cas. I am also happy that their (romantic) relationship has been established to be more powerful than the oldest, most powerful curse ever cast by Lucifer. The violence that the Mark had “Dean” committing against Cas, though, was disgusting, deeply tragic, and traumatic for Cas.

Also, Cas’ speach to Dean? It is a declaration of love.

Metatron asked Cas what was his mission now. And Cas, truly, chose to stay by Dean’s side no matter what happens.

Even if he has to see him burn the world, he still chooses to stay by his side. Killing Dean is not even a possibility for him.

Come and tell me that the angel Castiel is not in love with Dean Winchester. :)

I know a lot of people are seeing Cyrus as a mirror or parallel for Sam (and I can see that, too), but when his father put that scalpel into Cyrus’ hand and forced him to use it, all I could think of was Dean in similar circumstances.   How many people have put blades into Dean’s hands (either literally or figuratively) and asked him to use them?

Crowley literally did it last year in ‘Do You Believe in Miracles’.  Sam, Cas, and Gadreel agreed with Dean that he should use the First Blade against Metatron in the same episode.   Crowley wanted Dean to use the First Blade against Abaddon.  Uriel and Cas asked Dean to use blades and other instruments against Alistair in ‘On the Head of a Pin’, and in that same episode we heard that Alistair had made Dean pick up a blade and use it on other souls in Hell in order to stop his own torment.  I can’t help but think that that time in Hell looked a lot like Cyrus’ first time.

That was my first impression of that scene.  It was actually the thing that Monroe said, that Cy could cut up the boy, or Monroe would butcher him and then it would be Cy on that table.  That was literally Dean’s choice–torture or be tortured, and Monroe putting that blade in Cy’s hand just cemented it, for me.

The character mirrors this season have very often done double duty, and I can see the Sam parallel pretty strongly, but I think that when Dean shot Cy, after not in any way projecting “Bad Seed” at him, he was metaphorically killing off that part of himself that was forced first into being Sam’s guardian and then into hunting monsters and then into becoming a torturer.  Cy, you will notice, fell very close to the pile of DEAN that Eldon had dumped on the floor, and Dean looks over at him just before he says, “That Dean’s always been kind of a dick.”

Which is ALL KINDS OF EXCITING, since we’ve been saying for a long time that Dean was going to have to reject John’s influence on his life in order to move on.  AND, if we also take Cy as a Sam mirror, Dean is finally severing the tie that John used to bind him to Sam, too. 

Cas is right, the Mark has been changing Dean. We knew from the moment Dean said it should be Sam on that pyre instead of Charlie that this is not the Dean we’ve known for ten years, and the fact that he could snap those leather restraints and beat down an angel says that he’s not entirely human any more. Just like with demon!Dean, though, there is still some elemental core of Deanness in there, and that’s the part that is still trying to protect people and isn’t willing to pay the kind of price Rowena’s spell will demand, and that couldn’t just kill Cas. 

I’ve seen several people wondering how Dean is going to come back from this, and I think that’s exactly the point–the Dean we’ve known for ten years can’t come back.  We’re going to have someone different, maybe very different, but still Dean.

Exactly! I’ve written some posts about it and I’ve argued that Dean will kill the part of himself that has been at the mercy of other people, that has had no agency, that has been chained to other people’s expectations of him, in primis his father. Also the ‘new Dean’ will work as a sandpaper to polish the ‘old Dean’, and the result will be a different, improved Dean a la Hegel (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)… :)

The Mexican Restaurant he appears to meet Death in in next week’s episode looks like it is called “Juanita’s” but the ‘ita’ part doesn’t light up, leaving Juan’s.  Which I believe is the Spanish form of John’s.  It seems fairly likely that Dean’s relationship with John will come up in some way.

It is indeed the Spanish form of John.

Well, now.

Isn’t that interesting…