dean: yes I'm a domestic abuse survivor who's never gotten proper medical care. Yes I glorify my abuser. No I have no frame of reference to understand what abuse symptoms look like. On an unrelated note, yes I've been uncontrollably angry since I can remember and I don't know why. We exist.
This quote is from Leverage, in this scene Christian’s character, a badass fighter, shows that he not only is a badass fighter extraordinaire but he also likes cooking and has 200 people to make finger food for - so “get out of my kitchen I’m busy, I’m not just a fighter I have another side to me too, deal with it” is the gist of it.
Well, I said this episode would be relevant to Dean’s sublimation and his other side beneath the performance, I wonder if cooking and karaoke are the only things alluded or what else we might get to add to our ever growing list of things Dean says at first he isn’t into but he definitely is into.
Dean, who is notorious for saying exactly what is factually true and coherent with factual reality all the time and never letting his emotions lead to him saying something that is not adherent to how he genuinely feels about something, would never say something he doesn’t actually mean, says person
Dean isn’t honest about how he feels and a dramatic bitch?!!!
As largely expected and basically announced, we’ve entered the “darkest” hour before the dawn, which from a viewing experience means that it’s Super Suffering Time. Which we love, as Supernatural fans. Watch Supernatural they said, it’s gonna be fun they said. You’re gonna suffer, but you’re gonna be happy about it…
Anyway. I guess it says a lot about my investment in Nick’s character that when Dabb tweeted “where it’s darkest…” I’d completely forgotten that it was literally a quote by Nick from the scene where he picked Lucifer over his wife… and many of you did too, don’t lie, because everyone rightfully went back to 11x20/11x21 (which was all over the current narrative, obviously, down to the copy of the amulet…) but I haven’t seen anyone being like, ah yes that’s what Nick said :p
I have been saying that Dabb is writing his turn at the themes that the previous showrunners explored through the Leviathan and Amara, and now not only we have the Shadow narrative and Cas’ deal, but even Lucifer in his Empty form is visually reminiscent of the Leviathan (and the red eyes over black remind me of the monsters in Purgatory). (Remember, the Gamble era tackled the same themes of depression and identity issues as the following ones, but slightly more confusedly or maybe without the “what’s subtlety” of her successors… it’s not a coincidence we’re still answering the question the Gamble era asked in s6 - what’s a soul - and playing with metaphors around the color black, shapelessness and emptiness.)
So, this is another turn of the spiral that corresponds to the Leviathan arc: which means stripping the characters of everything, stripping the characters of what makes them the most genuine, healthy and strong versions of themselves, to rebuild them again. While I don’t think we’re going to see Dean, Sam and Cas truly stripped of everything (but they’re going to lose a lot - they already have started losing things - and their bonds are going to be tested…), because that’s not the turn of the spiral we’re at at this point, but the “extreme” version of that narrative is obviously on Jack, their ultimate mirror, who has been struggling with what makes him… him, and has maybe lost that very thing.
And of course this episode had heavy callbacks to the Amara storyline, and in fact we’ve been multiple callbacks to the last few episodes of season 11. The very character Donatello has been recently reminding us of the reason of his soullessness (he was “activated” in 11x21 and Amara consumed his soul in 11x22). God is back at full-force into the narrative, although not in person yet… and the last moment of the episode is reminiscent of the last moment of season 11 (and there’s also a cliffhanger similar to Sam being shot, if you want). In fact, it’s the antithesis of it: at the end of Alpha And Omega (beginning and end… ouroboros… and the spiral goes and goes) Dean asks “Mom?” as she is brought back to life. Now Jack asks “Mary?” as…
We’re in the turn of the spiral that corresponds to the last portion of season 11. Not surprisingly, because season 11 could have been the end, was the end of the narrative crafted by Carver and that simply was added new elements to make the spiral go again instead of letting it arrive at a conclusion.
But it’s also an antithesis of the Amara narrative, because that was about the anger of the suppressed feminine principle, and it concluded with the revival of the original woman who was sacrificed to make the story (the show and the story the characters have been living) happen. Now we have the most annoying character in the history of ever, Nick, who is (irritatingly but aptly) such a strong example of the worst masculinity, who chose Lucifer over a dead wife so reminiscent of Mary when she died. We have Lucifer, who represents exactly the same brand of toxic masculinity and toxic fatherhood, in the imagery of the shapeless black, instead of Amara.
We will see how Chuck fits in this narrative. But remember - I mean, me versus your mom? That’s… that’s not even a choice. The masculine, paternal principle gets put in the past. The father goes and the mother stays. I don’t know what Mary’s fate will be specifically, but what she represents is going to stay. What John represents - from paternal neglect to a normative model of family - goes.
Very interesting thought processes. I hadn’t seen the reflection of season 11 before, but it does show, does it not? I hadn’t thought of the Leviathan are as striping down the characters, I probably missed something somewhere.
Thanks ^^ The core concept of season 7 was to strip the characters of everything at some point. They lose Cas, Bobby, the car (whom they need to keep stashed away), their identities (‘stolen’ by the Leviathan), casual sex (the Amazon incident ruins the idea for Dean for a while…), pie (there’s corn syrup in them), Sam’s sanity and the ability to rest…
And the Leviathan were the representation of the mental state of the characters (I’m mostly focused on Dean in my analyses so it’s generally Dean I’m talking about but s7 is indeed split between a narrative that goes for Dean and Cas - the Leviathan -, and one that goes for Sam - Hallucifer -.) when stripped of everything - the viscous black fluid represents depression, the shapeshifting nature of the monster that doesn’t have a shape of its own represents the identity issue of a character who struggles with finding his own fully true and healthy identity because he always needs to ‘shapeshift’ depending on circumstances and others’ needs, the cannibalistic (and in fact the most horrifying thing about the Leviathan is that they are technically able to cannibalize themselves) aspect of the monster represents how these things eat you up and eat your relationships up (these things basically are valid for Dean individually, for Cas individually, and for their relationship - the Leviathan storyline is about their ‘breakup’, the s6 Purgatory plan is literally where the Leviathan came from).
Season 7 is basically an exploration of what happens to Dean when you take everything away from him, and that exploration is pivoted on Cas, because it’s Cas’ death and Cas’ return that frame the narrative, it’s only Cas’ return that can fix the situation because it’s Cas’ death (and betrayal earlier) that is the deepest issue everything else happens upon. On Sam’s side, we see what happens when his mind, basically, his ability to tell reality apart, is taken away from him - he loses control over his mind and that just drives him to a slow, terrible death, at the very last he says that he cannot get angry because he’s too exhausted for that, which is the downward peak of a narrative journey, his loss of control isn’t because of anger anymore but he experience a loss of anger because of a loss of control.
So basically the Leviathan represent Dean’s mental health issues and Hallucifer represents Sam’s, and what they are when they don’t have anything, but their “anything” is tailored on them.
Never forget that time Sam dead ass called Dean out for overcompensating when Dean asked him why he keeps being mistaken for gay.
Or just how awkward-oh-shit-I’ve-been-found-out Dean looked about it.
- supernatural 2x11
anytime i see dean post season 7 be ‘oblivious’ about tech and talk excessively about watching porn it either feels like lazy writing or like the writers are trying to say something. take this episode (14.16) for instance.
here’s the context:
- sam is in a pretty bad place. he doesn’t feel comfortable in the bunker, he keeps getting flashbacks in the bunker, and he’s probably in a state of self-loathing right now. in the first scene w him, he was probably up really early or awake all night.
- he has had a conversation with dean telling him some of this (14.15), and dean has acknowledged it. dean is definitely cautious when handling sam, done very inconspicuously.
the scene i’m talking about is the first one with sam and dean at the start of the episode, where sam’s on the laptop, and dean comes up asking him if he’s watching porn. the first time i watched it, i was all for the critical ugh really mindset, because i’m so sick of dean’s character regressing because of lazy writing.
but in this case, i don’t think it is. i think that dean saw that sam needed familiarity and dependability, and what’s more dependable than dean’s crude humour? sam knows that when dean’s horny, everything is as fine as it’s going to get. at this point, i’d assume it’s one of the anchors he has in regards to dean (a sub-anchor, if you will, lol). on the occasions he’s been noticeably abstinent - from anything he derives pleasure in (i’m talking about eating okay) - sam’s picked up on it and called him out on it. this means that dean knows that sam believes that if dean is eating a shittonne and talking about sex, etc., sam thinks that dean thinks everything’s fairly okay, or will be.
so tl;dr: dean will assume his pre-season 4? 3? persona and talk about porn because it’s something he believes sam might need in order to get back a semblance or normalcy and have an anchor to hold onto.
Agreed, part of me wonders if it’s a dude bro writer but most of me thinks this above is what makes sense, not that the new writer doesn’t know about performing Dean, just that he kind of cack handedly wrote it so it’s not clear clear that this is what he was doing, but it is still there.
We had Dean acting chirpy with “morning sunshine” when we know Sam has been nothing of the sort, being totally fine with Cas leaving when normally he’d be pissy, but he’s fine with it cos it allows him to focus on Sam, wanting to take Sam’s mind off things with hunting just as he would for himself and did recently.
So it’s not a stretch to think he’s doing this too, the performance that he believes makes Sam feel comfortable.
Oh my God! Karen, you can’t ask a two year old to go buy you beer!
Yet more on the fact that Dean shows love through acts of service and being useful so applies this to helping others feel loved. Poor boy...
I’m barely scratching the surface of 14x14’s meta explosion here, but I finally rewatched a second time, and Subtext on a Cracker!! As the brilliant meta community has discussed, textually queer MotW Noah was transfixed on subtextually queer Dean Winchester for a reason (and it’s a core reason, majorly interweaved with the sea of queer subtext already subsumed in Dean’s character): queer narrative mirroring.
Before I even deal with the HUGE underbelly of other literary goodies in 14x14, my head’s kind of reeling over this–
NOAH: Honestly, it’s not like I enjoy eating people. It’s a lonely way to live, and there’s only so many ways you can cook human.
NOAH: […] I do eat ladies too, but women have become so cautious lately […]
It’s pretty wild in expositional terms, because Yockey seems to straight-up parallel Noah’s dialogue with Dean’s own personal subtextual “confessions”: the exhaustion, the tiredness, the all-encompassing monotony of casual hook-ups.
DEAN: So, the women. Uh, and this is not something that I’m proud of, but I let them think that we have more of a future than we do, you know?
*pauses tape*
Kind of like Noah’s sexual seduction/manipulation, right? He let his victims think there’s something there - something they want, then they chase it (to a tragic end) – all of this a narrative metaphor for the sad truth: Impersonal Unattached Drifting simply leads to tragic unhappiness, and Noah eating the eyes of his victims lends credence to his narrative role as “seer” of Dean’s future and the relative (queer) truths of it.
*plays tape*
DEAN: I mean, [Gina] was – it was good times. […] And sometimes, I was seeing two, maybe three girls at the same time, sometimes in the same day. You get the picture. And it wasn’t just Gina. It was endless. It’s making me sick.
DEAN: You know, the life I live, the work I do…I pretty much just figured that that was all there was to me, you know? Tear around and jam the key in the ignition and haul ass until I ran out of gas. —10x16 Paint It Black
In 14x14 Noah was discovered as gorging on his victims, male and female, then leaving a string of them dead across state lines. Get it? String of broken hearts, but in this case eaten hearts?? *walks out of room* Terrible joke aside, Noah subtextually mirrors and augments Dean’s old (and I say old, since I believe - and observe - Dean moving away from it in canon as he progresses towards emotional fulfillment) Impersonal Unattached Drifter Christmas lifestyle, where it’s common knowledge - an SPN Americana staple - that Dean left heartbroken sweethearts (textually female and heavily subtextually male) in every town. He sought temporary comfort through physical intimacy and barred himself from emotional attachment (also recalling the deep, John-bred, repressive Good Little Soldier/Blunt Hammer Performativity element of his overall participation in casual sex).
Indeed, Noah verbalized the loneliness of his respective lifestyle. Like Dean, he “loves ‘em and leaves ‘em” — seducing his victims, ingesting their body parts (Noah’s Gorgon cannibalism representing, in a quite morbid way, the ecstasy of sexual satiation), bouncing from house to house (bed to bed) after getting his fill, and moving onto the next. It’s endless, and he doesn’t enjoy eating people, but the life he lives as a Gorgon binds him by it, once again mirroring SPN’s resident bisexual whose hunting lifestyle used to bind him by this very code—
DEAN: Sometimes, [sex] just makes you feel bad, you know? You’re drunk. You shack up.
[DEAN smiles] Then, it’s the whole morning thing. You know, “Hey, that was fun.” And then, “adios,” you know? Always the “adios.” —9x08, Rock and a Hard Place
[DEAN looks wistful]
Wistful. With S14 currently dissolving the final pieces of his Lonely Way to Live, we all know what serious organically-developed feelings lie in his own future – what Dean truly wants (and WHO):
A hopefully interdependent future with his subtextual spouse, Castiel.
Dean Winchester has come a long way :’) Full emancipated self-actualization ahead!
Dean really touched a cock this season huh, like he really moved it when they talked abt sex huh
……. did i forget something really important
Jack: What's "courting?"
Waitress: It's what you do before you start dating.
Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.
Waitress: Sometimes you just have the sex.
Dean: *awkwardly* Okay, that's...
*turns away the cock with an embarrassed look on his face and immediately launches into noisily and obnoxiously eating a huge creamy pie*
I'm so sorry to bother you, I know tiny tink is coming soon and I hope you both are doing great :) I just wanna say I asked you about what "dean sublimation winchester" meant a while back and I finally got to that episode in my rewatch. I cannot BELIEVE that "[sublimation] is kinda my think" is directly preceded by dean turning down pie. Turning. Down. Pie. I mean???? Amazing. Anyways thank you for being an amazing part of the fandom and taking notice of all the little intricacies of the show.
IKR. Like... hey good timing cos this is just yet another “meta” point that is now canon because hey yeah sure it was subtext before but it was OBVIOUS subtext that was intrinsic to the fricking storyline and clearly important, so it’s interesting how some people seem to keep forgetting that meta writers have been right about a zillion and one things which are now canon but yet somehow we are attacked and belittled by bitter whatevers saying we are of so delusional in our meta that these things exist and are important because they’re consistent in the storytelling and clearly no accident, because #reasons.
Dean Sublimation Winchester is canon bitches. As are all the other Dabb era textualisations of meta. Dabb era is a gift.
Remember when we got exposition that Dean’s sublimation of his true feelings, hiding his true self and his coping mechanisms was totally not working anymore? (13x05)
Followed in the very same episode by Billie showing us all the ways in which he could die?
Then we had a whole season’s worth more of showing us that Dean sublimates, hides himself.
Now this season is focused on what do you want? Coming out of Michael/Dean’s own mouth as well. It could not be more emphatically about Dean.
And now we have a callback to this again with Billie telling Dean there’s only ONE way to end happy. With Michael as the embodiment of all Dean’s hang ups, his sublimation, now laughably locked up by Dean, in the closet, on top of all the rest.
Yeah. I honestly don’t know what the point of this whole thing is if it’s not that the only good ending for Dean is one where he let’s go of the sublimation and is true to himself.
Showing us who Dean really is and what he really wants over the course of this season. Showing us over over and over that everything Michael said this episode is garbage, that he does love Cas and doesn’t just feel indebted to him, that he does love Jack and doesn’t feel like he’s a burden, that he doesn’t fear Sam abandoning him now but actually wants Sam to be emancipated and have what he wants too. That he is a hugger, a big softie, he loves Disney movies and soap operas and all the rest of the stuff he’s sublimated but it’s been obvious to anyone with eyes that he really likes he just pretends he doesn’t.
What’s the point of all this if the Michael!Dean story doesn’t expose all this to the max, even if it’s subtextually cos well it’s not the end yet, but especially now there’s apparently only one way this ends well for him. While alluding already to all the sublimation as bad stuff from before.
Oh look, next week he’s already hugging Sam.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
what i really love is how this ep demonstrated, once again, how hard dean is always trying - to do better when he thinks he’s made a mistake, to be there for others and make them happy - and how big his heart is, how much love it contains, how deeply he cares, and how deeply he is affected in turn when those he cares about are suffering or in danger. (and yes, both of those things can be to his detriment, like when he can’t forgive himself or exhausts himself in caring for others - but this post isn’t about that) i’m just… dean’s heart makes me cry 😭
Dean loves.
Catholicism defines God as “love”. Pope Benedict XVI wrote an encyclical with that very title - Deus Caritas Est. Dean truly represents the divinity that manifests in humanity. He loves in a very human way - a way that’s often messy, sometimes painful - but that’s what divinity is. Love.
Christian doctine also lists caritas (love) among the three theological virtues, i.e. the virtues that are infused in humanity directly from God (according to Catholicism) and make humans able to participate in God’s nature. The other two are fides and spes, faith and hope. *looks at Sam and Cas* Mmm
Dean: what is a love can you get one on amazon is the shipping free
Everyone else:
Everyone else: …that’s literally the reason you do any single thing you do at any given second of your life ever?
Dean: sounds fake but okay
Dean you are the most sentimental bastard on this show.
I literally was waiting for jack to call him out the whole time for this like dude you drive your dads car carried around a photo of you mom for years gave your boyfriend a mixtape and still call your brother his childhood nickname admit who are you are man
You said in an other post that dean canonically called out his sublimation as fake in early seasons and that is was "made text through him literally telling us that he sublimates and it isn’t who he really is before showing us a whole load of the other side in seasons 12+ precisely to draw attention to it as core to his character" I was wondering how do you see this and when was this said?
I’m not sure which part you mean but I’ll try the TL;DR version!
Early seasons: Sam shows us that Dean has a persona that makes him believe Dean:
- doesn’t like kids (he does, a lot actually)
- doesn’t “do love” ie. is completely comfused about how he is with Cassie and that he was so open with her (he does do love, very much in fact, Dean is basically Hulk, his secret isn’t that he doesn’t love but that he loves, hard, and all the time)
- doesn’t watch tv like Oprah (he does and is pissy for being called out on it)
Etc. There’s a ton of these just in season 1.
Sam has this perception because of what Dean has previously shown him. It isn’t made up. Eg. When we then see in After School Special (Dabb episode 2 by the way) that Sam’s perception of Dean is a lothario but that’s not who he really is.
Then Sam tells us in season 2 that Dean is über butch because “maybe (...) you’re overcompensating” with a smug smile on his face as he is grasping the fact that Dean, in fact, does like all these things and sublimates the Hell out of them and sublimates. He literally tells the audience this. In the text. It couldn’t be be clearer.
Then later we just have this theme continued on and getting more and more obvious because it just keeps building.
Dean pretends he doesn’t like stuff then pretty immediately reveals he does eg dr sexy, taylor swift, cake, reading books like game of thrones (?! That one always makes me laugh and yes I’m still bitter J2 are silly enough to have swapped those lines as the whole point was that it was another Dean sublimation thing and they both went with surface level Dean there I mean really guys it had been a decade, sigh), anyway, little “unmanly” coffees etc. It’s always toxically masculine shit. Then he shows he does like it.
Now. This is in complete contrast to Sam and Cas who give zero shits so don’t even bother hiding this kind of thing in the first place if they like something that isn’t part of the macho man man thing.
This is a specifically Dean thing that he tries to hide it and then reveals it to us so we know he was hiding it and we must wonder why.
Then finally in Dabb *make everything text that has been subtext cos I can’t be dealing with people arguing this shit isn’t real when it’s just SO OBVIOUS AND CORE TO THE CHARACTERS AND PLOT* era:
12x05: Dean “sublimation - that’s kinda my thing” literally calls himself out on all this that’s come previously that we, people who care about the character and have eyes, have seen for 12 years, that he sublimates a whole bunch of shit. Because #reasons. Which then are the focus of the following episodes and seasons eg. Immediately after this showing us who Dean is without his traumatic memories (sweet, kind, fun, bouncy, soft, sexually open and still a class A hunter) and then all the focus on John Winchester regarding his feelings and a massive hint towards him being a part of why he sublimates. Again. For #reasons.
So yeah, all this build up is just making text what’s been subtext since the pilot and it’s great :)
Supernatural’s Dean Winchester dismantled his own machismo, and that’s why we love him.
This is great.
This is from season 8.
This is when it was still subtext and not even yet actual textualised by Dabb “Sublimation - its kinda my thing” era.
It’s that blatant.
Excellent.
