It’s Not the (Salted Caramel) Pudding, it’s the Pattern!

destielhiseyesopened:

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Part of the slash and subtext series

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Follow-up to my Storytelling vs. Real Life post, inspired by the great additional discussion it led to. Cause overall I actually agree with bow-legged’s (punkascas’s) key observations on the matter, and the point that it’s about the pattern is always worth repeating.

I don’t know which of the small, superficial “signs” the fandom points to were intentional on the part of TPTB when they created the text, and which gained their significance later when fans began to interact with with the text. I leave that question to people with more knowledge of television as story-telling medium, Jerry Wanek’s contributions, etc. And frankly, I don’t worry about individual examples anyway – cause even if some weren’t intentional, it doesn’t ultimately change a thing!

We don’t say that Dean is bi because of the salted caramel pudding. Or the blue, pink, and purple shirt. Or any specific, individual instance of him appearing to be checking out or flirting with another guy. Or any of the other “signs” people point to, in isolation. None of these, in isolation, means a thing. But they don’t exist in isolation – they exist within a larger pattern. The pattern is composed of all its individual parts, which is which they’re all worth talking about – but no individual part is important enough, by itself, to make or break the entire pattern.

It’s about the forest, not the individual trees. Some of the “signs” of Dean’s bisexuality – the salted caramel and the shirt colors – are little saplings. Others – the constant eyefucking, the romantic tropes, the parallels with romantic couples – are big, sturdy trees. And all of them – thin saplings, tall sequoias, and everything in between – collectively make up a forest that’s more than the sum of its parts.

(Side note: FWIW, the “saplings” strike me more as a wink toward subtext-savvy audiences who’ve picked up on the more substantial signs, and less as actual evidence in and of themselves. We don’t talk about them so much because they’re the most important parts of the pattern, but simply because they’re fun! And because subtext-denialists love to pick on them, while ignoring the big trees and the overall forest, for some ~mysterious~ reason…)

We can debate whether this or that small-ish plant is best classified as a “tree” at all. Maybe this one’s more of a “shrub”. Hell, maybe that one over there is actually an old telephone pole! But quibbling over a couple of plants doesn’t make all the other trees – the forest as a whole – magically disappear. At the end of the day, when those of us who actually know what a queer “forest” would even look like in the first place assess the scenery, we see Dean Winchester standing right smack in the middle of a great big forest of bisexuality. At the end of the day, that – not the colors on his shirt, or any other individual sapling within that forest – is why we say he’s bi.