i don´t get why people want to ruin our happiness, like i´m not queer but i´ve been super excited about the scene the whole day and i also had to send gifs to my friend who has only seen couple of episodes and she was happy too, so i can imagine it must be even bigger party for bi people, also i don´t know why they think we see only sex in it? i saw some crack of course, but most people just cry because of the big character developement and how dean wants to love someone and be loved back

aphony-cree:

The phrase I see all the time from naysayers is “You’re reading too much into it.” Supernatural is very open about it’s heavy use of subtext, we’re supposed to read into things, that’s one of the ways the show engages their audience. Any fan who claims that subtext doesn’t exist on Supernatural must not know how this show works.  It was even told to us, clear as day, in Meta Fiction 9.18 that subtext is one of the things that makes a story work. At the other end of the spectrum are fans who acknowledge that Supernatural is heavy with subtext but ignore the subtext they don’t like and try to convince people that it doesn’t exist.

The confessional scene was obviously meant as subtext because Dean spoke vaguely, that’s a method writers use to invite the audience to look at subtext and determine what Dean really meant by his vague statements. But we have to look at the entire scene to read the subtext, we can’t draw conclusions based on one sentence. 

It starts out with Dean spending a full minute talking about his sexual history with women. The only one mentioned by name is Gina. I can’t remember any time in canon that Dean hooked up with a Gina and my search of the wikis is turning up nothing. That means it wasn’t a reference to a specific canon event, Gina is being used as a general reference to Dean’s many sexual flings. 

When Dean finishes his discussion about sex and the priest gives him penance they have this conversation:

Dean: Then that’s it? Then I’m good to go?
Father Delaney: One would hope some inner exploration might occur. Prayers are just the beginning to some serious soul searching.

Dean’s confession was over but that last line from Father Delaney inspired him to keep talking and to be more honest. He spoke about his fear of death and then:

Dean: There’s things, there’s.. people, feelings, that I want to experience differently than I had before.
Father Delaney: Go a little deeper, perhaps, than with Gina.
Dean: Yeah. I’m just starting to think maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.

The confession concludes with Father Delaney asking if Dean believes in God and Dean replies with the same thing he’s been saying since season 5, he believes God exists but doesn’t care. 

The key elements of the confession were: Dean’s past sexual conquests, being told to pray, Dean’s fear of death, his desire to experience life in a different way, Father Delaney clarifying that by different he meant different from his past sexual/romantic experiences, and then re-affirming to the fans that Dean still thinks it’s pointless to pray to God.

I’ve seen people say that Dean’s line about experiencing things differently was a reference to the overall theme of the second half of season 10 which has been Dean trying things that he used to not be interested in (like Taylor Swift and cake). I do believe that was part of what he was saying, most people have several layers when talking about wanting a major life change, but it wasn’t the main reason for him saying that. We were told, very blatantly, that he was talking about sexual/romantic relationships because of Father Delaney’s clarifying remark of “Go a little deeper, perhaps, than with Gina.” The priest wanted to make sure he understood Dean so he brought up Gina and Dean said yeah, Dean confirmed Father Delaney’s suspicions that he was mainly talking about sex/romance. That part wasn’t even subtext, it was actual text.

Now the question is, was he talking about wanting a deeper relationship with women or was this Destiel subtext? 

It’s a little late in the season to plan on having Dean meet a new woman that he can enter into a relationship with. It’s possible that they’re planning to bring back someone from his past, like Cassie or Lisa, and this confessional speech was foreshadowing that. However I can’t find any scenes/subtext in this season’s episodes that reference Cassie or Lisa. That means it’s highly unlikely that this was foreshadowing him getting back together with an ex. This late in the season Supernatural doesn’t introduce new subtext lines, they reinforce the ones they’ve built up in earlier episodes.

The romantic tropes surrounding Dean and Cas have been significant since season 8. Two things that stand out to me about the confessional scene is that Dean was told to pray and then it was reinforced to the audience that Dean doesn’t pray to God. So who would he have thought of when the priest told him to pray? Who has Dean been praying to for the past 6 years? There is one specific person that Dean associates with prayer and right after he was told to pray Dean shared that he didn’t want to die because there are people and feelings he wants to experience differently. We don’t have to dig at all for that subtext, even people who hate Destiel know that when Dean prays he prays to Cas.

To answer your questions, people are saying we’re reading too much into things because they either can’t see subtext or don’t want to acknowledge the subtext they don’t like. They claim we’re only talking about sex because an effective method of invalidating people is to ignore the body of a discussion and flippantly say it’s about something frivolous or selfish. Supernatural has been fairly obvious about the Destiel subtext in the past 3 seasons, so obvious that they’re receiving a large amount of hate for queer baiting. Entertainment news writers have always turned a blind eye to queer baiting but many have started commenting on the Destiel subtext, that’s how blatant it’s become. Even TV Guide, who have always been supporters of Supernatural, wrote an article saying the queer baiting needs to stop. Whether or not Destiel will actually go canon is up for debate but the existence of Destiel subtext is not.

In the confession scene, the Destiel connections were fairly easy to make. It may have been foreshadowing, it may be queer baiting, only time will tell. My money is on foreshadowing because it doesn’t make sense that they would queer bait after receiving so much bad press for it. 

I’m glad the scene excited you, and you don’t have to be queer to be happy about the possibility of queer representation. It’s important for everyone and queer allies should be just as excited about representation as queer people are.