Hi! 🙂
Aw, season 1 stuff 😀 I’ve noticed that line before in this context and I think I’ve also seen people talking about it, somewhere, and I’ll go look in a moment.
There’s some good meta out there about season 1 Sam’s queercoding via abstract magic powers contrasted with the very different form of queercoding for Dean via shit he says and does and circumstances and tropes etc. They both feel like freaks, which is said on screen for both of them by like 1×06, so you have Sam who is magically different from everyone else, and Dean who just feels socially ostracised and the metaphor works on a social level instead, which makes it more directly personal to his upbringing and why he doesn’t feel he connects just as a person. It’s part of the structural subtext of season 1 that lends to a bi!Dean reading (like I was recently snarking in the tags of this post about) 😀 So I don’t think there’s any reason not to think that some sort of early bi!Dean subtext is out there in a sort of structural way which to me validates every reading of him taken off random lines and actions. And Dean going around saying stuff like that in season 1 is part of it 😛
I… I just looked through my tag for the episode and couldn’t find anything, which is really weird because I *remember* having a conversation about it and/or reading good long meta about it. The only post I could find was this one which is not only one of 2 posts dealing with bi Dean stuff in this episode (aside from some slightly larger collections), I didn’t write much myself for this entire episode and the only reason it’s mentioned here is my tags snidely alluding to it:
https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/137427332398/f-ckyeahfutbol-rainbofiction
I’m going to have to assume that this is such an obvious line we all just kinda don’t pay it any attention because like the one about him teasing Sam about the hotter psychic, you have to go through a few loops more than you need to with later subtext, even though it fully counts in a projection/anxiety way that Dean’s behaviour is quite predictable even by this point about in other ways.
Well I don’t think these are my own thoughts but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it talked about vis a vis Dean’s awareness of the concept and social commentary e.g. he’s calling Sam out for not wanting to talk about it because he is trying to say he’s NOT as unwelcoming as the military and would be supportive of Sam if he’d just talk to him normally about it instead of getting defensive. Especially since Sam brushes it off as weird vibes and dreams, when he previously, in Home, was much more certain he was having premonitions and was visibly distressed and beating himself up about having predicted Jess’s death. Dean’s not stupid, he’d have been waiting to find out what Sam was hiding since 1×04 and he knew Bloody Mary’s MO so of course he knows that to Sam this is more than “just” weird vibes and dreams, but he’s having some serious plot-arc, thing-that-killed-Mom-and-Jess weirdness going on right now. Sam blows him off talking about it and Dean snarks at him that fine keep your secrets if you think I’m going to – well, dishonourably discharge you from the family for the truth, to finish the parallel.
Obviously Dean using the term critically means a level of social awareness to make the parallel and to use it as a negative concept. And then there’s the reflecting onto Sam, because the term obviously is *only* about being gay in the military as the first and only read you need to make of it in this context. And he barbs at Sam a lot for being feminine or gay or whatever in the early seasons, which is the negative side of the performing Dean thing: establishing that strength is one thing, that Dean doesn’t approve of these things, and that Sammy is instead, because obviously Dean’s the big manly older brother who’s never worn women’s underwear ever. Which just makes us go “oh hon” to Dean and try and steer him away from all these toxic masculinity related ideas of what he should be or not be.
But anyway the projection and anxiety that you get with Dean is he says stuff but secretly he’s afraid of it and how it applies to him, and ribbing Sam like that is a fast way to reassert himself to the top of the masculinity ladder, but it turns pretty much everything he insults Sam with into an I’m rubber and you’re glue situation. Because at the heart of it Dean’s biggest issues are he’s scared and doesn’t have full control of the situation, and most of the first MotW episodes in season 1 have something or other where they absolutely expose Dean’s layers. There’s some good recent comments from @wherethewildthingswerent who watching for performing!Dean rather than bi!Dean stuff and found a whole bunch of examples in the early episodes which prove that Dean NEVER had the facade for the audience. I think 1×03 or 1×04 pretty much immediately set us up to question Dean’s act anyways, like, the first 2 episodes are the only ones which are mostly about setting up the playing field and letting us know how this all works, and as soon as we are getting the idea of it, take it all away from Dean 😛
I suppose the conclusion would be that Dean fears as much as what he’s jabbing at Sam about fearing – that would his family disown HIM for his queerness if they knew and from Sam’s POV almost the entire episode is Dean acting like John and following orders. Being HIS soldier and trying to do what John would want and earn his approval. John as their drill sergeant is something he eventually confirms to them in his own words, so the military references to how their family works, especially with John as an ex-Marine, are really important.
That entire episode has John looming over it because he sends them to the case and Sam spends the first quarter expecting to meet John there, and then realises it’s been a distraction to send them away, while Dean is determined to work the case because John wants them to, and push Sam to do it no matter what as well. Hence the big outburst, and this episode leading directly into Scarecrow where they fall out completely for Dean not having a mind of his own and Sam wanting to get revenge instead of save people blah blah… Point being the idea about Dean there is he’s completely absorbed his own personality, wants and desires into being John, which isn’t even really called out and addressed until 3×10 when Dean’s demon!Dean dream self calls him out, and it takes further long years for any serious improvements to be made on Dean expressing himself, even if he’s begun to think for himself more after mentally grappling John’s ghost all of season 2, struggling with the orders, and finally being freed from that burden when they see his ghost move on in the sense of not being *directly under orders* any more, so he’s left to figure out the rest of his life how to be his own person or scuttle back into the safety of being John (and the timing of demon!Dean calling him out on that is pretty much because it’s season 3, John is dead and ALSO gone (which were 2 different events :P) and Dean’s still stuck in these things from back in season 1…)
It’s usually time to stop when the next paragraph would be summarising the rest of the show while making anguished Dean!girl noises. 😀
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And although tbh this was badly stocked for this episode, if you’re wondering about bi Dean stuff in the show, I have collected this shockingly large collection of posts that you can start with – you can use the search function to skip to episodes:
If I’m ever THAT bored for some reason I kinda want to change the links to descriptions of the meta but that is not currently something I am bored enough to do 😀
This kind of stuff is absolutely my jam and I’ve probably have many posts about it written by me or someone else in my blog but I am also unable to tag things decently so only thing I found was this post by f-ckyeahfutbol.
But yeah season 1 (and beyond lol) was about their different flavors of ‘freak’, which have been paralleled all along. I’ve been saying that the show has been paralleling Sam-and-the-supernatural and Dean-and-queerness (in a wide sense) throughout its course, and their endgames must be connected to that.
Bi!Dean meta: idk if this has been said or not, but I haven’t seen it. In s01e10, Sam was denying his demon powers and Dean says “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That, of course, was the official US military service involving LGBT personnel. At the time of the episode, this policy was still very much in effect. Thoughts? P.S. I also sent this to ibelieveinthelittletreetopper, just so you know.
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