Aw, season 1 stuff š Iāve noticed that line before in this context and I think Iāve also seen people talking about it, somewhere, and Iāll go look in a moment.Ā
Thereās some good meta out there about season 1 Samās 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 doesnāt feel he connects just as a person. Itās 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) š So I donāt think thereās 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 š
Iā¦ I just looked through my tag for the episode and couldnāt 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 didnāt write much myself for this entire episode and the only reason itās mentioned here is my tags snidely alluding to it:
Iām going to have to assume that this is such an obvious line we all just kinda donāt 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 Deanās behaviour is quite predictable even by this point about in other ways.
Well I donāt think these are my own thoughts but Iām pretty sure Iāve seen it talked about vis a vis Deanās awareness of the concept and social commentary e.g. heās calling Sam out for not wanting to talk about it because he is trying to say heās NOT as unwelcoming as the military and would be supportive of Sam if heād 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 Jessās death. Deanās not stupid, heād have been waiting to find out what Sam was hiding since 1×04 and he knew Bloody Maryās MO so of course he knows that to Sam this is more thanĀ ājustā weird vibes and dreams, but heās 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 Iām going to – well, dishonourably discharge you from the family for the truth, to finish the parallel.Ā
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 thereās 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 doesnāt approve of these things, and that Sammy is instead, because obviously Deanās the big manly older brother whoās never worn womenās underwear ever. Which just makes us goĀ āoh honā to Dean and try and steer him away from all these toxic masculinity related ideas of what he should be or not be.Ā
But anyway the projection and anxiety that you get with Dean is he says stuff but secretly heās 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 Iām rubber and youāre glue situation. Because at the heart of it Deanās biggest issues are heās scared and doesnāt have full control of the situation, and most of the first MotW episodes in season 1 have something or other where they absolutely expose Deanās layers. Thereās 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 Deanās 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 š
I suppose the conclusion would be that Dean fears as much as what heās jabbing at Sam about fearing – that would his family disown HIM for his queerness if they knew and from Samās 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.Ā
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 itās 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 blahā¦ Point being the idea about Dean there is heās completely absorbed his own personality, wants and desires into being John, which isnāt even really called out and addressed until 3×10 when Deanās 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 heās begun to think for himself more after mentally grappling Johnās 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 heās 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 itās season 3, John is dead and ALSO gone (which were 2 different events :P) and Deanās still stuck in these things from back in season 1ā¦)
Itās usually time to stop when the next paragraph would be summarising the rest of the show while making anguished Dean!girl noises. š
ā-
And although tbh this was badly stocked for this episode, if youāre 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 Iām 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 š
This kind of stuff is absolutely my jam and Iāve 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 wasĀ thisĀ post by f-ckyeahfutbol.
But yeah season 1 (and beyond lol) was about their different flavors ofĀ āfreakā, which have been paralleled all along. Iāve 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.
one of my favorite things is how badgers and coyotes will hunt cooperatively. as in not just like happening to go after the same thing at the same time but actually combining efforts to bring down prey; coyotes are faster and can chase down prey species, while badgers are adept at digging them out of their burrows
today i learnt that king tutankhamun made sure that he had a condom with him in his next life. i never want to hear a dude say he didnāt have the time to be prepared or didnāt remember to buy condoms. if king tut had the common decency of making sure someone put a condom in his resting place alongside one of the biggest treasures ever so he could practice safe sex in the afterlife no present day dude has an excuse for not wearing condoms.
here it is
itās made of animal intestine
and they know it was his because they found residue inside that they were able to DNA-match to him
yes, that kind of residue
My mans Tutankhamun was already busting a nut when Osiris was measuring his soul to go see his ol man Ra like imagine having such guts.
āKing Tutās Mummified Erect Penis May Point to Ancient Religious Struggleā
āEgyptās King Tutankhamun was embalmed in an unusual way, including having his penis mummified at a 90-degree angle, in an effort to combat a religious revolution unleashed by his father, a new study suggests [ā¦]
The mummified erect penis and other burial anomalies Ā were not accidents during embalming, Ikram suggests, but rather deliberate attempts to make the king appear as Osiris, the god of the underworld, in as literal a way as possible. The erect penis evokes Osirisā regenerative powers; the black liquid made Tutankhamunās skin color resemble that of Osiris; and the lost heart recalled the story of the god being cut to pieces by his brother Seth and his heart buried.
Making the king appear as Osiris may have helped to undo a religious revolution brought about by Akhenaten, a pharaoh widely believed to be Tutankhamunās father, Ikram said.
Akhenaten had tried to focus Egyptian religion around the worship of the Aten, the sun disc, going so far as to destroy images of other gods. Tutankhamun was trying to undo these changes and return Egypt back to its traditional religion with its mix of gods. Ā
Tutankhamunās mummified penis eventually broke off from his body after the mummy was discovered, at one point leading to media speculation that it had been stolen.
Ikram has yet to encounter another Egyptian mummy buried with an erection. āAs far as I know, no other mummy has been found thus far with an erect penis,ā she told LiveScience in an email.
The imagery of King Tutankhamunās erect penis has a connection to the god Osiris, Ikram said. āThe erect penis evokes Osiris at his most powerfully regenerative moment, and is a feature of ācorn-mummies,ā the quintessential symbols of rebirth and resurrection,ā she writes in her paper. Corn-mummies were nonhuman artificial mummies created in later periods in honor of Osiris. They were made of a mix of materials, including grain.ā
Now, I havenāt been around much these last couple of days because of health stuff, so forgive me if I say something thatās been said a million times already.
I wanted to throw down a thought about the nature of Deanās show of anger, or better, about the way the scene in Mia Vallensā studio is a play on reality.
Itās nothing new that the theme of the Dabb era is reality, and this episode has gone all out with it. Shapeshifters by definition are a monster that allows a play on appearances and lies and deception. In the first episode of the show featuring a shapeshifter, Skin, we got to explore the folds of the truth of Deanās character. Nightshifter, Monster Movie, Ask Jeevesā¦ all explore the themes of truths and lies and identity. But I donāt want to digress š So, this episode explores heavily the theme of deception, from the obvious element of the shapeshifter pretending to be someone else, to the visual metaphors like the ridiculously highly symbolic moment where āDeanā literally tears his face off like a mask.
And then thereās the crucial scene where Dean, Sam and Jack visit Mia Vallensā studio and put up a performance to pretend theyāre interested in her counseling service. The status of reality of the entire scene is ambiguous, and the anger shown by Dean is, letās put it like this, ambiguously real.
I am not saying that there is no anger in Dean because that would be silly. Heās angry at God for dumping too-big responsibilities on them and disregarding their needs; heās angry at Jack for the events in North Cove; heās angry at Sam for ignoring the boundaries heās trying to set regarding his role in dealing with Jack. But I think that we also have to consider that there is a level of performance to that anger shown in the counselorās studio.
The crucial scene for the interpretation of Dean as aiming anger at his family is purposely a performance, where the line between reality and deception is ambiguous. Iād say that Dean draws from reality and uses that reality to craft a lie. That scene in Miaās office is primarily a lie. Sam has to storm out of the room to go investigate the room (although he does take a moment to collect himself when he gets the cup of water, because the lie wasnāt a complete lie, of course), Dean has to keep the counselor busy.
Look at Jensenās and Jaredās acting – for most of the scene, itās theĀ āpretendā attitude. Only one thing, in my opinion, Sam brought up that Dean wasnāt expecting and made his controlled expression slip, i.e. the part where Sam talks about him not having the connection with Mary that Dean had.
Look at this bit for instance
Most of the scene is more or less like that – theyāre blatantly acting with streaks of actual feelings intertwined with that. Only at this moment Jensen does a kind of face that signals that Dean is taken aback in a hurt-y way, the blink-and-retract:
Itās not about anger at all. He slips when Sam clearly goes out from the track they had been planning the scene to go, because Dean is obviously taken aback for a moment there. (Sam is also making it harder for himself, digging actual troubles of his, and he has to collect himself with the cup of water later).
When the scene is about Deanās feelings, he is putting on a show for the counselor. And, while he does use actual feelings to make the show (of course, otherwise thereās no point to the entire episode if everything is a lie lol),Ā Dean seems fairly in control of the persona heās playing – letās call it a John persona if we want. Anger, making Sam storm out of the door (sounds familiar?), blatantly drinking hard liquor, making the kid terrified of him – there is a truth to these things Dean is showing. He does hold some anger, he does mean what heās told Sam to some degree, he has been drinking alcohol (but mostly beer), he has been acting aggressively at Jack (who, I might add, isnāt terrified of Dean, but terrified of himself – when he tells Sam that Dean said heād kill him, he doesnāt it because heās scared of Dean, but because heās scared of why Dean thinks that about him).
But at the same time, Dean and Sam are playing a part. Dean makes a show of acting angry and aggressively oppositional to Sam, Sam leaves the room and go investigate (it doesnāt really matter if theyād planned it to go exactly like that – either way, they had to explore the counselor, they were there with a purpose). No matter how much truth there is behind it – Dean is still putting up a performance for Mia. He makes a show of drinking alcohol from his flask, something so blatantly āI am not taking this loss well lolā that is sure to capture the counselorās attention on him.
I think that his anger is real (of course it canāt all be an act otherwise the emotional weight of the episode disappears and nothing makes sense), but the John persona he puts on is something he purposely play with for a specific goal.
I think that the scene suggests that he is emotionally mature enough that he play with the anger he feels. That he can use John as a performance on purpose. Maybe itās not a coincidence he doesnāt seem to have particular reactions to Samās accusations that heās acting like John – because heās not in a position where heās terrified of being like John, of his emotions escaping him, of being unable to control himself. It seems to me that heās in control of his anger towards Sam and Jack, itās not like Lisa and Ben when he felt his emotional reactions were escaping his control and was terrified. When Sam accuses him of acting like John, Dean simply reiterates his refusal to act as mother to Jack, which is the boundary he has been trying to set and Sam has been ignoring.
This actually makes so much sense a little ping went off in my brain and I let my dinner burn in my eagerness to discuss it. Because when Sam said,Ā āYouāre acting like Dad,ā Deanās said,Ā āThatās a bad thing?ā without any emotion what so ever. He actually shrugged.Ā
Dean Winchester, the dude who almost started crying when he realised he was acting like John with Ben:
It scared him to think of himself as John when it came to Ben because he chose Benāhe chose that emotional labor of being someoneās father. But when Sam says heās acting like John when it comes to Jack, he shrugs? Why? Because he knows exactly what heās doing. And itās not about cruelty or anger.Ā After he nonchalantly asks if thatās a bad thing to be John right now, heĀ follows it up withĀ āIām not going to hold his hand or tuck him in at night. Iām not going to be his mother.āĀ
Because heās not going to be, to Jack, what he was to Sam (i.e.: holding his hand and tucking him in at night, doing all the emotional labor that John wasnāt willing to do when raising a child) and instead he is going to be, to Jack, what John was to Sam; the rough, hardened, drill sergeant who left it up to Dean to worry about Samās feelings. He is leaving the emotional labor up to Sam.Ā This is a conscious choice Dean is making. It is not irrational or fueled by rage. It is quite simply Dean drawing a line in the sand, creating an emotional boundary between Jack and himself. A boundary which he has every right to make. I am actually so proud of Dean for doing this for himself. For saying no and making something about his own needs for once. This is good.Ā
Exactly! Sorry for your dinner. Thereās also the fact that Deanā¦ isnāt really acting like John acted towards him. Heās acting more like John apparently acted towards Sam. From what Sam has said about John over the course of the show, John was a drill sergeant type that barked orders and didnāt listen and had zero patience and sure became scary when he drank, but wasnāt nearly as bad as, say, Max Millerās father, right? Deanās experience of Johnā¦ doesnāt seem to be exactly the same. Dean was terrified about acting like John not because he barked orders at Lisa and Ben, but becauseā¦ well, slippery slope, right? Being snappy in case of danger is not bad, especially if youāre the competent one and youāre dealing with fairly unexperienced civilians. Itās the idea that the attitude could be a symptom for something deeper, for a stronger resemblance. Sam accusing him of acting like John possibly falls a little flat because, duh. If only John had had Dean stay sit in the car or get food from the kiosk. The John Sam experienced was a drill sergeant, the John Dean experienced was something darker and scarier.
*slides into the end of this post to add the reminder that, as the original post said, it wasnāt just about maintaining the emotional continuity of the episode, or making it lose all sense, theirĀ āactā HAD to contain an element of real feelings, because they went in to Miaās office believing that she was a PSYCHIC. They believed that, if she were a true psychic, she would KNOW if they were being dishonest with her, which is why Dean wasnāt thrilled with Samās plan. Luckily for them, Mia was just good at her jobā and a shapeshifter and not a psychicā¦*
But also, Deanās entire cooperation in bringing Jack along with them on this hunt boiled down to Samās puppydog eyes and his plea to do itĀ āfor me.ā Dean capitulated, but then at every turn Sam was pulling faces at Deanās reticence to deal with Jack at allā¦ because Dean was upfront about not wanting to, and heād made his feelings about being forced to not only share space in his home but now emotional labor in dealing with Jack abundantly clear.
In some ways, Deanās attitude with Sam about his reluctance toĀ āget overā what happened to Mary strikes me as a retaliation against Samās repeatedly pushing Dean toĀ ājust get overā losing Cas, and the fact that Dean has flat-out yelled it in Samās face why he isnāt going to help him with Jack. And yet, Sam keeps pushing him. Even at the end of the episode Sam assumed that Dean was just ready to be okay with everything. I hope that brings the reality of Deanās grief home to Sam, because he just hasnāt seemed to get it yet. Maybe this is what prompts Sam to suggest their hunt in the promo for 13.05ā¦ just the two of them hunting together like old timesā¦ (and what looks like some eerie callbacks to 1.10, which I am eagerly awaiting)
Reblogging this because I feel like it might help people understand Dean a bit better right now.
God thoughts in these posts.
And I was left wondering, if the ātherapy sessionā was mostly an act (which I find pretty convincing) why is it that Dean should feel compelled to sincerely apologize to Sam for ābeing a dickā but not Sam to Dean for being a pushy jerk?
And the answer is, of course, because Dean is just that kind of considerate, compassionate person (being a ādickā notwithstanding). And Sam just isnāt.
Because Sam doesnāt see his behavior as wrong, he sees Deanās attitude as unreasonable. Sam apologizes when his actions have consequences he didnāt expect/want (and the apology is about how he feels about it, because in his eyes making that mistake means heās a terrible person and it becomes all about Samās feelings). When something he does turns out to be a mistake, heās heartbroken about it and apologizes for the mistake; but he doesnāt apologize for being a dick, because what we see as being a dick Sam sees as being rational and reasonable. Dean will apologize for acting like a dick even if he was right. Dean is the one who carries the responsibility for the emotional integrity of the family, a role that was dropped onto him as he became theĀ āhousewifeā of the Winchester household after Maryās death. If a member of the family does something wrong, Dean will apologize for not having acted better to prevent the other from making the wrong thing. I am not an expert, but Iām pretty sure itās a thing commonly found in victims of abuse, especially parental abuse – they blame themselves, they shoulder the fault. With all the talk about Samās experience with demon blood lately, I feel authorized in digging this thing back – at some point, the blame ambiguously hovered over Dean for leaving Sam alone because of his damnation to hell. Heck, it started before Dean went to hell, before Sam started drinking Rubyās blood – Ruby just had to suggest it, and the big thing stopped being Dean going to hell, the big thing became that Dean was leaving Sam alone. But itās not just that. Dean has always been apologizing for doing something wrong when he was raising Sam, but the fact that he was a struggling kid himself doesnāt touch the radar. Only Dean seems to have realized that – his speech at Mary in Maryās head is about that – but it doesnāt seem to have reached Samās radar yet.
(Doesnāt seem to have reached some fansā radar either, because for some itās all about poor Sam who didnāt get enough vegetables growing up.)
The scene in 13×04 is about Dean apologizing for being mean to Sam, and Sam saying something that requires Dean to provide him emotional support. Eh, in-character for both. Sorry if this came off as very critical of Sam but sometimes you just gotta be.
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