Tag: dean is bi

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

destielhiseyesopened:

Part of the slash and subtext series

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.

catastrophic-fallen-angel:

midget-banana:

sousuke-is-in-love-with-rin:

currently-hyper:

Destiel Parallels – 4×10 // 5×03 

This is just a quick reminder that at one point, Dean used his self-proclaimed ‘best line’ on Cas.

#sometimes with any given ship i feel like people are reading too far into it#with THIS#I DO NOT#THIS IS NOT READING FAR INTO ANYTHING#THIS IS STRAIGHT UP HARDBACK LEATHER BOUND COVER MATERIAL#i mean i guess straight up is the wrong term to use because uh#nvm (via Dajo42)

Those tags

f-ckyeahfutbol:

sandraugiga:

f-ckyeahfutbol:

sandraugiga:

f-ckyeahfutbol:

I have a theory I’d like to test, but there seems to be no way of getting the information online, so if there’s anybody in the fandom with back-issues of the Playboy magazine, hit me up.

In 7.22, Dean mentions that he has read Kevin’s translation of the Leviathan tablet “more times than the…

Did some little research, and everything is online, but you would have to become a member of the site that archives all the issues. The simmons story was later renamed “dying in Bangkok” and bundled. It might available in libraries?

Yeah, the short story I found and just finished reading it. A guy who doesn’t realize he’s in love with his comrade in arms, who is found dead and junkless in a river, and he gets revenge on the vampires many years later when he contracts HIV.

The bisexual stuff disturbed me and excited me at the same time. I didn’t understand myself well then.

—-

 I don’t think that I knew in Vietnam that I was gay. I had disguised the very real love that I felt for Tres as other things: loyalty to a buddy, admiration, even the kind of masculine love that grunts are supposed to feel for one another in combat. But it was love. I realize that now. I have known it since shortly after I returned from the war.

I never came out of the closet. Not publicly. Even while in medical school I learned how to troll the most discreet bars, meet the most discreet men, and make the most discreet arrangements for temporary liaisons. Later, as my practice and public persona grew, I learned how to keep my prowlings restricted to rare nights in cities far away from my home in L.A. And I dated women. Those who wondered why I never married had only to look at my busy practice to see that I had no time for a domestic life.

I would venture that it was this short-story that 14-year old Dean Winchester read more than once.

I would venture that as well.

It’s also a Dabb and Loflin episode, and I’m pretty sure they haven’t written a single episode without a bisexual Dean reference yet. It’s actually pretty clever. All three Winchester read the magazine, but they read it differently.

I didn’t find the Broyles Jr. article, but researching I realized that there was an article from him I had read before, Why Men Love War. He talks about the heightened erotic desire in war in this article:

Most men who have been to war, and most women who have been around it, remember that never in their lives did they have so heightened a sexuality. War is, in short. a turn-on. War cloaks men in a coat that conceals the limits and inadequacies of their separate natures. It gives them all aura, a collective power, an almost animal force. They aren’t just Billy or Johnny or Bobby, they are soldiers! But there’s a price for all that: the agonizing loneliness of war, the way a soldier is cut off from everything that defines him as an individual—he is the true rootless man.

The uniform did that, too, and all that heightened sexuality is not much solace late it night when the emptiness comes.

There were many men for whom this condition led to great decisions. I knew a Marine in Vietnam who was a great rarity, an Ivy League graduate. He also had an Ivy League wife, but lie managed to fall in love with a Vietnamese bar girl who could barely speak English. She was not particularly attractive, a peasant girl trying to support her family He spent all his time with her, he fell in love with her—awkwardly informally, but totally. At the end of his twelve months in Vietnam he went home, divorced his beautiful, intelligent, and socially correct wife and then went back to Vietnam and proposed to the bar girl, who accepted. It was a marriage across a vast divide of language, culture, race, and class that could only have been made in war. I am not sure that it lasted, but it would not surprise me if despite great difficulties, it did.

Of course. for every such story there are hundreds. thousands, of stories of passing contacts, a man and a woman holding each other tight for one moment, finding in sex some escape from the terrible reality of tile war. The intensity that war brings to sex, the “let us love now because there may be no tomorrow,” is based on death. No matter what our weapons on the battlefield, love is finally our only weapon against death. Sex is the weapon of life, the shooting sperm sent like an army of guerrillas to penetrate the egg’s defenses is the only victory that really matters. War thrusts you into the well of loneliness, death breathing in your ear. Sex is a grappling hook that pulls you out, ends your isolation, makes you one with life again.

You know. If you were wondering why exactly Dean came out of Vietnam-Purgatory looking like he wanted to eat Cas like he was a candybar.

Kelsey, I’ve a question for you: everyone keeps pointing at the whole, “On your knees” —> “I’m awfully flattered” thing as an example of Dean’s bisexuality. I do believe he is bi to my core but I don’t get this one. It felt like any other snarky thing he’d say while trying to appear cocky in the face of danger. So am I the one interpreting it wrong or…?

deanswingsbothways-deactivated2:

Well, you’re half-right.

Dean has always, always use flirtation (and misinterpreting threats as come-ons intentionally) as an aggressive act. He uses the implication of homosexuality to mentally knock down his opponents. It’s a symptom of his deep-seated effemiphobia. Dean strongly believes that only the toughest survive, and it’s impossible to be tough while doing things that have traditionally been gendered as feminine.

The problem is that Dean also really enjoys “feminine” things like dressing well and cooking and childcare, and is a nurturer by nature. He’s also got a feminine cast to his features, with the cheekbones and the lips and the Disney princess eyes, which people have been pointing out in a threatening way for years. And in his line of work, that kind of weakness can literally get you killed. So he buries it under this macho persona, and uses it as a threat against others.

He clings tooth and nail to his own manliness as a talisman that he is tough enough to survive. And if you think a Kansas roughneck in his mid-thirties doesn’t code dude-on-dude sex as “feminine” in his own head, ho boy, do I have some things to tell you. 

We have been shown nine seasons of all of that being stripped away to reveal the real Dean. It’s pretty intense character development, and he’s  moved away towards a more accepting-of-himself mindset where he sees his “feminine” traits as less of a liability. He’s not all the way there yet, but he’s steadily headed in that direction.

And the “I’m awfully flattered” line is a step in that direction. It wasn’t a denial, or a turn-down, or “You’re cute but I don’t swing that way.” It was still a verbal punch, but it lacked the denial of “I don’t swing that way.” He still used flirtation aggressively, but this time he was the one flirting, not the one turning the guy down as a joke.

It wasn’t, “Wow, you’re totally gay for me, which makes you more feminine than me, which means I’m going to win this fight by virtue of being more manly than you.”

It was, “Even if I was really flattered it wouldn’t matter because I’m still gonna kick your ass because liking dick doesn’t make someone less deadly in a fight.”

Basically, you’re right, and he does use flirtation aggressively. But the way he used it in this instance was remarkably less homophobic and effemiphobic than in the past.

Because character development. 

skeletonsarewatchingoveryoudean:

castiel-knight-of-hell:

hamjesus:

castiel-knight-of-hell:

Twice Dean has pulled the “No homo, I don’t swing that way line” but both times his hunter senses were tingling and he was trying to gauge if the other person’s predatory stare was human sexual interest, or a monster sizing up his next victim (Croatoan  2.09 and Live Free or Twihard 6.05)

In Everybody Hates Hitler 8.13 when Aaron openly claimed his interest was sexual, Dean didn’t let him down easy with his trusty “I don’t play for your team” line. He got flustered, started fiddling with his badge and mumbling about his investigation

#can we just talk about how he also kept eyecontact with aaron when leaving him while mumbling something like “/you/ have a nice day” before accidetally hitting a table

yep, when he’s 90% sure that the other guy is a monster he’s confident and cocky, but when he’s 100% sure the other guy is flirting he turns into a socially awkward teenager who can barely string a sentence together

Yeah, but now he’s the one to initiate it