JESUS FUCK I KNOW WHICH ONE IS DEAN AND WHICH ONE IS CAS NOW.
FINALLY CONFIRMED: Bert is Dean and Cas is Ernie.
but guys guys guys do you know what’s the glorious thing about this:
Dean is the kind of viewer that catches homoerotic subtext.
Dean . gets. gay. subtext.
“I know it for certain” For certain. he sees it. he embraces it. he doesn’t dismiss it nor gets grossed out about it, he’s not “eww they’re gay”, he just takes it as a fact and that’s beautiful.
(Also how many macho straight guys actually not only see it but are cool with it? just saying)
This is a beautiful addition to my post. Thank you.
Dean Winchester would think Dean is bi.
He SO would. *G*
<laughs> Dean and Sam watching Supernatural together…
<Dean, with his mouth full probably> “I am telling you Sam, that angel dude and that Dean character have a thing for each other…”
<Sam, with extreme poker face> “Really? I don’t see it, man! Can you point out where to me, more specifically?”
<Dean> “Sure, just look at the praying thing, for a start…uh…” <eyes widen and chokes on food>
Are other fandoms as meta as our fandom? I don’t think other fandoms are as meta as our fandom.
Max and Alec: totally platonic bros, nothing there whatsoever. No, sir.
…okay. After having to leave the room about this. Jensen and Misha decided how to portray the fight, and… Jensen must’ve know this would be familiar right? Right?
I don’t know about Jensen, but the director Thomas J. Wright sure did. Seeing how he directed both of these episodes.
this describes exactly EXACTLY my thoughts/feelings on the ‘pining’ situation (like, seriously – the breakdown of reactions to that line and the whole thought process about it is SO EXACTLY MINE it’s creepy – high fiv for being analysis twins on this, or something! :p)
Just gonna pick out the following for being particularly astute imo:
Mildred has created this construction of Dean–that Dean is single, he’s pining for someone, but he’s afraid to go after it, to follow his heart. and we already know that Dean is afraid of his attraction to Amara. he stated that explicitly in this very episode. but the subtext of the episode also suggested that he’s ALSO afraid of his attraction to Cas–for different reasons. and so maybe the ambiguity persists, maybe the attraction to Cas remains nothing but potentially unintentional subtext. when we hear Dean is pining for someone, it could come off as creepy–Mildred unintentionally referring to his connection with Amara.
where I think I honestly, honestly have to push back on that skepticism though, is where Mildred encourages Dean to go after what he desires, to “follow his heart,” that this is the secret to a long and happy life. […] and I think word choice is key, too–if the intended effect was a creepy allusion to Amara, it would have been far better for Mildred to say “I know when someone’s heart already belongs to someone else.” if she had said that, I would immediately assume it was an Amara thing. it would have had the right air of creepy, of the unwelcome possessiveness she exhibits toward Dean. but pining?Dean cannot resist Amara when he’s around her, but he’s hardly ‘pining’ for her. so it can’t be about Amara. it’s so clear, then, that it must be Cas. we know that Dean enjoys Cas’s company, that he misses him when he’s gone. Cas has the best shot of anyone at giving Dean a long and happy life. isn’t that a known truth, with or without the romantic factor?
Bolded parts are what I think are particularly key –
Dean is explicitly SCARED of his ‘attraction’ to Amara, that is stated outright. But as said above, he is arguably implied as scared of his feelings for / attraction to CAS as well. There’s a proper parallel between the two relationships going on.
But as with all parallels, they are about highlighting the DIFFERENCES as much as the similarities between two things – and the central difference here is, imo, the nature of Dean’s fear in both instances.
Why is he is scared of his ‘attraction’ to Amara? So far it seems to me because the attraction doesn’t seem his own, it is something being forced on him (hence why he feels he CAN’T resist it), and he is scared it will overpower him and take away his free will, change him into someone he doesn’t want to be.
Why is he scared of his (potential) attraction to Cas? This is ofc less clear, as it hasn’t been addressed specifically, but I think we can at the very least say he is NOT scared of Cas or his feelings for Cas overriding his free will? – which alone is a major difference, marking his fears about his feelings for Cas as the OPPOSITE to the kind of fear he feels about Amara. Based on my general reading of Dean over the course of the show I would say he is afraid of his feelings for Cas because, again unlike with Amara, he knows these feelings ARE his own and is a) anxious about what that means about who he is, since Cas is (to all intents and purposes) a guy, and as I read Dean that’s something that will trouble him, like he’ll think him as a guy having ~feelings for another guy is weak or weird or some macho bullshit and c) afraid what the consequences might be if he acts on his feelings – which means fear of a shit ton of things, like if Sam might be weird around him if he became romantically involved with Cas, if Cas were to reject his advances, if embarking on another romantic relationship might lead to tragedy/heartbreak like his previous ones, if Cas being romantically involved with him might turn out harmful for Cas etc.
In a nutshell –
I think Dean is scared of his ‘attraction’ to Amara because
he DOESN’T LIKE OR WANT the feelings he has for her and certainly DOESN’T WANT TO ACT ON THEM, but equally DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO RESIST THEM.
While in opposition, I think Dean is scared of his (potential) attraction to Cas because he DOES LIKE AND WANT the feelings he has for him and absolutely DOES WANT TO ACT ON THEM, but equally DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO EMBRACE THEM.
So… yeah – these two relationships, with Amara and Cas, really do seem at this point to have been placed in tandem to show (as many have been saying all along) that they are equal but OPPOSITE to each other (right down to the sexes involved).
(and yeah, only in one of the two relationships does Dean’s feelings, as they seem to me to be being conveyed, really fit, well ANY definition of ‘pining’ – so I agree that word choice feels ~significant)
It hits Dean like a ton of bricks; his thoughts have tumbled like a Jenga tower, pieces crashing onto the floor in a way that makes his head ring. Words like vulnerable and pining and something off swim before his eyes as he sits up, the heels of his palms pressing into his eyes.
“Fuck.” The curse is breathed, like Dean is too tired and weak to do more then resign himself to the truth that has been causing his body to physically ache. “Fuck.”
He barely gets to the bathroom in time to vomit.
Clutching to the porcelain of the toilet, Dean digs his fingers into the hard surface, his fingers turning white as he coughs and gags. Exhausted, the hunter rests his head on the ceramic and heaves a deep breath.
The first thing, and arguably the most important, is that Cas isn’t Cas. Whatever happened in the cage—whatever stupid, self-sacrificial decision Castiel thought he’d make for the good of the world has probably landed himself a backseat in his body, with Satan driving the buggy. Just the thought makes Dean’s stomach roil.
The second is that he is in love.
He, Dean Winchester, King of the One-Night Stand, has fallen so deeply and blindly that he has no idea how to dig himself out. This love isn’t like the heart-racing, giddy thing he had with Cassie; or the steady, comfortable thing he had with Lisa; and it’s worlds removed from the nervous, uncomfortable, trance-like thing he has with Amara.
…This love is so profound it’s written in the marrow of his bones. It makes his heart race and his mouth go dry and his palms sweat and it’s so deeply comfortable that Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself. It’s watching sunsets and taking cases close to home and retiring with arthritic hands and creaking knees. Wiping his mouth, Dean forces himself up with a grunt and goes to re-brush his teeth.
What is he supposed to do?
He’s got the Devil in his best friend, God’s psycho sister out have him in the most disturbing way possible, and his brother is riding the guilt train straight towards Dumb Decision-ville.
Sighing, Dean lets himself collapse on his bed once more, scooting over to one of the edges and looking at the negative space he’s left. He then bites his lip and turns away. “Cas?” he breathes into the darkness. “I know you’re riding shotgun, but maybe you can hear me anyway?”
Though Dean doesn’t expect an indication he’d been heard, he’s still disappointed when nothing happens. Exhaling a big, shaky breath, the hunter squeezes his eyes shut in his upset, refusing to cry. “I-I miss you.”
Nothing.
“…I love you.”
Silence.
And that’s when he remembers.
Pulling back the covers, Dean pads out of the room and down into the basement, feeling through the dark until he reaches the correct storage room. The coat is exactly where Lucifer had left it, and Dean grasps it tightly in his hands before walking briskly back to his bed.
Dean feels ridiculous, but he’s more distraught than concerned with how he must look, and so slips the garment on over his pjs, breathing in at the shoulder. It smells like Cas. “’M sorry,” he breathes into the fabric, fingers running along its edges. Even as soft as it is, his voice cracks. “Sorry that you felt like you had to do this, or wanted to do it, or… or whatever. Sorry, Cas.” Dean swallows thickly and wraps himself in both the coat and his covers as he makes himself comfortable, eyes once again drawn to empty space he instinctually leaves. “I’ll save you,” he vows quietly to the other side of his bed, reaching a hand out to touch the nothingness that rests there. “I promise, Cas.”
Letting his eyes slip shut, he buries himself further into the coat.
Me: *tries to ignore the parallels between the banshee targeting dean and the rit zien targeting cas*
Me: *thinks about how cas was targeted following a string of victims all suffering from heartbreak that left them vulnerable, how the banshee targets the physically and emotionally vulnerable (including a man specifically referred to as heartbroken), and how dean’s emotional pining was brought up multiple times this episode*
Yeah… To be honest, the “wrong shoulder, dude” analysis from before the episode was a speculation that held up in the scene, to my eyes? And as you say Dean DID know something was off by the end so I don’t need to convince you 😛 I also thought it was pretty obvious that Dean ended up suspicious.
Dean could not have been OVERLY suspicious of Casifer once they started interacting. I think tbh the way Dean mistook “Cas” for an intruder and came rushing down the hall gun in hand is a good sort of indicator that he had a correct gut feeling that something was weird, and he challenges “Cas” as soon as he finds him – “we don’t hear from you for days, you show up and start wrecking the joint?”
Casifer IS acting out of character for Cas, even when it comes to handling their property. Cas has spent some time now hanging out with them and touching their stuff, digging through their personal supplies without asking, even like in 8×08 where it was invasive snooping into Dean’s bag just out of curiosity about his toiletries. But he’s respectful about it and he’s not like a pet that still needs housebreaking that will just leave a mess and throw their stuff everywhere. Meanwhile Lucifer has knocked over two filing cabinets for some reason which can not be about making it easier to find things. The room is subtly messed up with drawers open everywhere and papers and index cards spilled, which I think is probably symbolic in of itself about the scene and how Dean gets unintentionally emotionally gutted by Lucifer – which he can only realise later.
I think the important thing is that Dean is really really willing to accept an apology and an explanation because he doesn’t WANT it not to be Cas, so he gives Casifer the benefit of the doubt at the start of the conversation instead of challenging him right away, which I think is what some people would have wanted – not for Dean to even go into the conversation at all.
(Casifer seems to be taller than Dean, rewatching this :P)
Dean also takes a long time to meet Casifer’s eye as well: the subject is Amara basically the whole time they’re in the room together. and Dean is having a hard time talking about that, and so he’s clearly consumed with some self-centred thoughts about that as well, working up the nerve to talk to Cas about it – he’s been harping on it since the very first episode – his weird stare at the end of 11×01 and drinking at the end of 11×06 are both moments he really self reflected on what was going on about him and Amara and didn’t share, so this is half a season of build up for Dean to finally trust someone enough to talk, so he is clearly in turmoil if we take into account how hard this is for him to speak.
This gifset: http://ksenianovak.tumblr.com/post/138198364555 simplifies the reactions but gets the message across in Dean’s body language in a way I feel is honest to the scene, for people who can’t rewatch.
Through the “Attraction!?” bit of the conversation the emphasis on reactions is on Casifer since Misha is being scene stealing, but Dean continues to not make much eye contact, distracting himself to look for the knife he came for:
This is right after Dean confesses to the “attraction”. Casifer moves closer and Dean instinctively looks away, after two shots of him sneaking a glance at Cas in short succession to check his reaction isn’t too whatever Dean doesn’t want to see, so for HIS side of things, he is not paying attention to Cas, at least not for more than proximity and what he expects to hear, because he’s not devouring Cas’s reaction with his eyes, seeking out the full response. Dean expects comfort and understanding, but he also finds it hard to look at Cas. His grumbly “I know” about Cas’s “Dean,” sounds to me like he read it as concern and he’s saying “I know” as in “I have been angsting about this all season, trust me, I understand how bad it is.” He glances at Casifer a couple more ties, but he continues talking away down to the left as he admits about not being sure he can stop or resist it.
So he’s STILL not focussing on Cas’s reaction to all this – not more than understanding that Cas is currently hearing him out, and Dean’s got his expectations about what a heartfelt conversation with Cas entails to keep him going even if Lucifer’s reactions and mannerisms are not 100% Cas – Dean hasn’t even been looking at him to catch all the weird quirks of how he’s not moving like Cas any more.
And then FINALLY Cas puts that hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean finally looks up and makes proper eye contact with him as Casifer says “It scares me too.”
It’s his reactions after that which are really interesting:
His eyes flick up on “scares me too”
but if we consider that 11×10 gave us Cas pawing all over Dean in another “similar” moment of concern and Dean was totally fine with physical interaction there, the non-Cas way of holding Dean’s shoulder with the very deliberate touch as if “This is me putting a hand on your shoulder because that is a thing that comforts humans” is distinguishable from “Hi I’m Cas I would literally help you pick your nose if you asked because I have no sense of personal boundaries but I do care about you” – it’s not so clear that Dean suspects Casifer of being “off” just from this, but he seems wary in a way that’s connected to the way Casifer touches him and we know he does NOT mind physical interaction with Cas. So.
Anyway, his face is fascinating after that:
(I made these gifs slower than normal to peer at his face better :P) You can see his eyes narrow on “we will find out what this is, I promise” which means now he’s actually looking at Cas, he’s beginning to not quite trust the way he’s acting, probably because the shoulder grip startled him, but maybe because Cas isn’t quiiite talking like Cas in this amazing show of Misha acting Lucifer acting Cas.
And then finally, the infamous “this could be a good thing” line, which we got in isolation in the promos but is actually a run on from talking about drawing Amara out, an abjectly bad idea when Dean has been talking about how scared he is of her, and Lucifer of course is only saying Amara scares him too to worm his way in emotionally:
Dean looks away, and then his eyes flick back up to Casifer, and after that he looks away because his phone rings, but only AFTER he looks suspiciously at Cas. I feel like he might have questioned Casifer’s “this could be a good thing” and what he seems to be saying about drawing Amara out, but he is interrupted, so all we have to go on is a fraction of a look of suspicion and a flicker of narrowed eyes.
And then Casifer tells Dean he’ll be there when they face Amara next time and Dean’s like “thanks Cas” (the dialogue in this gif) and walks off without another word between them.
He’s still not meeting Cas’s eye and he looks quite concerned – if he already felt weird about Cas’s suggestion earlier about drawing Amara out using their connection, Casifer’s promise here is not particularly reassuring to him. I almost see the “thanks” as a sort of placating thing but is really a “… but no thanks” to that idea. Whatever it is, he does seem uncomfortable with Casifer here where he wasn’t until the wrong shoulder thing earlier. Maybe couldn’t meet his eye then, but it was for his own issues… And now it’s for Lucifer related issues 😛
Anyway, like you say, they may not know about Casifer until 11×14 or so, but it’s reasonable for Dean to be suspicious and he did say he thought Cas was off. I don’t think even if he fully suspected after the junk room conversation that in the library conversation he would have said anything. And we know he’s spent half a season repressing about Amara so even if he did have a suspicion it WAS Lucifer and he HAD put it together as the only thing that could be “off” with Cas, then he’s not saying what he’s thinking as if to not make it real yet. So Dean not immediately figuring it so far as we can tell may just be Dean repressing this fear, just the same as he refused to talk for several episodes earlier in the season about Sam plausibly going to the cage in the first place.
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