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.
You’re Sam Winchester and one day your brother comes back from hell with a handprint on his arm and an angel at his side. They fight and they scream and Dean complains about him but you know that he trusts him. Likes him too, at least a little. Sometimes you wonder if they forget you’re in the room. Sometimes you wonder what would happen if you weren’t.
You’re Sam Winchester, only you’re not, not completely. You’re back from hell, but something is missing. The missing piece is not Castiel, but he’s gone too, at least he is until the very first second Dean calls. You would be upset but you’re too busy wondering when exactly this happened, this “profound bond”. It’s also hard to be upset without a soul.
You’re Sam Winchester, and you’re whole again, sort of. Your brothers best friend is standing in front of you in a circle of holy fire and you ache for him. Dean went to bat for Castiel, and even now he tries to bring him around. You know a little something about betrayal and it’s not hard to imagine what he’s feeling. You hear them arguing in Bobby’s house later that night. Dean calls Castiel “brother” but you think you both know that’s not quite true.
You’re Sam Winchester and your brother doesn’t talk to you about nightmares but sometimes you hear him call out for an angel in the middle of the night. Even that doesn’t hurt as much as the time you opened the trunk of the Impala for a knife and found a freshly laundered trenchcoat.
You’re Sam Winchester and your brother is back from Purgatory. You never thought you’d see him again, but you’re Sam Winchester and the subversion of death no longer surprises you. You’re surprised the angel isn’t with him. Somehow, without even realizing it, you’ve begun to expect him to come back for Dean. It’s happened every time before. But Dean swears he’s gone for good and your heart breaks for him, what he must be feeling.
You’re Sam Winchester and your brother used to tuck you into bed and promise to scare away all the monsters. Today you wake up in the middle of the night, but instead of fighting monsters Dean is standing at the window. His voice cracks like the lightning outside and he tells you he’s seeing Cas. You tell him its impossible but even as the words leave your mouth you remember a beautiful blonde girl whose smile used to light you up from the inside out. You remember seeing her after she burned. Everywhere. When you warn him to walk past it, you’re speaking from experience. You don’t have a problem with your brother having feelings for an angel, but you wish he didn’t because Castiel is gone for good and now the only unshakable thing in your life looks shaken.
You’re Sam Winchester and you’re in a hotel room going over a case. Angels can manifest anywhere but Castiel comes into being directly behind Dean. You’re not surprised. You suspect the times Dean has seen him to be driven by Cas’s fading power and his attempts to contact the two of you. You tell him this. Dean hesitates, but agrees and that’s it. Right there. That little moment of hesitation. This is the moment where it is suddenly completely clear to you. It’s not just “feelings”, it’s love. Because even with a perfectly logical explanation available, Dean, who is perhaps the only person in the world who is better at repressing things than you yourself, still isn’t sure whether or not he was hallucinating with grief. Dean doesn’t believe in chick flick moments but you watch him watch Cas walk away and you wish he would have one, just this once. Because who knows how long it’s been true, but your brother is in love with an angel. An angel who seems to defy every possible law of death and logic and somehow always ends up back at Dean’s side.
The main reading I’ve seen—besides the bi!Dean or Dean/Cas interpretations—is that it was Dean admitting to wanting a long term romantic partner.
After Dean says that he isn’t ready to die, the exchange with Father Delaney goes as follows:
Dean: Recent events, uh, made me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And I don’t know, I mean, you know, there’s things, there’s people, feelings that I- I- I want to experience differently than I have before. Or maybe even for the first time.
Father Delaney: Go a little deeper, perhaps, than with Gina.
Dean: Yeah… I’m- I’m starting to think that maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.
So Father Delaney connects Dean’s confession of having people and feelings that he wants to experience in new ways to the probably-made-up fling he had with someone named Gina—and Dean agrees. He wants something more in a romantic sense. He wants a relationship.
This is something that has been hinted to in the narrative and through silent storytelling since the beginning of season nine, but after this scene it could only be clearer if he flat out says “I want a long-term partner.”
If there are other interpretations to this I’d love to hear about them, but I really can’t see this exchange suggesting anything other than a desire for romantic love. It’ll take a pretty convincing argument to de-romo this dialogue.
So basically everyone agrees on the wanting a relationship part, but those who don’t see Dean as bi think it’s a general longing for a women yet unmet.
That would be, frankly, really weird ten years in. New character, completely new relationship, adding a 4th person to Team Free Will. Is that the writing on the wall that non-Destiel shippers see?
If it’s actually possible to NO ROMO that confession without contorting the logic into a pretzel, I’m a cat.
And I really don’t see how, given what we’ve seen for the last three seasons, there are any possible candidates for a long-term romance that we haven’t already met, because Dean’s clearly thinking of a particular person, and not someone in the abstract.
And that is a very small pool of candidates. Sam and Charlie are out right off the bat, which reduces the pool even more. Claire and Chrissie are kids, so they’re out. Ann Marie has already NOPED out of the pool. Of the people Dean’s still at all close to, that leaves Donna, Jody… and Cas. And of those three, there’s only one that Dean’s said he ~needed~. Only one he’s ditched Sam and driven for hours to go and see. Only one he’s wished was with him when he felt alone and overwhelmed.
ok I’ve seen a lot of us doing what we tend to do when we’re particularly excited about a piece of spn that lends credence to ‘dean is bi’ readings, which is conceding like, “and yes, its ambiguous, and it could mean something else really easily, but if you look at it this way with other things from earlier in the show, you could use it to read it the way I prefer, and that could turn into something later.” and i feel like this tactic is sort of owning up to the ambiguity/polysemy that our perspective hinges on, and acknowledging that this ambiguity could negate our reading.
but with this one…i don’t know guys, i kind of feel like the ambiguity is exactly what supports the ‘dean is bi’ reading.
to cut right to it, why wasn’t this the dialogue of the scene?
Dean: …Recent events…made me think i might be closer to that than i really thought. And – and I don’t know, i mean, there’s things I wanna experience differently than I have before. You know, uh, I’ve always kinda loved ‘em and left ‘em but…I don’t know, maybe I’d wanna stick around for once, do the whole wife and rugrats thing
Priest: Go a little deeper perhaps, maybe with Gina?
Dean: Yeah…I’m just starting to think, maybe there’s more to it all that I thought, with someone like her
Something like that would be more like something we would go “ok yes he’s talking about a hypothetical woman, but we could interpret it as a symbol for anyone, and that he’s really talking about, just in general, a long term relationship,” and in that way find our reading in the text.
But Dean is not so gender-specific in the speech. He wants to experience things, people, feelings differently, maybe for the first time, and he’s realizing there might be more to it all than he realized. I don’t know, it just reminds me of when I’m talking to my friends who don’t know I’m queer and we’re all talking about the future and I talk about a hypothetical person while they talk about a hypothetical husband. My gender-unspecific language is something they can overlook, but I’m sure some of them go, “Hey wait, that ambiguity is kind of making a statement in juxtaposition to the specifics you’d expect to hear.”
And I feel like it’s a very loud silence on Dean’s part here not to talk about a hypothetical woman here, especially in a Catholic confessional, because I know the church has become a bit more progressive in recent years, but I still feel like one would want to clarify that you’re not maybe yearning for something their teachings might condemn – unless you are. And if you are, i feel like you use language unspecific enough to be safely interpreted in a way that protects you, but that is close to the truth. You know? So you don’t out yourself and say, “I think I might like guys,” but you also omit saying, “I want to have a relationship with a woman.”
So, tl;dr: Dean’s omissions here speak very loudly. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this counts as Dean outing himself explicitly, but it definitely pinged something in my head to go, oh, maybe the writers will go there this season or beyond.
This reminds me of the Fayetteville sheriff talking about his partner when everything indicated he ought to be saying wife.
Those are definitely non-gender-specific when you’d expect specificity.
This was gonna be my usual initial thoughts post, but then the confessional scene happened. What the actual fuck. Ok, here goes.
Holy fricking goddamn. If that wasn’t a coming out scene I don’t know what is. I mean yeah, it was still in the show’s usual subtext level, but only barely. Dean started by spinning his story about “Gina”, someone who (as far as I remember) is made up, but is pretty much an amalgam of all the women Dean has been with. She was both the ongoing relationship (Cassie, Lisa), as well as the casual ones. He played up his wham bam thank you ma’am, overcompensating nature. She was made up, but was also an exaggerated representation of how Dean has tried to present himself. His version of himself was his mask, and you can set how ill-fitting it is now. And then it comes off, and it is both heartbreaking and glorious. The second half of the confession is the real Dean, contrasting in every possible way with the mask he presented in order to try and draw out the ghost in the first half. And what I love is the way the first half is all about women, how he’s sick of being dishonest, leading them on, but the second half, the second half… that’s not.
“There’s things…people, feelings, that I want to experience differently than I have before. Or maybe even for the first time.”
He mentions people, feelings. Given train of thought he was on, the subject matter of the preceding half, it’s not unreasonable to reach the conclusion that he is still thinking and talking about people & feelings in the romantic sense. And quite tellingly, he’s playing the gender game. He’s not talking about feelings for women, not in the same way he was before. It’s not that he lost attraction towards them. It’s that he wants something different. Something that he’s not ready to explicitly say, but something he feels he can bring up in the safety of a confessional, after he’s specifically been told that the priest cannot share what people tell him. Something that involves a modification of the pronoun game, something that a lot of queer people are familiar with. Now, the argument can be made (and probably has been) that it’s just general statement about changing his life, wanting something other than what he has. And is true, and likely is one layer. But this is Supernatural, which is renowned for pulling layer upon layer of meaning into things. And this is no different.
Did anyone else get the same sort of general feeling as they did on seeing Dean’s room in 9.14? Remember, when we were all speculating like mad about how it showed that Dean wanted someone in his life in a romantic sense? Well this is the spoken text equivalent. Dean is ready to have someone with him. There is no doubt in my mind that he was speaking in a romantic sense, none at all. Equally there is no doubt (for me) that he had someone in mind when he was talking about it. And he specifically amended his statement to include “Maybe even for the first time”. He’s had long term relationships. He’s been in love. With women. With men though? That side of him he has always kept suppressed (on screen, at least). He’s flirted with the idea, but he’s never allowed himself to go any further that. This would be something he’s experiencing differently than before, something he’s experiencing for the first time. It would mark a pretty profound shift in the feelings he has been experiencing. And it ties in beautifully with the way he starts it all, talking about how he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t. He’s got things he wants, things that are for himself, things he thinks he might have a chance to have.
And then it all wraps up with fantastically symbolic shot at end, of him leaving the confessional. He opens up, spits out the all-but-coming-out speech, then is seen walking out of that tiny little box that is so reminiscent of a closet, that room where your deepest secrets can be released in safety. It was kind of amazing.
There were two moments at the beginning and the end though that bookended it all nicely. First, during the ‘then’ segment, the shot that overlaid Rowena saying “The Winchesters”? That included not just Sam & Dean, but also Cas. They could have used any one of a million shots of just the brothers, but they chose one that included Cas. Then at the end, when Dean talked about how no woman has given blood for him (I forget the exact phrasing). And he’s right, no woman has. But someone else has, and very willingly. Many times, and he even made mention of how he was “always willing to bleed for the Winchesters”. Someone whose motivations just last season were revealed to be not heaven, not humanity, not even the brothers, but Dean. Cas may not have been mentioned in the episode, but he was there in every other conceivable way.
Dean wants love. He wants romantic love. He wants to both give, and receive it. And he knows exactly who he wants to share that with. There is only one person who fits the slot, whose death would hurt him something awful. And Dean, I think, is finally being honest with himself about why.
This takes me back to the idea that cake is a parallel to Cas, and Dean has been liking cake A LOT more than usual…
I like Scout’s comic too, but I think I’m the…
Now I’m totally on board with the cake = Cas/bi!Dean metaphor (I’m a Destiel shipper), but as a straight person, please forgive my ignorance when I ask what “cake” means in non-straight circles? 🙂
And suddenly this scene from Clueless pops into my head, haha. (I promise I don’t get all my info from 90s teen romcoms! But it must be mainstream enough for this, at least…)
But more generally, yes, I think it stands in for every unexpected thing that Dean wants and that he’s had to deny himself, whether because some crisis prevented him from having it (10×12) or because his family caused him to give it up (10×15).
Though it seems ‘cakeboy’ has evolved to mean ‘metrosexual’ rather than homosexual – so if the writers are in the know about these associations with cake they could just be using it to represent Dean’s feminine traits.
For me, I see it as encompassing all the parts of Dean that he considers feminine/unmanly, which is generally stuff he thinks it’s wrong/weak to like and to want and to be. Ergo, that covers ‘metrosexual’ stuff, and ALSO bisexuality/liking guys.
But we do have some circumstantial evidence that John is physically abusive, at least to Dean. Granted, we have to look at it from two points of view at once-that of the audience who knows werewolves are real, and that of a social worker who may or may not-but, in Bad Boys, young Dean’s forearms are clearly covered in grab marks. Human sized grab marks.
As an audience member, we know werewolves don’t work that way-had Dean actually been captured by a were, he’d be in bloody ribbons. (We know from previous encounters that they don’t think like humans, don’t reach and grab, and a wild animal goes for the soft spots, after all, and if it can reach your forearms, it can reach your belly or throat.)
As a Responsible Adult, as we’re supposed to assume Sunny is, along with any social worker who should be seeing Dean at this point, if I’d seen a kid with those marks, with that story-literally replacing a real life monster with the big bad wolf?-John would not be leaving with his sons at the end of the day.
Either Dean is lying, or Dean is lying, and I can’t honestly think of many supernatural baddies that would grab a kid by their arms, and not leave any other marks.
Now, on John and the Dursleys, I think you missed an important point: John’s attractive. Either as Matt Cohen or Jeffry Dean Morgan, there’s a nice sized chunk of fandom who’ll happily expound about his appearance, and, to be blunt, the Dursleys have been described and portrayed as all the worst sorts of ugly-namely fat, but w/e. Just like we don’t want to think of our Hero as being a child abuser, we have issues thinking of a handsome man the same way.
When I was growing up we’d sometimes plant a veggie garden out back. The first thing you have to do is use shovels to turn the topsoil so it’s nice and loose. You start with making a perimeter by sticking the shovel straight down into the earth and pulling it back to upset the dirt in front of the shovel, then move to the side and do it again and again until you have straight lines showing the edges of your garden space. This is so you know exactly where the garden ends and wont waste energy digging further than that. Digging is hard, a perimeter ensures you only dig what you need to dig and nothing else. Our garden was pretty big so we did the perimeter first, a grave is a smaller area so they can start in the middle and establish the perimeter as they work. That’s why the graves are dug up with straight lines, because you mark off edges to keep yourself from wasting energy
They don’t show this every time because it’d be redundant but the Winchesters spray lighter fluid on the remains, bones wont burn unless you use an accelerant and the fire springs up very quickly because of this. That’s why they throw the lighter, because if they stood in the grave to light it they’d be burned before they could get out. They use zippo lighters which are specially designed to light easily, stay lit without having to hold anything down, and the cap blocks wind/rain so you can light them in any weather. Zippos are sold at every gas station so they wouldn’t have any trouble replacing them. I’m sure they keep several in the Impala and when they run out they can restock the next time they buy gas. As for the lighters being identical, that’s the classic Zippo look and it’s the most popular design so they’re sold everywhere
Sorry I’m just now seeing this but thank you for answering my ask.
You’re welcome. I’m always happy to answer Supernatural questions
They use Zippos because of how they’re made, cheaper lighters wont do what they need them to do. Zippos are reliable, will light in bad weather, and stay lit without having to hold anything. Yes, they’re a lot more expensive than a plastic Bic lighter but you can’t throw a Bic into a grave because it wont stay lit. Also the cheaper lighters wont light reliably even in mild weather, and if it’s bad weather it can be almost impossible to light them while outside
Zippos are small and easy to steal. Some gas stations keep them locked up because of this but I’ve been in many that don’t, so the Winchesters have a fair chance at finding ones they can shop lift. I’m sure they have to pay for them at times but they use stolen credit cards at gas stations so they’re still not actually paying for the lighters.
When you have a murderous ghost terrorizing people you don’t worry about tossing a $15 lighter into a grave, all that’s important is having the best tool to do the job quickly. They often go months between ghost hunts so it’s not like they’re tossing out a lighter every week. It’s an acceptable expense, you don’t want ot worry about a cheap lighter crapping out on you when people’s lives are at risk
Yeah, that makes sense. But there’s a thing I learned from my dad: When you want to lit up a fireplace or a campfire, you can use a method where you take a big splinter and light it, then throw it into the fireplace. And I think it would be pretty cheapier to carry some splinters instead of buying a ton of lighters.
A big splinter is a great method for lighting fireplaces but the Winchesters have to drop the source of fire down a six foot hole. Ever notice that when people are done with matches they usually shake them to get rid of the flame? That’s because air pressure will extinguish small fires. Tossing a splinter into a deep hole means it will encounter enough air pressure that it can be blown out. Zippos have an accelerant feeding the flame and the case is shaped to reduced air pressure and keep it lit
Money isn’t an issue, they steal the lighters or use stolen credit cards. It’s a tool they need just like bullets and salt. The amount of salt they use would probably cost more than the Zippos since ghosts are an infrequent problem and salt is used against multiple monsters but fans never say they waste money by putting down so many salt lines. When people are being killed you don’t mess with cheaper, but less reliable, alternatives. You get the best tool for the job and you use it
Alright my dear sassy anon, I apologize for the late response but I wanted to do this right and school had been getting in the way. So buckle up. I’m going to take you for a ride. *cracks knuckles*
Moving on to my overall argument. Let’s look again at Cain’s speech and dissect that, shall we?
This is a perfect parallel to me. In this scenario Crowley is Abbadon. So do you remember when Abbadon was possessing Colette in 9×11?
And then she has a very interesting conversation with Cain, that hints very stronglyat a previous romantic relationship between them.
And Abbadon then goes on to literally tell Cain “Well, if I can’t have you, than neither can she!” before manipulating Colette’s body to the point that Cain attempts to stab her with the blade as she smokes out. This parallel between Abbadon and Crowley later becomes incredibly important because of what happens after the fight. Moving ahead to 10×14 and what do we see?
What is this!? The obvious Colette parallel being chosen over the Abbadon parallel? The physical embodiement of Cain/Dean’s addiction being put in the hands of Colette to take care of?
The Abbadon parallel looking visibly aggrieved about being passed over for the Colette parallel? The Abbadon parallel feeling wounded and wronged about Cain/Dean’s actions because of the history they share?
It must all be a coincidence right? Ok well let’s look at the next part of Cain’s speech.
The second person close to himself that Cain killed was Colette, and this effectively places Cas in that position in the lineup of future murders. I suppose you could argue that Dean technically was the one who killed Abbadon, but by giving Dean the Mark for the express purpose of killing Abbadon Cain essentially signed her death warrant. She was the last person of close relationship with Cain to die, putting her parallel, Crowley, as the first to die. So my first point of Cas being Colette is simply the order in which he appears in the Cain speech. Beyond that you had asked when Cas had pulled Dean back from the edge of darkness. Well…
Cas has been intimately involved in the removal of the Mark. I have my own complaints about the show has been writing Cas as going out hunting for cures for Dean and not staying with him, but the fact remains that that is what he’s been doing.He’s literally put everything else on hold to try to fix Dean.You mentioned that Cas hasn’t been around Dean for a lot of his struggles with the Mark and I would argue that there is a pretty obvious reason for that. It makes more sense for Cas to be the one out doing this because he’s an angel. Thinking about this logically, one person should stay with Dean and one person should be out doing the legwork the search for the cure requires. Once it was clear that the search for the cure was going to take them to Cain, why the hell would you ever send Sam to do that? An angel didn’t even stand a chance against him, what’s Sam going to do? It’s totally valid that Cas be the one out searching and it doesn’t diminish his feelings for Dean or Dean’s for him. You don’t have to be around someone all the time to love them.
But mostly I just think that Cas is Dean’s Colette because he fits the way Cain described her.
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried, Colette. To see myself as you did."
"I know you watch over me still.”
“She forgave me.”
Basically I just feel like Cas loves Dean the way Colette loved Cain. Unselfishly and unconditionally. Complete devotion right to the end. Always putting Cain’s needs before her own and doing what’s best for him, literally to her dying breath. So now we have the final part of Cain’s speech and I’ll be wrapping up my rant soon here.
Your message that Sam is Dean’s Colette was honestly just really surprising for me to read because I thought it was totally obvious that Dean and Sam were Cain and Abel respectively in this scenario. They are literally their descendants. Lucifer wanted to possess Abel and Lucifer wanted to possess Sam. And then Cain said the whole “You’re living my life in reverse” line. Sam is Abel in this scenario because that’s where Cain placed him in the lineup of people Dean would kill. Abel’s spot. Not to mention that Abel is Cain’s younger brother and Cain gave up his very soul to save him, just like Dean did for Sam. I mean, in terms of parallels I think the Dean/Cain and Sam/Abel links are possibly the single most obvious parallel in the entire series. Unless your argument is that Sam is somehow simultaneously Colette and Abel, which, if it is I’d be interested to read.
So in conclusion, that’s why I think that Cas is Dean’s Colette, although I will admit that sometimes when I really try to remove the Destiel-colored glasses entirely I have considered that Dean doesn’t have a Colette (thanks ephemeral-castiel). What I’m saying is that I think that Cas fills the roles that Colette filled for Cain, but I do think that in the end Dean will learn how to overcome his issues on his own. I don’t think that any one person, not Sam or Cas, would be able to stop Dean just by begging, because that didn’t work while he was a demon and because this is the season of self-discovery and I really think Dean will be able to find this strength in himself. He really needs to find his own will to live at this point in time, rather than just hanging around because Sam and Cas need him. So yeah, that’s why I think that IF Dean has a Colette, it’s Cas.
Do you remember how afraid some people were that would introduce a female character to be Dean’s Collette at some point? I don’t think anyone’s worried about that anymore.
Oh, I bet there are some people who are pretty worried that they WON’T…
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