SPN and Ellen: How to Out Your Main Character in a Few Easy Steps, or why I believe SPN is going through with it

flyingfish1:

Every once and a while, in bi!Dean/Destiel fandom, you see the refrain, “We’re in uncharted territory.” And when it comes to a slash couple textually getting together, yeah, we kind of are. But when it comes to gradually, over the course of a season or more, ushering a main character out of the closet… there is a roadmap.

A roadmap that Supernatural has frequently been following.

Here I’m going to examine Supernatural s8-9 through the lens of the fourth season of the 1994-1998 sitcom Ellen—the season that famously set up its title character Ellen Morgan (Ellen DeGeneres) to eventually come out as gay, making it the first show to do so with a main character—and demonstrate how much they have in common.

First I’m going to quickly go over the ways in which the two shows are different, and then I’m going to get to the—in my opinion, more significant—ways in which they’re really, interestingly alike.

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obsessionisaperfume:

littlehollyleaf:

castiel-knight-of-hell:

castiel-knight-of-hell:

castiel-knight-of-hell:

garageblues:

castiel-knight-of-hell:

that’s the face of a man who’s questioning every gay stereotype he’s ever been told and realizing two rugged hunters can fall in love

AND HAVE YOU LOOKED AT THE COLOURS IN THE SCREEN OR IT’S JUST ME.

do you mean the neon Texan Star beer sign being the blue/purple/pink of the bisexual flag?

coincidently, that’s the brand of beer Dean and Cas are drinking

and the brand that the bartender has to sign for before the cupid hooks him up with his true love

it’s also the brand delivered to the gas station in Heaven Can’t Wait 9.06 that Cas had to sign for while talking to Dean

and they were even positioned the same as the bartender and his soon to be bf

one behind the counter working, the other in front of the counter like a customer

but I’m sure people will say I’m reading too much into this

as predicted people are saying the beer was only used because they didn’t want to make a new prop

check out all the boxes in the store room, I wonder why they didn’t use one of those for the delivery

peanuts, yummy, and they’re in a generic brown box perfect for deliveries

this guy is delivering newspapers and Cas didn’t have to sign for them

Sacrifice 8.23 has two guys, one working and the other a customer, that are interrupted by a Texan Star beer delivery that needs to be signed for

Heaven Can’t Wait 9.06 has two guys, one working and the other a customer, that are interrupted by a Texan Star beer delivery that needs to be signed for

that’s a parallel 

#i want to believe #did Jerry direct this one? #then I might…

Jerry Wanek has only directed two episodes (Slice Girls 7.13 and Captives 9.14), his main job at Supernatural is as a producer. He started out as a production designer in seasons 1-6, which means he was responsible for the overall look of the show (costumes, props, sets, lighting etc). That’s why he tweets about the props, they’re his area of expertise and he takes special interest in them

He was given a producer credit for both of these episodes

Huh. Funny how I’ve never checked that! Thanks 🙂

Wanek is still the production designer, and Serge Ladouceur is the cinematographer.  Together, they’re responsible for all the story that isn’t the action and dialog, and there’s a lot of that.

They absolutely re-use elements thematically—there are costume pieces that show up in particular circumstances, like the yellow tie Sam wore in two of the djinn episodes and Dean’s Burgundy Shirt of Loss and Plaid Shirt of Grief.

And then there’s the El Sol beer logo, which shows up when there’s something that seems real but often isn’t, like Dean’s djinn dream in “What Is and What Should Never Be” and Sam’s hallucination in “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” and it’s the beer that Dean is drinking in the green room in “Lucifer Rising,” so it’s definitely possible, and very probable, that the beer logo in “Sacrifice” and “Heaven Can’t Wait” were used because the scenes shared some kind of theme, in the same way that the music cue behind Dean watching Cas through the window linked that scene thematically with Sam watching Amelia and Don through their window.

“Heaven Can’t Wait” is the biggest argument for Destiel EVER. 

Hey do you have any meta on dean and on the road being bi etc

charlie-minion:

andythanfiction-deactivated2017:

I don’t think the sexuality (subtextual or textual, depending on the edition) of Kerouac’s Sal has fucktweezers to do with Dean’s sexuality.  They aren’t copies or an AU version, it’s just a character Kripke used as a partial influence…along with Han Solo, James Dean, and Have Gun Will Travel.  

definitely don’t think it’s a hidden “clue” as to or “reference to” Dean’s bisexuality, because I don’t think that Jensen is playing him bisexual, he’s being written as bisexual, or that he was conceptualized as bisexual, and therefore that there aren’t any hints from TPTB to be found.  

STOP A SECOND BEFORE YOU SEND THOSE ANONS!

I do believe that Dean is bisexual and that has been written in canon and portrayed by Jensen, both very much on purpose.  But I think they’d swear to you all day otherwise and mean it, because I think the problem here is one of definition.  I think that they’d both tell you that Dean is a very masculine man whose masculinity means a lot to him to the point of occasional overcompensation and not infrequent chauvinism and misogyny, that he really, really really enjoys women sexually, visually, and sensually, but that he’s also secure enough in himself that yeah, sure, there’ve been a few times he’s glanced at a dude and thought dayum, can’t say I might not hit that if I had the chance.    

And yes, that makes him bisexual, you’re right.  But the thing is, we’re a fucking ignorant society when it comes to non-binary sexuality.  Homosexual, we get. Heterosexual, we get.  But there’s this idea that bisexuality is the thing exactly in the middle only.  Dean is NOT written or played as equally attracted to men and women romantically.  Dean is NOT written as giving no shits about his partner’s gender.  Dean is NOT written as equally sexually aroused by men and women.  Dean is written and played as a man attracted 99% of the time sexually and romantically to women who has had his moments of interest in men but never had a boyfriend, consensual sex with a man, used gay porn to get off, or otherwise had anything come of it beyond a raised eyebrow or a dude, tappable nod.  And to the majority of non-Tumblr-SJW 30 and 40-something American adults (aka Jensen and most of the writing staff) that does not make him bisexual, that makes him “not narrow-minded heterosexual,” which is how they write and play him.

It is and isn’t the same thing, and I think it’s one of the biggest thing that wanks this fandom in circles, because when the fandom asks Jensen and TPTB if Dean is bi, they mean “is he ever attracted, even latently, to other men?” and when Jensen and TPTB answer that he’s not bi, they mean “He isn’t a Kinsey 3…he’s like a 1-point-okay-he’s-severely-confused-about-the-whole-angel-thing-but-so-not-even-addressing-it-yet-because-other-apocalypses-to-fry which means he’s straight.” I think this is also where the “bisexual would make Dean OOC” thing comes from, because they’re looking at it as suddenly having to retcon him as right in the middle of the rainbow and “half gay” (with accompanying stereotypes about what that would mean) rather than simply saying it is not impossible he could get hard for a dude occasionally with no change to anything else about him.

And what about the whole angel thing?  I think they haven’t decided yet, I think that right now Misha and Jensen are just playing I LOVE YOU I NEED YOU at the top of their hearts’ volume and leaving it for the writers to parse what kind of love and need later, but I think that even if they do decide it’s a kind of love that involves sexual and romantic attraction, they still won’t consider Dean a bisexual character: He’ll be “het with an exception.”  

Because biphobia and bi erasure means that unless you’re smack dab in the middle Kinsey 3 Oberyn “then everyone is missing half the world’s pleasure” Martell, you’re gay or straight with “phases,” “exceptions,” “moments,” “fantasies,” and “asterixes.”   

I’m bisexual and this is perfect! I have such a hard time trying to explain to people that I don’t have to be 50/50 to be bi. Bisexual erasure exists and is cruel. It’s not “a phase”, it’s not “the result of bad experiences with men” (in the case of females), it’s not “because you haven’t met the right man” (again in the case of a female). Being bi doesn’t automatically make you 50/50 at all. I wish people understood that! Thank you for this, Andy!

dustydreamsanddirtyscars:

4persephone:

destihellsyeah:

destihellsyeah:

mappingyourdreams:

something’s broken here.

not sure if it’s just me, but when dean went down into the basement after alonso and entered the room marked ‘private,’ did anyone else get the feeling that we were being granted a glimpse of the darker parts of dean’s psyche? i got chills watching him making his way through the shadows, finding the one lonely bed and then, of course, the scattered jars of fat sucked dry by a man so desperate to fill that gaping hunger, that utter emptiness. it made me uncomfortable in the sense that it almost felt like we were trespassing, knowing that dean has never, ever allowed anyone this deep inside. and if this indeed was the intent of this scene, it was bloody brilliant. dean has always been a fascinating and enigmatic character, but i think they’re really outdoing themselves this season specifically in regards to his personal development.

reblogging because i feel like this is becoming even more eerily relevant now. sam’s denying dean any hope of restoring the brotherly relationship to what it once was, mirrored in 9×13 by maritza putting alonso on a more restrictive diet, and dean’s more desperate than ever to fill the void that’s eating him from the inside out. except now that we’ve seen dean officially take his first steps into the dark descent of the first blade’s power, that void is inevitably going to be filled with a thirst for the carnal; the thirst for bloodshed. if a person is deprived for so long, eventually, he’s going to find ways of lashing out and taking drastic measures of his own.

and now dean’s dead like alonso too

fuck this show

I may be the only one who thinks this, but on some levels I actually think this journey into darkness is a road back up to the light for Dean. Because so much of his darkness/inner void is what amounts to self denial and self starvation, caused by his repeated refusal to acknowledge his own pain and trauma and suffering. Dean’s been presenting a guise for years, to himself as well as to others, and the strain of that has taken it’s toll, splintering the outer veneer into more and more tiny crushable pieces with rot of untreated infection pooling ever larger and larger just beneath the surface.

But now, first with the Mark – which hints at the depth of his inner rage, and with the increased honesty we’re likely to see from him full demon if his visions of his demon self prove accurate, all those pockets of death inside him are going to get lanced and then spill past his lips whether he wants to keep his secrets or not.

DemonDean from days past was a horror, yes, but he dealt his damage via HONESTY. He said the kind of things Dean couldn’t or wouldn’t, for fear of harming others or destroying himself.

DemonDean is far less likely to worry about such things.

Which could be a good thing, if Sam and Cas can hear the truth meant as violence and use it to heal instead in the long run. Because Dean needs honesty desperately…from himself, more so than anyone else. He needs to voice, to purge, to let loose all the stuff he’s hid from himself and from others, while it sat inside and poisoned him.

It won’t be pretty to drain the wound, it won’t be polite, it’s going to hurt like hell for those who have to watch, but at the same time the truth, once spoken can either destroy OR set you free.

And lets be honest…Dean’s worst jailer, worst tormentor is himself. No one hates him more than him, as was so baldly summed up by Crowley.

A Dean who speaks truth to harm, is STILL SPEAKING TRUTH, to himself and everyone else around him. And that truth, hard as it may be to cope with, will leave him open in a way he’s spent his whole life teaching himself not to be. It’ll leave him in pieces yes, but those pieces will washed clean of the deception he’s used to duct tape himself into a false form for decades of his life.

I like this discussion and very much agree with what is being talked about here, because it matches very much how I perceived not only this particular episode, but the whole season. We had many instances of Dean underground, locked in caves and lost in basements. To me it was always very much aluuding to Dean getting lost, exploring and succumbing to his id. I have been writing about exactly this and particularly Dean’s psyche and Freud’s model of personality with the superego, ego and id back when the episode aired (see here). “The Purge” was a milestone in terms of subtle or maybe not so subtles foreshadowing (as was “Dog Dean Afternoon” as well btw – episodes people would wave off as filler – no damn, those were important!!!). Dean getting drugged and losing himself in the haze imo was foreshadowing what would happen later on with Dean getting lost in his bloodlust and the feelings the mark provided (see here) as well as one more instance of foreshadowing for Dean’s death (x). There were many aspects about this episode heavily relating to the mark though. In general we have the mark the pishtacos leave – red and raw and then of course there is the thing about them basically ~killing people from the inside out, leaving just empty ~vessels, the people and who they used to be barely recognizable. I’m sorry, but S8/S9 have been golden in terms of structure and foreshadowing. I mean, we got the first hint for Dean’s death in 9×02 “Devil May Care” when his shot in death position followed the shot of Abaddon’s burnt corpse and in the end killing Abaddon as Dean said himself marked the moment, he was unable to turn it off. And while it was Metatron, who killed Dean, Dean has been decaying and dying for a lot longer than that… 

 #okay while this line is hilarious and whatnot #i actually read it as something a little bit sadder #because in this episode Dean is pushing everyone away #trying to make them WANT him to say yes so he’ll be gone #he tells Bobby ‘you’re not my father’ #knowing that’s where it’ll hurt him the most #he tells Sam ‘I don’t believe in you’ #knowing that will cut the deepest #but what does he say to Cas? he makes a bunch of mocking sexual references #I think he knows that Cas is attracted to him #and this is him calling him out on it #to try and make Cas angry and hurt #this episode is Dean trying to convince his family that they don’t want him #so he goes for their weak spots #and Cas’s weak spot is the fact that he’s in love with Dean

I’ve been noodling over this post for the past few days, and I think it’s almost right, in that Dean throws out the sexual barb because he almost certainly knows that he’s Cas’s weak spot.

And yet… I think the person Dean’s really digging at here isn’t Cas, but himself. He’s the one sexually attracted to Cas: he’s the one who can’t stop looking at Cas’s lips, who always looks so uncomfortable when Cas crowds his personal space. And Dean hates himself for it, because he knows that this is an angel of the Lord, the holiest of the holy, and he—well, what is he? He’s the blood-stained fuck-up, the man-sized hole of Daddy issues and neediness, the demon who never deserved to be saved from the Pit. What business does he have feeling something so dark and needy and human about an entity as good and heavenly as Cas, someone who so profoundly believes in Dean’s non-existent righteousness, who talks about him in terms of “special” and “saved” and “profound bond”, who rebelled against the divine plan and the entire Host of Heaven, and sacrificed everything, just for him, all for him? Dean knows it’s disrespectful, this dark and small and petty human sexual attraction, he knows it’s wrong and unreciprocated and he wishes he could make himself stop but he can’t, he just can’t.

Remember what the Dean!Leviathan says about Dean? “He doesn’t have relationships; he has applications for sainthood”. For nobody is that more applicable than Cas (which is why Cas’s eventual betrayal hurts Dean so much). To S5!Dean, Cas is a concept, a creature so innocent and pure Dean didn’t even think it existed until it saved him from eternal damnation.

So when Cas revokes his faith in him in that second GIF; when Cas says, essentially, “you are no longer worth my faith in you”, that’s when Dean snaps, because that hurts so much, too much, and all he can think to do is lash out with the one thing he thinks will hurt the most — except he doesn’t stop to wonder who he’s really trying to hurt here. 

That’s why, when Dean says “Blow me”, Cas seems more confused than anything else — he can tell that Dean is angry, and he’s angry too, but more than that, Cas doesn’t understand why Dean chose to express himself with those specific words.

But to Dean, the innuendo makes perfect sense; it’s a form of self-harm, of self-torture. In the same way he bitterly tells Kevin (twice) that angels are “junkless”, it reminds him of what he wants but can never, ever have.

Because Dean trained under Alistair, he knows all the best ways to torture a man, to make him break, and deep down he knows that what he feels for Cas is what will break him; or, more specifically, what will break him is that Cas can never feel what he feels, that angels just don’t have the equipment to feel that way, that whenever they try, it just breaks them apart.

And I eagerly await the day Dean realizes he was wrong.

I need you here: mishcollin: [gif credit] No okay we need to talk about this for a…

mishcollin:

image

image

[gif credit]

No okay we need to talk about this for a second. Firstly, we as an audience have never seen Dean like this. I think it grants us a little interiority to what Dean might’ve become when he was in hell, but this transformation here isn’t due to torture…

I need you here: mishcollin: [gif credit]
No okay we need to talk about this for a…

I Need You (I Love You): duprass42: ceeainthereforthat: duprass42: Cody and I are started our…

duprass42:

ceeainthereforthat:

duprass42:

Cody and I are started our rewatch of Supernatural and for a character that is supposed to be a ladies man, Dean does sure spend a lot of time not doing that. In fact, it’s Sam that seems have the lady action.

Episode one, Sam is the…

I Need You (I Love You): duprass42: ceeainthereforthat: duprass42: Cody and I are started our…