The most important scene was the heartfelt conversation between Chuck and Dean in the very beginning of the episode. This is a heavily queer-coded conversation during which Chuck acknowledges that Dean has had a ‘complicated upbringing’.
Dean: Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it. Chuck: I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.
Dean, with tears in his eyes, listed all the ways that the world is fucked up, and told Chuck – God – that it didn’t get better. Despite promises, it never got better, for him.
Dean: People – People pray to you. People build churches for you. They fight wars in your name, and you did nothing. Chuck: You’re frustrated. I get it. […] And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. It’s enabling. Dean: But it didn’t get better. Chuck: Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit: I think it has [gotten better].
It’s important to note here that the character of Chuck – God – is a textually queer character. Chuck is bisexual. Chuck is LGBT. The subtext to this conversation between a queer character and a character that many of us read as queer is this:
“It Gets Better“ is a queer-coded phrase. It is a phrase that every LGBT person in America recognizes. It is the slogan of a famous campaign for LGBT youth (see also video of Dan and Terry talking about their ‘complicated upbringings‘). And is not only that it’s instantly recognizable to queer people, it’s that the show itself has made a reference to the campaign before in text, in Jeremy Carver’s episode We Need to Talk About Kevin (note also the queer-coding of the episode title itself, “We need to talk about [name of son]” being a line parents say when they suspect their son might be gay):
Sam: You know, it gets better. Kevin: You know I’m not gay, right?
And let us not ignore how Kevin’s simple, no nonsense line, “You know I’m not gay, right?“ shone a light on the negative space of how Dean Winchester in the entire run of the show had never said those words.
They explicitly referenced the slogan of the campaign in this exchange. The phrase ‘it gets better’ is also attached to the queer experience in the textual canon of the show. So, the conversation between Chuck and Dean is queer-coded. It is the conversation between two queer characters. Dean was telling Chuck that as was his understanding, it was supposed to get better. He had been promised that it would get better. He, a queer person, had been promised that it would get better, and it hadn’t.
And Chuck, a queer person, told Dean that from his point of view, it had gotten better. It is better when you open your eyes, Dean.
And the fact that the character of Kevin Tran, who was killed of two seasons ago, suddenly made a reappearance for the scene immediately preceding this queer-coded conversation between God and Dean Winchester? It only serves to contextualize this scene even more securely with the LGBT campaign It Gets Better.
Kevin Tran knew that it was a phrase that was told to queer youths. Sam Winchester knew that it was a phrase told to queer youths because Kevin Told him (he might have known otherwise too, to be sure, but we explicitly know that he knows because of the scene between him and Kevin – and the re-appearance of spectral Kevin could only serve to jog his memory of this). And here, his brother is weeping before him about how it never got better.
Sam knows that Dean is queer. God knows that Dean is queer. And conversely to what a lot of the fandom seems to think, Dean Winchester knows full well that he is fucking queer.
And the audience is starting to catch up, too. Because this motherfucking reference was as subtle as a brick to the face.
I totally agree with this, but I’m fairly certain the title ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ was a reference to the book of the same name? Idk that just seems more obvious.
It’s a queer-coded phrase regardless. Yes, it’s likely a reference to other things, mostly likely the Rembrandt song title We Need to Talk about Kevin in addition to the film – given the history of the show using song titles as episode names.
I knew Robbie would make some big revelation through the meta episode, but the revelation wasn’t for the audience, it was for Dean. I love that he used the Ben Edlund episode in which the subtext indicated that there was an actual sexual relationship between Dean and fallen Castiel in the future, because there is definitely S-E-X in Robbie’s subtext. Robbie is by far not the only writer to purposefully insert Destiel subtext, but his subtext isn’t just romantic, it is erotic. So it’s fitting that he chose The End as the plot element in the episode.
In The End, Dean has his phone call with Castiel, which from his point of view ended with Castiel curtly saying ‘Yes’.
The phone conversation was Dean reminding Castiel that he was human, and Castiel having little patience for Dean being human. Dean didn’t know what Castiel said after he hung up, and he certainly never knew that Castiel waited for him all night. The next heard from Castiel, after having come in contact with this very human version of the angel in the future, was when Castiel pulled him away from Zechariah. But Dean did not know that he waited for Dean. Dean did not know that during this time, he was Castiel’s only preoccupation.
So why is this important? Because from Dean’s point of view, Castiel is always leaving. Just like he walked out of his door at the bunker. He can never keep Castiel.
But Dean’s point of view has always been wrong, because we know that most of the times that Castiel has physically vanished from Dean’s presence, he has still had his angel radio tuned into Dean. There’s an incongruence in their experience in that Dean feels abandoned while Castiel, from his point of view, never leaves Dean. It is a revelation for Dean that what Castiel is doing is not leaving him again, leaving like he always does, but that the angel is waiting for him. Castiel is waiting for him like he alwayes does, and all Dean needs to do is to reach out and he will be gripped tight.
How dare you bring this back to my dash, how very dare you.
I’ve been so focused on the way that this song took an arguably platonic moment and retroactively showed it to the show’s audience through a romantic lens with the lyrics “I’ll wait for you” that it never occurred to me that Dean “everybody leaves” Winchester was also getting this perspective.
Never thought I could love this episode more, and yet here we are :’)
I can’t help but wonder if Dean’s fear of Cas not wanting to stick around is actually worse now. Because he learned in Fan Fiction that Cas had waited for him. He learned in The Prisoner that Cas planned to stand by him forever.
But then Dean beat the hell out of him, and killed Death, and didn’t kill Amara, and Cas was angry with him.
And then Cas said yes to Lucifer. In Dean’s mind, saying yes to Lucifer is surely tantamount to leaving. And he still doesn’t know why Cas did it.
It occurs to me that from Dean’s perspective, it likely looks like Cas has finally given up on him.
It also goes some way into explaining why Dean so adamantly denied the possibility that Castiel could have made the choice out of his own volition (while fearing in his heart of hearts that he might have) – because for Dean to accept that Castiel made the choice for himself means to accept some other uncomfortable truths, as well.
It’s not just that Castiel seems to have given up on him, but that it’s because Dean failed to take care of him – Dean failed to take care of someone that he had made his responsibility, someone that he had chosen to protect (even from himself) – and in Dean Winchester’s world there can be no greater failure.
Not my gifs, but here’s a thing I find interesting: this framing began as an SFX cheat.
TPTB needed to depict Cas’s supernaturally abrupt method of departing a scene; either they didn’t have the budget to actually show Cas winging away, or they preferred a more subtle and suggestive approach. (Having now had an on-camera angel teleport in ‘The Vessel’, I know the subtler suggestive approach is my preference.) What they decided on was the following sequence of shots:
1) Medium shot of both Dean and Cas in the frame.
2) Closeup on Dean/camera follows Dean as he walks or turns away from Cas, cutting Cas out of the frame.
3) Wide shot of Dean alone, emphasizing the empty space where Cas used to be.
There are some slight variations in there–for example, sometimes they cut directly from a shot with Cas in it to the wide shot without Cas–but generally, this was TPTB’s decision on how to exeunt Cas. It was a budget-conscious, technically straightforward, functional way to place Cas physically in the scene/narrative.
HOWEVER. This framing has now come to be used in scenes that Castiel is not, and never was, a part of physically at all. In the last two gifs here (another example would be Dean praying to Cas in his room at the bunker at the end of ‘Remember the Titans’), the wide shot of Dean alone doesn’t depict Cas’s departure, but rather his absence. The empty space isn’t emphatic because it’s where Cas used to be, but because it’s where Cas should be. It emphasizes that Dean wants him to be there.
So, this visual technique that used to be all about locating Castiel physically has become a visual technique for locating Dean emotionally. And I think that’s nifty. 🙂
I knew Robbie would make some big revelation through the meta episode, but the revelation wasn’t for the audience, it was for Dean. I love that he used the Ben Edlund episode in which the subtext indicated that there was an actual sexual relationship between Dean and fallen Castiel in the future, because there is definitely S-E-X in Robbie’s subtext. Robbie is by far not the only writer to purposefully insert Destiel subtext, but his subtext isn’t just romantic, it is erotic. So it’s fitting that he chose The End as the plot element in the episode.
In The End, Dean has his phone call with Castiel, which from his point of view ended with Castiel curtly saying ‘Yes’.
The phone conversation was Dean reminding Castiel that he was human, and Castiel having little patience for Dean being human. Dean didn’t know what Castiel said after he hung up, and he certainly never knew that Castiel waited for him all night. The next heard from Castiel, after having come in contact with this very human version of the angel in the future, was when Castiel pulled him away from Zechariah. But Dean did not know that he waited for Dean. Dean did not know that during this time, he was Castiel’s only preoccupation.
So why is this important? Because from Dean’s point of view, Castiel is always leaving. Just like he walked out of his door at the bunker. He can never keep Castiel.
But Dean’s point of view has always been wrong, because we know that most of the times that Castiel has physically vanished from Dean’s presence, he has still had his angel radio tuned into Dean. There’s an incongruence in their experience in that Dean feels abandoned while Castiel, from his point of view, never leaves Dean. It is a revelation for Dean that what Castiel is doing is not leaving him again, leaving like he always does, but that the angel is waiting for him. Castiel is waiting for him like he alwayes does, and all Dean needs to do is to reach out and he will be gripped tight.
How dare you bring this back to my dash, how very dare you.
I’ve been so focused on the way that this song took an arguably platonic moment and retroactively showed it to the show’s audience through a romantic lens with the lyrics “I’ll wait for you” that it never occurred to me that Dean “everybody leaves” Winchester was also getting this perspective.
Never thought I could love this episode more, and yet here we are :’)
I can’t help but wonder if Dean’s fear of Cas not wanting to stick around is actually worse now. Because he learned in Fan Fiction that Cas had waited for him. He learned in The Prisoner that Cas planned to stand by him forever.
But then Dean beat the hell out of him, and killed Death, and didn’t kill Amara, and Cas was angry with him.
And then Cas said yes to Lucifer. In Dean’s mind, saying yes to Lucifer is surely tantamount to leaving. And he still doesn’t know why Cas did it.
It occurs to me that from Dean’s perspective, it likely looks like Cas has finally given up on him.
It also goes some way into explaining why Dean so adamantly denied the possibility that Castiel could have made the choice out of his own volition (while fearing in his heart of hearts that he might have) – because for Dean to accept that Castiel made the choice for himself means to accept some other uncomfortable truths, as well.
It’s not just that Castiel seems to have given up on him, but that it’s because Dean failed to take care of him – Dean failed to take care of someone that he had made his responsibility, someone that he had chosen to protect (even from himself) – and in Dean Winchester’s world there can be no greater failure.
I knew Robbie would make some big revelation through the meta episode, but the revelation wasn’t for the audience, it was for Dean. I love that he used the Ben Edlund episode in which the subtext indicated that there was an actual sexual relationship between Dean and fallen Castiel in the future, because there is definitely S-E-X in Robbie’s subtext. Robbie is by far not the only writer to purposefully insert Destiel subtext, but his subtext isn’t just romantic, it is erotic. So it’s fitting that he chose The End as the plot element in the episode.
In The End, Dean has his phone call with Castiel, which from his point of view ended with Castiel curtly saying ‘Yes’.
The phone conversation was Dean reminding Castiel that he was human, and Castiel having little patience for Dean being human. Dean didn’t know what Castiel said after he hung up, and he certainly never knew that Castiel waited for him all night. The next heard from Castiel, after having come in contact with this very human version of the angel in the future, was when Castiel pulled him away from Zechariah. But Dean did not know that he waited for Dean. Dean did not know that during this time, he was Castiel’s only preoccupation.
So why is this important? Because from Dean’s point of view, Castiel is always leaving. Just like he walked out of his door at the bunker. He can never keep Castiel.
But Dean’s point of view has always been wrong, because we know that most of the times that Castiel has physically vanished from Dean’s presence, he has still had his angel radio tuned into Dean. There’s an incongruence in their experience in that Dean feels abandoned while Castiel, from his point of view, never leaves Dean. It is a revelation for Dean that what Castiel is doing is not leaving him again, leaving like he always does, but that the angel is waiting for him. Castiel is waiting for him like he alwayes does, and all Dean needs to do is to reach out and he will be gripped tight.
How dare you bring this back to my dash, how very dare you.
I’ve been so focused on the way that this song took an arguably platonic moment and retroactively showed it to the show’s audience through a romantic lens with the lyrics “I’ll wait for you” that it never occurred to me that Dean “everybody leaves” Winchester was also getting this perspective.
Never thought I could love this episode more, and yet here we are :’)
I can’t help but wonder if Dean’s fear of Cas not wanting to stick around is actually worse now. Because he learned in Fan Fiction that Cas had waited for him. He learned in The Prisoner that Cas planned to stand by him forever.
But then Dean beat the hell out of him, and killed Death, and didn’t kill Amara, and Cas was angry with him.
And then Cas said yes to Lucifer. In Dean’s mind, saying yes to Lucifer is surely tantamount to leaving. And he still doesn’t know why Cas did it.
It occurs to me that from Dean’s perspective, it likely looks like Cas has finally given up on him.
It also goes some way into explaining why Dean so adamantly denied the possibility that Castiel could have made the choice out of his own volition (while fearing in his heart of hearts that he might have) – because for Dean to accept that Castiel made the choice for himself means to accept some other uncomfortable truths, as well.
It’s not just that Castiel seems to have given up on him, but that it’s because Dean failed to take care of him – Dean failed to take care of someone that he had made his responsibility, someone that he had chosen to protect (even from himself) – and in Dean Winchester’s world there can be no greater failure.
So there’s the focus on hands / hand prints and the focus on “the wrong shoulder”. I’ve not delved into this thoroughly but has it clicked yet that while Castiel’s hand print is on Dean’s left shoulder / arm, the Mark (The Darkness) is on Dean’s right arm (the wrong shoulder).
While Lucifer touching Dean’s right shoulder serves as a little heart-tug to let the audience (and Dean) know that something isn’t right – I think it also serves as part of a larger subtext about this whole “wrong shoulder” business. It’s essentially the same as how hands have continued to show up – the right arm also shows up a lot, foreshadowing the darkness.
Dean is literally pulled in two directions. Castiel (the left arm, the hand print) and The Darkness (the right arm, the Mark). Notice how one is male and one is female – Dean duality / bisexuality subtext again.
(We all saw the recent ep where Dean has a huge DARK sign hanging over his right arm, yeah?)
Also, Lucifer = The Light (bringer / bearer).
Isn’t it interesting how Castiel thought he needed to become The Light in order to defeat The Darkness.
Hands and Shoulders (follow up)
(Ah, don’t you hate when you hit ‘submit’ on something but your train of thought hasn’t quite finished yet.)
I forgot to bring in that third meta that’s going around, ‘cause I’ve got something for that too.
Cas = the light.
Amara = the darkness.
Dean is caught in the middle therefor Dean = the gray.
The gray…the grail… (and possibly the power of ‘gay’ love).
Also Dean the grail = the vessel. Which we already know is true, because he’s an angel vessel.
Now stay with me while we consider Tarot for a moment. There are four elements.
Lucifer = fire (because hell, devil, light, star)
Amara = air (because dark smoke)
Cas = water (because of all the reasons)
Dean = earth (because Earth, humanity, material attachments like his car and his burgers.)
In Tarot the pentacle represents earth. Dean has a pentacle tattoo on
his chest. (The ‘bad chest touch’ being the fourth meta going around.)
And in Tarot the cup / challis / grail represents water. So why is Dean
also the grail? Because it’s a vessel for water. And who represents water again? Cas.
Water + fire = smoke. As in air. Amara. This is a bad combination and it’s only going to make things worse.
Air + earth = dry lifeless dusty wasteland. Dean, do not give in to Amara!
But… Water + earth = clay. The stuff humanity is made from (or at least Adam in the bible).
Dean and Cas are the answer to this victory.
And finally, body parts -wise, if Cas = left arm, Amara = right arm,
Dean = chest / heart, what does Lucifer equal? (Is it just me or has
Lucifer been touching a lot of people on the head?) I don’t have answers
for any of this bit, I’m just trying to bring all the metas together.
And that’s me done. Enjoy.
Submitted by Anonymous.
(I’m not sure why people keep sending stuff to blog instead of blogging it themselves, but I love it. Keep ‘em coming.)
@bluestar86 has been chronicling the discussion on hands and hand-prints in season 11, so see their blog for more on the topic.
It was really interesting what this episode did with time. Two different times, yet one ongoing, interwoven story- what happened in the past affected the present, but also what happened in the present actually affected the past. After all, there’s no reason that trapping the Soul Eater would eject all the souls, and Bobby suspects as much himself- yet it does make sense that killing the soul-eater would eject the souls. And if Bobby and Dean were in the nest at the same time, then what Dean did there would affect Bobby as well.
To build on the theme of time, the two stories were filmed in such a way that they were essentially interchangeable, and yet the parallels threw into sharp contrast the subtle differences. Sam and Dean followed in Rufus and Bobby’s footsteps almost exactly, including what they argued about, but because Sam and Dean had just one extra resource, they were able to take the hunt one step further. Not just trap the bad, but kill it, and free the souls trapped within. History is repeating itself, with an outcome that appears to be similar, but is actually fundamentally different.
-which of course has serious implications for the mytharc this season. Finding a way not just to repeat history but to expand on it, find a real solution that will allow for life to continue afterward. Not just accept that you can’t save everyone, but fight to do it anyway.
Lastly on the theme of time, I also found it interesting that the Bobby & Rufus story was “some years ago” rather than a specific date. The ambiguity of the time period added to the interwoven quality of the two stories, placing them in that space outside of the linear dimension of time. It also meant that even with Bobby mentioning the apocalypse, it was unclear when in the show’s history the hunt took place- until Dean mentioned Lilith at the end, it wasn’t even clear whether the hunt was before or after Lucifer was set free. Given the context of season 11, I assumed that the hunt took place during season 5. But Bobby’s hunt took place in the period before Lucifer was set free, back when they didn’t realize that Lilith was the final seal, that Sam is Lucifer’s true vessel and Dean is Michael’s, back before they knew they wouldn’t be able to kill the devil, only trap him. It’s almost as if Bobby’s hunt took place in the window of time before the Darkness was released, reminding us that it’s not just the individual hunt that’s repeating, it’s the entire timeline.
With that, though, we’re also reminded that even though it seems that history is repeating itself, this time won’t end up exactly like the last. Maybe they’ll find a way to actually kill the devil- maybe they’ll find a way to actually kill Amara. History isn’t worth anything if you don’t learn from it, build on the work that others have done before you. And maybe the way that Sam and Dean solve this problem will have a profound impact not just on the future, but on the way they view the past as well.
‘Set aside all the killing people or not killing people or whatever, and you’re left with this: Amy is a supernatural being that Sam fell in love with as a child. More importantly, from Dean’s perspective:Amy is a supernatural being that Sam once fell in love with when he was too stupid to know not to. Dean knows that no matter how innocent she seems, Amy is a snake in the grass. She’s dangerous. And by killing Amy, Dean thinks he’s doing Sam a favor. Sam’s blinded by nostalgia, Dean thinks, and so it’s up to Dean to do what must be done.
This is a pretty obvious projection on Dean’s part of his feelings about what Cas did to him. Cas seemed innocuous, and Dean trusted him. But then Cas broke Sam’s wall, opened the door to Purgatory and unleashed the Leviathan. Cas, by virtue of being a supernatural being, is and always was dangerous, and Dean forgot it. He let his feelings cloud his judgment, and now everyone must pay the price.
Here’s why I really emphasized all that stuff about A plots and B/C plots earlier, because without understanding how the A plot mirrors the C plot and vice versa, you’re missing out on what this episode is really trying to tell you.
Basically, the A plot in this episode (the Amy storyline) acts as a reflection of the C plot (Dean’s grief), in which Dean realizes that Cas is the supernatural being that he fell in love with when he was too stupid to know not to. And so by killing Amy, Dean is attempting to retroactively fix that mistake with Cas.’
As mentioned in this conversation thread, I had a slightly different interpretation to Dean and Lucifer’s interaction in Into The Mystic to those I’ve seen going around, and especially regarding what about it unsettled Dean, and I thought I’d explore it a little more.
Dean has a deep-seated desire for affirmation, and he especially desires it from the people he loves. Although teased throughout the first two seasons, we first really see it in Dean telling Carmen Porter, his imaginary companion, “You know, I get it. Why you’re the one” in What Is and Never Should Be . What Dean desperately wants is for someone to tell him that he’s done good, that it’s not his fault, everything’s going to be alright, and that he’s not alone. Dean has wanted someone to tell him these things ever since his mother, caught in her own pain, replaced these words with pie when he was a child, which we saw in Dark Side of the Moon.
Castiel is not, and never has been, very forthcoming with his verbal affirmation of Dean – not because he doesn’t think Dean deserves it, but because he doesn’t know how to express it. We saw a change mid-ninth season of Castiel affirming Dean and Dean’s choices – but not to Dean, to Sam. All of season ten, Castiel took Dean’s side, he supported Dean’s choices, he’s was there for Dean all the way, but not in a way that Dean was able to see, not verbally affirming Dean in a way that he could understand. Dean doesn’t know that Castiel is in his proverbial corner, all the way, until the end of the line, because Dean’s problem, which Castiel outlined for him when they had just met, is that he has no faith in himself. So why should anyone else have faith in him?
And here is Lucifer, suddenly giving Dean the thing that he has wanted for so long, the thing that he needs: Castiel affirming him. Having faith in him. Telling him that he’s doing the right thing, he’s making the right choice, and that Castiel will stand by him while he makes this choice. Lucifer is telling Dean what Castiel was trying to tell Dean at the end of The Prisoner, but in a way that Dean is able to hear.
In The Prisoner Castiel tells Dean that he will stay with him until the end, and what Dean hears is that it’s all his fault and he brings Castiel, brings everyone nothing but pain – whereas Lucifer just comes out and says it: you won’t be alone, I’ll be with you. There are many such contrasts between Lucifer and Castiel, beginning with the simple fact that Dean finds Cas in the bunker of his own volition in the first place.
We saw the flipside of this in Soul Survivor: Dean wants Cas in the bunker. Castiel likely wants to stay in the bunker, but doesn’t think he can. What Castiel tells Dean is that it’s alright. What Dean hears is that he tried to kill his brother and that he’s in constant danger of losing everyone he loves because of his own actions.
In the episode Lucifer takes responsibility for destroying Amara, expressing the sentiment that it is his responsibility and not Dean’s alone. Dean thinks it’s all on him alone pretty much full time. That’s his most enduring character trait.
Lucifer wants to hear more about how Dean was unable to kill Amara. He’s understanding, offers his sympathy. Contrast this with Our Little World in which Dean thinks Cas is accusing him of not being able to kill her, both of them defensive.
Lucifer asks Dean to tell him everything, offering what seems like a sympathetic ear. Castiel, well. Castiel wants to Dean open up to him, but what Dean hears is:
Many people have paralleled the shoulder touches between the episode and Meta Fiction, but there’s more to it than Lucifer merely grabbing ‘the wrong shoulder’. Lucifer tells Dean that what he’s done may turn out to be a good thing, whereas Castiel asks Dean what he’s done. Castiel is worried, Dean hears an accusation because he’s already feeling guilty.
Lucifer promises to help Dean find out what it is they’re dealing with, regarding Dean’s connection to Amara. Castiel has habitually vanished to do his “Caine from Kung-Fu crap“ both because he is weighed down by his responsibilities and because he doesn’t think Dean wants him to stay in the bunker.
Lucifer agrees to let this stay just between the two of them, to not tell Sam about what Dean confessed to him. Everyone has been telling Dean to share everything with his brother, that their problem is that they don’t talk about crap. Lucifer is, that is, validating Dean’s choice, even though Dean knows Castiel knows it’s a bad choice.
Lucifer is transporting Dean and Castiel’s interpersonal dynamic to that moment in Road Trip before it all went to hell, and Dean thinks he doesn’t get to have that. Thinks he doesn’t deserve it. Oh, but he wants it. That’s what he wants – from Castiel.
Lucifer says things that he doesn’t mean to further his own agenda. Castiel means things he doesn’t say, maybe out of respect for Dean who, after all, has expressed his disinclination to participate in ‘Chick flick moments’, or maybe because he just doesn’t know how to say them.
But hearing the things Lucifer told him and hearing them from Castiel? That is Dean’s fucking sunset, right there.
I’m not sure about this just because I really believed he was unnerved by the end of their first conversation, but this would be a tragic reason for Dean to say that he thought something was off with Cas at the end of the episode.
Sure, he’s unnerved, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unnerving him beyond Castiel not following ‘the script’, meaning that there were no signals of anything supernatural, signals of any gut-feeling that would have tipped him off.
It’s tragic that “if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true” would be the tip off, but it fits the pattern: Dean knew his father wasn’t his father because he was too kind, Kevin knew that Sam and Dean weren’t Sam and Dean because they were too nice.
And actually Sam in “Baby” was sure that john wasn’t really his father as he told him all he wanted to hear…
Excellent point: that was Robbie’s episode and is textually close enough for an intentional cross-reference. There’s precedent.
Plus, that was Lucifer pretending to be John in Baby. The precedent was set for him specifically, this season. Lucifer thinks the way to the brothers’ hearts is through saying what they think they want to hear. In reality, *no one* ever says what they need to say to each other in this show. Not until it’s almost too late. So, it’s what gives him, and others, away. But for Lucifer himself, every time he’s dealt with a human, he says exactly what they want to hear. He just doesn’t realize that will never work on the Winchesters. Lucifer is powerful, but not infallible. His lack of understanding humans has always been, and will always be, his downfall.
Good points! I think there was a further parallel in Baby in how Dean wanted very much for someone to acknowledge his portmanteu ‘werepire’, which Sam refused to do. He needed someone to validate him. And when Castiel did it, he said it, Dean wasn’t there to hear it. Dean doesn’t know that Castiel validated his idea, validated him.
Everything that Lucifer told Dean might well be things that Castiel could tell Dean if he knew how, if he knew Dean needed it. Castiel means the things Lucifer says, and yet one the last things Dean heard the real Castiel say to him was that he needs to go it alone because Dean is a frail human.
This is the stuff star-crossed lovers are made of.
reblogging for added commentary
The conversation in 11.11 immediately made me recall Dean’s reaction to John all the way back in 1.22, when Dean realizes John’s possessed because John said he was proud of Dean instead of being angry about “wasting” one of the Colt’s bullets to save Sam. Dean’s issues go back a lot farther than his relationship with Cas.
So while Dean might have felt relieved to unburden himself to Cas(ifer), and to have Cas(ifer) validate him in 11.11, I can’t help but see a layer of this uncertainty over the change in their usual dynamic, as described above. Much as he might want Cas to be that open and understanding and affirming with him, it’s… not… natural. At least, not in a way that Dean can put his finger on at the end of the episode.
Oh, hey! I hadn’t even noticed there was more conversation here.
I think this deserves another look now that Dean has found out the truth of the matter, especially in light of the end of The Vessel. Outwardly, it would seem like Dean’s faith in Castiel is unshaken – he refuses to believe that Castiel has chosen to become a vessel for Lucifer out of his own volition or that he continues to do so out of his own choice.
But when he tells Sam “That’s not possible,“ he looks away. He looks away as though he doesn’t quite believe the things he is saying to his little brother. Because this? This is much easier for Dean to believe – that things have gone terribly sideways, again, that he’s fucked up, again, that this is all his fault. And Dean is blaming himself for everything because that’s what Dean does, make no mistake.
This is familiar. This is something he knows. It hurts, but he knows how to deal with this – work it like a case, drown it out in bouts of violence and alcoholism. Conceal, don’t feel. Dad still loves you. I love you, too.
When we finally see Castiel and Dean communicate with one another, that’s going to be one painful experience.
Someone probably ought to discuss Mannequin 3: The Reckoning as the third installation of the Mannequin film franchise, as the only thing the films Mannequin and Mannequin 2: On the Move had in addition to mannequins was the queer character Hollywood Montrose.
The original Mannequin film came out in the late 80s, and the character is a huge, flaming stereotype – but also kind of awesome. Rantasmo discusses the fact that it’s not the stereotype that is the problem as the nature of stereotypes is that they have some kind of basis in reality, but that as stereotypes present an incomplete picture, the problem at the time was (and often still is, especially when it comes to bisexual characters), that it was the only kind of visibility there was. But Hollywood Montrose, whose love for his car Bad Girl rivals that of Dean for Baby, was a prominent and recognizable queer character. And while the Mannequin films aren’t exactly LGBT films, there is a queer element to both of them.
And Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder attached their episode to the franchise via its title. It is the third Mannequin story.
But there was something else about the episode I wanted to discuss today. The background of Dean’s phone. The background image in his phone is a picture of his own feet on a motel bed, and the first time I saw it, I thought it was the saddest thing I had seen on the show. Obviously, the picture isn’t really of his feet but of the motel room wall, which is either a photograph or an extremely life-like painting of a forest. It’s likely that Dean thought it was cool.
Only, he thought it was cool months ago in Clap Your Hands If You Believe, when he seems to have taken the picture. The timing of the picture must be while Sam was in the library and Dean was alone in the motel room, because from Dean’s facial expression when he almost sits on the bed on which Sam had sex with a woman earlier indicates that the bed that sex happened on had been his bed, and he took over the other bed from which the picture was taken subsequently.
What’s interesting is that the wall of trees is not the only thing these episodes have in common. We also see the El Sol sign in both episodes, and in the former episode it is in the diner just before Dean is left alone by himself in the motel room. The brands are semiotic signals that carry the subtextual narrative, and the diner scene in Clap Your Hands was one of two episodes in which the presence of the sign made no sense to me. The episode Clap Your Hands in its entirety was one – is one to this day – that is so filled to the brim with subtext, symbolism, and different undercurrents that it escapes full analysis.
But what we can conclude on the basis of Dean having had the forest from the motel as his phone background for several weeks is that he must have spent some time morosely staring at the wall in the motel, and even more importantly – that it meant something to him. It meant something to him, and that same feeling was being recalled in this episode in which Dean finally breaks up with Lisa. So what is it about this forest?
I want to take a detour in the two times we see an angel visit the dreams of Dean Winchester to communicate with him: The Rapture and The Song Remains the Same. I haven’t seen these scenes compared, and yet they are crying out to be compared and contrasted, just as Anna and Castiel were. In both scenes, an angel visits Dean Winchester’s dream to speak with him: Anna intrudes on a sexy dream featuring the strip tease of an angel and a demon, and Castiel visits a dream of Dean fishing by himself.
The difference between the scenes is that Anna was trying to reach Dean whom he was unable to find due to the sigils in his ribs at the behest of her superiors, whereas Castiel was attempting to communicate with Dean while knowing that he was being observed by his superiors, fearing that even this communication was not private enough to keep them from being overheard. Anna, that is, visited a surface dream, whereas Castiel visited a dream that was buried much deeper in Dean’s subconscious. Castiel has incentive to find the most private part in Dean’s subconscious for his communication, and it was this pier on which he was seated alone. Anna even lampshades this by her question “This is what you dream about?“
The scene is iconic, and people usually don’t spend a lot of time musing on the fact that Castiel is not a part of the dreamscape. Castiel intrudes on the dream and changes it, but he is not a part of the dream that I would argue was a frequent, recurring dream to Dean following the episode Born Under a Bad Sign, which was placed in the region of the Twin Lakes area in Michigan, an episode which featured a lot fishing symbolism, and which followed Dean and Sam having taken separate vacations – of having spent time apart from each other. The recurring nature of this dream is perhaps hinted by the presence of piers in the visual narrative to this day.
So, did Dean spend time fishing all by himself he then later dreamed about? When you look at the scene in The Rapture, the camera is driven forward, slowly edging toward him from behind, as though someone is approaching. As though Dean is expecting someone.
Not Castiel, who suddenly appears beside him, but someone else. Who? We don’t know. But there he is, on a pier by a forest and likely a cabin in the woods, expecting someone, dreaming a dream that may be based on a memory of something that happened in Twin Lakes, Michigan.
Lisa lived somewhere in Michigan during the sixth season after having moved from Indiana, as it happened. But the person Dean was waiting for wasn’t Lisa, obviously. They were estranged at the time. Lisa was always the rebound. But she did live in Michigan. And we see this forest in the background of his phone in the episode in which they break up that he had carried with him for months. Possibly because it reminded him of a cabin in the woods. And someone that walked toward him on the pier that we never got to see.
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