Since so many people seem to have trouble with their Dean Winchester-to-English translations recently, I thought I’d offer my services in the form of a small dictionary.
Dean Winchester is known to use projection as a psychological defense mechanism. Projection is a means of relieving psychological tension by projecting unwanted characteristics of oneself to others – most often on his brother. Dean Winchester has displayed a propensity for projection ever since the Pilot episode. It is one of his most enduring characteristics.
No chick flick moments! = I’m insecure about my masculinity Dude, could you be more gay? = I’m insecure about my sexuality You’re a red-headed woman = I’m insecure about my masculinity You’re Lois Lane = I’m Lois Lane Angelina Jolie? Brad Pitt? = I would so do Brad Pitt, dude Sam wears women’s underwear = I have tried on Rhonda Hurley’s underwear Is this [bra] yours? = I wear women’s underwear Sam Winchester cries his way through sex = I totally get emotional during sex Sam Winchester takes keeps a ruler by the bed… = I feel insecure about my masculinity I was too busy having sex with women = I am such a nerd Let’s not go all geek on this stuff, okay? = I am such a nerd We’ll braid Sam’s hair = I’m insecure about my masculinity because I’m in love with you Or, hey, how about what you did to Penny Markle in the sixth grade? = I did something real shitty to Penny Markle in sixth grade You’re awkward and weird = I feel awkward and weird Real men don’t drink from cups this small = I feel insecure about my masculinity For the ladies. Or the fellas. I don’t judge = You’re a bisexual douchebag = I’m a bisexual douchebag Well? Come to apologize? = I really hurt you and I don’t even know how to begin apologizing
this isn’t fandom making this up the narrative goes out of its way as early as episode three to say this
True that. And Carver and Dabb’s episodes especially have taken it seriously as a psychological condition, not just used it for gags.
The first thing you’ve gotta know about this post and me, is that I adore Flutie’s meta, the other is that I can’t watch Repo Man without crying a thousand oceans from start to end: 1) because it’s so Dean-heavy it makes me wanna puke, 2) because it’s so Destiel-heavy it’s gross, 3) because it is genuinely terrifying.
Flutie did an awesome analysis of it, which you are going to need to read in order for this post to make any sense. I’m not going to remake a lesser version, so don’t expect me to explain in detail why x mirrors y. I repeat: this is not an analysis. I am just going to collect all the parallels so that you get a sort of visual scheme with all the evidence that proves that the A plot mirrors the C plot. Also, Flutiebear is not associated with this post in any way and does not necessarily agree with it or with my interpretation of her analysis.
i did this mostly because feels. But since my exam paper in June might be about Supernatural (YES YES YES YES YES SO EXCITED), for the first time in my life I can say it’s also legitimately for science (YAY!)
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The parallels start with physical appearence: Jeffrey and Dean wear the same clothes:
since you never get a clear view of them standing next to each other in the episode, I drew a sketch for you.
Dean’s outfits are both in the same style as Jeffrey’s. This also works if you combine the outfit Dean wears earlier in the episode and after.
All the other characters, Sam included, are wearing visibly different clothes.
Then there is the dialogue. Here are all the quotes that are significative for both the A and the C plot. That is to say, all these parts are about Jeffrey’s story with the demon (in the text), but also they mirror Dean’s story with Castiel (in the subtext) and say something relevant about either Dean, or his grief and struggles and coping mechanisms, or what happened with Castiel. Note that here I’m reporting almost only the dialogue, not the character’s reaction to it. Again, for all Dean’s very telling expressions, Flutie’s analysis will ensure you don’t miss anything.
yeah that doesn’t stop the fact that when sam knew dean was under the effect of the siren but thought you need to have sex with the siren sam wasn’t at all like “eww dean had gay sex.” as a matter of fact sam seemed unfazed.
mod d
It’s funny how the plain text of the episode says that the Siren looks like “what ever floats the guy’s boat”, and then it looks nothing like his brother. If only we had other episodes to teach us about Dean’s type….
Before the Siren went after Dean, we saw 2 more guys under its spell, and in both cases the Siren substituted the person they loved the most and made them kill this person. The first guy killed his wife, the second guy killed his mother. Both of them had sex with the Siren – but note that sex is not necessarily the reason why they were eventually persuaded to kill their loved ones.
When the Siren impersonates Belle for Lenny (the second guy), it does not lure him in promising sex. Belle tells Lenny how impressed she is with him taking care of both her and his invalid mom, calls him ‘amazing’, tells him she loves him. Then she promises they can be together forever – she might be a stripper, but she’s no ‘bitch in a G-string’. She fulfills a very real emotional need Lenny has, and succeeds in taking his mom’s place in his heart. Note, the Siren does this not – NOT – by turning itself into an exact copy of his mom. It turns into a girl who needs someone to love, to take care of her. It isn’t the promise of sex that convinces Lenny to kill his mom – and yet, lo and behold, they have sex even though ‘Belle’ is a substitute for his mom, and sex is not the point for him.
Also, like f-ckyeahfutbol notes, Nick is nothing like Dean’s brother. He’s impressed with Dean’s car, likes the same music he does – he’s not, by any stretch of imagination, a little brother who looks up to Dean and trusts him. Nick does show trust in Dean, and he also does make a show of being impressed with Dean, but if what the Siren was going for was Sam, then it failed completely, because Nick is nothing like Sam, in looks or character. Like, at all. He’s not Little Brother Sammy™, he’s the type of guy Dean would easily befriend, maybe let his guard down around, maybe flirt with. And the writers may have gone with the silly sharing a drink thing to exchange saliva because they weren’t willing to do anything more textual, but this episode is a bi Dean subtext galore, and it’s fine if you interpret Nick/Dean just as a brotherly thing, but between Nick being nothing like Sam, Lenny having sex with Belle even though she was technically trying to substitute his elderly mother who was the most important person in Lenny’s life, and the fact that Sirens are inherently sexual creatures… a non-platonic reading of Nick/Dean is definitely valid and plausible.
Note also that this is the second Cathryn Humphris episode (cf. Dream a Little Dream of Me) in which Dean sharing his saliva with another man is an actual plot point.
reblogging for this excellent comment and also to fix all those typos/mistakes I made before, that response was awfully rushed and it shows omg
Okay, seriously though, modern speech would typically call for “practical” here, not “sensible.” A quick Google search–highly scientific, I know–for “sensible shoes” pulls up some random spiritual memoir and about 2,440,000 results. “Practical shoes” on the other hand brings up something like 67,700,000 results–roughly 30x as many. (“Comfortable shoes” gets me even more: 142,000,000.) No one uses the phrase “sensible shoes” that way. So don’t tell me that the use of “sensible shoes” wasn’t an intentional use by the writers of coded queer lingo, here.
For those of you not yet in the know, “she wears sensible shoes” is an old euphemistic way of saying someone is a lesbian. (The phrase “light in his loafers” is still too much in circulation and obviously euphemistic for something to just get slipped into dialogue. My other favorite obscure queer euphemism, by the way, is “born on the 17th of May,” which refers to Paragraph 175 of the old German Penal Code which outlawed homosexuality until the mid-1990s. I love obscure queer coding.)
I was rewatching Hibbing 911, and the scene between Dean and the Deputy is even more eroticized than I remembered. It’s difficult to believe it actually exists. There’s not a part of that scene that isn’t intentional. The deputy is into dudes, and Dean went there with the express purpose of flirting the information out of him.
The contrast between the scene, and the deputy’s scene with Jody on the one hand, and the scene with the Deputy and Dean with Sam present, makes it even more obvious.
Like Dean, Jody quickly realizes the Deputy is lying. He has his hands folded against his chest, but he does the same thing he does with Dean: he looks down and up at her, twice. But he does it idly, his hands crossed the whole time. He unfolds his hands as he and the Sheriff leave, giving her a longer glance, checking her out. Compared to what happens with Dean, this is academic. But there’s a clear parallel, there’s a clear contrast. The Deputy is curious here, but he’s also self-contained. He’s unperturbed. He’s in possession of all his faculties.
In the scene with Sam present, Dean is aggressive, although he does not begin that way. Notice that the Deputy has his hand suggestively on his belt the whole time, and Dean not once glances down at it where glancing would be the natural impulse because the man’s hand is close to his gun – his actual gun. In fact, he seems noticeably uncomfortable with the line of sight, his eyes trying to focus on everything else. But this doesn’t stop Dean from cold-reading the Deputy. He can tell from their short exchange that he’s thinks the Sheriff is lying. Not that the Deputy is lying, but that he thinks someone else is lying. And Dean, a keen observer of people, can probably tell a host of other things about the Deputy, as well.
Dean starts out cordial enough, answering the Deputy’s disbelief with “Well, we go where the FBI tells us to go.” This is accompanied with a small, fake smile. It’s not until the Deputy gives him the flirty line about it being cute to watch them try that Dean suddenly shifts gear, going from 1 to 80 in a second flat. The Deputy’s jibe about the bobcat had no effect on him, so it’s not about him making fun of them or the FBI. They were the butt-end of his joke on the bobcat, and Dean lets it roll off his back. It was the flirty gaze and the word ‘cute’, used in front of his brother, that set him off.
Unlike with Jody, the Deputy is even in this scene smiling with his teeth. His pupils are blown wide.
The Sheriff points out the bear claws with the Deputy’s hand still suggestively at his belt. He gives Dean a look before he walks away without a word.
Dean describes him as ‘Deputy Douche’ to Sam, but offers to go crack him immediately. Dean clearly felt that the conversation was not over, yet felt the need to contextualize his behaviour for Sam. Their next scene could not be more different from the initial encounter.
First of all, Dean gives him an honest smile at his teeny-weeny hand-cuffs remark, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Clearly, he thinks the Deputy is hilarious. The whole cadence of his voice is different. The way his emphasizes words double-communicates. When he says “The investigation my partner and I are here on,” he doesn’t emphasize investigation, which would be natural, nor the word partner. He emphasizes ‘here on’. While he avoided looking directly at the Deputy before, he now looks him firmly in the eye, and his gaze holds the Deputy’s. It’s a gentle, friendly domination.
Then there’s the really clever way in which Dean works the man over. He uses the word ’big’ twice, to counter the Deputy’s ‘teeny-weeny’ suggestion. The investigation is big. The boys back in DC are big. Dean is making innuendo on his huge dick for the Deputy. And the Deputy most certainly gets it, because on both uses of the word ‘big’, he checks out Dean’s crotch. First shyly, but the second time? He is so ready for it.
“You think that might be something you’d be interested in?” Dean asks. “Might be,” he says, bashfully. They’re not talking about the fucking case, there.
Then Dean tells him that he needs him, first of all, to be totally straight with him. But he says this while touching his tongue to his lower lip. Suggestively. I’m having a difficult time even imagining how he could have made the exchange more erotic. They could have played the scene as a gag, and instead it’s a straight up seduction. Dean Winchester is seducing the information out of a man. And the man was willingly being seduced.
While the Deputy had been unperturbed while Jody had been interrogating him, with Dean he’s putty. He looks away and bears his neck to Dean, and draws even further attention to his bared neck by scratching it nervously. Where with Jody his hands had been folded, with Dean they are not only open, but he actually reaches over for Dean at the end, using the word ‘straight shooter’ to describe his superior, repeating Dean’s choice of word. He’s swallowing noticeably.
At the end, Dean tells him, “When I need you, I’ll come find you, okay?” Not if I need you, when I need you.
So the question is, did he? One can only surmise that Dean would have needed to find him after the Sheriff was killed. If not sooner.
This happened. This really, truly happened. On the actual show. Last season. Dean Winchester seduced a man for information.
I usually like to be warned before I'm violated with demon tongue.
Enemies have a habit of making sexual or sexually suggestive moves on Dean, and it’s very disturbing and sad and makes me very uncomfortable. 😦
I also want to note that Dean’s responses in these situations (“I don’t usually get this friendly until the second date.” // “Are we gonna fight or make out?” // “I’m not in the mood.”) are a verbal defense mechanism, since he usually can’t defend himself in that moment any other way.
I’m sitting here looking at how many times we hear the enemies say he’s pretty, and JEEZ. No wonder Dean makes that face every time the word’s directed at him…
I still wonder how many times he heard this before the beginning of the show, when he was still young and how much it contributed to his macho overcompensation. I wonder if that’s why he needs to be so tough externally, because he’s always felt so vulnerable because of his looks, so the appearance of toughness is his defense mechanism.
It’s really well done, though, the way that Jensen doesn’t just look disgusted and horrified when Dean’s in this situation, but how he also plays it as a violation. That’s something that we see a lot in media products when it’s a woman who is being sexually assaulted, but less so often when it’s a man. When it’s a man who is sexually assaulted, then the tropes of Double Standards: Rape, Male on Male and Double Standards: Rape, Female on Male come into play for the most part.
From the former:
A man raping someone is (almost) always depicted as a horrible thing, and the source of much drama. Unless the rapist’s victim is another man, in which case it’s commonly dismissed, ignored, or even Played for Laughs. It doesn’t matter if it’s through force, deception, coercion, or drugs, male-on-male rape is almost always an object of derision — against the victim.
And from the latter:
Men are stereotyped as constantly wanting sex and of being stronger in general than women. Therefore, the idea that the man could have either not consented to sex with a woman or been incapable of fighting off a female aggressor if he did refuse sex is simply not taken seriously. Another commonly-held notion that the idea of female-on-male rape challenges is the false idea that since men have erections, they enjoy the sex, and hence is not rape or not as traumatic as any other kind of rape…
A man raped by an attractive woman is considered a lucky man, and a man being raped by an unattractive woman is comedy gold.
Dean’s our hero, right? And he’s handsome and strong and brave and fucking kills monsters for a living, but he is constantly being put into situations where he is being assaulted by both men and women. And it not played for laughs, not with him (sadly, there are other examples where it is, “Tall Tales,” for one). Physically, Jensen Ackles overwhelms nearly every other actor in this gifset, yet Dean is clearly powerless and overwhelmed. It subverts those tropes (particularly the Female on Male ones) and exposes them for the disingenuous falsehoods that they are.
Yet another component about these tropes (particularly the Male on Male trope) is that the rapes or assaults are not dealt, in-text, as the awfulness that they are and that there is lasting ramifications to characters. They’re played for, of all things, laughs. Dean is implied to have been raped in Hell. But it’s not a joke and it’s not something without long-term implications. There has been a consistent horror at sexual assault in the show with regards to Dean that is serious and is based in what the character has gone through and experienced. It subverts the idea that rape is a joke when it’s a man who is the victim.
This show isn’t exactly perfect when it comes to discussions of sexual violence, but they do a damn good job with this one.
I usually like to be warned before I'm violated with demon tongue.
Enemies have a habit of making sexual or sexually suggestive moves on Dean, and it’s very disturbing and sad and makes me very uncomfortable. 😦
I also want to note that Dean’s responses in these situations (“I don’t usually get this friendly until the second date.” // “Are we gonna fight or make out?” // “I’m not in the mood.”) are a verbal defense mechanism, since he usually can’t defend himself in that moment any other way.
I’m sitting here looking at how many times we hear the enemies say he’s pretty, and JEEZ. No wonder Dean makes that face every time the word’s directed at him…
I still wonder how many times he heard this before the beginning of the show, when he was still young and how much it contributed to his macho overcompensation. I wonder if that’s why he needs to be so tough externally, because he’s always felt so vulnerable because of his looks, so the appearance of toughness is his defense mechanism.
It’s really well done, though, the way that Jensen doesn’t just look disgusted and horrified when Dean’s in this situation, but how he also plays it as a violation. That’s something that we see a lot in media products when it’s a woman who is being sexually assaulted, but less so often when it’s a man. When it’s a man who is sexually assaulted, then the tropes of Double Standards: Rape, Male on Male and Double Standards: Rape, Female on Male come into play for the most part.
From the former:
A man raping someone is (almost) always depicted as a horrible thing, and the source of much drama. Unless the rapist’s victim is another man, in which case it’s commonly dismissed, ignored, or even Played for Laughs. It doesn’t matter if it’s through force, deception, coercion, or drugs, male-on-male rape is almost always an object of derision — against the victim.
And from the latter:
Men are stereotyped as constantly wanting sex and of being stronger in general than women. Therefore, the idea that the man could have either not consented to sex with a woman or been incapable of fighting off a female aggressor if he did refuse sex is simply not taken seriously. Another commonly-held notion that the idea of female-on-male rape challenges is the false idea that since men have erections, they enjoy the sex, and hence is not rape or not as traumatic as any other kind of rape…
A man raped by an attractive woman is considered a lucky man, and a man being raped by an unattractive woman is comedy gold.
Dean’s our hero, right? And he’s handsome and strong and brave and fucking kills monsters for a living, but he is constantly being put into situations where he is being assaulted by both men and women. And it not played for laughs, not with him (sadly, there are other examples where it is, “Tall Tales,” for one). Physically, Jensen Ackles overwhelms nearly every other actor in this gifset, yet Dean is clearly powerless and overwhelmed. It subverts those tropes (particularly the Female on Male ones) and exposes them for the disingenuous falsehoods that they are.
Yet another component about these tropes (particularly the Male on Male trope) is that the rapes or assaults are not dealt, in-text, as the awfulness that they are and that there is lasting ramifications to characters. They’re played for, of all things, laughs. Dean is implied to have been raped in Hell. But it’s not a joke and it’s not something without long-term implications. There has been a consistent horror at sexual assault in the show with regards to Dean that is serious and is based in what the character has gone through and experienced. It subverts the idea that rape is a joke when it’s a man who is the victim.
This show isn’t exactly perfect when it comes to discussions of sexual violence, but they do a damn good job with this one.
I’m still on the cut scenes posted by theoverlordmisha, wondering what would have changed if the cut scenes would have been featured in the episode.
At the end of Season 9, we were shown that Castiel loves Dean Winchester. The end of Season 10, it seems, was meant to show that Dean Winchester loves Castiel (and it was textually established that they are aware of their love for one another during the season).
I think the crux of the issue was Castiel’s assuredness, as he pried information out of Rowena, that everyone loves something. If we had the first cut scene with Dean and Crowley, Dean’s dream about the brutalized Castiel and its combination with Dean’s waking hallucination of Castiel leading him to trash his hotel room, leave his beloved car behind and contact Death, then the conclusion on who Dean Winchester loves would have been extremely clearly laid out. It would have placed Castiel much more firmly than it does now as the ultimate push for Dean wanting to end his own life. I don’t want to downplay his desire also to spare innocent lives, but what drove him to seek death (and Death) and very nearly to claim his own brother’s life, was Castiel. And the cut scene would have strengthened that impression.
But what about the other scene?
That was the polysemous balancing no-homo turn to the prestige. There have been a few people, very few, that I’ve seen suggest that what Castiel loves, since everybody loves something, is Claire. Claire is important to Castiel, this is true, but what Castiel loves is pretty goddamn obvious, whatever nature you choose to ascribe to this love. It is known. Even the general audience probably could have made the connection.
So to balance out Dean Winchester’s love for Castiel, Castiel makes a speech about the sweet, crooked smile of his Ersatz daughter. This would have brought back the question of the previous season, who does Castiel love? It would have cast (slight) doubt on what Castiel’s own disposition toward everybody loving something would have been. But there’s a subtext in his line, because Claire and Dean were paralleled throughout the season, and like I suggested yesterday, especially their sweet, crooked smiles were contrasted. In fact, most of the smiles of Dean Winchester for past three seasons have been given specifically to Castiel. Now that is something that the general audience probably isn’t meant to remember. That is the subtext.
But as we have the episode now, both the hell yes homo and the no homo were removed. The elements are still there, but they aren’t as obvious, and it takes longer to put the clues together. But in essence, nothing is changed. Castiel is the thing that Dean Winchester loves. Castiel is what Dean Winchester loves so much that he was willing to die, willing to exile himself on a goddamn asteroid for all eternity, and to kill his own brother because of him. Mostly, because of Castiel. 98% because of Castiel.
That’s how fucking much Dean Winchester loves Castiel.
The thing is though, if you check my ‘Brother’s Keeper’ post from before I read that meta, I already thought Dean had hit Death by mistake even without understanding it completely. The only thing that makes sense to me now, is the rest of the explanation, the contextualization of the mistake. But I already thought he’d done it by mistake simply by the way it looked.
It wasn’t addressed because as soon as we’re done seeing Sam and Dean’s horrified and surprised faces we switch back to Rowena&co. She casts the spell, we go back to Dean who is near his bag/the table and Sam who still looks kinda out of it. Keep in mind that Death was supposed to take Dean to somewhere he couldn’t hurt anybody nor go back on his own, so the problem is not just that Sam is still alive, it’s also that Death is no longer there for the second part of the plan. Dean is hit by the spell a second later, at which point the priority becomes gauging the damage and then, well, running for their lives.
Rewatching the scene, that explanation is the one that makes the most sense to me, especially because both Dean and Sam explicitly agree to killing Sam right until the moment Dean swings.
The scythe is not a weapon Dean is used to wielding, and it is bloody awkward if you don’t know what you’re doing with it or aren’t using it as it’s meant to be used. Also, it’s a lot heavier than you’d think. So that 180 was mostly down to physics.
Scythes are meant to be swung low to the ground in a kind of pendulum motion; the weight helps keep the motion going and takes some of the effort out of that constant swinging. If you’re going to swing it as high as Dean did, you’re going to have to use a lot more muscle and put your back into it more.
Dean was counting on the resistance from cutting through flesh to slow the blade down, but when that didn’t happen, the weight and the momentum of Dean’s wind-up just carried him on around.
So what you’re saying here is that Death deliberately handed Dean an unfamiliar archaic farm-tool version of the scythe with a massive turning radius (rather than the Garden Fun Size scythe that Dean had held before), stood behind Dean at exactly the right distance to get whacked by the scythe if Dean missed on his first swing at Sam, and then just stood there looking peeved as Dean did, in fact, miss?
Either that was not the true form of Death standing there, or Death has a reason to want to be dead.
i mean, the rational part of my brain is definitely like “lol destiel is never going to happen, stop thinking it’s going to happen”
BUT
i can’t help but notice this theme that’s been stewing since season 9 when metatron decided to write his own story about love and then we have cas destroying a library, literally ripping up the pages of the books, to get his grace back
and then we have the stynes nearly burning all of the books in the bunker, and instead cas is thrown against them and later dean stabs a book instead of stabbing cas
and i can’t help but think about how scully and mulder became canon on the x-files where tptb wrote an episode about an author’s story getting away from them and getting out of their control and that was tptb admitting that the relationship between scully and mulder had turned into something they never intended but they couldn’t ignore any longer
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