Dean Studies archive

Primarily Dean studies, some other SPN character studies as well (check featured tags) Main blog: gremlin-pattie

[deanstudiesblr]

I follow from my main blog @gremlin-pattie

[junefl0wers]

what do you mean dean winchester was purposely misremembering his escape from purgatory because he didn’t want to accept the fact that castiel chose to leave him. the guilt of not being able to save cas was easier to deal with than the idea that cas would willingly choose to leave him

[spaghettinatural]

dyou think if they hadnt grown up in poverty with dean prioritising feeding sam over eating himself, they wouldve grown up closer in height? not that dean’s short obviously, but sam is significantly taller than him which wouldve been almost impossible if dean didnt make sure he ate first/had full portions/stole food for him etc. he clearly had the genes to get tall as fuck but if dean hadnt done what he did to make sure sam wasnt malnourished, sam probably would’ve had some of that growth stunted

[t00muchheart]

The parallels between Dean verbalizing the way John failed him as a father in Dream a Little Dream of Me and acknowledging that he didn’t deserve what John put on him & Dean calling Mary out in Who We Are for making a deal that left them alone and put him in the position of having to step up and be a father and a mother to Sam instead of just being his brother !

Dean saying that he doesn’t deserve to go to Hell and letting himself feel the deep unfairness of the deal he’s made and the fact that he tells Mary he understands because he’s made deals to save the people he loves too !

The line “I hate you. And l love you. ‘Cause I can’t—I can’t help it” and the way it could apply to both Mary and John because Dean can’t stop himself from loving them, no matter how much their decisions hurt him, how he understands them in a way because he was raised to love by putting his own life on the line in the place the lives of those he loved, and how he sees how messed up that is but forgives it anyway because if he dwells on it, it might break him

[angelsdean]

dean being elated john died in his sleep........like ok i know it's been said that john being dead in his djinn dream is certainly a Choice and a pretty loud one but. think a big part of john dying a normal death is important to dean in the context of s2 bc he's been grappling all season with the grief and guilt of knowing john died because of him, for him, trading his life for dean's, and is now suffering in hell because of it. dean has been feeling unworthy of the sacrifice and feeling wrong and unnatural for being alive. and dean's feelings toward john are complicated, but he doesn't want his dad in hell. he cares too much. and in his dream life, if his dad has to be dead it's under normal circumstances. a peaceful death. no suffering.

[pinesorneedles]

dean calls cas his brother because he cannot conceptualize a relationship as deep and significant as a relationship between brothers, and cas, who has a thousand "brothers", all of whom are glorified coworkers, takes this to mean that dean values his usefulness and cunning as opposed to his personhood

[rockingthegraveyard]

Me shaking the absolute shit out of the show runners and writers; Why the fuck do you give us this shit and yet never address the issues they developed from their years of abuse and neglect! 

[tiktaalic]

The thing g is I understand why to the general public. You think of Dean Winchester and go. Oh. Straight man embroiled in queerbait. I wouldn’t blame you for this. I don’t hold this against you. You are absolved. But me. I love spreadsheets and holding a grudge and spiting people. So I know better. Dean Winchester is gay if you watch supernatural. Like you can watch him be gay in supernatural. But Dean Winchester is also gay. If you love scrutinizing a man’s every action and tallying them and fact checking them against other things he has done and said. Dean Winchester is gay because 1) I saw the tv show 2) I have data points 3) because I said so 4) because I won I over the course of fifteen years slowly wore everyone down until they threw their hands up and said fine but neither of us are going to be happy about it.

[tiktaalic]

If someone well meaningly asked me why is Dean Winchester gay I would say. Oh well when you watch the show he slowly replaces relationships with women with his relationship with his best friend to the point that they start a family together and raise a child together and he stops pursuing women and this is clearly the most important figure in his life. Do you want to see him fall to his knees and wail when cas dies. Let’s queue that up. If i was being normal. I could also say oh his overarching struggle is that he yearns for “normalcy” but it’s always out of his reach and when he does achieve it he’s unhappy and unfulfilled but when he inevitably drops this life. It’s still something he wants and yearns for. This + an extremely performative masculinity and heterosexuality that becomes extra apparent when compared to his brother, who is masculine and heterosexual but doesn’t do Half of the peacocking dean does, and his best friend, who is masculine and homosexual, and doesn’t do half of the peacocking dean does. And he has a conversation with his father, who he did Scores of performative masculinity for. Where his father says. I wish you had a normal life and family (wife and children). And dean says. I have a family (gay best friend and son I am raising with him). So it’s really rife. With metaphor. Lots of performance. If I wanted to be ABNORMAL. I would say. So here is a list of gay pop culture references he’s made here is a list of times he has commented on women here is a list of batshit things he has said here is a list of so straight it’s gay here is a list of

[angelsdean]

dean and cas love and trust each other unconditionally. they give and they forgive easily. there is never a debt to settle. never a score to keep. i'd rather have you, cursed or not. i prefer trusting, less dumb less ass. i'll go with you (again and again and again). i forgive you, i need you. of course i forgive you. of course i wanted you to stay. i've got you. i love you. etc etc. they are best friends first and foremost. they can talk to each other and be real. they know when the other is lying about being "fine" and they call each other out on it. and then they listen. they get angry sometimes, and miscommunicate often, but they are always approaching everything with the desire to understand, to work together. they worry. they make bad choices sometimes out of a desire to protect the other. keep each other out of a situation and out of the loop. take on the burden for the other. all these flaws and wrong choices are still rooted in love and care. they care SO much. that love and care is at the center of everything they do.

[shallowseeker]

Absolutely fascinated by you pointing out that John has a lot in common with The Woman in White!

Unhinged damsel-John is a favorite of mine.

[shallowseeker]

SAM: And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children.

JOSEPH: I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. 

And John would never... but he was the one to hurt them.

[shallowseeker]

yessssssssss

via @angelsdean

The boys (and John) as having more in common with Constance is my jam. I had talked about how Mary is the opposite (above link), but I’d never carried the remainder that she can’t rest until the children come home to her!

Yay that’s so cool!

[castiellesbian]

It comes down to Dean kind of sees Sam as his kid but Sam doesn't see Dean as his parent

[sleepdeprivedsurgeon]

the thing about supernatural is that, if it were real, hunting as a subculture would have a lot in common with biker and cowboy culture. it already does, aesthetically and as a lifestyle. and that means that it would be full of gay men, or at least gay sex. if supernatural were accurate men would’ve been cruising day and night at Ellen’s roadhouse and Bobby/Rufus would’ve been real. unfortunately no one involved in this goddamn show except maybe late-stage Misha Collins understood that they were making a show about queer masculinity’s place within the American gothic. tragic. many such cases.

[bragginball-z]

The parallel between Dean and John is making me deranged. The way Dean is treating Jack like John treated him after Mary died BECAUSE THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE IS DEAD NOW TOO. AND HE DOESNT KNOW HOW TO COPE WITHOUT HIM.

I NEED TO SIT DOWN.

[the-mpreg-guy]

still thinking about dean suspecting that castiel was fake or not real or being a puppet of god in s15 (bc why would he have anything real and good aside from his brother who is in the rat race with him), and YET... he still believes he's real by the end of the season. the Level Of Trust. The Level of Love. explodes.

no listen i feel like fandom at large has zoned in on the parts where dean fucks up in that season but what no one is realizing is that somehow s15 is an insanely good dean character study bc every single instinct pressed into his body by chuck, john, alastair, whoever, is telling him that nothing is real and they all hold the puppet strings and it was all made up the whole time and nothing he ever went through mattered and the only way out is to hurt and kill everything around him, and he still chooses to have faith in his family and to love them every single time. everyone focuses so hard on dean pointing the gun on jack, but they always forget that he puts the gun down. everyone focuses on the love confession, but they always forget that dean heard someone, that he distrusted mere weeks before on the basis that he might not be real, admit that he loved dean so hard that it fundamentally rewrote his hardware, and dean internalized that so hard he broke his self loathing hatred and told god that he was worth something.

dean winchester is Thee Character of all time idk what to tell you

[lovelessloverboy-dean]

Okay Dean's whole "I'm not well adjusted, I'm just well fed" thing with famine isn't working for me, and not in Famine's he's empty inside way. Because if he just wasn't affected, he would be acting like normal. But he clearly isn't-he's eating less than normal, drinking less than normal, not going out to bars on Valentine's Day like normal. Which has to be a famine thing. So my interpretation is that what dean hungers for in this episode IS deprivation. He's starving himself, denying himself his own wants and needs (as he often does) as a form of punishment because his hunger is for pain and guilt. And it feels natural to him just like it does to all the people in the town because it's so in line with his usual instincts, he's just indulging it more visible (i.e. not putting on a performance for sam)

[autisticandroids]

anyway what i love about meg is that she reveals that supernatural is this:

[soft-pine]

the thing about dean is that yes, for most of his childhood john was God to him. he was the rule setter. he held all the answers to the mysterious, hidden nature of the world. he was the only constant (even if it was inherent that within that constancy was absence). he defined the morality.

but what happens to a kid's brain when God shows up beaten and bloody in the middle of the night needing stitches from your small, shaking hands and soup scraped together and watered down and borrowed from tomorrows meals. and God's slurring his words first from pain and later from whiskey. what happens when God is crying and folded over where he sits in a rickety chair and you're standing next to him trying to hold him up and his heavy arm is across your shoulders cause he's the same height sitting as you are standing.