#evil deancas

[lesbiansamruby]

castiel is so earnest in every single interaction he has with dean while actively lying to him as hard as he possible can. multitudes.

[astermacguffin]

Reading the rest of the apokteino darkfics (as well as other fics that explore the Type 2 evil deancas dynamic) made me appreciate the delicate narrative engineering of With Understanding even more because, believe it or not, WU Dean is waaaaayyyyyy healthier than Canon Dean. If you make me choose between Post-S15 Dean and Post-WU Dean I would (hesitantly but reasonably) choose the latter for Cas.

(None of this would make sense if you haven't read WU, which, by the way, is literally the opposite of abuse apologism. The fic hammers down rehabilitation and restorative justice; literally no transgression was carelessly brushed aside. It's literally better than canon in terms of addressing all the violations done to Cas. Maybe make sure you've read something first before proclaiming secondhand opinions as gospel.)

ANYWAYS. Typical WU rants aside. The reason I'm saying this again now is because of reading "i fold in half so easily" by @autisticandroids and its writer's commentary. You can totally imagine Canon Dean of post-S15 doing that; it is soooo fucking plausible that it becomes scary. Meanwhile, Post-WU Dean would never ever DARE do that. (Yes, WU Dean is only Post-S8 but the point still stands.)

What I mean when I said "delicate narrative engineering" is that if you've read the earlier apokteino darkfics, you can totally see them learning from their previous works.

Dean from "When" is too unsympathetic and outright cruel, Dean from "Bones" is too calculating and compos mentis, and we never get to see much of Dean's side of the story in "Hesitation" (which, by the way, he's a victim in this fic as well. Specifically, he's a victim of Type B Gunpoint Coercion according to my taxonomy of Dual Violations). WU Dean is, I think, the synthesis of all the narrative choices that apokteino learned from writing the three. WU is riding the razor's edge between the comfortable and the unforgivable, and it rides that edge well.

This visual might help:

What I love about this visual is the fact that the vertical positions of each fic can be interpreted as the amount of moral responsibility/blame we can assign to each of apokteino's Deans. Hesitation Dean is blameless (he's a victim as well), WU Dean can be blamed and held responsible for his violations towards Cas, BUT not as much as Bones Dean and When Dean, both of which harmed Cas with the actual intent of hurting him.

Anyways. This is part one of the comparative reading of apokteino darkfics that I promised here earlier. I'll post a continuation when I have another epiphany.

[rainsongmp3]

the most evil judas kiss is in the prisoner. dean takes the angel blade out of cas’s sleeve. cas grabs dean’s hand and says stop. dean leans down and kisses him sweetly. then drives the angel blade right through cas’s heart.

[faggotcitosis]

“goodbye stranger” - supernatural, 8x17 | no children - the mountain goats

[sorenserotonin]

Dean sat across from Dr. Novak, same as he did every week before everything that happened. He rolled his shoulders and sat up straight, watching the way his psychiatrist’s eyes following the movement of his shoulders. Ever since he was in the hospital for the criminally insane, ever since he realized it was Castiel that was the very Ripper that Zachariah Adler had been chasing for a decade, it had been Dean’s goal to catch him. I’m a fisherman, Zach, he had said.

“How do you catch a fish that isn’t hungry?”

“Get him to bite even though he’s not hungry.”

Castiel looked into Dean’s eyes, and Dean saw nothing but hunger in the man’s empty blue eyes. “You have decided to resume our sessions,” Castiel said, his voice a deep timbre that would have made Dean blush had he not been so utterly pissed about being framed for serial murder.

“Yeah,” Dean said. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to… apologize for what I did while in custody.”

They both looked at Castiel’s wrists, and Dean pictured the scene of the crime that he had never gotten to see. The crime he should have gotten to commit. They made eye contact again, and Castiel clenched his jaw. “You believed I was the one framing you for Jack’s murder. I do not blame you for such a harsh reaction, but I would have liked you to have had faith in me.”

Faith? Dean only had faith in one person, and that was Sam. He couldn’t afford to have faith in anyone, Castiel included. “Yeah, well…” Dean shrugged.

“Do you plan on trying to kill me again, Dean?” Castiel asked, and Dean recognized a spark of intrigue in his eyes.

“Kill you, Dr. Novak? Why would I kill you, now that I finally find you interesting?” Dean smirked.

The intrigue in Castiel’s eyes flashed to arousal, and the corners of his mouth lifted in a mirroring smirk as he glanced at Dean’s lips. Oh, this was going to be a fun game.

[leviathancas]

yeah Dean was broke up about torturing in Hell, but I’m sure he was really good at it. Amazing at it. Art, as one said, and that was all under Alastair’s tutelage, the demon coaxing his hands until Dean relied on instinct, until Dean could pull someone apart just as well as Alastair, coaxed by the honeyed praises whispered in his ears.

And yeah, he liked it, he liked the freedom he got, he liked that he could escape the pain that haunted him for years and take it out on people who deserve it—souls who made deals for greed, souls who committed unimaginable crimes, etc etc. Anyways.

We’ve got Castiel (maybe Godstiel, whichever) in charge of Heaven, and we’ve got angels who aren’t too fond of that idea, angels who rebel against this new authority, angels who try to take out Castiel before he can do anymore damage to the new order.

Then we’ve got Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man who shed blood and liked it, who still remembers how to pull at certain nerve endings, how to make people scream with just a twist of his blade, how to make them beg for a savior that won’t ever come. 

And, of course, Dean pledges himself to Cas, but it’s not out of fear over a higher power, no, it’s out of reverence and loyalty, it’s out of desire to stay by Cas’s side while he reshapes the world around them. 

He stands by Cas’s side as an equal rather than a pet, and when he picks up the blade a second time, it’s not to escape the pain—it’s to cause it.

Those disobedient angels, the ones who try and stir trouble with their whispers, the ones who want to overthrow Cas’s throne, all of them end up caught and trapped in a room with Dean, where he makes art out of their soon-to-be mangled wings and carves his devotion into their grace, never letting them die no matter how much they beg for mercy because this is for Cas, his Cas, and that’s all that matters now.

[astermacguffin]

I haven't made an evil deancas analysis post in a while and as your evil deancas scholar that cannot abide. Heads up for these upcoming posts:

1. Comparative reading on apokteino's Big Three (With Understanding, When, and Bones). This is basically my Thesis on Hell's Logic (the torturer-tortured dichotomy) and its corruption of the survival instinct.

2. Thesis on Dual Violations. Here, we get to explore dynamics where both parties are victims (even when they're not equally or similarly victimized). This can happen either through:

coercion, where the main driving agent of the violation is an external force, forcing itself onto at least one of the parties. There are versions of this where (1) the Self/ego/personhood of the active party is taken over (e.g. one is possessed/mind-controlled and is forced to violate the other) and versions where (2) their selfhood is intact (e.g. the active party is blackmailed/held-at-gunpoint to do the violation or let themselves be violated; although forced into restricting circumstances, the active party is doing it with their own hands and is not being actively controlled);

compulsion, where the main driving agent of the violation is internal (even if what started the causal chain was initially external). This can happen either through (1) corruption of the mind/Self, where something drastically alters the persona of one party (e.g. turning into a demon, getting the Mark, some mind-altering spell, etc.), or through (2) corruption of the heart, where either foreign wants/desires are forced into a party or preexisting desires are warped and exploited (e.g. certain sex pollen or heat/rut fics fall into this category);

imitation, where one party is mimicked and the violation is done through that image. This is a very specific kind of violation—the main thing that comes to mind are fics where a shapeshifter imitates the victim's loved one and performs the violation in that body. Or perhaps by possessing a corpse; the mechanics doesn't really matter. The point is that both parties here are violated and their relationship is horribly damaged due to this violation.

The violations done to the primary victims are, of course, very obvious. But what I think we rarely engage with is the violation and trauma of the unwilling perpetrator. When the possession is over or when the spell finally lifts, what happens then? How do you deal with the consequences of having committed such an awful violation (or in the special case of imitation, having your image permanently tarnished in the eyes of the victim)?

(also shoutout to evander @withunderstanding and the gang from the misunderstanding server for fueling my evil schemes)

[astermacguffin]

Generally, I think there are three major interpretations of "Evil Deancas"—it's a term that we use interchangeably when we usually mean different things. (Although to be fair, these categories often overlap and are not mutually exclusive.) We can summarize these interpretations as:

1. Evil as in "These are bad people"

2. Evil as in "These people are bad for each other"

3. Evil as in "How bad can these people be?"

The First Interpretation

This is perhaps the easiest interpretation to pull off in fics because all you need to do is make one (or both of them), in a sense, a bad person. Arguably, they're already bad people in canon, but what I mean here is the "evil in a theatrical way" kinda thing.

Within this category, there are even more specific interpretations. They can just be fun and stupid ("haha we're murder husbands") or dark and sexy ("Dean and Cas become rulers of the Pit and they erotically torture others and each other"—and yes, this is a spinoff series for DTA, made by THEE author of DTA), or some combination of the two.

A version of this interpretation that I'm 50/50 about is when the writer makes one or both of them SO EVIL to the point that the only commonality between the canon and fic version of the characters is their name. Yes, it's fun to do, but it's also so easy to do because you can just do this to any other character. Like, what makes these characters Dean or Cas aside from name alone? It's not as compelling to me. (NOTE: This is NOT a value judgment and I'm not saying people should stop writing how they want. I personally enjoy these kinds of fics from time to time.)

This is personally where I would categorize most of the Demon!Dean/Mark of Cain fics I've read so far. What's interesting about this is that the First Interpretation often entails the Second Interpretation (e.g. due to Dean being Like That, he ends up being bad for Cas as well), but not necessarily. Let me elaborate on this in the next part.

The Second Interpretation

This interpretation is the one that I personally think yields the most Destiel content. (Yes, they can be bad for each other even as friends, but if you're reading/writing deancas fics then chances are that you don't read them as a platonic relationship. Just a guess.)

I think this interpretation is at its most powerful when it's aiming to tease out and address the toxic aspects of Cas and Dean's relationship in canon. What's fascinating about this is that you don't even need to put them in canon world to do this; I have read many AU fics that meaningfully tackle their issues just as well as (and sometimes even better than) fics in the canon world. (Yes, I know they can be toxic. I've seen it; I enjoy it.)

Depending on how well the writer understands these characters, this interpretation can either go very well or very badly. There are three versions of this: 1) Dean is bad for Cas; 2) Cas is bad for Dean, and; 3) They are bad for each other. Which of these three you will focus on will ultimately depend on what you are trying to achieve in your fic. Often, I find that fics like this function as in-depth character studies as well. This makes a lot of sense, considering how the conflict in these fics are often internal more than external.

There are generally two paths that you can take with this. You can either take the angsty path where they just end up not being together, or you can take the Angst With A Happy Ending route and make them work their way into having a happy and functional relationship. (I'm personally a big fan of the second one.)

The Third Interpretation

This one is very unique because it often draws power from either of the first or second interpretations. Notice how this interpretation is phrased as a question and not a declaration. This is because fics like this often deal with answering questions.

The point of these fics is to explore not how bad they already are, but how bad they can be, given the right circumstances. This interpretation is a two-pronged process that asks you to answer these two questions:

* What circumstances would break them?

* How far would they go once they break?

A famous example of this is in With Understanding, where the answer goes:

* Dean breaks in grief after Sam dies in the Heaven Trials.

* Dean kidnaps FBI agent Castiel Novak.

Fics like this also function well as character studies, because they often use the already existing issues and neuroses of the characters and takes them to their most extreme conclusions (e.g. how Dean's control issues manifests in the kidnapping in WU).

Synthesis

This is a flexible category system for us to grasp what exactly do we mean when we use the term "evil deancas" and how these interpretations overlap. Not all fics would fit neatly into these categories, of course, but it is fun to think of which fics fit in which interpretations. For example, I think the godstiel arc in canon starts as a Type 3 for both of them (Dean and Cas both break from each other's perceived betrayals and enacts drastic measures) that then devolves into a Type 1 Cas and a Type 2 Dean. I'm not sure if this makes sense to any of you lol