I think it was you had this meta about how dean as when he's a leader has to be like a doctor that does surgery on his own family. This image stuck with me! I looked but tumblr won't let me find it. Was this yours? Do you know it off the top of your head?
I think you're talking about this? TFW are fascinating disaster parents and I dig it. There's a snippet at the end that compares Dean to a doctor operating on family.
Dean craves safety and being protected, but that’s somewhat incompatible with protecting everyone
Dean never got to be valued and protected growing up, so he secretly craves that. But Sam is correct in his psycho-analysis. Dean’s neurosis is wanting to protect everyone, and this is often fundamentally, violently incompatible with letting your family fight alongside you.
All things considered, Dean rarely resorts to going lone wolf, like with the Mark of Cain. Despite his discomfort, he tries to marshal everyone under one roof, and that often results in a degree of my-way-or-the-highway type rigidity as a means of neurotically trying to keep everyone safe.
In fact, Cas often avoids this dilemma altogether by going lone wolf. (They all do this on occasion, but Cas's background as a soldier is especially tired to this. Mary, as a child soldier, has this issue, too. Jack has the same issue in AU earth when he tries to run away to confront Michael on his own.)
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When the fights get too BIG (as they often do in Supernatural), Dean cannot ensure the safety of his loved ones, and he freaks the fuck out. When Dean can neither protect nor stop family/comrades from going into danger, you get these coping mechanisms:
Benching the player: “Wait, you might get hurt, so I’m gonna say that I don’t trust you to be in that fight at all so maybe you won't!"
Sometimes, this need to kick people to the bench comes out as a barb: “You’re an incompetent baby who does stupid things. Baby in a trenchcoat. You’re an idiot. To Jack: You’re 98 pounds soaking wet.” etc etc.
Fatalism: “I’m powerless / this whole fight is meaningless / there’s nothing we can do / we have no choice.” All members of TFW slip into this in different ways. Giving up is a natural part of SPN, something that each family member goes through depending on the psychological wound of the moment.
Denial: Other times, Dean downplays the danger, which can result in meanness and occasionally a lack of support/neglect.
With regards to Cas, we see an even more colorful option deployed and one of my all-time favorites: goading him into being stronger. It's a barbed version of, “You can do it, Cas!”
SAM: Tell me again why you don’t just grab Adam and shazam the Hell out of there.
CAS: Because there are at least five angels in there.
DEAN: So? You’re fast.
CAS: They’re faster.
(CAS takes off his tie and wraps it around his palm. Dean looks on worriedly. ///Aside: Hilariously, two seconds later Dean is like WAIT YOU'RE GONNA TAKE ON FIVE ANGELS? :((((( )
Cas doesn't fit in his pre-conceived notions of anything
In early days, Dean is incredibly spun out and confused by Cas, who he wants to be protected by and protect. In the beginning, in season 4, he’s still wanting to think of Cas as invincible.
Post-Cas’s first death, Dean tries to pin him down as brother, and at times he even infantilizes Cas as he evolves into needing to protect him.
But bottom line, he just can’t make Cas FIT. He’s a comrade, but there are extra layers to their relationship that get confusing real fast. We get these Dean coping mechanisms in seasons 5-6 alone!
(A) Goad him into being more powerful and better so he’s safe
(B) insult him to underscore that he’s in danger and maybe shouldn’t be fighting at all
© go full denial and pretend the situation isn’t that serious blah-blah Raphael
I think in season 8, Dean figures out what those extra layers are, and in season 9, they deal with rejecting each other by accident, and in season 10, they’re respectively dealing with their past traumas and baggage. Then, in seasons 11-12, they’re grappling with the whole embarrassing and terrifying fiasco of wanting to commit to each other.
But to my point about cosmic family members, there’s this simmering tension concerning the danger of celestial power running throughout. A feeling of:
“Dude you’re kinda scary and I instinctually know this because I’m a seasoned hunter. But I’m gonna keep ignoring that gut instinct because reasons.”
And confusingly, there’s also this feeling:
“I can’t really protect myself from you, since you’re stronger than me. And I’m not strong enough to protect you from your enemies… or stop you from leaving.
See this quote from season 8:
CAS: See, it wasn’t that I was weak. I was stronger than you. I pulled away. Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn’t want to be saved.
DEAN (distraught): What the Hell are you talking about?
Dean was SO upset that Cas let go. That he didn’t even try. (Dean and Cas often give up, but they become unhinged if the other partner gives up.) For someone like Dean, whose instinct is to squirrel away his family in a protective underground bunker? That’s a tension that feels devastating.
As a main character/battle commander, Dean knows that tactically, Jack and Cas will take on big, scary responsibilities by virtue of being, as season 15’s Belphegor so eloquently puts it, “the muscle.”
…and this is in direct conflict with Dean’s baseline need to protect everyone.
He doesn’t want to gamble with them at all. (See season 12's "We gambled with Cas, and now Amara's got him!") He wants to say, “you’re more than a weapon,” (13x14 Good Intentions script) and Cas wants to tell him, “in times of peace, I can be.”
DEAN: Cas, you’re more than a weapon–
CAS: In times of peace I can be, but if (war) is coming…
TFW and the burden of leading
This, at times, makes Dean a rigid, unhinged leader. That’s because he’s too often sending his own fam into battle. And who wouldn’t be unhinged about that? There’s a reason we don’t operate on our own family members in a medical setting, for example.
When Dean is a leader, he can be like a dog with rabies foaming at the mouth, backed into a corner. It’s the worst.
Sam, on the other hand, fares pretty well as a leader, because he values independence so highly, and that kinda works for him. (He’s pragmatic and he dissociates very effectively.)
