One Castiel Quote Per Episode 106/136 13.21 BEAT THE DEVIL"

One Castiel Quote per Episode 106/136 → 13.21 “BEAT THE DEVIL"

"Before, I was very self-assured." ↳ 10.09 - THE THINGS WE LEFT BEHIND

I'm just a traveller, wandering past. Believe it or not, all I'm after is a quiet life.

"We've always been privileged, you see. Privilege just means 'private law.' That's exactly what it means. He just doesn't believe the ordinary laws apply to him. He really believes they can't touch him, and that if they do he can just shout until they go away."

-- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

You think John Winchester beat/abused Dean into suppressing his sexuality? You're great at taking these canons apart on details--- would love to get your take on this.

Dean's inner workings are such a huge field of study! You're very kind, but I think a lot of his nuances are still beyond my grasp of canon. I bet there's tons to pick up on rewatching. I'll have a stab at it though!

I think Dean's father taught him that practical reliance and emotional dependence on anyone or anything but blood family is dangerous. That indulging his private feelings - any feelings - is dangerous. And that doing those things makes him a danger to others, to Sam, to the mission, and therefore would make him into a bad person; that Dean grew up convinced that he can't afford to let himself have - or need - affection, support, connections, community, obligations, or ties outside the hunting life, and only limited access to those luxuries within it.

Dean fell into line with John's rules of the road while Sam pushed back and got himself out for just long enough to see a different way of living life - one I'm sure a younger John Winchester, married to Mary and with their two young sons in the house, would have recognised as worth fighting for and protecting. Sam brings that back with him, and never stops trying to share that wider perspective and personal growth with Dean - never stops offering to listen or be emotionally supportive, even when Dean shuts him down over and over again.

I think Dean learned from his father - from his whole rootless and overburdened childhood - that other people have to be able to depend on him, so he can't afford either to feel weak or to be perceived as weak, for their sake. For survival's sake. The performative mess we find him in come the start of Supernatural is him trying to fit that with his adult experiences and needs. If he's wrestling at all with his sexuality in the middle of all that, I think it's far from being the biggest or most damaging of his issues.

Dean's basically a decent bloke with a good heart, full of love to give, smart, capable, and intrinsically strong, but his self-worth is completely tied up with this need to be a protector, the strong one. His baby brother actually has to spell out to him that, now he's an adult too, Sam can, will, and wants to protect Dean right back. Dean had no inkling that it wasn't a one-way street, which is heartbreaking.

John's white-whale revenge quest taught Dean that life is short, that there's no higher meaning or grand plan. That you don't get what you want, you get the hand you're dealt and have to play it. That it's his role in life to serve, and to die young doing it. He doesn't think he gets to plan a future, and has mixed feelings when Sam tries to do just that by going to college.

I'm not sure Dean's hiding or repressing his sexuality in particular; more that he's not dealing - refusing or unable to deal - with the whole area of intimate relationships that go beyond a fun one night stand. Of emotional and supportive relationships and people's need for those, period.

Dean looks at the comfort and support system available to other people with their lovers and spouses, and doesn't see a Dean-shaped vacancy anywhere, be it with men, women... or angels. Yet he wants it, or something that looks like it. He longs for family and home, and not only because it's something he knows he lost once. He's terrific with children, from the small ones up to the angry teens, so he knows instinctively how to give the kind of support and validation he denies himself - but does he even know that he finds those encounters rewarding? Is he even aware that it's a good thing for those relationships to be mutually rewarding? I'm not sure he lets himself think that way. Maybe it's just an itch he can't quite scratch?

The moment he has the opportunity he goes straight to Lisa and Ben and tries to make it work with that ready-made family. He remembers just enough of the time before his mother's murder to feel a pull towards 'traditional' family life, but it's like he's living a fairytale. He's waiting for the big bad wolf the whole time, waiting to flip back to high alert protector mode. Once the monsters touch his little family and shatter the bubble, he can't sustain the relationship. Lisa gives him every chance to have it on his own terms, but Dean can't do it.

My take is that Dean suppresses anything and everything that might give him comfort, peace, softness, or what others (including his father in vengeance mode) could perceive as outward signs of weakness. Talking about his feelings, about things he can't have, dwelling on and processing his feelings - that's what John taught Dean that weakness looks like. That unaffordable luxury of weakness. You get up, wash off the blood, keep your weapons in good order, and keep fighting until you can no longer fight. Dean denies himself anything that could be used against him or Sam, and for the longest time he thinks that's a good thing. Later in the series, he's learned enough to know that this kind of strength is brittle at best, and to be afraid of the consequences of stress-testing it too hard.

I think Dean doesn't even bother digging into what he wants and needs from a lasting partner. Into his feelings and sexuality, his ideas about couples, about hearth and home. It's not just that he's terrified of losing it if he has it: he's sure he'll lose it if he ever has it, because he's sure he doesn't deserve it.

I reckon Dean stopped exploring himself at a very young age, and learned to ignore his own needs and feelings beyond the limited avenues that got a nod and a wink from John Winchester. Being good at hunting. Taking care of Sam. Drinking. Driving. Polishing the roleplay and the hustle to stay under the radar. Taking care of Sam some more. Shut down everything else tight and keep a lid on it. Grab gratification where you can but don't ever try to keep hold of it or set down roots.

Dean lives in maintenance mode. Other than his brief idyll with Lisa and Ben, there's never a time when Dean doesn't feel he has to stay in that state of toughened battle-readiness. The only reason he's able to get close to Castiel over the long term is that Cas can join him in the fight, is willing to take Dean as-is without needing him to unbend, and can tough things out just as hard as Dean can.

I don't think John necessarily needed to pile on physical or targeted psychological abuse to shape Dean this way and make him equate processing and personal exploration with weakness. Just making the adult-responsibility demands he did of a child, and exposing him to the monsters and the killing and the awareness of how precarious life is, would've been plenty. I get the sense that if John had ever posed a danger to Sam through violence or drunken carelessness, Dean would've killed him. (For the first few episodes, I sorta thought he sekritly had!)

(Ask me again when I've rewatched Supernatural and my answer might be completely different!)

Pretty sure Teal'c considers Star Wars a documentary of sorts.