I'm Always Getting Caught Up In Your RageAnd I'm The One Who Is Bruised By All Your PainAnd Babe I'm

I'm always getting caught up in your rage And I'm the one who is bruised by all your pain And babe I'm so tired of all of this trying

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@waywardlyfe - this is for you, because you have been nothing but a sweetheart to me!

Also to these amazing artists who make such beautiful destiel edits, I’m sorry if I am bothering you with the tags, but this is my first time and it is sort of a tribute to all the amazing content you provide us

@seraphcastiel @spnsmile @wanderingcas @alivedean @casthyelle @dreamnovak and so many more - I ADORE ALL OF YOUR BLOGS!

oh it’s the real me alright, the new real me

Potential title of my supposed fanfic

seeing as I ranted about a fanfic i was going to write for destiel, and along with the little edit I did in honor of the type of story i was thinking of writing. I think it would be best that the title would be “sin in your skin.” ALSO because that song with the same name literally gave me all the destiel vibes in the world!

“... you never do...”

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Taglist: @waywardlyfe @casthyelle @spnsmile @dreamnovak

(if yall don’t want me to tag you... just let me know!!)

--if anyone wants to be part of my shitty edits, let me know, that way I can tag you!!

i didnt get to experience the beginning of the empty's deal arc live, but im just so obsessed with the whole concept of it.

first of all, i know for a Fact that i would have instantly assumed it would have meant destiel. i've always been a diehard heller with probably too much blind optimism a person could ever have about this show, but that's just how my brain works, and i don't have to defend myself about this. that's just me.

second, the framing of it is 1) Romantic As FUCK - like, even without the whole concept the confession is very much a romantic confession, but the curse makes it even more so, and anyone who calls it a confession of platonic feelings has probably struggled in high school literature classes; 2) a Great parallel of Cas saving Jack to Dean saving Sam, which would have been a Great culmination of Cas being later saved by Dean (which they obviously dropped the biggest ball on!! FUCK i could have had all the Disney's Hercules gif comparisons i could ever handle) to parallel Cas saving Dean; and 3) the ticking bomb set-up HAD to have come into fruition, and i love plotlines that make you ask how something is going to happen, rather than whether it even would.

third, which is probably my favorite part of it all - and you may question the amount of faith i had in the writers to have planned this, idc, i'm not subscribing to the idea that anything good ever on this show was an accident - which is that the fact that the requirements for the deal to work deny a possibility of an earlier or less substantial trigger. to reiterate, the condition for the moment to be the PEAK of cas's happiness required the story to 1) strategically build to that point; 2) compare/contrast other happy moments to emphasize just how special this particular moment is; and 3) create a new understanding of everything prior. in my opinion, it has more or less succeeded on all those counts.

the build-up has definitely come from placing dean and cas's relationship at the forefront of this season from the divorce arc and on. i definitely think there could have been more of a development of that dynamic in terms of cas's grace failure and an elaboration on dean's relationship with jack.

the last part adds to my second point. in 15x15, cas gives a speech about finding a new source of faith that is not deicentric. he speaks about his trajectory as a person, about finding family, about jack. that moment is very much a happy moment for cas. it is not THEE moment of happiness required to summon the empty, both stemming from and proving the fact that the confession that does lead to the empty taking him was not, in fact, about finding family, purpose, and all those things. if the articulation of him being happy about finding where he belongs was what was necessary, cas would have been taken right out of that church.

my third and final point is what i mean by the fact that the confession was such a major revelation that it echoed back throughout the series' narrative to highlight every single moment of cas's expression of love for dean and the world at large. just the concept of something that had that much power to not alter but reveal something so many of us saw hiding just underneath the veil of subtext is both groundbreaking and inspiring.

A Look at Queer Subtext in Supernatural

I don’t have many followers, so I’m not sure how many people will even see these, but I figured I’d start dumping a few analytical essays I’ve written over the years. Some are updated to include information from the latest season. Anyway, enjoy!

The following is a brief (and by no means comprehensive) introduction to queer subtext in visual media, its use in Supernatural, and how cultural changes are transforming the series’ treatment of these narratives.

Originally written as a quick overview to help a more general academic audience understand why the interpretation that Dean is bisexual exists.

To understand queer subtext in modern media, it’s helpful to begin with the implementation of the Hays Code in 1934. In place until the late 1960s, this decency code prohibited portrayals of sexual deviance, drug use, profanity, etc., as cultural backlash against Hollywood’s publicized scandals throughout the 1920s. As such, filmmakers had limited options for incorporating queer narratives into their projects: essentially to portray stereotypically queer traits as villainous (and so the effeminate villain stereotype was born) or to weave queer coding into their films’ subtext (acting choices, character interactions, costuming and set design, layered dialogue, symbolism, etc.). This has had lasting effects on the way such narratives are portrayed in visual media. Because these stories and characters were forced into subtext at the time when nearly every trope, narrative framework, and character archetype was being developed in the context of modern film, subtextual queer stories were fundamentally built into the fabric of cinematic storytelling. These constructs condition viewers not to take these relationships and characters seriously, because they are rarely given weight in the main text, and to only fully validate the surface reading, mentally relegating subtextual stories to interesting quirks. Recognizing these subtextual narratives may add depth to the story and our reading of it, but can essentially still reduce an entire set of lived experiences to supplementary dressing for socially “normative" stories. We are beginning to see shifts in storytelling as social attitudes have evolved, especially over the last ten years— we are seeing more and more openly queer characters in television and film, without their sexuality being the defining feature of their character, relationships, and place in the narrative, but there is still a long way to go.

This is what makes Supernatural so fascinating. It exists in the intersection of a changing society and changing storytelling structures, and perfectly encapsulates the struggle of maintaining a subtextual queer narrative amidst evolving audience perceptions and expectations.

Supernatural’s subtext* draws on overarching genre-based themes, as well as specific narrative and visual codes. Arguably, the surface level of the show’s premise is very traditionally masculine: two buff brothers cruising dark roads in their muscle car, saving people and hunting monsters. However, the show’s genre foundations of horror and American road narratives are anything but heteronormative. Both are founded on explorations of the other, of society’s fringes. Horror is based on metaphors for social exile, sexual deviance, illness, and the loss of innocence. American road stories explore freedom and existential escapism, with characters who leave regular society to pursue their identities and run from their demons among the drifting social outskirts. (On a related note, Dean is named after Dean Moriarty, a bisexual drifter in Jack Kerouac’s famous Beat novel, On the Road). Both genres fundamentally incorporate explorations of identity (and, often, sexual identity) and are disposed toward these subtextual narratives. Accordingly, the underlying themes of Supernatural, most notably for Dean’s character, deal with the gradual breakdown of toxic masculinity and the repressive aftermath of childhood trauma. These themes and many elements of Dean’s emotional arc fit perfectly with classic coming out archetypes, like overcoming familial limitations and pursuing autonomous selfhood, and explore the tensions of reconciling conflicting identities. 

Building on these thematic foundations, most of Supernatural’s queer subtext singles out Dean, often opposite Sam, in situations that draw the viewer’s attention to his performed masculinity or sexuality.

Throughout the series, Dean is consistently framed as feminine in contrast to his performed masculinity. He is filmed with camera angles reserved for the “male gaze”, given a character arc fitting the heroine’s journey versus Sam’s hero’s journey, fills the role of Sam’s mother over his father, and regularly rejects things he considers feminine only to seek out or enjoy them later on. Now, these points are not made to present proof of Dean’s sexuality; femininity and masculinity are not indicative of sexuality. What is interesting to note is that these are conscious choices made by the writers, directors, and production designers, who have inserted feminine attributes into Dean’s characterization. Their intent, whether it is to subtextually draw attention to Dean’s sexuality (relying on misguided stereotypes of femininity and queerness) or to support the thematic undermining of toxic masculinity, is open to interpretation and introduces entirely new sets of discourse (notably, the problems with using feminine coding as queer subtext, and the tension between validating its use and exploring authorial intent to do so). Regardless, these choices support the broader exploration of Dean’s conflicted identity, and his gradual journey toward accepting repressed parts of his personality.

Supernatural also uses narrative and visual queues to more explicitly draw attention to Dean’s sexuality. Dean is consistently given parallel storylines to Sam at both the structural and episodic levels, in which his brother is romantically paired with a woman while Dean is with a man (i.e. Ruby vs. Castiel, Amelia vs. Benny, Cara vs. Nick, etc.). At many points throughout the series, Dean’s interactions with men can be interpreted as flirty, interested, or romantically flustered, and in some cases are verifiably understood as such by the writers and directors.** Secondary characters remark on Dean’s sexuality, sometimes with Sam present and sometimes on his own, and it is Dean whose uncomfortable or nervous reaction is emphasized. Additionally, Dean is regularly surrounded by visual coding that can be interpreted to suggest bisexuality. He is frequently surrounded by the colors of the bisexual flag (pink, blue, and purple) and he is often framed simultaneously with male and female iconography, to name a few limited examples.

These and other elements are cohesively included throughout Supernatural’s thirteen-year run, across different writers, directors, and showrunners, lending weight to a long-running and consistently coded narrative. Add on that the only character Dean has sustained an emotionally profound relationship with besides his brother is a male angel, who meets every requirement the narrative has put forth to complete Dean’s character arc (and vice versa), and over ten years the writers have thrown romantic tropes at them like confetti, Supernatural has structurally integrated queer subtext into its main plot.

The show rooted its structure in a hyper-masculine premise set within subversive genres like horror and American road narratives. An early superficial reading misses the point that these masculine ideals were only set up to be broken down: the real big bads of Supernatural are toxic masculinity and the failure to advocate for personal identities, needs, and wants. The show builds on its genre-oriented subtextual themes with distinctive narrative and visual coding, creating a cohesive subtextual story that constantly draws attention to Dean’s performed masculinity, sexuality, and his relationship with Castiel (which are all distinct from one another).

Since Supernatural began in a less accepting time thirteen years ago, many viewers only read the surface-level plot, while the more subversive narrative was woven into the subtext with arguably no intent to ever be fully textualized. As social attitudes and consumer expectations have evolved, however, so has the show’s treatment of such narratives, to the point where the writers have spent the last three seasons slowly pulling many of their subtextual elements (the brothers’ toxic codependence, Dean and Castiel’s romantically-framed relationship, Dean’s bisexuality, Sam’s repression, Castiel’s depression… the list goes on) into the main text where the general audience can clearly see them and go, “Ah, that’s what that was about.”

Supernatural is where social evolution and the changing portrayal of queer narratives meld together with fictional questions of identity and autonomy, served up with winks and meta commentary. The question is, has the show grown enough to follow through on its thematic arcs? Will they subvert the subtextualization of queer stories (and their meta mountain of subtextual themes) and fully textualize these narrative foundations, as both its developed characters and audience demand? We’ll see, if the show ever ends.

*In the interest of brevity, this essay only looks at Superatural’s subtext as pertaining to Dean’s sexuality. A breakdown of the subtext specifically regarding his relationship with Castiel requires an infinitely longer analysis.

** See Ben Edlund and Phil Sgriccia’s 8x13 commentary on Dean and Aaron