spnmuse

Your character wasn't supposed to be saved by the angel.

You've never seen a guest star put their whole pussy into a three-episode deus ex machina character like this, it's like he? Cares?? And he's a weirdo but so fucking charming you can't help but get pulled into his orbit.

The angel wasn't supposed to survive long after meeting your character.

You vibe so hard with this guest star that cares like you do and he's smart and generous and handsome and funny and god, just so WEIRD but a weird that's shaped to fit perfectly with your weird so it's completely natural to fall ass over teakettle.

Your character saves the angel.

You love him. Every little thing he does. It's so intense it bleeds through, in quiet ways that you don't realize are so goddamn loud.

And then, on national television, on a notoriously unsupportive network, ten years after your angel was supposed to die off, objective complete... he gets to tell you he loves you. It trends above the US election.

Because it's real.

Attachment Styles and Why ‘I Need You’ Can Mean More Than I Love You

At this point, I think we’re all familiar with the ‘I need you’ scene but I’d like to dust off my old undergrad psych degree and give you a character analysis. 

In psychology, it’s generally agreed upon that a person’s relationships with their primary caregivers in childhood can impact how they react and behave in relationships later in life. 

One way to look at this is through a person’s ‘attachment style’. If all goes well the parent and child develop a secure bond. However, for a number of reasons, this doesn’t always happen. When this doesn’t happen a person develops an insecure attachment style. They aren’t all relevant here, so I’m just going to go into what I believe Dean’s attachment style is. It’s important, I promise we’re circling back to ‘I need you’. 

Judging by the way Dean acts throughout the show, I think he has an insecure-avoidant attachment style. 

An avoidant attachment style is generally developed when a child’s needs aren’t met by their caregiver (looking at you, John Winchester). Parents of people with avoidant attachment styles tend to be dismissive of their child’s needs or emotionally distant. 

To combat this, a child learns to look after their own needs. They become dependent on themselves. They try to build themselves into a person who doesn’t ‘need’ anybody because then they will never be let down. As a person ages, this core belief remains the same. 

This rings true when thinking about how Dean generally raised himself and Sam while trying to turn himself into the human equivalent of a Swiss-Army knife. He tries to be a mother and father figure for himself and Sam while trying to be a soldier for John, a normal kid for people outside his family and later a ‘playboy’ when it comes to women. Heavy is the head that wears a thousand different hats, I guess. He has to be a million different things at once because he doesn’t want to rely on other people. He doesn’t want to need other people, because past trauma has taught him if he needs someone, they’ll let him down.

In adult relationships people with avoidant attachment styles typically fear intimacy, hence Dean’s ‘ladies man’ persona. He spends the early seasons getting with a lot of women but he’s had next to no intimate relationships across the show. There’s Lisa, possibly Cassie and of course, Cas. People with avoidant attachment styles tend to withdraw when a relationship starts to become too ‘real’ for fear of being dependant on another person when they have shaped themselves into a person who doesn’t need anybody. 

i had to sit back and think about this for a while, because it's genuinely a difficult question to answer.

i don't regret the 8 years i've spent in this fandom, but it has caused me a great deal of pain. i've never had a fandom experience this amazing, but i've almost quit a few times from overwhelming frustration and anger.

after considering it, i'm going to say that i think this is the lynchpin: you need to watch a few episodes and see if you actually enjoy it. because while i rant and rave and cry about the greatest love story ever told, unfortunately TGLSET takes up precious little actual screentime. if you don't actually LIKE watching the show and enjoy its premise, it won't be worth it for you.

watch a few episodes of season one, see if it compels you. (lots of people want to skip to season four when cas enters, but honestly, if you find nothing about sam and dean enjoyable, you're not going to enjoy the show enough to watch it for cas.) if you watch those and say, "this is alright, i'm kind of interested, but does it get better?" then try watching the first three or four episodes of season five. if you don't like season five, you don't like supernatural.

it's important to understand that spn is a wild patchwork of content, changing enormously from beginning to end while also staying maddeningly the same. it's hilarious and it's terrifying, it's stupid and it's brilliant, it's beautiful and it's repulsive, it warms your heart and it makes you want to scream.

it's misogynistic, racist, and homophobic. it's also a wonderful story of found family, defying destiny, choosing free will, and love saving the world.

some of the episodes are so, so fucking stupid you can't believe they aired on television, while some rival any oscar-nominated film for the quality of their writing, directing, and acting. it's boring as shit but also the MOST show you'll ever watch. sometimes you wonder if the writers watch their own show, and yet miles of meta have been written about how a choice of wallpaper and the arrangement of a lamp reflects a character’s inner turmoil. they chase their tail by repeating the same lame plots over and over, and for their fifteenth season they came up with the freshest, most interesting and meta concept i've ever seen. there is a scooby doo episode.

they captured lightning in a bottle with castiel, and then spent twelve years wasting his potential. they created the most utterly breathtaking love story on television, mostly by accident, and then gaslit the fandom about its existence while simultaneously exploiting them. they wrote a story about two brothers that managed to touch millions of people's hearts, and then they poisoned themselves by refusing to ever allow the relationship to grow or change.

in their fourth- and third-to-last episodes, they reveal that an angel invented free will through the power of choosing to fall from grace because of the love he felt for the man that he rescued from hell. and then... something terrible happened at the network, whatever was originally planned was cut, and something shallow, empty, boring, flat, and pathetic was inserted as the finale.

in the end, the only peace and satisfaction we have is what we make for ourselves. in the end, we have to reclaim the story and finish it with our own hands. but in a way, that’s weirdly appropriate for a show that is, canonically, about ripping up the ending you’re given and writing your own.

i can’t tell you, or anyone else, if watching it is worth it, because that depends on how much you get out of it. you have to decide if you’re willing to watch it to see if you get enough out of it to continue watching it.

if you decide the answer is no, you’ll get no judgment from me. if it doesn’t float your boat, that’s fine, you’re welcome to still like the gay angel and reblog drawings of him kissing the pretty hunter. 

and if you do decide to the watch the whole thing, i’ll offer a couple pieces of advice. first, expect to be disappointed; that makes it a pleasant surprise when you’re not disappointed. and second, stop at 15x19. the second to last episode serves as a lackluster finale, but at least it’s not a finale that shits in your mouth while you weep tears of hate.

#SAMDEANCHALLENGE:  Favorite hunting disguise

despite it all, you cannot silence us.