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I'M SO CALM AND NORMAL ABOUT THIS

The Brent Boys – Book 2By: D.P. Clarence★★★★★ Ten years ago Toby Lyngstad tried out for British TV’s most popular talent show Make Me A Popstar. While things might not have gone his way during the competition, he did meet the boy of his dreams Cole Kennedy. Sadly neither the show, nor the budding relationship between the boys ends well. A decade later Toby finds himself the host of Pop Review,…

like yes give me bucky coming to their shared apartment after working late at the docks and finding steve asleep on the couch with his sketchbook in hand, waiting for bucky. give me bucky and steve sitting on their fire escape in the sunset. give me bucky with skin smelling like salt & sweat from working. give me all steves drawings of bucky because he's just too pretty to not draw. give me them on some rooftop watching the 4th of July fireworks for steves birthday

BEST ONES EVER

all the angels and the saints - religious trauma steve turned socialist, bucky falls first, shithead steve, majority pre-wwII

sidereal - best soulmark AU ive EVER READ. made me cry like 4 times and is genuinely so beautifully written

thirteen letters - (not easily conquered is absolute PEAK series) pining bucky POV during howling commandos era

pre-war stucky (my love)

painted in indigo - cute, short series of oneshots

boys - slowburn, smut, SLOWBURN

If You Let Me - bucky teaches steve how to flirt, we all know how this one ends

What Pals Do - Sexual experimentation & tension!!

That Moment Divine - that fic where bucky is trying to fit into what society expects him to be and who he really is :((

war-time fics

Tête-à-tête - everyone knows sargent barnes is gay. then they all understand when they meet 'stevie'

Demobilization - bucky survives the war and steve never becomes captain America AU

The first victim murders his wife

The second victim murders his mother

The third victim, Dean, the siren tries to goad into killing his brother

So the siren manipulates some people into harming a romantic partner, or manipulates them into harming a family member, a platonic bond. The siren gets off on the violence, the power, of driving someone to that extreme.

Sam and Dean are on different paths this season. Dean misses his brother and he's lonely. They're drifting apart, mistrust is growing between the brothers. The siren takes a male form, FBI agent Nick, to entice Dean. To give him someone who is like-a-brother. But Nick isn't like Sam. Nick is a lot like Dean. He's excited about the Impala, he's knowledgeable on classic rock, he laughs at Dean's jokes. Nick is the siren purposefully honing in on the loneliness in Dean, but in so doing, creates someone who is sort of like a brother but isn't Dean's brother. They aren't brothers. What the siren is playing upon is Dean's wish for a companion who understands him, who he can connect with, and it doesn't have to be his brother.

"I gave him what he wanted and it wasn't some b*tch in a g-string, it was you" is the text. Textually, Nick is using Dean's loneliness due to his slowly growing estrangement from Sam, and giving him a substitute for that.

Nick, along with being a companion, is a potential romantic and sexual partner, which a brother wouldn't be. Those scenes with Nick and Dean in the car...for one thing the siren innately operates in a seductive way and that actor really seems to be leaning into that, and Dean is...Deaning the way he sometimes does with men he's not related to. The way they're looking at each other in the car scene. This is the subtext.

And it's so weird to me that people get attacked or mocked or have had hate threads made about them on twitter dot com just for analyzing all this (I've been trolled for it, other bi Dean fans could probably tell similar horror stories). Even recently, I know it's still been going on -- a few weeks back, some bitter Sam stan tried to claim that if you let in the subtext on bi Dean, that must mean that you are validating w*ncest and that's just not how this works.

In fact it can be both about the platonic sibling bond, and bi Dean subtext (with Dean/Nick as the unspoken potential). The episode is mainly, and most overtly, about the brothers and their strained bond and how the siren preys on that. And I have a lot of feelings about Sam and Dean in this episode. It hurts. It's poignant. That is a platonic bond on the series and one that I really love. At the same time, the bi Dean subtext, the dynamic he has with Nick, the actual seduction siren Nick is playing on Dean, can co-exist with the brothers and their sibling bond troubles. Sam is not a potential romantic or sexual partner for Dean. Nick is. And yes that can be a layer, it's called subtext, while it is ostensibly about Nick filling that loneliness in Dean because Sam and Dean are drifting apart.

We also need to put this in context of the season. This ep isn't about Dean and Cas, but it is in S4 and falls at a time when Dean is drawn to a male companion--an angel, who is not related to him. Who gets him in ways nobody else Dean knows does. An unexpected kindred spirit where Dean never expected to find that. Cas isn't like Nick, Cas is weird, and he doesn't know pop culture and he doesn't know music and he doesn't care about classic cars like Nick does. Nick is an illusion, a seduction, the siren creates The Perfect Person for Dean to get close to. Cas, otoh, is the real deal. He's authentic. The connection between them isn't a seduction, it's Cas being Cas, Dean being Dean, and Cas goes against his orders from Heaven due to his growing attachment to Dean. Cas is making Dean feel a whole lot less lonely in S4 where Dean and Sam are drifting apart and Sam is wading into dangerous waters and isn't listening to Dean. So Sex and Violence isn't about Destiel, but Sex and Violence, Dean and Nick, exist not only in the context of Sam and Dean's relationship, but what's forming between Dean and Cas as well (even if Sam and Dean are obviously most directly relevant as the context).

Scrubbing all that out, and trolling and mocking anyone for unpacking it and making their case for the bi Dean subtext is really weird and it's anti-art and it's anti-interpretation. There's nothing wrong with saying "huh, that's an interesting take, hadn't thought of that. Not sure I see it, but carry on *shrug*" and move on.

Instead, for years, there are stans who attacked subtext and attack analysis of subtext, who laugh at it and call people insane, and are still doing it recently.