#dean studies

like dean realizing he’s queer later in life is fine i guess but what about a dean who had a limp wrist as a five year old. what about a dean who was taught to course correct before he learned how to read. a dean who always knew he had to stand up a little straighter and not sing along to madonna in front of his dad and not hold that other boys gaze for too long, two seconds max, count it out. like it’s fine! look how far apart we’re sitting! i’m being so careful. a dean who knew there was something in him that other people could always sniff out if they got close enough and who has tried to hide it by lowering his voice until his throat hurts and wearing a giant leather jacket that doesn’t fit and making sure his little brother always sees him flirting with women. a dean who is constantly running the math in his head to see what he can get away with and what is a little too far and constantly coming up short. a dean who knows what he is but who wants so so so badly to be different, so much so that he has to constantly mirror the men in his life who seem to know how to do this effortless masculinity thing and who loses so much of his authentic self in the process.

I’m rewatching supernatural, and I can’t believe I never realised this before, but sam and dean are the exact opposite of what they think of themselves. In the brothers’ eyes Sam is the more emotionally open one, or the one with more empathy, and yet he struggles to make close relationships that aren’t romantic. He keeps everyone at arms distance: john, mary, bobby, cas, and so many other examples throughout the series. Whereas dean is supposed to be closed off and emotionally stunted, and yet he has deeper connections with almost all recurring characters: garth, jody, donna, claire (obviously the ones mentioned before). He lets people in more easily than sam. Even how he knows all the shopkeepers in lebanon, whereas they don’t seem to know sam (ie 14x13).

like i really can’t emphasize enough that amara is structurally not a love interest for dean in any way, and the pull that he feels towards her is clearly not romantic in nature. what she IS is an unsubtle metaphor for suicidality. she’s the call of the void. the draw dean feels to join with her is the draw towards eternal peace and permanent annihilation of the self (in a way that regular death isn’t when you chronically come back to life). the shame he feels about his desire for her is shame that he feels a desire to give up, to give in to eternal nothingness. dean fighting against amara’s call is him fighting against the depression he’s been dealing with intermittently for many many years! just because it’s more allegorical than in season 2 or season 5 or season 7 or season 13 doesn’t mean it’s not there.

a big part of the reason that I feel so MUCH and so protective about dean winchester is that he is so so lonely. jensen ackles gave his all in his every performance of dean's vulnerabilities, especially when it came to his fear of abandonment issues. people always talk about that in relation to his misguided view of john and the trauma of losing his mother (inexplicably tied to the loss of his childhood & innocence) but sometimes I think it's easy to forget just how much it's at the core of who he is as a person. that panic of not wanting to be left behind like he's been so many times bleeds into every aspect of his personality - in his choice of words "i did not leave you" "don't think that there's anything past or present that I would put in front of you" dean shows his fear and vulnerability by doing for others what he craves for himself; by being a physical presence, albeit sometimes overbearing and borderline controlling. by choosing to fight for his loved ones over his own safety because john taught him that to love is to be a human shield for those who need protection. mary's death instilled in him the fear of losing, fear of the fragility of life and john made it so much worse by robbing him entirely of his childhood, refining him into a weapon that it left him terrified of his own being, his own life. he became a cornered animal clawing at anything that got too close to him (+ sam and then later cas). he was terrified of doing more than surviving, to live because to live would be to leave himself vulnerable and good soldiers don't do that. this in turn, rendered him unable to love freely (without a need to let that love consume his entire being in a very unhealthy way that often caused his death) and unable to be loved - as proved by the aggresive push and pull of his relationships with sam and cas. all of this, because dean winchester was just too afraid that he would be alone. that he would be too much for anyone to want to put up with so he made himself small, and funny and compliant. he made himself scary and dangerous to protect anything but himself. and deep down his fear remained that no matter all that he'd done, he would still be left behind, that he'd die alone. and CW, what did you do.