#on anger

I reposted a really nice meta by @angelsdean you might like. I also have this here, about how the broad stereotype of Dean is doing a lot of shorthand for audiences who close their eyes and shut their ears.

I hope you don't read this as me pulling away from your broader point about anger, but I do sometimes feel like trying to point a finger at "which one's the John," can be... one of those fanon discourses that doesn't go very far. It runs a risk of flattening everyone, even John himself.

The thing about Sam's anger at the start of the series is that he was this bright-eyed, hopeful kid who could TASTE his future, right? It was laid out right in front of him: love, hope, success. And then it got ripped away. Of course he spiraled. Just because he didn't have a lot of time with Jess doesn't mean it wasn't devastating.

And the deeper he goes into learning about his dream, the more his whole college experience (hi, Brady!) looks like a sham. Friends pretending to be friends. Hostile enemies luring him towards the lover-of-choice. (Chuck does this later too, with Eileen!) It leads to a lifetime of problems for him. I feel like this is part of why he leans into the safety of Dean's judgment (and friendship circle) later.

Charitably, it's hard NOT to be angry at such a sham, you know...? He got cheated! So... he self-destructed, had a nervous breakdown, and then had more nervous breakdowns and let a bunch of people down... He did NOT handle it well at all. (To say nothing of the flimsy "resilience" John's cruelty he gifted them with. It's a resilience in name only, a battle prowess that doesn't hold up to basic water.)

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So, what's my point, I guess?

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Well, pulling out from a broader view, I think one of the meta traps that SPN WANTS to pull its character INTO is Hope. Hope is the whole point. It's the most devastating thing there is. You have all these dead-men-walking types of characters and you're throwing all these things and love interests and wrapped-up dreams at them to see if they'll bite.

People turn to God the most, maybe, when they Despair.

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So, Dean.

Dean gets baited time and time again, but he RARELY bites. As a (mostly) backward-looking character, he tends to meditate on the past grief and what could have been, and when he speaks of the future, it's pessimistic, "This only ends one way for me."

That said, as a character, he has so much secret, devastating HOPE inside of him, but he almost never FULLY lets the "light shine on his face," to borrow a phrase from my friend The Shadow Ruler of The Empty...

I think we begin to see this specific type of anger manifest secondary to a very deep kind of grief, and we don't see that out of Dean until maybe season 12? Because Dean is showing his hand; he's wearing his heart on his sleeve like never before. He's always been emotionally quite obvious to anyone who actually watches and engages with the show. But Mary coming into the mix makes him feel allowed to reach for his own happiness, his future.

Things between Mary and Dean certainly aren't perfect. Mary's not the load-bearing parent he wants, but she's here. She is working through it. She's TRYING (and failing so, so hard lmao). But it's the effort Dean respects, that getting up after you fail so hard you don't wanna show your face ever again. Mary is like a boxer you just keep hitting. And here she is, despite everything.

And so, we get the Everything Dean ever wanted of it all rearing its head. It feels rather like, "His true weakness is revealed! THIS is the REAL shape of Dean's happiness." He's not trying to force-fit himself into being the truck; he's just Baby.

It's why you get Dean saying stuff like this in 12x23: "This'll work. It HAS to!"

Because, for the first time, maybe ever, you get Dean thinking, "I want to experience things differently than before. Maybe even for the first time." He's become a future-looking character. That spirals EVEN further later, with Jack. Yeah, he hated the kid at first, but then you get Jack being extraordinarily like Dean in the deepest ways, and you get Dean settling into the pajama hot dog pants and crawling the mommyblogsphere, and dreaming of retirement. Verbalizing that, even. Out loud. (Dangerous thing to do! The writers and audience can HEAR you, Dean.)

So yeah. When that blew up, Dean got angry. He spiraled. He had a nervous breakdown. But because Dean's the caretaker character, the audience doesn't take that lying down. They skewer him. (Haha! Look at you now! You FAILED! Hypocrite! See how you like it! Daddy's little girl broke!)

They'd put his head on a pike if they could.

But here's the thing... Dean's own family understands why Dean is angry. Even Sam, for all his "Don't be like dad! I need you stay with me and support me!" stuff in s12, gets IT when it comes to season 15. Cas and Sam stick with Dean, even through his anger, because they're already been through respective vessel trauma, loss of faith in the FUTURE*, and identity crises.

Maybe I'm off here, but I THINK what's bothering you is people are using anger as shorthand for "the John Winchester," and "the failure." If you as an audience member can “find the John Winchester” in the Where’s Waldo map, then you have pinned the monster and the puzzle is solved! But the thing is, it's not that, for anyone. It's just a part of grief, and yes, Dean is working through his grief in seesaw steps. He loses sight of the future, he's CORNERED, and all he can see is the light out. Doesn't matter what shape that light takes. It's very much like Kelly's, "I don't see a happy future for either of us, so..."

That's why Kelly is, especially when she's killing herself and Jack, as much of a Constance-and-John mirror to me, as she is a Mary one. If the best part of John is ANYWHERE alive inside of the John we see on our screens, he's screaming. And that's an important lamentation.

x

EDIT: I have some links to add to this... can't find em.

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