#pine yaps

dean is sam's punching bag. and i think that's a role dean has actively cultivated as well. especially in the conversation with meg in 1.11 and then the revisiting in 1.16. in 1.11 sam lashes out at dean because he can't really lash out at john. and in 1.16 sam can't quite stand by what he said because the truth is that it was just frustrated venting. but this dynamic arises because john made dean responsible for sam's safety as a kid while also emphasizing that sam was only safe with them while also himself alienating and frustrating sam to the point of wanting to run away. so, given that dynamic, it is far far far easier for dean to foster an environment where most of sam's frustration is vented at him rather than john. cause dean is there; dean won't push back; dean won't punish sam for his outbursts of frustration.

i'm also sure that given what we see in canon, dean absolutely downplayed his own intelligence and played into the "grunt" role for sam's benefit while they were still kids. sam so clearly felt left out and frustrated at being not included in hunting but we know both john and dean felt sam was in danger and were trying to protect him from that danger. so having sam be research boy means that he can feel included and needed and useful (powerful for keeping him around) doing research and computer stuff while john and dean are off doing the more dangerous parts. sam feels included *and* necessary especially if he feels the research part is unique to him; that dean just *can't* work it out on his own.

i mean this isn't even the only time dean downplays himself to make someone else feel better about themselves. i think about dean calling himself and mary "two terrible cooks" while meanwhile, we know dean is an excellent cook. it's a pattern of behavior.

i think for a lot of dean's life it's like... well a family member that's rolling their eyes at you or judging you or even yelling at you is a family member that's still in the room... :(

anyway, hi anon! thanks for the ask and for letting me go on a kind of tangent about it. although i suppose how could you have stopped me...

hi anon,

uggh, i'm so sorry you're seeing that.

this is the fucking stupidest and evilest discourse that keeps circling around. (i believe unfortunately j*nsen said something about girl jack to this effect at one point in... it's giving 2023? which Did Not Help). but the truth is that i don't really have data on this because after school special is, to my knowledge, the only time dean initiates a comment about interest in high schoolers. like in 4.07, there's this exchange (referring also to high schoolers):

DEAN: I got this one. SAM: Two words: jail bait. DEAN: I would never – DEAN smirks behind SAM’s back.

which is obvs also yucky. but also, like in after school special, that's the end of it. dean doesn't actually try to flirt or do anything inappropriate with any of those girls. this is just NOT a like a recurring pattern of behavior at all. those two instances are it?? like in 1.07 and 10.13 dean makes a comment about women in college. but in 1.07 dean is barely older than them?

(i will also say that i tend to read a lot of dean's season 4 hypersexualized comments with subsequently no actual follow through - or even clearly feeling disconcerted when someone does return his attention - as a trauma defense mechanism against assault in hell. and yeah that's a Reading i'm doing but it's the only one that really fits the facts for me)

dean makes a lot of comments about interest in women throughout the course of the show and literally except the above*, it is directed at adult women - and often women who have shown interest in him first. there's a bunch of data in my "romantic encounters" tab in my notes doc but i tried to really thoroughly document and categorize all of it.

but anyway, we don't even need to ask how dean would be with "girl jack" because we have Claire and Krissy and Alex and Patience, all either high schoolers, or college-aged and Dean - like with Jack - treats them as kids/young adults he cares deeply for.

I would also point to charlie (1.05) - a high school girl that dean and sam spend A Lot of the episode with and dean doesn't show a shred of "interest" in her. and there are oodles more examples like this!! including, lillith (possessing the body of a recent college graduate (roughly the age jack seems to be embodying)) in 15.05 who chuck specifically instructed to try to seduce dean and who fails so badly she has to spell that out to dean because he is so not into it that that thought hadn't even crossed his mind.

the long and short of it is that dean has a horny persona that he puts on as armor. but it all really boils down to empty words. does he sometimes cross the line a little with what comments he makes, yeah. but does he ever do anything that could remotely be considered "creeping on young girls." not even a little bit.

i agree that the moc era does get treated as somehow a reflection of dean's true nature rather than what it is - dean feeling so compelled to do things so out of character for him that he spends the whole time fighting it and trying to stop. but also, with the exception of 10.23, there is no marked increase in dean making comments about women (young or otherwise). you do get two instances of him violently murdering men who are preying on young girls though....

but focusing on 10.23, there are two times dean says something misogynistic that people are probably thinking of (though neither of these are about his desire):

DEAN: Well, they let her leave the house looking like a whore.

MR. McKINLEY: By suggesting my daughter was a slut? DEAN: I'll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home. MR. McKINLEY: You shut your face right now. DEAN: And you know what? I don't blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

i shouldn't have to point out that this whole episode's premise is that dean is acting so differently than normal that everyone is deeply concerned about him. narratively these incidents function to show how altered he is; they show how much he is *not normally* like this.

and i also shouldn't have to point out that Dean is so disturbed by his behavior on this hunt that he *immediately* decides to summon Death to kill him.

but i do find it interesting how dean immediately clocks the abusive dynamic going on between mr mckinley and rose and he is intentionally trying to enrage mr mickinley in order to get him to confess/reveal more information. even this, is not even moc dean's real unfiltered thoughts.

anyway, i hope this was helpful. sorry it was kinda ranty and somewhat disorganized.

Because, you know, men can like sexy pink satin, cook, care for people, be intuitive and emotional, admire and relate to women, and desire men. All those things are things a man can definitely do. And Dean does. I think he would love to not comply with gender, but he doesn't have time for himself in that way. He's too busy being god's favourite toy.

aww thanks! of course i agree about john's expectations of dean's behavior when raising him. but i think that's complicated by john both wanting dean to act in ways that are stereotypically masculine (teaching him how to use a gun at a very young age (1.18, 2.06, 11.08) and also saying things like, "that's my man" to an elementary schooler (1.18). but he also expected dean to do very stereotypically feminine things: frequent primary responsibility for feeding and caring for a child (i literally cannot cite all the examples of this godbless that is the whole show (to meeee)).

and i think that from what we've seen of dean's personality, the second is the one that comes much more naturally. he LOVES to cook and feed his family (and anyone). and while i definitely don't like the forced parentification or repeated forced responsibility dean experiences over the course of the show, i genuinely do think if given the choice, he would chose to care for and cook for and clean for his family in ways which are extremely stereotypically feminine.

and i think the way that that came naturally to dean and the amount of laundry, cooking, dishes, and sam's school-prep he did as a child probably made john lean a little harder on all the ways he wanted dean to still "be a man" etc. it can't have been easy for john, who already felt he was semi asking his kids to pause their lives so he could do his Hunt, to see dean to some extent pausing his growth into manhood by having to fulfill these feminine roles. i mean in 14.13, john emphasizes the normative hopes and expectations he had for dean. of course john wanted him to listen to rock music and was pleased when it seemed like dean was starting to sleep around.*

and of course dean learned to put on that mask.

i think it really is beautiful as the show goes on to see him let the mask go more and more. from little things like cooking lots in the bunker and wearing his special apron to his comfy purple pajamas - and in general more whimsical home clothes (noodle socks, scooby-do boxers, hot-dog pajama pants). to feeling he can express fear and discomfort with more ease ("always am" [scared] (15.16), not wanting to go in the tunnel (13.06), spiders (13.08), "never said i wasn't scared" (14.12), "hot bread" (15.20**). to his self confidence ("i'm good with who i am" (14.13), "lady, i'm tolstoy" (15.11), talking about retirement (13.23)) beyond his assigned role as value through self-sacrifice alone.

all of those signs lead me to believe that as time passes, as his life is less fraught with danger and conflict and death around every corner, he will have the time and space to heal and to bloom into more of the person he wants to be. and all signs point to that person being very different from the person that john, chuck, alastair, amara, gabriel, michael(s), zachariah, cain, crowley, even sam, and certainly anyone who values rigidly defined gender differences would expect.

(also your line about dean admiring and relating to women is SO spot on. i just have to shout that out. i just watched 2.18 and the way he is so impressed by tara's acting (speaking of acting and masks etc!!) is so charming to me. i said more about how dean sees and respects women's performances here. but yeah i loved how you said that!!)

*okay that one is from john's journal im sorry. but it tracks for me.

hi and hello! unfortunately this took me so long to get back to in part because it opens this can of worms that's been sitting on my shelf as it were that i keep glancing at knowing i will have to deal with someday. but it requires an amount of research into past queer terminology about which i simply do quite know where to start. so sorry to take it on somewhat of a journey from your initial ask but here we go.

just to preface, i personally don't tend to use terms like "femme coded." maybe that's a little bit pedantic and to each their own. but it harkens me back to the "woman coded" discourse which is misogynistic, reactionary, and reductive.

all that said, i completely agree with all the points you've laid out in terms of dean's many statements which complicate his relationship to cis, male gender (from 4.07 and 12.22)! and we get that from jump with "my boobs" (1.01)! some other examples are: "do i look like paris hilton (1.05), "there's no way I'm kissing a damn frog" (3.05), "i've been rehymenated" (4.05), "they were pink and satiny and we kind of liked it" (5.04), dean happily being assigned charlie's "handmaiden" without complaint (8.11), the freddy mercury "female" fake ID we see in 10.22, and "i’m not gonna be his mother," (13.04).

there's a lot more as well! dean's knowledge of spas (7.05), his interest in ballet/dance (7.16, 15.10), his love of "chick flicks" (7.05, 7.06, 11.23, 12.11, 13.15), his frequenting of mommy blogs (14.20). all of these are things which are witnessed and commented on by sam in ways that vary from surprise and skepticism to judgement. but i don't list those in the same category because - like my issue with "woman coded" - there is nothing inherently feminine about dance or cooking or spas or liking sappy movies. the way our society maps gender onto those stems from a complicated history of capitalism and patriarchy. nevertheless, because the show exists in this same capitalist patriarchy, it's worth noting this pattern in dean's interests.

i am not going to lay out all the ways we know dean's sexuality is queer because i feel that work has been pretty well established. but now we get to this complicated spot where i think dean's gender and sexuality are in communication with each other in a way that maybe eludes modern terminology. that is the aforementioned can of worms.

i absolutely have no problem, and in fact encourage, reading dean as a trans woman. there is textual support for it - in my opinion slightly more-so than reading him as a trans man. but i don't personally see him that way. this brings us to the part of your ask about dean wanting to be the girl in the "hero gets the girl" scenario. because THAT is 10000% spot on, i think. i mean that IS the kissing the frog thing. but that complicates things a bit because many of the examples above about dean's gender are about fulfilling a specific gendered role within relationships (eg the princess or the desirable cheerleader).

i'm not trying to promote antiquated stuff that suggests that all queer relationships still have to mirror who's the "guy" and the "girl" or something like that. but there is a history of gay men who use feminine pronouns sometimes and wear much more feminine clothing - including dresses sometimes - and do things which we might these days read as straightforwardly trans but it wasn't really. it was a component of gay sexuality and our modern terms can't quite get at it. and that is more or less how i see dean. and when i say dean's gender leans gnc/trans-femme, this is what i mean. (the issue is that i've seen this a lot in older queer media and yet when i try to look up terms, i'm coming up really short. it feels very likely that someone on here knows what i'm trying to get at and could say it a lot more clearly. if that's you, please feel free!!!)

not that it would be wrong to call him gender-non-conforming or non-binary in more modern ways but i feel like there's another layer to it.

anyway, sorry for that long and tangential ramble.

as you mention, the feeling kinship with the women he has relationships with is so deeply true. especially since, as wiser folks than me have pointed out, dean is so often on the receiving end of particularly sexualized violence which is often reserved for women protagonists.

and i heartily agree about his "womanizer" persona, a veneer so thin that it is obvious as a performance and a shield as early as episode 2 and which relies primarily on the sexist expectations of those around him with very little to no effort on dean's part to maintain unless he's using it to specifically distract from something else. (my fave example of this is dean pretending to be interested in a porn mag in 8.17 in order to buy himself time to find sam's bloody tissue).

lastly, i LOVE your idea of dean getting to discuss cas' female vessel with him. i think if dean felt safe and freer of judgement than we ever find him in the show, that conversation could be such a beautiful exploration of gender - both dean's own gender and cas' trans man adjacent experience!

Do you think this is overused for Dean?

I find it’s a much more interesting conversation when we describe his behavior for what it actually is—whether he’s being stubborn, dismissive, hostile, or even emotionally guarded. I think some of the specific ways he copes—through joking, deflection, self-sacrifice, breaking objects, or pushing people away—are very human.

I think it was @ilarual that pointed out that Supernatural isn’t a Saturday family drama… it can’t be divorced from its religious horror fantasy roots. The characters’ struggles—whether emotional breakdowns, crises of faith, or cycles of self-destruction—aren’t just personal; they’re heavy with cosmic forces, biblical themes, and the weight of fate itself.

Anyway, it’s hard for me not to see “toxic” as a copout word. (Forgive me for dumping on you.)

Hi Shal! I'm so honored to get two asks from you!! I was carrying them around in my head all week though I didn't have time to answer :(

I'm trying to gather my thoughts about this. Because, yes, I agree that calling Dean "toxic" is a) not accurate and b) a cop-out for analysis. And I certainly agree that that word is overused by deancrits particularly.

I think I'm probably not grasping the full weight and meaning of ilarual's point but from what I'm getting, I think that's a really important element to how dean (and sam and cas and jack etc) act and how we evaluate their actions. The stakes are always so damn high for all of them.

Stepping back for a moment, when reading fic I'm often a little frustrated if Dean is characterized the way he is in canon but most of the contexts that have made him behave, react, be that way are removed. Because in some of those instances, I think some of his behavior reads as pretty ungrounded from reality and maybe more into the kinds of patterns which coalesce into toxicity. (I mean I also think fanon makes people lean into these kinds of characterizations of dean - disaster bisexual, repressed and biphobic, and various other things which are incomprehensible to me)

But in canon, I tend to personally struggle to define any of TFW et al as "toxic." I recall a conversation I had with a friend after watching Lucifer Rising where she was critical of Dean for yelling at Cas when he was trying to break Cas free of Heaven's plans to bring on the Apocalypse. She said he was being mean. I remember feeling so confused - surely if the stakes are the whole entire world, you are well within your rights to raise your voice?

I think all of TFW has moments of being not particularly kind or good communicators or steamrolling each other's emotions or various other things which are kinda yucky interpersonally. But it's pretty much always because the stakes are so fucking high; the world is in peril; there isn't time to have a conversation; they are dealing with catastrophic grief while also having to do crisis management. Most of the conflict in spn happens when the characters are going through what, for most people, would hopefully be the worst day of their lives. And for our boys that happens again... and again...

I am not saying all of this to say we can't call out specific instances of them not being very kind to each other - Sam strangling Dean, Dean aiming a gun at Sam, Cas beating Dean up in an alley, Dean beating Cas up in s10 etc etc. And I also think it's important to talk about the ways these kind of moments constitute or break from their common behavioral patterns - or don't. Eg in your post about Amara and 15.15, you pointed out that betraying and forcibly sacrificing someone who isn't really a direct threat and is learning and growing is not in line with Dean's usual morals - a break from a pattern. And people often point out Cas' pattern for trying to problem solve solo. (These are just examples and by no means comprehensive!)

All this is to say that I actually think that if they all ever got to be in safe, calm world, got some space and time, they all really really do have values around talking things out (we see this again and again) and listening to the differences in how they feel or want to handle situations. Sam and Dean alone have a staggering amount of conversations at the end of episodes where they had conflict. Dean and Cas have multiple on-screen conversations about what caused tension between them and many off-screen conversations which are alluded to. I don't think any of them are perfect communicators. I think they all have various amounts of introspective capacity and effort at various times. They all have some well-worn and not all that healthy emotional go-tos because of the traumatic lives they have all lead - which would take time and safety to unlearn, unpack, and change.

I know your question was about Dean but there's not much I really have to say about Dean which doesn't apply to the others. I am specifically a die-hard Deangirl(gn) but this logic is what would keep me from making a long post about how Sam or Cas are Toxic(tm) even when I'm seeing them exhibit a specific behavior pattern which is annoying to me.

But the last thing I'll say is much more Dean specific and that is that Dean is sort of always just supposed to absorb and roll with everyone else's opinions and analysis and choices and not react with his true or full emotions or else he gets these labels thrown at him. This reminds me of a time I saw a Casgirl(gn) claim it was okay for Cas to beat Dean up in 5.18 because he was really mad at Dean... ? Or what we were talking about a week ago with the Mia Vallens therapy where Sam's frustration and hurt and anger are listened to and validated - including him lashing out at Dean - and the grief and frustration and cornering that Dean is feeling are somehow not supposed to affect the way he's acting? I'm certainly not the first to point this pattern out by any means but I do think that that's a big contributing factor in labeling Dean toxic while having explanations, exceptions, and excuses for the others.

Lastly, you are never dumping on me though I fear this reply is at risk of being a dump <3 I also don't even know if I really answered your question...