#i get the impression you’re a repressed dean writer or enjoyer

[shallowseeker]

how do you feel about repressed dean?

I've been sitting on this one, and I've been a little scared of it, to be honest. I really hope it's not anger-bait. So, why not answer it in the middle of the night, when few will see it?

Here goes: I love just about anything that's complex, you know? I think if I had to pick, I'd say I'm more a fan of consciously suppressed Dean than unconsciously repressed Dean, at least when it comes to emotions.

//

(Of the two, I actually view Cas as the more repressed one, not always privy to the three-dimensionality and multifaceted depth of his own motivations. -> "I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be? What my true happiness could even look like."

And The Empty knows who Cas loves, sure, but does Cas really, really know the extent of what that means at that point? I don't know. Did Cas allow himself to fantasize, or did he shut it down and sublimate it so hard into The Mission that it lives only in the repressed shadow-world of The Empty?

Cas can certainly read others and is, I think, actually more emotionally intuitive than characters like Sam, but his own emotions? He brutally trained to repress them to the point the Angelic company line is, “We’re heartless. We feel nothing.”)

//

Anyway, I really adore when Dean knows what's going on and is actively choosing his whole sublimation and transference approach, whatever that approach happens to be.

As a default, I view him as emotionally intuitive. That said, we have seen him unconsciously repress his own memories of Cas rejecting him in Purgatory, so you can certainly build things around Dean and repression! (It seems like the rejection was the big issue there, more than even losing Cas. -> "We were there! It was like you just gave up!")

And I know it's not exactly popular but:

I think you can make a well-argued case for a deeply closeted Dean who doesn't act on his less “acceptable” urges. Like, he was The Good Son, you know? It's completely logical for me to see a reading where Dean has Queer Relationships that he knows have implications and yet keeps them juuuuuust peripheral enough that he doesn't act on them in a way that he thinks counts, which for argument's sake can be not acting on them physically or just…sublimating them into Rhonda Hurley type scenarios. Or he just gets himself into situations where he triangulates.

Dean tends to get stereotyped in a hypersexual manner, so I think assumptions are made, but they don’t have to be made, and we don’t have to conclude the same thing. I mean, there are stories where I find a less-sexual-than-expected Dean fascinating. I mean, clearly, he’s flustered around men like Aaron Bass. He gets flustered too when Cas tells him over the phone in Prophet & Loss that, “It’s so good to hear from you.” I can roll with it. Perhaps it really comes down to which parts of his puffed up performance you believe, and some ppl believe waaay less of it.

//

Anyway, overall, it’s just fine as a reading. I'm not here to read the text just one way! I hope I don't come off that way…because I enjoy things that aren’t my “Main.” Some of my all-time favorite fics approach Dean in unusual ways, and it's delicious and painful and all the things that keep you riveted for days.

Some of them even challenge me and change my mind.

//

I read one where Dean sunders himself from his own desires and act strategically-manipulatively as a way to prop up the desires of others in order to get at the security he craves, and I absolutely love that! That Dean might suppress his own needs to obtain a goal with regards to someone else's continued presence/security/etc? Mind-bogglingly awesome in my book! Dean’s shadow self is demonic; he can read others’ needs and maneuver desires! Maybe sometimes getting past others’ desires and all the way down to his own can be like rupturing a boil! I’m here for it!

//

In some stories, Dean is the emotionally forthright heart/Tinman, but suppressed insomuch that he doesn't take that final physical step unless he's being steered by someone else's desires, which can be argued beautifully, I think. On the other hand, Dean is certainly courageous in trying to communicate his feelings as early as season 8. (But arguably, he’s not as clear about it as he thinks!)

//

And what of Cas being forward? Cas uses grand gestures a lot, and he prefers to hide behind a Noble Cause but when he Gets It, he Gets It. He’s more firmly explicit about it, because Cas can be up-front to the point of bluntness. (His words were grand, too, a pretty grand gesture, all on its own.) Cas is certainly a courageous/Cowardly Lion in season 15, once he finally wakes up to What's Going On.

Overall, Cas is remarkably brave, even when he thinks he's not. He lives in the fear and is culturally outside of his comfort zone 99% of the time, and 9 times out of 10 he will do something regardless of how foolish he may look.

//

The thing is, people go through things and they get psychologically wounded and they have periods where their mental health thresholds plummet, so really, depending on the context, people can act in unusual or unexpected ways and it totally works!

What i’m trying to say, Repressed Dean enjoyers, is that I support you.

#performing dean #dean #regarding dean #i get the impression you’re a repressed dean writer or enjoyer #so i hope this helps you feel comfy here #i talk too much #you didn’t even ask about cas #oops #i have had character development on all sorts of diff things