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amwritingmeta · 7 years

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The Destiel of It All: Part I

Briefly before We Begin

Hello. I’m new. I’ve not been in this fandom for very long, but I’ve loved Supernatural for longer. I’ve now read some meta and have found it so uplifting and enjoyable to read through thoughts that reflect my own so perfectly that I felt inspired to begin putting my own impressions into actual words and sharing them with you all. Being in this fandom is like stepping out of the cold and into a warm, lovely, welcoming room of kindred spirits - all kinds of wonderful - so I do apologise for the repetition I’m undoubtedly going to bring to the table, but hopefully I may bring some fresh angles as well.

Part I of, well, I honestly have no idea.

That said - let’s start.

Romance or Bromance?

The core premise of a romantic coupling, the idea that makes the Love Story so powerful, is two people coming together to open each other’s eyes to what they really need, rather than what they think they want. It should be said that the bromantic coupling is also rooted in this idea: the completion of an emotional puzzle, where the character traits of the one help evolve and, ultimately, unless it’s a tragedy, better the other. However, I will argue my point in the following posts that the relationship between Dean and Castiel is, and always has been, romantic. Not only because of how the showrunners have chosen to write these characters’ dialogue, or because of the blatant use of romantic subtext, evident in how they’ve set up the shots and how the actors act out the scenes and how those scenes are then edited (more on all of that later), but because of how the showrunners have chosen to angle these characters’ joint journey of self-discovery.

Here’s what I mean: in many an example of the romantic narrative, two Opposites will argue and refuse to see eye-to-eye, but unavoidably they will learn from the lessons the other is teaching. This growth is what finally allows them to see past what they’ve always thought they wanted (the conscious external motivation for their journey) to what they really need (the subconscious internal goal of that journey), which is right in front of them: in the case of a romantic narrative this is their other half. Pairing up with their other half and getting what they need, in a well-written story, will usually result in the characters also being able to attain what they truly want, which is typically a variation of the external motivation they’ve been striving towards all along.

For example: In the romantic comedy Leap Year, the protagonist ANNA has one main desire, which is to marry her boyfriend, but she also wants to gain access to a prestigious apartment building in central Boston, which is made easier by the fact that she and her guy Friday are a successful couple, and they’ve both wanted to live in that particular building for a long time: an internal goal (marriage) going hand in hand with an external goal (apartment).

When Anna goes to Ireland to surprise her boyfriend by proposing to him (since he’s seriously dragging his feet), bad weather leaves her stranded and at the mercy of Irishman DECLAN, who runs the small hotel she finds refuge in. Anna and Declan clash immediately, but as Anna needs someone to get her to Dublin, and Declan needs cash to pay off the debts on the hotel, their journeys intertwine. A battle of wills ensues as they go on the road and both clamour for control of the situation, questioning the other’s behaviour, challenging one another and, ultimately, growing to understand each other and lend each other support and encouragement. By the end of their shared journey, their joint external motivation: Dublin or bust, will lead them to call out truths about each other that has them see new truths in themselves, ending in them fulfilling their inner goals: Declan makes peace with his past and Anna let’s go of her expertly planned future. Their reward for learning their lessons and daring to evolve: sharing true love and finding happiness together.

Why am I outlining the plot of this romcom? Because this romantic structure is so applicable to the interlinked character journeys of Dean and Cas - to the point where it’s such an integral part to their narrative - that I cannot imagine it’s not used with every intent and purpose. I would go so far as to say that Dean and Cas being the central love story is very much canon, and have so been since Castiel’s epic entrance into the series, because visual and verbal subtext is every bit as important as the superficially stated - I’d argue it’s more important - to the intricate narrative of this show. When it comes to why the showrunners would need to, rather than outright choose to, keep this love story in subtext is something I’ll (also) discuss further on, so back to the topic at hand: the romance.

Let’s begin with the two most vital ingredients for any narrative, but especially for the romantic one - The Characters.

Dean Winchester

“Saving people, hunting things - the family business.”

So you have this guy who’s outwardly confident, a real guy’s guy and ladies man, a fearless leader, a natural born charmer who’s easy on the eyes, who dresses in a leather jacket, drives a kick-ass set of wheels, listens to classic rock, eats meat - and no frigging veg - like it’s going out of style, has a severe problem with authority, a dorky sense of humour and a heart about the size of Texas: this guy is our Leading Man.

As you get to know him, you realise how much of your first impression of him was actually a very calculated misdirect. You get to see the deepening cracks in his consciously polished veneer, because that outward confidence is all an act, plastered on, not only for the sake of his younger brother, but for his own sake as well, since this guy has perfected the act from a very young age. The weight of responsibility for his brother’s safety that he has been forced to shoulder since childhood, has stumped him from ever taking any real responsibility for himself, so the motor that keeps him running, that gives him purpose and affirms his place in the world, is looking out for his brother’s safety.

This - along with their father’s rigorous training schedule - has turned this guy into a hunter, a killer, who goes after the things that go bump in the night before those things can go after him. He’s gotten so used to being in charge that neither he, nor his brother, question who calls the shots when the going gets really tough, because it’s always been the elder of the two. And the going does get really tough, and this guy, he does make some wrong choices along the way, and there’s regret, but not a whole lot of opening up about it because this guy is tight-lipped and repressed and refuses to acknowledge his emotions as anything more than baggage to be locked away and ignored. Girls talk about their feelings - real men do not.

It’s just that this guy, who sleeps with a new hot chick every other week (or every other night, presumably) and, though clearly one of the Good Ones deep down, treats women as pieces of meat more often than not, has a severely damaged sense of self-esteem. There is a deeply rooted doubt in him, a doubt that says he’s not good for anything but this life he never even chose for himself; and let’s not forget hunting is what this guy does, it doesn’t tell us, really, who he is. This disconnect between being good at what he does, but not so good at being himself, stems from this guy’s father - the most prominent role model in this guy’s life - failing to ever tell him he’s worth something apart from his role as his brother’s guardian.

There’s really no wonder, then, that his younger brother is this guy’s entire world and that family is the epicentre of his universe - not when the truth of it has been drilled into him by a father who gave up a normal life to hunt for his wife’s murderer, dragging his boys into a reality of danger and blood and death in the process, teaching them that this is how you act, this is the sacrifice to be made, for your own blood. There’s no wonder that this guy has shut down any attempt at self-exploration, when every time he’s tried in the past, he’s been yanked back into the circumstances he never chose for himself, but has come to accept as the only reality he’ll ever know. This guy lives by the adage that you do anything for family, and that’s it. That’s all that matters. Without family, there’s only a big, fat nothing. So without his brother he has no sense of self, and as he’s gotten older the probability that there might actually not be anything there but that big, fat nothing has started feeling more and more plausible.

Should he not love his brother? Of course he should, and does. They share a very real and abiding bond that even Death himself has tried, and failed, on numerous occasions, to entirely sever. However, this abiding bond and this lack of self-esteem holds this guy - and ultimately his brother - back from stepping out of their shared comfort zone of familiarity, and into one of actual self-reliability. Does this mean they have to part ways? No - and they never, ever will, but it’s become a vicious cycle: in order to live a full life this guy needs to let go of his need to control his brother in order to keep said brother safe, but this guy’s low self-esteem keeps him afraid that if he let’s go of his brother he won’t like what he’s left with - his sense of self is so badly skewed by his codependency.

What makes this cycle so tragic is that, in this guy, there is a sincere longing for stability, for a hearth and a home. His obsessive compulsive love for his car - putting aside how the precious vehicle was inherited from the boys’ father - ties a direct line to this longing. The Impala is the only constant sense of a home this guy has ever had, the only thing in his life that represents that stability which he deep, deep, deep down yearns for.

The anger he has carried around with him - anger over his mother’s death, over his mother’s choices, over his lost childhood, over his brother leaving and going off to college, over dragging his brother back into hunting (regardless of how ultimately it was the brother’s choice to stay), anger over the need to keep his brother close, the inability to allow his brother that normal life the brother keeps stating he wants because he himself can’t relate to it, no matter how much this guy wants stability, a hearth and a home, because he doesn’t think it’s for him, he can’t see that he deserves it - all of this anger, the final thing he inherited from his father, the foremost emotion in his chest, the one that’s kept him fighting when he could’ve just given up, is the one thing he will have to reconcile with if he’s ever to combine his want (the external motivation for his journey) with his real need (the internal goal of that journey).

This reconciliation would then result in his external motivation to save people by hunting things coexisting with his internal goal - that of finding stability through acknowledging his buried emotions, and in learning how to actually deal with them gaining the reward of living a long, and happy, life. He just needs someone to guide him in the right direction.

Castiel

“We’re making it up as we go.”

So we have this angel, whose first appearance makes him seem like he’s the centre of a lightening storm, something charged and threatening about to strike our Leading Man down, who tells our Leading Man that God has work for him, turning his entire world upside down and inside out and then disappearing as suddenly as he appeared: this angel is our Love Interest.

For our Leading Man, getting to know this angel is a slow process. Getting to trust him is an even slower one. There’s an ever lingering sense of danger surrounding him, on top of which his unpredictability and continuous refusal to adhere to, or even try to adopt, human behaviour makes it difficult to suss out exactly where his loyalties lie. This angel forces our Leading Man into violence because Heaven commands it, this angel turns his back on him for the same reason, resulting in our Leading Man beginning to seriously mistrust Heaven. Then, just like that, this angel actually hears him, properly, and perhaps it’s for the first time, perhaps it isn’t, but this angel breaks ranks and chooses, of all things, to fight by the side of our Leading Man against everything and everyone this angel has ever known. Our Leading Man doesn’t fully comprehend what this means, and how could he? After all, he’s is only human - but he does know some things.

He knows that this angel has been around since the dawn of life on Earth, has captained a garrison of angels and has fought the armies of Hell to save our Leading Man from himself; this angel, who appears in the human vessel of a humble, trench-coated salesman, but whose true form has six feathered wings and is as tall as the Chrysler building and will burn the eyes out of our Leading Man’s skull if he looks directly at it, whose true voice can give our Leading Man a weeklong headache and blow every light for half a mile, who can bend time, travel across the planet in the blink of an eye, who appears and disappears without warning or goodbyes, who understands nothing of human emotion because angels don’t experience them, who invades our Leading Man’s dreams, demands his respect and obedience and trust, who’s commanding in ways previously unknown to our Leading Man because this angel is something he’s always assumed was nothing but a fairy tale of light to put fear in the darkness of the world; this angel, who makes our Leading Man feel, for the first time, that he’s not alone, because this angel keeps turning up, keeps choosing to step in, to intervene, to help. This angel’s faith and power is infectious and it fills our Leading Man with a tentative, but very real, hope that there’s something more, to everything.

Despite all these jaw dropping qualities, our Leading Man begins to see that this angel also has flaws - just like him. Those first impressions, the ones of angels being creatures of complete focus, no hesitation, utter perfection, begin to rip at the seams. Our Leading Man witnesses how the arrogance of fighting under Heaven’s flag can too quickly become hubris, and the very real need to help people can too easily veer into helping them at any cost, even when the risk is that the cost to the innocent will be a great one. In spite of this, our Leading Man can’t help but see beyond these flaws, to the heart behind the choices, to that beating humanity, the one that tethers the angel to Earth like a rope. (Of course, our Leading Man doesn’t see that he’s the one holding the other end of it.)

This angel is a soldier and a warrior who throws himself into danger without a moment’s hesitation, who sacrifices his life for friends and for strangers, who helps rip up the script his Father wrote so long ago and who chooses free will over ever falling in line again, but his disregard for his own life and his own safety, with his own worth tied only to what he can do for others, rather than taking stock of what he wants, who he is and who he could be, is holding him back. His sense of duty is so deeply imbedded in his personality that he’s set adrift without it, so adrift that he actually believes himself to be expendable, and now he’s torn between loyalties: those formed through eons of time to Heaven, and those formed through learning who he could choose to be and what he could have as a human man.

He’ll need to make a choice between them and stick with it if he’s to combine his want (the external motivation for his journey) with his need (the internal goal for his journey). The choice of humanity would result in his external motivation: to help people - coexisting with his internal goal: that of letting go of duty and fully embracing free will in order to gain the reward of living a long, and happy, life. He just needs to learn his lessons first.

So, to Round Off

With our Leading Man and our Love Interest defined we have the foundation for our Love Story. With their character traits, their strengths and flaws, firmly in place, the source for conflict - the root of their much needed growth - is clear. Now all that’s left is setting them on parallel paths, allowing them to challenge each other and learn from one another. Here’s where their joint journey begins.

#destiel #meta #romance #narrative #story structure #supernatural #canon #dean winchester #castiel

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