rainbowshoelaceswag:

rainbofiction:

You ask a great question, and you already know the answer: HETERONORMATIVITY. 

but

DeanCas is kind of already explicit I think? It’s more explicit than Meg/Cas. It’s got more textual support than Cas/Hannah. 

I mean, think back to Pirates of the Caribbean and the early Elizabeth/Will scenes. The entire romantic arc is founded in those scenes where they do not touch or even speak much to each other, okay, we’re expected to buy into their romantic story based on how they stare at each other, and it works. They’re seriously tense romantic scenes. And even if they hadn’t ended up together (‘cuz I really wanted her to go with Jack) they would still have been read as romantic scenes.

and they’re actually less romantic and less explicit than the stuff between Dean ‘n Cas*.

Remember that episode with Dean’s “gay thing” with Aaron? it’s kind of the same exact freaking thing as Dean’s moment(s) with Jo in season 2. like Jo was seriously considered as a romantic lead for Dean, and there is exactly as much support for Dean/Jo as there is for Dean/Aaron. 

(There are probably good examples from Hunger Games too, but I haven’t read those. Oh, there’s the ship from Brooklyn 99!! The two leads who are good friends and work partners all of a sudden have romantic feels because they’re male/female and that’s how it works. their scenes are less tense than Deancas.)

It’s not just that “if Cas was a woman they would have gotten together in season 4” — it’s that if Cas were a woman and everything else was exactly the same, line for line, shot for shot, everyone would already know they were in love and wanted to be together since like season 8. Because DeanCas already meets the general standards for romantic sideplots that are hetero.  It looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck except for the fact that they’re two dudes … so i’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s a duck. A gay duck.

Here’s the thing: The literary tools we’re calling ‘subtext’ are the exact same tools used to set up het-romantic sideplots,** and the only reason we think of them differently is heternormativity. i.e. - we should be calling Dean/Aaron’s bar scene a ‘meet-cute’ because that’s what it freaking is.*** Instead we call it … subtext. And I think by doing that, we’re buying into heteronormativity ourselves.

We’re kind of correct to do that, because heteronormativity is a real thing and the writers can’t just ignore it. Queer ‘ships are in fact held to different standards by the culture at large … But I don’t think we have to look at it that way just because a lot of other people do. I think if a scene looks romantic, we should go ahead and say it’s romantic - we’re cheating ourselves not to. I think the biggest reason we hang onto the heteronormativity goggles is because we’re afraid the writers have them on too. ****

and that is a real thing and it sucks monkey balls that most people don’t see it, I swear to freaking God, it ties into our history of homophobia, and it feels like being in the literary closet sometimes, but ……………………. i don’t know, part of me says “You can’t just ignore all that history, you can’t just pretend heteronormativity doesn’t exist” and I’m like “WATCH ME.” And that’s okay for me personally because I’m not writing the show. It’s problematic for the writers because they need to consider the general audience. 

tl;dr - heteronormativity sucks balls

(I also want to apologize for saying “it’s not a romcom” so tersely. It probably sounded dismissive and insulting, and I hope I’ve made myself more clear.)

*(The Elizabeth/Will stuff is on the same level as the bar scene in 8.23, I think, and 9.06 just blew that out of the water and it keeps getting better from there. like “Heaven Can’t Wait” legitimately feels like a romcom. like, the fourth act of a romcom where they’re mad at each other and we think they’re not gonna get together but then they do. That’s what that episode was.)

** these romantic tropes are actually kind of necessary to have us buy into the relationship, to have us believe that it’s real. Without the setup it falls flat.

*** (take a moment to imagine Dean and Cas having a meet-cute in Hell and giggle)

****(I’ve been trying to remove my heteronormativity goggles lately by just assuming Dean is canonically bisexual and it’s surprisingly easy to watch the show that way. nothing contradicts it. I haven’t thought of Dean as straight since season six.)

a) why has no one talked about a meet-cute in Hell, seriously, please. tell me your headcanons

b) Dean with the burger date and Cas with the heart eyes in “The Things We Left Behind” continue to be more intimate than legit straight couples

c) Dean trying to still be mad at Cas, trying to play it cool, trying to keep him out, and he just can’t 

i just