Why is "this isn't a romcon" only used to explain why we don't have explicit Destiel when Supernatural, the non-romcon, still made plenty of room for Charlie/Gilda, Dean/Lisa, Cas/Meg Sam/Amelia, even Hannah/Cas to get more explicit nods. Supernatural doesn't have to be a romcon to include explicit DeanCas. And Cas doesn't have to be a main character to be involved in a romantic relationship. Like what is up with all these bullshit arguments that don't amount to anything but double standards?
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
Because how many times did we see Clair kick that guy in the nuts? Not close to them, RIGHT ON TARGET. She tagged him at least three good ones.
And yet not two minutes later he comes down the stairs and seems perfectly fine.
I’ve seen several people commenting about how long it took for Cas to pull her away from him, so we were meant to see that she should have been incapacitating him. But why, apart from just the surface level of audience catharsis? And there’s ALWAYS something underneath; if you’re taking this season at face value, you’re missing a lot of stuff.
And now I’m wondering if this doesn’t have something to do with it:
That is a very deliberate comparison of the red blood on Randy and what is clearly black blood from the other guy. We were meant to notice the difference—this editing only points out what we’ve already seen a couple of times in the wide shots.
So what was that guy? Clearly he was something not human. Was he a demon in his original body, like the guy we saw in “Girls Girls Girls”? And if so, how did Dean kill him with just that knife? Regular knives don’t work on demons, so what the hell did Dean do to him?
I think this is part of the reason Cas looks so horrified—slaughtering everyone in the house is bad enough, but if Dean’s able to kill things that shouldn’t be killable with the weapon he had…
Suddenly the fact that we didn’t actually see what was going on in the house and just heard Dean roaring is making me very, very nervous. If this is a Significant Thing, it is already so much worse than we’d thought…
Huh. Well, this ep established that there’s a pipeline smuggling demons out of hell. This guy could be part of that, or (speculation time) maybe things are getting smuggled out of purgatory too. Like, leviathans.
And that guy was a loan shark.
Hello whole new level of OH NO for all the water imagery. (Which, yeah, there was more of in this ep. *guiltily eyes askbox*)
DUDE. I had not connected that, but yes, that could very well be it. And also, what’s going on with these in-their-own-body demons? What does it mean for Dean? Because if this guy was a demon, that makes twice now we’ve seen them killed by something we’ve never seen kill demons before—hex bag and ordinary steel knife.
The rest of this season is growing more terrifying by the minute…
‘I just NEED to decorate, Sammy. Once I start I can’t … I can’t stop.’
Dean no, you’re taking this too far. You’re decorating too much it’s changing you. I mean look at what you did to Cas YOU TIED HIM ON TOP OF A CHRISTMAS TREE. THAT’S TOO FAR.
Dean in a red and green flannel, Dean blaring Jingle Bell Rock as he drives the Impala, Dean putting mistletoe everywhere and inviting Cas over for some eggnog
Dean sucking his candy cane into a sharp point and using it to stab someone because he’s a holly jolly killing machine
Okay thank you so much for the Dean POV. I rewatched the scene and really. Really. He had no other choice! And he wanted out so bad. In fact. They knocked him out and I think what drove him back to consciousness was the mark.
There have already been posts that describe Dean as evil in that scene, but that’s not what happened. To break down:
Dean was backing away to go back to the car
He had to lift his gun again to remind the men to stay back
One hit him over the back of the head
He fell down
They started to come towards him
He pleaded: “You don’t wanna do this”
They laughed and took it like he was begging for his life
There were gunshots in the room
AND DEAN ONLY HAD A KNIFE
No matter how guilty Dean looked, sounded, no matter what he said to Sam, he had to fight for his life. He became too violent, killed them all in a haze thanks to the Mark, but he didn’t have a choice. He fought under gunfire, severely outnumbered. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t supernaturally-strong monsters. They. Had. Guns.
So, he felt sick. He felt violated by the horror that he had just dreamed about. The scenes were too close. So, what does he think?
I dreamed this. It’s my fault. I was always going to do this. I’m cursed.
I’m a monster.
Then, Sam comes in. He wants to rescue Dean, he can’t think, he’s terrified—gunshots, is Dean dead? Did they kill him? But there’s Dean, on his knees, bloody knife in his hand, and he says:
“Tell me.”
All Sam wants to do is save Dean, but Dean hears nothing but fear not for him, but about him. He hears:
“Tell me you’re not the monster I’m scared that you could be.”
He sees the horror in Castiel’s face, that old scourge of angels, the shriek of a teenage girl, watches himself in their eyes. As far as he’s concerned, he is a monster.
Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful—something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that’s not what love is all about.
Loving behavior doesn’t grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn’t hurt, it feels good. Loving behavior nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace.
