#I'm nearly done my rewatch and I forgot how emotional I get over these characters LMAO

[clare-with-no-i]

I think I would put Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood up as one of the best final acts of any television show I’ve ever watched

[elizabethrobertajones]

If you feel like it, I'd be interested in your opinion.... personally I'm getting really tired and hopeless about the way Dean gets angry, blaming and aggressive towards Cas and Sam.... yes, he's worried, he feels abandoned or betrayed - but I feel like I've been making excuses for him for so long.... IDK if it's out of character, it seems so so different from past characterization, where I feel it was more understanding and came with more sweetness and care.... am I wrong?

Answering this properly would probably take an entire walk through Dean’s life history, along with rewatching everything just to form an opinion… Bearing in mind you’re asking someone who would still default to being a Dean girl if I had to pick, even though I think those categories are monstrously unfair to my TFW-loving heart :P

I do think each successive trauma Dean’s had since season 2 has each time made him more depressed, angry and withdrawn, which is the root cause of all this (as usual, start with blaming John when discussing Dean’s personality defects :P) 

He also is usually right about things and has a moral high ground even when the show is making him a demon, so that can’t help :P He’s positioned as the emotional POV and moral centre of the story, and as Mittens keeps calling him, a human lie detector, and that puts him in a LOT of situations where he has to protect his family, or their lies and betrayal and losses all are about his reaction. 

(It’s this that makes me think he has a lawful good D&D alignment, mostly because these are extremely irritating traits in a character if not done right, and clearly irritate people about Dean when he rubs them the wrong way, and like… yeah, it’s a gut feeling about how irritatingly right he is but that’s essentially why. :P)

But yeah, he’s very sympathetic to me without me having to try and these same actions don’t feel that way to me because I’m clinging to Dean and sobbing about how miserable he is, and have been for pretty much my entire adult life >.> Oops. 

I understand though, because it was partially this that made me really fall out of love with him over season 10 (also how gross he was being) and it took a big rewatch intentionally reminding myself of Dean being sweeter that helped ease me back in. I was more concerned about falling back in love with Sam after season 10 though, because Dean not being Mark of Cain Dean was all I needed to like him again. And in season 11, that also was true - without the Mark I found that he was much easier to get on with emotionally, and I was thankfully ready to like him again after watching a great deal of the show over again to remind myself. 

I think he has changed though since then, and in many ways positively, but also he has in a weird way developed ahead of Sam and Cas in positive development but since he hasn’t in other ways, he’s getting narky with them from his IMPROVED moral high ground and they’re not meeting his standards of new character growth and he’s not like, perfect, so he gets snappy with them. :P 

The show ALWAYS give him a moral high ground though - even when he was demon!Dean. In this episode’s case, Cas is gonna steal the Colt and IS acting shifty, and in a way it’s totally Dean’s right to call him out if he knew this, but he just has a gut feeling something’s shifty and is pre-angry about what he’s angry about later in the episode, so he seems not to change, in a way, being angry about Cas for one thing then the other, but really he’s been angry about the same thing all episode, only getting more clarity on WHY and what Cas did later. 

I’m not saying he was right to act the way he did, especially on making Cas feel unwelcome immediately (it reminded me of him lashing out in 8x22 and that really hurts my heart as it was coming from the same place but now 4 years ago - Cas made off with the angel tablet to protect Dean in the abstract (and protect the tablet from Dean because again he was being kind of controlled by it in a way where it messed with his basic programming), instead of sticking with him and them risking all the trouble together as a team)… but between his worry and his suspicion, he tried to call Cas out about it because - and he knows he does this but I guess can’t help himself in the moment - he reverts to anger when he’s worried, and Cas is really really worrying him. Explaining he does it but then carries on doing it doesn’t mean he CAN all the time and ideally he’d try and talk it out before storming off or lashing out, but this is where we are >.> 

But yeah, he does this same thing way back… I can’t think of smaller examples though there’s bound to be some because right from the start he and Sam grated on each other but Dean’s secret in season 1 was he was just so scared for his family and wanted to put it all back together and not be alone and to protect them all - that’s the darkest thing Dean discovers in season 1, how much he’d do to protect his family. So this is still playing off a core trait that was Dean’s darkness in season ONE. But in practice back then that looks like constantly pissing Sam off to the verge of leaving to find John on his own half the time :P 

In 4x04 Dean has a chance for a huge sanctimonious narrative-will-prove-him-right argument with Sam at the start when he finds out he’s still been working with Ruby… He really lets Sam have it but he IS right and his approach really didn’t help anything especially as Ruby WANTED a rift between them, and Dean digs himself a great big hole over, like, everything… Same could be said for Cas, once he’s in the family bracket for sure, with 6x20 and everything Dean says there, especially as Cas going to Dean doesn’t actually seem like it could have helped all that much in averting Apocalypse 2.0 except for dying in the moral high ground together as family, so, yay :P In 4x21 Dean also says he’d rather Sam dies human and is technically right, with the narrative again, that Sam shouldn’t have been drinking more demon blood, or that they should use him as a weapon for the greater good, or let him go kill Lilith, since what seems like the ideal end goal is just how Lucifer gets free and causes even greater evil. (He also yells at and hits Cas in 4x22 but idk if Dean is even sure they’re friends yet until 5x01 when he definitely calls Cas his friend, although of course it IS the same type of argument where Dean is right, knows he’s being lied to and manipulated, and is pissed off and terrified.)

So anyway in show terms it’s old as dirt (aka anything that happened in Kripke era) and Dean’s always been angry-concerned and it’s so much a part of his character it doesn’t bother me in a way, even if I think he should change long term and not yell at and upset his family like that, it doesn’t upset or grind me down. 

I can see how season 10 could break you on that point though because it NEARLY did me, and kind of did for a little while (like… a couple of weeks. Which is a very long time to not like Dean in my personal timeline :P) - these days Dean is comparatively happier and in a better place than he was in season 10 and so every day he’s not Mark of Cain Dean is a little victory to me, and his behaviour and treatment of his family is accordingly more balanced and mature than it obviously would have been then, but I also think he has been working hard on trying to talk things out and addressing feelings. 

So in 12x19 he yells at Cas in one scene, but when Cas comes to talk to him again, Dean is open and calmer. He only gets angry again later when Cas betrays his trust, and I think that would be in part BECAUSE he opened up so much to Cas so it’s not just a general trust, it was a “I thought we were working on things and communicating better” trust of the immediate conversation he’d just had with Cas. I think he HAS been more well-rounded with emotional stuff and trying to get it right and not fuck up like he has in the past since season 11, and he genuinely had character development over that season that’s been very obviously applied THIS season. But he’s not magically become someone else other than Dean, and this is a core reaction for him and a core character trait when WRITING him, so it’s going to be a slow process to demolish it even though he’s addressed back in 12x10 that he does it and he knows it can be harsh, especially when he only really means to show his concern. 

I definitely don’t think it’s a thing to be hopeless about, especially when the story called Dean out for doing it - it’s called him out a few times over stuff, like in 11x23 making him say he put Sam and his own troubles ahead of everything including Cas, as well as 12x10 and apologising to Cas that he is too harsh because he’s concerned, not angry. Having Dean express these things out loud is not just Dean running his mouth, it’s dialogue that’s put in for the reason of SHOWING they know he has character flaws, and Dean genuinely has been trying to be aware he does it and to make up for it when he does. He can’t say, this time, that he forgot about Cas, because rather than wait for the ominous news, like it took until “Dean, that’s not Cas!!” for him to express more than passing concern, as soon as Cas stops picking up, Dean starts bombarding his phone and searching to see if he turned up dead in a ditch. He even got concerned and annoyed when Cas was working with Crowley at the start of the season and was keeping a grumpy eye on that scenario. He knew something was up before it even was this episode, and he might not have approached it well because he’s working on “concerned not angry”, but forgetting Cas is something he never wants to do again and the wake up call about it with Casifer has clearly had a profound effect on how he behaves about Cas - again it might seem like he’s being over-concerned and it might even be controlling behaviour but the narrative is determined to prove him right, and he has a strong basis for his gut feeling, because his gut feeling is very very accurate in many cases. 

But it has been 12 years and change is slow, so I can see why and understand it might not feel like enough, or that he’s getting worse… I don’t think you’d be wrong for thinking it, even if I don’t see it that way, because it’s so subtle and usually only shows up as positive development BY showing us the negative side of his behaviour so seeming to reinforce that it’s still there while we’re waiting for the change, and if you start to feel like you’re apologising rather than seeing those excuses as explanations for change, because it keeps on coming without seeming to change to you… It’s just a viewpoint and interpretation and  especially while we don’t have any big pay off, all it really is is that I have a more positive interpretation that’s making me much happier about where Dean is and how the show’s treating him that makes me really chill to see him angry at his family.

I think the point is that it feels to me at the moment that it IS in focus and they’re addressing it, we get MORE scenarios where this sort of thing happens because Dean is being tested on his character development over and over again - like how he had to deal with consecutive discoveries in only a few episodes of Mary and Sam and Cas working with the BMoL and then Heaven. Did he handle them perfectly? No, but he showed his development in different ways each time by expressing how he feels, or trying to go along with things instead of falling out, or to try and bridge gaps after falling out, and it shows each time that Dean is a work in progress and they’re slowly affecting him and helping him to grow as a person. But it means lots of scenes where Dean is pissy with the people around him, and falling into the traits the show feels like addressing, which is maybe why you’re now seeing them a lot and getting upset by it and thinking he’s never changed. They might not HAVE a moment where anyone ever points out he’s actually changed, and it becomes something that’s changed in him by omission that we don’t see it again after a while, and we have to remember he used to be this way.

I feel like a lot of his change, at least escalating to the Mark of Cain stuff, has been for the worse (as in, like I said, making him more and more depressed and angry and withdrawn), season 5 aside (season 5 fixed him and Sam somewhat before they unravelled the sweater again for another take at it all :P) and only in season 11 does he start getting positive character development, so we’re also in the middle of Dean’s positive change, and the show has all the time in the world, with a season 13 waiting and all these promises of it ends when we want it to end, that they don’t have to rush it, frustrating as that may be while WE wait for pay off on any of these long character arcs.

As an example of a finished one, though, Sam also has had lasting character development that had a profound change on the way he reacts/is written between season 5-7, and part of why he’s now more of a peaceful mediator in these things (although tending towards being too passive sometimes, and obviously has a lot of work he still needs doing especially as he still knee-jerk over-corrects and bottles things up) but in season 7 he really genuinely seemed to have grown and become more zen and peaceful with himself, and loses a LOT of his anger and over-confidence (… to the point of lack of confidence, which is where season 8 onwards escalated it >.>) which is a process he’s been on since season 5 but becomes more and more obvious through that chunk of the show, until Carver era starts messing with him badly, in a way where he also accumulates more trauma and changes his behaviour notably and over an extended period of time with lasting effects away from that and into seriously messing him up - but from a baseline of the zen Sam who emerged in season 5, not the angry Sam from season 1-4. 

We see them on screen so much sometimes you need a rewatch and to watch them evolve as if you hit the fast forward button on their lives, because going a season at a time and not looking back, it’s hard to keep a picture of how they were and how they’ve changed in our minds, especially when some behavioural changes are quite organic or not called out until they’re a long way down the line… It takes the start of season 7 to change and grow before Dean and Bobby start giving him “who are you and what have you done with Sam” faces as they realise, and tbh I only really noticed that after a rewatch where I already knew Dean and Bobby had called it out in the middle of season 7, to really appreciate this arc where Sam changes in season 5, 6 and 7…

… I think that is about as concise as I can get my very lengthy opinion, having deleted large tangents which probably were 3 times the length of this, all added up XD