Meta: Dean Winchester's Road to Lisa's Doorstep (Supernatural)
This is cleaned up and reposted from some anonymous comments I made. I've been working on this theory for awhile now, and this discussion prompted me to finally write the whole damn thing down, if you'd like the context.
Basically, this connects the dots that we got in canon to develop a plausible road map from the Bendy Weekend to the end of 99 Problems, based on the premise that, physically, Lisa has been Dean's dream-girl since he met her, and explores his relationship with her from there on, as well as exploring Dean's love affair with death and his deteriorating regard for his father. His relationships with Mary, Ellen, Jo, and Castiel don't play much into this particular roadmap, though I don't deny their importance in developing his character, it's just this is a bit long already.
1. 1999 - The legendary 'bendy' weekend occurs, solidifying Lisa's place as the physical proto-type for Dean's dream girl. The weekend is never meant as anything more than physical and both parties leave more than satisfied.
2. Sometime while Sam's at Stanford - Dean develops an emotional and physical connection with Cassie, but when he reveals his job/is forced to leave by John, Cassie rejects him. Never having taken rejection (especially emotional) well...
3. 2005/early 2006 ... When given the opportunity to re-ignite the relationship, Dean can't bring himself to trust Cassie not to reject him again.
4. Late 2006 - Tessa picks the form of a pretty girl so that Dean will listen to her, a pretty girl who looks a bit like Lisa (his physical favorite). She manages to get Dean to the cusp of accepting his own death, of retirement and peace, before his Father makes the deal that puts Dean back in his body. Dean, who had previously always accepted he was going to die young, begins to truly fall in love with the idea of dying. In particular, he becomes convinced that if Sammy/his family are going to die, he has no reason to live. (See 'Croatoan' and "BUaBS' for explicit examples of this attitude.)
5. Spring 2007 - The djinn lets us see Dean's dream world, where he doesn't have to be particularly responsible or reliable, and where he's dating/living with/in love with Carmen, a woman whose picture he's been eyeing in magazine ads lately, probably because she looks like Lisa/Tessa. In his fantasy, Carmen's more responsible/respectable than he is, and loves him despite knowing his many flaws (the cheeseburger conversation, her obvious knowledge of his problems with Sam, 'he's missing out on a great guy'). (Not saying the world is only made up of his hopes: it also reflects his fears that without hunting, he'd lack a purpose and ambition/be recognized as an alcoholic; and also that if he didn't raise Sam/Sam didn't have to depend on him in life or death situations on a routine basis, they wouldn't get along.) He rejects this world in an act of suicide, both because he's already in love with death if he's wrong and because if he's right, he has a duty to protect Sam and others (but mostly Sam) in the real world.*
6. May 2007 - Sam dies, Dean makes the deal because he honestly would prefer death at this point, getting Sam back is a bonus, and possibly because he wouldn't mind a reunion/confrontation with his father, which is then spoiled when John escapes hell.
7. 2007 - Freed of responsibility by his impending death and embracing hedonism, one of the first items on Dean's bucket list is "More sex with Lisa". (Apparently item number one was the Doublemint Twins, but that may have been an issue of availability rather than priority). Upon finding Lisa, Dean glimpses the possibility of being a father to her son Ben, which opens up the chance that he has been/is going to be an absentee father to a child. His anger towards John that's been simmering since the previous November starts to boil. Dean starts to think of John as a dead-beat Dad, recognizes that he was effectively a parent to Sam and begins to realize that being a parent is something he likes/wants. I don't think he'd previously considered expanding his family beyond Sam/having children of his own. (In WiaWSNB, when he talked about Mary's grandkids he seemed to be referring to Sam and Jess' kids).
Furthermore, after Lisa encounters the supernatural and finds out what Dean does, she doesn't reject him but invites him to stay. This is where she out-distances Cassie in the "if-only-girl" sweepstakes: she admits that not only is Dean-the-pick-up-artist her type, but Dean the reality is accepted as well. However, knowing that he's now got an expiration stamp, Dean leaves, no longer as sure about the deal as he had been before.
8. Late 2007 - Dean's dreams again. Lisa appears in the white-dress-of-doom holding an apple, symbol of things Dean wants but can't have but wants. In the same dream, Dean acknowledges the deal sucks (whatever the remaining attractions of death, the question of eternal torment aside: Dean doesn't want to become a demon). Dean outright blames his Father for putting him on this path and making Dean's concept of family so narrow that his entire world became Sam. He feels tricked on a number of levels.
9. 2008 - Dean's last illusions of his father the superhero coming back to save the day are shattered in LDC. Even Sam can't save him from Hell.
10. 2008 - Dean returns from Hell and is immediately thrown into an apocalyptic struggle. Unsure of his chances of survival, coping with PTSD, trying to figure out what's going on with his brother, in man!love with Castiel, I don't know, but Dean doesn't contact Lisa or Ben for reasons not stated. (But, seriously, writing staff: HE REALLY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST MENTIONED HER!) He may notice the resemblance to Lisa/Carmen on meeting Tessa for the second time: he remains attracted to her, but has learned to distrust death.
11. 2009 - Courtesy of Zachariah, who needs Dean to embrace his "destiny," Dean and Sam get a sneak peek at a normal life they both hate. In it, both live alone, and Dean apparently does not call his family to find out that Ellen, Bobby, and Jo are not actually his mother, father, and sister. He doesn't mention any girlfriends (or boyfriends). In fact, Dean Smith is essentially asexual and career driven - the career-driven isn't really a stretch, it's just that sales isn't quite as satisfying as hunting monsters and saving lives.
12. 2009 - Dean meets his half-brother Adam, another reminder of John's faults as a father, another reminder of what Dean could have been to Ben. Now thoroughly disillusioned with John, Dean resists the urge to be the sometimes-Dad to Ben that John was to Adam, continues to avoid Lisa. (Again, writing staff: it would be nice to have something like this made explicit.)
13. February, 2010 - With the Apocalypse chugging along at full-steam, Dean is despondent and has given up on the random hook-ups that had previously satisfied him. He doesn't know what he wants, so he continues to confine his world to Sam, Bobby, and Castiel, none of whom is making his life easier at the moment: all of them depending on him for leadership, strength, stability, etc. pretty heavily by now.
14. 2010 - After DSotM, Dean, now feeling completely rejected by the family he had (not saying it's true, just saying that's how he felt), shows up at the doorstep of the family he might have had. As Michael he has to kill Sam and end the world, but he hopes he can save them, and he wants Lisa to know what she meant to him/not be afraid/acknowledge what he's doing for them. Lisa confirms her status as his if-only-girl by once again not rejecting him, offering to take care of him, and asking him to stay. Afterwards, Sam knows exactly where Dean had stopped, indicating that offscreen (dammit, writers!) Dean has mentioned Lisa and Ben at least a few times since DaLDoM.
15. 2010 - Dean meets Death himself - old dude, likes pizza, a lot smarter than Dean is, but not necessarily evil - just necessary. He's willing to help but asks more of Dean than Dean really wants to give. This is Dean's new relationship with Death.
16. 2010 - Orphaned, brotherless, disillusioned with just about everything, Dean falls back on the family he might have had and shows up at Lisa's door. Sam makes it his last request, remembering how, when he only had Bobby to turn to, Sam lost himself in the quest for revenge. By using the leverage he knows he has to push Dean towards Lisa and Ben, Sam hopes that Dean will be able to rebuild an actual life. Dean's told him about the djinn fantasy, Sam knows how miserable Dean Smith was living alone: and it was also Sam's dream when he was an eighteen year old running away to Stanford. As a last request, it's not bad: it's almost a last-bequest. Live the dream, Dean.
Of course, Sam doesn't realize his stay in the Cage is going to be temporary.
Like I said, except for the GAPING HOLE of s.4, the arc almost makes sense.
* Point five has led to some fun discussion of how I interpret WiaWSNB and the exact mechanics of how/why the djinn creates the hallucination where the "wish" is granted. Many thanks to the poster(s) who brought this into the discussion. I also include the posts I've made defending the conclusions I drew in point #5:
Re: The Wish!verse was an actual AU, all of which stemmed from changing a single event: Mary's death:
Whether you're on the "He wished Mary lived" or the "He wished he could rest" side of the WiaWSNB debate (I'm in the latter camp), can you agree that the fact that Carmen was the Sol Beer ad girl indicates that the djinn tapped into Dean's psyche to create the Wish!world?
Re: Maybe Carmen was just a recent image chosen at random? How do the djinn make up these hallucinations?
Regarding the djinn's methods - and I was really trying to avoid bringing 6.01 into the discussion because I'm reserving judgment on that episode until I have more information - but, speaking purely of on-screen explicit canon, the new!djinn in that episode create delusions that are specifically tailored to Dean's worst fears. So it looks like their hallucinogenic venom/telepathy can and does identify the emotions related to specific memories in creating the illusions.
So, the first djinn, who's just trying to keep his prey placid and docile, manipulates memories to make what should be a pleasant but plausible AU for the prey (which sort of renders the actual wish superfluous). The new!djinn, on the other hand, who want Dean to suffer, manipulate memories to create a horrific but plausible AU for their prey. Plausibility seems to be their main limitation - they want to make the dream/hallucination feel real. Which is another reason why they'd tap into more of the prey's psyche than just the explicit wish, and why I stand by the conclusions I drew in point #5.
Re: Eh. I don't buy it, and I'll freely admit that it has more to do with my view of Dean's character than it does with canon, because you make a pretty cogent argument here.
You see, if you buy into the idea that WiaWSNB is what Dean's subconscious really thinks would happen if he and Sam had grown up normal, then you have to buy into a Dean who really has no self-worth at all. He thinks his brother would hate him; he thinks he would be a gambler and someone who would steal from his own mother; he thinks he would be a drunk.
I really don't see Dean as THAT lacking in self-esteem. I don't see it elsewhere in canon, either, no, not even in the infamous "Dad would have ripped me a new one" scene in Devil's Trap.
I would like to clarify: I don't think that the Dean's subconscious interpretation of WiaWSNB shows that Dean believes he has no self-worth.
What are Dean's problems in that episode?
1) He isn't terribly ambitious: still working at the garage, but he is working and paying the bills on a reasonably nice house/apartment.
2) Everyone thinks he's drunk. But he doesn't actually drink that much in the episode, despite everyone's fears, and he's expressed regret/alarm at how much he drinks on other canon occasions. I think he's afraid of becoming an alcoholic more than anything.
3) He pulled a lot of shit on Sam while growing up that soured their relationship: but there's no indication that what he did is anything *worse* than what he did while growing up on the road (consider the prank wars). As I said, he worries that if Sam didn't have to put up with him, he wouldn't.
On the other hand: Wish!Mary loves him unconditionally. There are no indications that Wish!John and Dean had any strain in their relationship. And Carmen, the character who has the least basis in reality/is most drawn from Dean's thoughts, the dream-girl who chooses to live with him, says that Dean is a good man and that if Sam knew him better he'd realize that. Dean creates a fantasy of someone who acknowledges his self-worth, and that makes the issue less "I'm worthless," and more "As hard as I try, why can't I ever be good enough for the people I care about most?"
This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/53347.html because DW is where I set up crossposting first and I'm lazy. Feel free to comment wherever you prefer. This post has
comments on DW.
Basically, this connects the dots that we got in canon to develop a plausible road map from the Bendy Weekend to the end of 99 Problems, based on the premise that, physically, Lisa has been Dean's dream-girl since he met her, and explores his relationship with her from there on, as well as exploring Dean's love affair with death and his deteriorating regard for his father. His relationships with Mary, Ellen, Jo, and Castiel don't play much into this particular roadmap, though I don't deny their importance in developing his character, it's just this is a bit long already.
1. 1999 - The legendary 'bendy' weekend occurs, solidifying Lisa's place as the physical proto-type for Dean's dream girl. The weekend is never meant as anything more than physical and both parties leave more than satisfied.
2. Sometime while Sam's at Stanford - Dean develops an emotional and physical connection with Cassie, but when he reveals his job/is forced to leave by John, Cassie rejects him. Never having taken rejection (especially emotional) well...
3. 2005/early 2006 ... When given the opportunity to re-ignite the relationship, Dean can't bring himself to trust Cassie not to reject him again.
4. Late 2006 - Tessa picks the form of a pretty girl so that Dean will listen to her, a pretty girl who looks a bit like Lisa (his physical favorite). She manages to get Dean to the cusp of accepting his own death, of retirement and peace, before his Father makes the deal that puts Dean back in his body. Dean, who had previously always accepted he was going to die young, begins to truly fall in love with the idea of dying. In particular, he becomes convinced that if Sammy/his family are going to die, he has no reason to live. (See 'Croatoan' and "BUaBS' for explicit examples of this attitude.)
5. Spring 2007 - The djinn lets us see Dean's dream world, where he doesn't have to be particularly responsible or reliable, and where he's dating/living with/in love with Carmen, a woman whose picture he's been eyeing in magazine ads lately, probably because she looks like Lisa/Tessa. In his fantasy, Carmen's more responsible/respectable than he is, and loves him despite knowing his many flaws (the cheeseburger conversation, her obvious knowledge of his problems with Sam, 'he's missing out on a great guy'). (Not saying the world is only made up of his hopes: it also reflects his fears that without hunting, he'd lack a purpose and ambition/be recognized as an alcoholic; and also that if he didn't raise Sam/Sam didn't have to depend on him in life or death situations on a routine basis, they wouldn't get along.) He rejects this world in an act of suicide, both because he's already in love with death if he's wrong and because if he's right, he has a duty to protect Sam and others (but mostly Sam) in the real world.*
6. May 2007 - Sam dies, Dean makes the deal because he honestly would prefer death at this point, getting Sam back is a bonus, and possibly because he wouldn't mind a reunion/confrontation with his father, which is then spoiled when John escapes hell.
7. 2007 - Freed of responsibility by his impending death and embracing hedonism, one of the first items on Dean's bucket list is "More sex with Lisa". (Apparently item number one was the Doublemint Twins, but that may have been an issue of availability rather than priority). Upon finding Lisa, Dean glimpses the possibility of being a father to her son Ben, which opens up the chance that he has been/is going to be an absentee father to a child. His anger towards John that's been simmering since the previous November starts to boil. Dean starts to think of John as a dead-beat Dad, recognizes that he was effectively a parent to Sam and begins to realize that being a parent is something he likes/wants. I don't think he'd previously considered expanding his family beyond Sam/having children of his own. (In WiaWSNB, when he talked about Mary's grandkids he seemed to be referring to Sam and Jess' kids).
Furthermore, after Lisa encounters the supernatural and finds out what Dean does, she doesn't reject him but invites him to stay. This is where she out-distances Cassie in the "if-only-girl" sweepstakes: she admits that not only is Dean-the-pick-up-artist her type, but Dean the reality is accepted as well. However, knowing that he's now got an expiration stamp, Dean leaves, no longer as sure about the deal as he had been before.
8. Late 2007 - Dean's dreams again. Lisa appears in the white-dress-of-doom holding an apple, symbol of things Dean wants but can't have but wants. In the same dream, Dean acknowledges the deal sucks (whatever the remaining attractions of death, the question of eternal torment aside: Dean doesn't want to become a demon). Dean outright blames his Father for putting him on this path and making Dean's concept of family so narrow that his entire world became Sam. He feels tricked on a number of levels.
9. 2008 - Dean's last illusions of his father the superhero coming back to save the day are shattered in LDC. Even Sam can't save him from Hell.
10. 2008 - Dean returns from Hell and is immediately thrown into an apocalyptic struggle. Unsure of his chances of survival, coping with PTSD, trying to figure out what's going on with his brother, in man!love with Castiel, I don't know, but Dean doesn't contact Lisa or Ben for reasons not stated. (But, seriously, writing staff: HE REALLY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST MENTIONED HER!) He may notice the resemblance to Lisa/Carmen on meeting Tessa for the second time: he remains attracted to her, but has learned to distrust death.
11. 2009 - Courtesy of Zachariah, who needs Dean to embrace his "destiny," Dean and Sam get a sneak peek at a normal life they both hate. In it, both live alone, and Dean apparently does not call his family to find out that Ellen, Bobby, and Jo are not actually his mother, father, and sister. He doesn't mention any girlfriends (or boyfriends). In fact, Dean Smith is essentially asexual and career driven - the career-driven isn't really a stretch, it's just that sales isn't quite as satisfying as hunting monsters and saving lives.
12. 2009 - Dean meets his half-brother Adam, another reminder of John's faults as a father, another reminder of what Dean could have been to Ben. Now thoroughly disillusioned with John, Dean resists the urge to be the sometimes-Dad to Ben that John was to Adam, continues to avoid Lisa. (Again, writing staff: it would be nice to have something like this made explicit.)
13. February, 2010 - With the Apocalypse chugging along at full-steam, Dean is despondent and has given up on the random hook-ups that had previously satisfied him. He doesn't know what he wants, so he continues to confine his world to Sam, Bobby, and Castiel, none of whom is making his life easier at the moment: all of them depending on him for leadership, strength, stability, etc. pretty heavily by now.
14. 2010 - After DSotM, Dean, now feeling completely rejected by the family he had (not saying it's true, just saying that's how he felt), shows up at the doorstep of the family he might have had. As Michael he has to kill Sam and end the world, but he hopes he can save them, and he wants Lisa to know what she meant to him/not be afraid/acknowledge what he's doing for them. Lisa confirms her status as his if-only-girl by once again not rejecting him, offering to take care of him, and asking him to stay. Afterwards, Sam knows exactly where Dean had stopped, indicating that offscreen (dammit, writers!) Dean has mentioned Lisa and Ben at least a few times since DaLDoM.
15. 2010 - Dean meets Death himself - old dude, likes pizza, a lot smarter than Dean is, but not necessarily evil - just necessary. He's willing to help but asks more of Dean than Dean really wants to give. This is Dean's new relationship with Death.
16. 2010 - Orphaned, brotherless, disillusioned with just about everything, Dean falls back on the family he might have had and shows up at Lisa's door. Sam makes it his last request, remembering how, when he only had Bobby to turn to, Sam lost himself in the quest for revenge. By using the leverage he knows he has to push Dean towards Lisa and Ben, Sam hopes that Dean will be able to rebuild an actual life. Dean's told him about the djinn fantasy, Sam knows how miserable Dean Smith was living alone: and it was also Sam's dream when he was an eighteen year old running away to Stanford. As a last request, it's not bad: it's almost a last-bequest. Live the dream, Dean.
Of course, Sam doesn't realize his stay in the Cage is going to be temporary.
Like I said, except for the GAPING HOLE of s.4, the arc almost makes sense.
* Point five has led to some fun discussion of how I interpret WiaWSNB and the exact mechanics of how/why the djinn creates the hallucination where the "wish" is granted. Many thanks to the poster(s) who brought this into the discussion. I also include the posts I've made defending the conclusions I drew in point #5:
Re: The Wish!verse was an actual AU, all of which stemmed from changing a single event: Mary's death:
Whether you're on the "He wished Mary lived" or the "He wished he could rest" side of the WiaWSNB debate (I'm in the latter camp), can you agree that the fact that Carmen was the Sol Beer ad girl indicates that the djinn tapped into Dean's psyche to create the Wish!world?
Re: Maybe Carmen was just a recent image chosen at random? How do the djinn make up these hallucinations?
Regarding the djinn's methods - and I was really trying to avoid bringing 6.01 into the discussion because I'm reserving judgment on that episode until I have more information - but, speaking purely of on-screen explicit canon, the new!djinn in that episode create delusions that are specifically tailored to Dean's worst fears. So it looks like their hallucinogenic venom/telepathy can and does identify the emotions related to specific memories in creating the illusions.
So, the first djinn, who's just trying to keep his prey placid and docile, manipulates memories to make what should be a pleasant but plausible AU for the prey (which sort of renders the actual wish superfluous). The new!djinn, on the other hand, who want Dean to suffer, manipulate memories to create a horrific but plausible AU for their prey. Plausibility seems to be their main limitation - they want to make the dream/hallucination feel real. Which is another reason why they'd tap into more of the prey's psyche than just the explicit wish, and why I stand by the conclusions I drew in point #5.
Re: Eh. I don't buy it, and I'll freely admit that it has more to do with my view of Dean's character than it does with canon, because you make a pretty cogent argument here.
You see, if you buy into the idea that WiaWSNB is what Dean's subconscious really thinks would happen if he and Sam had grown up normal, then you have to buy into a Dean who really has no self-worth at all. He thinks his brother would hate him; he thinks he would be a gambler and someone who would steal from his own mother; he thinks he would be a drunk.
I really don't see Dean as THAT lacking in self-esteem. I don't see it elsewhere in canon, either, no, not even in the infamous "Dad would have ripped me a new one" scene in Devil's Trap.
I would like to clarify: I don't think that the Dean's subconscious interpretation of WiaWSNB shows that Dean believes he has no self-worth.
What are Dean's problems in that episode?
1) He isn't terribly ambitious: still working at the garage, but he is working and paying the bills on a reasonably nice house/apartment.
2) Everyone thinks he's drunk. But he doesn't actually drink that much in the episode, despite everyone's fears, and he's expressed regret/alarm at how much he drinks on other canon occasions. I think he's afraid of becoming an alcoholic more than anything.
3) He pulled a lot of shit on Sam while growing up that soured their relationship: but there's no indication that what he did is anything *worse* than what he did while growing up on the road (consider the prank wars). As I said, he worries that if Sam didn't have to put up with him, he wouldn't.
On the other hand: Wish!Mary loves him unconditionally. There are no indications that Wish!John and Dean had any strain in their relationship. And Carmen, the character who has the least basis in reality/is most drawn from Dean's thoughts, the dream-girl who chooses to live with him, says that Dean is a good man and that if Sam knew him better he'd realize that. Dean creates a fantasy of someone who acknowledges his self-worth, and that makes the issue less "I'm worthless," and more "As hard as I try, why can't I ever be good enough for the people I care about most?"
This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/53347.html because DW is where I set up crossposting first and I'm lazy. Feel free to comment wherever you prefer. This post has
comments on DW.