see i love john winchester. as a character, he slaps. he’s also hot. and i understand him. he’s got so much grief and love inside him but it sometimes rots him from the inside, and he’s a little bit insane at this point, and he’s abusive, but he’s also protective, and he neglects his kids, but he’d also sell his soul for them. he’s so focused on revenge for a love that was predestined for him that he forgets himself sometimes, and he’s complicated, and he’s such a fucking good character.

see i love dean winchester. he’d do anything for his baby brother. he’s loving and fierce and practically raised sam as much as john did. but he’s also abusive. he’d kill anyone to save sam and also lay his life down for his brother but that means owning sam just as much. sam’s body and soul belong to dean. and he’s funny and he’s cute and he’s honorable and he saves people and he’s so fucking handsome and he has daddy issues and childhood trauma and eldest daughter syndrome and anger issues and abandonment issues and he sexualizes himself to control the beauty he’s been cursed with, flaunts it to his gain because that’s the way he’s been used as bait since he was a little kid. and yes he sometimes treats sam like shit--gaslights him, manipulates him. and he’s complicated, and he’s such a fucking good character.

and then there’s sam. there’s no doubt im biased towards him. sam’s the culmination of a long line of familial trauma, a boy with a streak of freak running through him--the grossness was always in his veins. a boy with powers he doesn’t understand, with a life he hates but a family he loves and too young to understand the loss and cycle that got them there. so he rebels and he tries to leave, once he makes it to flagstaff to escape the abuse and the life and dean takes the brunt of it, and when he runs away the second time, he’s told it’s for good. but he can’t escape his fate, so the loss of his father becomes his own and the brother beside him becomes his stronghold, and that means submitting, and that means sacrifice. returning to an abusive relationship of the person who needs him most and the person he needs the most. codependency. and he manipulates right back, lashes out violently to the abuse, hurting dean in the process, and warps himself darkly to his surroundings, and when the freakishness rises to the top, none of them can understand it, except for the devil of the god he’d been praying to all along. and he’s complicated and he’s such a fucking good character.

these are how i understand these characters. so when i say i’m deancrit, or im johncrit, or i hate how dean treats sam or john treats dean or whatever whatever, this is the cycle i’m talking about here. they’re all fucked up. i don’t hate any of them, but to me, to deny the abuse in these relationships would be unthinkable. the power dynamics will always be there. i want people to understand that when i criticize these characters...this is what i mean.

I see this held up as major proof of Dean's badness, but couldn't it also be proof of Cas having faith Dean can get past anything without Cas having to change his behavior? The way it's structured the onus is on DEAN to work through it, not others to change or make amends. ---- CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.

I see what you mean in a general sense, and it's extremely possible that Cas is thinking about his own past fights with Dean and Dean forgiving him, and from the perspective of the critique you have in mind that you're refuting, I agree. But of course deancrit casgirls will forever insist that Cas has never in his life done anything harmful to Dean either accidentally or on purpose, so any time Dean might dare try to hold him accountable for anything, he's actually just making shit up and being toxic and controlling, so here Cas is just apologizing for his own abusive relationship. You can only get their take by being deliberately obtuse/disingenuous.

That said, the context of that line (from 15.13 "Destinty's Child") is Cas answering soulless Jack's question about whether Dean will eventually forgive him for murdering Mary.

CASTIEL: Hey, Jack. JACK: Cas, you know what's good about being dead? CASTIEL: Uh, as I recall, very little. JACK: Well, when you come back, you – you really get into all that life is. Hot, cold, sweet, spicy, funny, scary. CASTIEL: And are you? "Into it"? JACK: I want to be. But I don't... feel things the way I used to. Before I lost my... CASTIEL: Your soul. JACK: I used to feel things. In my bones. It was glorious, and sometimes unbearable. But I felt them. Now, I understand joy or sadness, but... I know those things aren't in me. I understand why Sam and Dean were angered by what happened to Mary... CASTIEL: By what you did to Mary. JACK: Yes. I see that I've caused them pain. And it's clear that things have changed. Especially with – with Dean. Will he ever forgive me? CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on. JACK: How long will that take? CASTIEL: I don't know.

And yeah—I have seen people refer to Cas's little speech here as "condoning child abuse" and other bullshit. Because how DARE Dean not forgive soulless Jack for murdering his mother (something soulless Jack is unable to actually really acknowledge he did). I mean clearly any time someone murders your mom because she made them mad and threatened their sense of security by asking if they're okay and saying their concerning actions can’t stay a secret… That’s just natural understandable stuff! You need to forgive the person who murdered her instantly and if you don’t idk you’re kinda overreacting don’t you think? :/ I mean your mom probably deserved it kind of anyway for reading the room so wrong and talking about getting a person help. And I mean if you don't forgive the person who killed your mom or do anything trying to stop them from hurting more people you're really a child abuser... toward an adult... who murdered your mother in cold blood and is unable to even understand why it was wrong in any sense other than an intellectual one like he read it from a book... preferring to refer to it as "What happened to Mary" instead of acknowledge it as something he himself did because he was mad and felt threatened—which is what he circled back to in "Jack In The Box" too. It's only when Jack gets his soul back that he's able to actually feel true empathy, acknowledge his real actions and the gravity of them, and give an actual sincere apology. Because his soul is actually important—something this fandom refuses, by and large, to notice.

Anyway, this fandom's take on Mary's murder and soulless Jack vs. regular Jack is overwhelmingly a bag of wet third grader vomit and feces so what can one expect?

dean: [jack] almost killed us.

sam: yeah, because you tried to shoot him.

dean: i tried to shoot the monster, sam. it’s kind of what we do.

sam: we don’t know what he is yet, dean. and i had it under control.

dean: i’m sorry. are you defending the son of satan?

sam: i’m not defending anything. i’m just saying, look, with everything that’s happened, i’m obviously spun out also, but we need a plan.

dean: yeah, kill him. okay? that’s the plan. right now, all that matters is finding him and ending him before he hurts anybody else. and once we do that, we’ll figure everything else out.

sam: what about cas? is he... is he really dead?

dean: you know he is.

—

this is gonna sound strange, but i love how this is playing out. it reminds me a lot of john and sam in s1. azazel killed mary and jess, and both john and sam got tunnel vision trying to get revenge. and i know — the situations are not 1:1. i do not think jack is at fault. lucifer killed cas. lucifer took mary. lucifer is the main reason this happened. but with lucifer not here, and with jack being his son and being — along with sam and dean — who cas died trying to protect, jack is a natural target. and so, dean’s development is being deliberately turned on its head in this moment. dean grew past thinking in black and white to seeing the grey areas in hunting. given jack’s situation, there’s an abundance of grey, right? but all dean can process right now is that he just lost his mom and his best friend. he lost family. nuance goes out the window when it comes to his family, and a big part of s12 was about dean clinging to family, lashing out in concern when he felt like he was losing them. he has to regress. s12 set it all up to happen. this conversation alone touches on the perfect combination of challenges dean will likely face moving forward in terms of processing grief, accepting loss, and not always placing blame on an “innocent” person, especially when some circumstances are honest mistakes, or even entirely faultless choices. overall, this has been building up throughout dean’s arc for a while now and i am so excited to finally explore it.

As a heller who's deancoded and supports that bisexual, I'm not that forgiving of his mistakes. I totally agree that nonhellers typically give him a much bigger pass, but some of us don't and I think that's more organic? He made a lot of mistakes, but so did Cas. They have to be held responsable for the things they did wrong, to themselves, each other and others. I'll never forgive and forget how Dean just tossed Cas out of the bunker, for example. The thing is that, as hellers, we tend to focus on the good aspects of their relationship and put heart eyes in anything.

I mean I also fit that description! I’m more talking about broad tendencies within the fandom. as I mentioned I think shipping destiel tends to have a mediating effect on people’s urges to forgive dean’s more egregious behaviour in the show because you also care a lot about cas (and ime destiel shippers by and large don’t care very much about sam. like they don’t hate him but he’s very much secondary. which makes sense in a way because most of sam’s best arcs happen before a lot of mid to later seasons destiel content. again I also tend to fit this description so I’m not trying to point fingers lol).

I’m also trying to be very vague here because I don’t want to directly link posts or start fights with people, so I’m sorry if I’m not getting my point across lol. but if you do happen to stumble upon deangirls who don’t ship destiel, they tend to be incredibly apologetic about dean’s behaviour and have very bizarre and warped ideas about sam and cas. like because dean is the focal point of the show he’s also where a lot of fandom battles occur, but with a lot of destiel people (ime) there is an acknowledgement that dean is a flawed human being who has issues that need to be addressed (although whenever you try to have a discussion about that, people in destiel tumblr yell at you and call you deancrit lmao)

no i get what you mean tho. i'm destiel > until i die but there are also times i literally cannot turn off how annoyed i get at dean when he treats cas *like that*. but i'm a multishipper i think sastiel is so cute. also a casgirl and like i said deancritical i think there's a target on my back out here... in all seriousness tho i love your blog keep doing your thing cus i'm living vicariously through you i wish i could be friends with more deancrits but i come off very. loving of him because of the way the fandom is lmao

aw anon 🥺 thank u this is so sweet fr?? and ngl i have my moments dean IS very endearing sometimes! it’s inevitable! as long as you acknowledge that (as u said) he treats others badly sometimes i am perfectly happy to kiss on the lips. ALSO some of my legit fav mutuals are deancrit cas (& jack) stans (do u want recs?)

i generally don’t like destiel becuz of fans being obnoxious or just straight up ooc BUT i’ve reblogged deancas stuff before becuz it CAN be compelling. i think the important thing here is that u don’t have to choose a side or whatever if u don’t want to, u can just vibe. i consider myself a sam stan becuz hes my gf my wife my silly rabbit but u genuinely don’t have to ‘pick a side’ u can enjoy content from all corners :] these boundaries are arbitrary and often meaningless!

ive been watching supernatural since it first aired and ive never once got involved with the fandom until last week and so i must ask...though i am afraid of the answer...what is a samgirl and what makes their brand of fanon particularly toxic/obnoxious

oh god well okay so. this is TO MY UNDERSTANDING as a newcomer to the fandom. probably not the best person to be explaining this but I will do my best. if any of this is wrong/incomplete people can feel free to correct me. I’m also gonna try to be as neutral as possible and talk about the perception in the fandom at large as opposed to my own personal opinion on the validity of any of this. obligatory disclaimer that I have samgirl mutuals, they are my friends, this is not trying to start beef I swear lmao.

the spn fandom is very sectarian, with the destiel side (“desticule”) being the largest faction by a wide margin. people tend to identify their favourite characters by calling themselves (x)girls. deangirls and casgirls are both the norm in the desticule, with dean being the more common of the two. “samgirl” means the same thing, and this group is usually placed in opposition to the destiel side of the fandom, either because they are anti-destiel or they simply don’t care about the ship. this isn’t every samgirl, that’s just the general understanding amongst the destiel side of the fandom, and the “samgirl” label tends to imply that the person is automatically anti-destiel in some capacity.

I am only very vaguely familiar with fandom history/lore on here, but in general samgirls get a bad rap from the destiel side for a couple reasons. 1) they tend to dislike destiel. 2) they are commonly “dean critical”, ie people who dislike dean and criticise his character. on the samgirl side this commonly takes the form of criticising the way he treats sam in the show, but criticism is definitely not limited to that. the term dean critical/deancrit is often used jokingly in the desticule whenever discussing dean in a critical manner. 3) samgirls can be “adjacent” to or even sometimes involved in the more unpleasant parts of the fandom, including wincest/J2 people and, more rarely, bronlies/bibros (people who hate cas and want the show to just be about sam & dean, though those people tend to be siloed off into their own corner from what I’ve seen). in my personal experience, whenever my posts circulate into “samgirl tumblr”, the notes almost always fill up with wincest blogs soon after, so this holds true for me. again, this is very general and not true across the board, but this is the popular understanding in destiel tumblr, and anecdotally at least it matches my experience.

samgirls who are explicitly pro-destiel are considered “the good ones” and are sometimes jokingly called diversity hires, because while they watch the show for sam they still enjoy destiel and tend to be more forgiving/sympathetic to dean. honestly the two big things about samgirl tumblr is dean hatred and the wincest thing. In my personal experience, samgirl perspectives on the show tend to take the egregious elements of spn more seriously (racism, ableism, misogyny, etc) and centre them in discussions of the show a lot more often, so I follow a couple of them/lurk on their blogs for that reason, but in general they’re broadly distrusted by the destiel side for the reasons I outlined above.

so, again, that’s the general perception among the “desticule” based on what I’ve seen and read. you can debate how fair that reading is, and it is definitely reductive by virtue of the fact that there’s no way to account for the diversity of opinion within a fandom of this size, but that’s the “deal” with samgirls from the desticule perspective.