(2/2) So while i wouldn’t be completely surprised if we got more of a bro moment once all this casifer stuff is said and done, i can’t say i’m exactly *expecting* it after seeing how Dean was in 11×18. So pining and tender and broken, there was nothing bro like about how he was towards anything to do with Cas. I guess we’ll see, but i’m sure whatever it is will be emotional and make them all feel good and blah blah blah:-) Hopefully. As long as it’s sincere on all sides, i’m good.
Hi there, and thanks for trying to recreate part 1 of this ask. The original is probably laughing at us both from The Empty. I think that’s where misdirected tumblr asks go. They pop up on post-it notes pinned to the cork board in the back room at the Walmart E, and angels on their coffee break try their best to answer them, but there’s no outgoing mail service from The Empty. They had to cancel it after Gabriel kept trying to mail himself to Purgatory (the one in Miami).
SO.
Yeah. They’ve definitely gone a very long way in differentiating how Dean behaves around “bro friends,” including Benny. And having rewatched s8 fairly recently (and relived the first 5 episodes, which included a lot of Benny stuff, through Lizbob’s weird rewatch notes– no that’s what she calls them, I’m not saying they’re weird, that was her tag for them), he definitely treated Benny differently. In fact, I just read the one for 8.05 yesterday, where she made this observation:
TBH the ridiculous OTT way Dean reacts to hurt!Cas makes this Dean helping hurt!Benny thing more bro-y than basically anything going on in the actual scene for my eyes 😛
like “oh just found my vampire buddy mostly dead in a dark hole waiting for help but you know it’s cool”
and his reaction to Benny wandering out healed and in clothes is painfully setting us up for 8×07 and Cas’s ~cleans up nicely~ moment of infamy
Ah, the power of Hindsight Goggles, especially after watching Dean care for Cas in 11.03, and then continuing to worry about him over the phone in 11.04.
Even going back to how he felt about Benny when he asked Benny to die in order to go to Purgatory and get Sam out. That was a pretty significant thing for someone to ask of a friend, and a pretty significant thing for said friend to agree to. Even Sam was willing to offer Benny a second ride out on the “Soul Train,” because Sam knew how much Benny meant to Dean, and clearly Dean meant a lot of Benny for him to show up to help Sam in the first place. Sam knew what had to happen to Benny in order for him to be there, and that it was Dean who’d done the deed. Dean was pretty broken up that Benny decided not to return, but Dean wasn’t shattered in the same way he was over Cas not wanting to come back from Purgatory.
Sure, Dean buried Benny’s body near the portal in Maine, just in case he ever decides he wants to come back. Dean respected Benny’s choice, but he left the metaphorical door open just in case. And then he moved on with his life.
There were no hallucinations of Benny popping up outside his motel room window in the rain. No nightmares (at least, not that we were shown. I have a feeling Dean has nightmares about all sorts of things we’re not privy to). No faraway stares into the distance with glassy-eyed slow-zoom reaction shots. Dean didn’t invent a false memory in order to feel less awful about Benny’s decision to stay behind.
Then there was the Halluci!Benny Dean talked with under the influence of the Werther Box. Yeah, it was a bit of his own psyche, conjured by guilt and urging him to kill himself (which was the function of the Werther Box spell), but it was the part of Dean that had actually found Purgatory “pure,” represented by his friend.
I was sitting here thinking about Dean’s other bro friends.Poor Dean needs more friends. I guess technically Charlie was a bro-friend, in that he considered her like a sibling. His reaction to her death was dialed up to 11 on the violence meter under the MoC’s influence, but it sent him off the rails, and likely would have even without the Mark driving him to it. It also hadn’t been that long since HE’D been the one to hurt Charlie when the Mark took over in 10.11.
As skeeved as I am to say it, I think Crowley counts as one of Dean’s bro friends now. *ew ew ew summer of love and all that* *spits* But they have a relationship that runs the gamut from personal confidant on family matters (like in 10.17 where Dean gives him the “family don’t end in blood” speech) all the way to “we did extraordinary things to triplets.” Take that however you want.
Sure Dean’s not buddy-buddy with Crowley, and he knows who and what Crowley is, but he still can’t bring himself to kill the bugger. Dean’s seen Crowley at his most human, too, after the Trials. But Crowley’s also now on Dean’s list, same as Benny was, of People Who Tried To Save Cas. He’s shown up time and again to help, even though yeah, most of the time it was also in HIS interest to help. Like “un-demonizing” Dean in 10.03. Giving Cas a shot of stolen angel grace to recharge his mojo was a part of that. And convincing Cas to oust Lucifer was almost entirely prompted by the pinched situation Crowley’s found himself in since Luci had been keeping him as a pet… so.
What was the point of this? AH! Right. How Dean reacts differently to “friends” and to Cas being hurt. I thought this was bad enough in 11.03:
And that was right after Cas had been throwing Dean around like a rag doll while under the attack dog spell. But then, after 15 “Cas! CAS! CASTIEL! CAAAAAAAS!” outbursts in 11.18, combined with this:
I mean, that’s not a HEY MY BUDDY MY PAL U OKIE DOKEY IN THERE? kind of look there. But that’s just my reading of it. Gah, I’m tearing up a little just looking at the damn gif. Better finish this up.
Yeah, I have no idea what’s actually in store for us, but really, whatever it is is going to be emotionally significant.
You’ve amazingly contrasted the emotional difference with Dean’s regard to his bro-friends and his more-than-bro friend, but let me add another angle. Benny and Castiel were contrasted purposefully during season eight in many, many different ways, and one of the most blatant examples is that Dean watched both Benny and Castiel emerge from the washroom all cleaned up and ready to go. Both scenes were even sandwiched between Purgatory flashbacks, so the composition was very similar.
In Blood Brother Dean initially has his back to the washroom and then turns, frowns and says “Wow, you look okay.“ His tone is pretty flat. A thing to also note is that Sam is not in the room with them, they are perfectly alone. Dean gets back to business just as soon as Benny’s cleaned up, starts working the case.
The scene could not be more different from that in A Little Slice of Kevin where Dean is struck dumb. Dean has no control over his face or over his limbs, he does not know what to even do with himself.
Not only is Dean not ready to get right back to business after having seen Castiel emerge from the washroom – this is the part we rarely talk about with regards to the scene: Dean, immediately following the scene, removed himself from the motel room. He went outside, for a walk, to get a breath of fresh air, to get a six-pack of beer. And despite all this, despite having removed himself from the scene, when he gets back to the motel he still wants to devour the angel.
I want to emphasize this again: Dean walked away from the situation to calm himself, and he’s still clearly, visibly affected up to a twenty minutes later.
The two scenes are meant to be paralleled. One of these things its not like the other.
Benny was Dean’s blood brother, his comrade in arms. Benny was as close to Dean as one man can be to another – platonically. Benny was there to show the audience that Castiel is not – that. Castiel is not Dean’s blood brother, he’s not Dean’s comrade in arms. He’s not Dean’s friend. He’s something other.
kototyph 