Name: Arden
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dancinpenguins .
Contact Info: AIM: thegreatmuldini, Plurk:
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ardendactylOther Characters Played: N/A, also apping Isabelle Lightwood
Preferred Housing: N/A, though I have a strong preference towards giving him housemates who are also newbies? To maximize the initial WTFery.
Character Name: Mr. Dean Winchester
Character Series: SupernaturalCharacter Age: 31
Background: Dean Winchester was the first child of John and Mary Winchester, born in Lawrence, Kansas, on Jan. 24, 1979. The first few years of his life were about as normal as you could get - although his parents had some marital problems, they were still a pretty peaceful household. These suburban formative years would become a cornerstone of Dean's emotional attachment to his family, and despite only having lived there until age four, he possesses incredibly strong impressions of this time. The truth was, however, that this 'idyllic' childhood had come at a steep price for his mother, who had come from a family of hunters, and made a deal with the demon Azazel. When Dean was four, the demon came to collect, feeding its blood to his baby brother Sam, and killing his mother when she tried to interrupt the process. Dean's father charged him with getting the baby out of their burning house, and in that moment, Dean adopted a level of protectiveness over his brother's safety that would remain for the rest of their lives.
John was irreversibly changed by Mary's death and became consumed with seeking knowledge of the supernatural realm and trade of hunting that would allow him to locate the yellow eyed demon and extract vengeance for the murder of his wife. This meant a life spent on the road, taking both his young boys from town to town, school to school, motel to motel, all in his '67 Impala, stuffed with weapons and tools of the trade in the trunk. Dean was taught from a very early age how to handle weapons, fight demons and monsters, use supernatural protection, and develop a wide array of criminal skills necessary to their job. He believed that his dad was a superhero, and never saw their lifestyle as a burden - they were helping people, as a family, and those were the two most important things to him. When Sam learned the truth about their dad, Dean helped train his brother. He never really expected their lifestyle to change, nor particularly wanted it to.
Like it or not, however, change it did.
Sam announced one night that he was leaving, going off to college, and it sparked an explosive fight between him and John. Dean felt as if his brother was abandoning the family. The relationship between the brothers became strained when Sam left, and eventually they broke off contact completely.
Dean was running some missions by himself by this time, and that's when John went missing. Dean showed up at Sam's in the middle of the night, to secure his help in locating their dad. What they found instead were clues - and their dad's notebook full of occult knowledge. When Sam's girlfriend Jessica was killed in the same manner as their mother, he agreed to help Dean track the thing down, and find John, no matter what. Along the way, John dropped more hints leading the boys to various cases, until the message became clear: he wanted them to pick up where he was leaving off. They found him again eventually anyway, and learned about a weapon their father had tracked down - the Colt, that could reportedly kill anything. This led to a confrontation with Azazel, who possessed John, attempting to secure the Colt for himself. Upon escaping from the showdown, the Impala was involved in a car accident that resulted in Dean and John being admitted to the hospital.
Dean was stuck between life and death, until his father made a deal with Azazel, trading his own life for Dean's. Before his death, he told Dean that if Sam could not be saved, it would be his duty to kill him. It was, however, Dean who saved Sam from death later, by making a deal with the crossroads demon to bring Sam back when he was killed. He, like his father, traded his own life for his brother's, but instead of dying instantly, he was granted one final year. Dean then used the last bullet of the Colt to kill Azazel, and release his father's soul - but in the process, legions of demons escaped into our world. The boys swore to track them down, and Sam vowed to find a way to save Dean before his time was up.
Dean tried to argue Sam out of any attempts to save him, though his brother wouldn't listen - and Ruby, a demon who offered to help him find a way - certainly didn't help matters. An encounter with a thief named Bela ended up with the boys losing the Colt. They learned that the demon who held Dean's contract was named Lilith, and Dean took Ruby's demon killing knife and tracked her down. They were, however, too late, and were tricked by Lilith's body hopping into Ruby. Lilith granted entrance to her hellhounds, who proceeded to tear Dean to pieces. His soul went directly to Hell.
In Hell, Dean spent thirty years being tormented by the demon, Alastair, who would eviscerate him again and again. He was made an offer every day to be taken off the rack if he would become Alastair's student. He resisted for three decades, but finally gave in, and for the next ten years, he studied torture under Alastair. Ripping souls apart for so long - and taking out his hatred of Alastair on those souls - had a massive psychological impact on Dean, who didn't believe he would ever be escaping hell, but, for Sam's sake, still fought against becoming a demon himself.
After approximately forty years in Hell, Dean was pulled out by the angel Castiel. Uncertain of how he had escaped, he found Bobby and Sam again. Between the aid of Bobby and Pamela Barnes, Dean discovered who saved him from Hell - and Castiel told him that he had been saved to do God's work on earth. He also learned from Castiel that Lilith was breaking 66 seals on Lucifer's prison - that yes, the Devil was real, and he would be freed if she wasn't stopped. Castiel sent him back to the past, where he learned the true history of his family and about Mary's deal with Azazel. Dean's attempts to change history turn out to be, in fact, a part of history itself. When he found out about Sam's new abilities to fight demons, and that he'd been bumming around with Ruby, the boys had another huge fight. After having struggled in hell against becoming something like a demon himself, seeing that his brother had walked down that path in only the few months that he'd been gone was shocking, and he accused Sam of not being human.
The boys encountered Anna Milton, who they first thought could simply hear angel voices, but they learned was actually a fallen angel herself, who had lost her grace. It turned out both heaven and hell were after her, and so they aspired to protect her until she got it back. Dean and Anna ended up getting down, which only goes to show he had some natural strange predilection towards angel booty. HMMM.
The angels later took Dean against his will, and demanded that he torture Alastair for information on who was killing the angels. He was forced to confront what he'd done and become in hell, and it was only made worse by Alastair talking about torturing Dean's father. That was nothing, however, compared to the low blow Alastair eventually gave him: that when Dean had taken his offer and become a tormentor downstairs, he'd broken the first seal and set the Apocalypse in motion.
Oops.
And then there was a clusterfuck of badassery in which Alastair and Uriel died. Dean ended up in a hospital where Castiel confirmed what Alastair said. Manly tears abound.
Another brotherly fight, the worst they'd had so far, ended up with them splitting ways again, and he went to the angels and swore to serve God. And then the angel Zachariah stuck him in a fancy room with some hamburgers so that he wouldn't meddle with the angels' precious little Armageddon. Cas grew some balls and helped Dean escape, but it was way too late. Sam killed Lilith - which was the final seal, and Lucifer went free. At least Dean got to kill Ruby.
This didn't really make him feel all that much better. :C
Dean shortly learned that he was intended to be Michael's vessel in the final battle between he and Lucifer. However, he did have to agree to it - and so began a long dance of the angels trying everything they can to get him to agree. His life, which already sucked, headed back to Hell pretty fast. Especially since Sammy was slated to be Lucifer's prom dress, and Lucifer was also attempting to get Sam to say yes.
The Four Horsemen came to town, and the boys had to fight them off as well. Meanwhile, the pattern of everyone they knew and loved getting screwed over/dying as a result of their connection to them continued and... got worse. Castiel decided their only hope was to find God who was missing, but that search didn't turn out to be very fruitful either. The angels played more time travel games with Dean, but he still said no. Sam and Dean learned that the Trickster god they'd faced down several times before was actually the angel Gabriel, who also urged them to just 'play their parts' and pointed out how their entire lives had been a shadow play of the relationship between Michael and Lucifer.
Sam and Dean faced off with Lucifer, planning to kill him with the Colt, but it didn't work. And in the process, Jo and Ellen died to save them. When the boys were killed and went to heaven, only to learn they'd been there multiple times, and had the memory erased, Dean's morale plummeted to zero - especially when he heard that God didn't care, and wouldn't be helping them. His downward spiral ended with him leaving Sam to go accept his role as a vessel. This plan, however, got cockblocked when the angels resurrected the boys' dead-half-brother Adam, to use as a vessel instead of Dean. Dean ended up stabbing Zachariah, though he did say yes, but backing out due to Sam's faith in him.
Our heroes were pretty much out of plans except for one really crazy one, so that's... what they went with. Gabriel left them a video explaining, in the wake of his death at the hands of Lucifer, that the Horsemen's rings could be used to make a prison to seal Lucifer back up. However, Sam had to drink demon blood and say yes to allow Lucifer inside him, so that he might fight him for control and walk him into the prison. Dean promised Sam that if it worked, he'd go back to a woman named Lisa Braeden and try to leave a normal life.
Surprise, the plan doesn't exactly work out and Lucifer walked... with Sam's body. Dean, Castiel, and Bobby showed up to the final fight, and Lucifer promptly disposed of the latter two. In a Lifetime movie moment, Sam managed to regain control of Lucifer who was in the middle of beating the crap out of Dean, when he saw some army men stuck inside the Impala and got a flood of memories of their life in it. The battle ended with Sam/Lucifer and Michael trapped in the prison. Castiel was resurrected by God, and healed Dean as well as bought Bobby back. Dean parted ways with them both and returned to Lisa's to make good on his promise to Sam. However, he was full of bitterness towards God over what had occurred, and dealing with the loss of his brother, when he ended up... in the game.
Personality: Dean's life has been fairly defined by fulfilling the 'good soldier' role. It meshes well with his instincts - he is, at the core, the big goddamn hero type. However, he's also capable of being so notoriously stubborn that it's almost a surprise how easily he'd bend to his father's orders well into his "adulthood". In truth, his desire for his father's acceptance and respect has been one of the driving forces in his life: whereas Sam managed to step away from the path they were born into, if only for a little while, Dean's stuck to it every inch of the way. His entire personality's been crafted to fit the business that his life is wrapped up in: he doesn't form attachments quickly, (except to some of the people involved in his line of work), the skills he's mastered and knowledge he's memorized all have to do with ways to most effectively hunt, track, and/or destroy demons and other supernatural baddies, and he has a sense of humor that takes things other would consider horrific lightly.
It is not, by any stretch of imagination, an exaggeration to say that Sam is at the very center of Dean's world. Dean's a soldier at heart, and one whose loyalty is to family, rather than flag, country, or company. Sammy's representative of the very last fort standing, to maintain the metaphor, and ever since the day when their father first put his infant brother in his arms and charged him with his protection, he's considered that a personal crusade. He'd do anything to save Sam - and not just to save his
life, but more importantly, perhaps, to save his
soul.
The
most important thing to Dean is family, and he'd really do basically anything for those he puts in that classification. At the same time, no one in the world can piss him off so much as family, because of how much he has invested in them. So when Sammy screws up, it bothers Dean to no end: especially because he considers himself so responsible for his brother. He practically raised Sam, given the way their father was always so invested in his work, and so he often slips into acting as more of a father-figure to his brother than a sibling. In fact, given that Sam and his father were the only consistent figures in his life for so long, he approaches the entire world with a similar attitude, and expects there to be a chain of command, often assuming that he'll be the one at the top of it. He instantly tries to take control in situations where the boys are forced to work with allies, and butts heads against the idea of bending to authority (other than his father). This really all slides into how he wants to emulate John Winchester, and his behavior subconsciously mirrors what he was used to seeing in the man: the guy who was always in charge, gave the orders, and expected everyone else to fall in line without question.
Dean and Sam's differing views on hunting have a lot to do with their respective childhood experiences. Dean remembers what it was like to have a normal life, family, and home, and he's had to watch how losing all that transformed his father. Given that the loss of his mother was something very real to him, unlike it was to Sam, it's hardly surprising that Dean chose the subconscious route of justifying his father's transformation, rather than condemning it, because this allowed him to not also lose his father, so to speak. If he accepted that the path his father was taking was not a healthy one, or chose to be resentful about it, it would put a wall between them that would leave him without any parental figure to look up to, and the loss of his mother hurt him too much to be able to willingly accept that and make that choice. Instead, it was easier, and more conducive to his relative sanity, to simply find reasons to believe that all his father's actions were just.
So how did a very young Dean grow up justifying the questionable actions of a man who ripped his childhood from him, and his chance at a normal, real life or identity? How did he come to practically worship a father who was bent on vengeance, and showed more passion for his obsession than love for his children?
Very easily, actually. He simply applied a child's lens to things.
He believed that his father was a superhero.
It's a common enough childhood fantasy to think that one's mom or dad is a secret crime fighter, but in Dean's case, he had every single reason to believe it. John Winchester used aliases everywhere he went, making who he really was into the secret identity he only shared with spare friends and his family. He didn't have to hide behind a mask - this was modern America, and we're identified by our paperwork. Fake IDs, passports, credit cards - they were all as good as a mask, or better. Sharing in his father's secret became empowering for Dean, and was one reason he's always been so determined not to share it willingly. Next to ordinary, every day people, John's occult knowledge and martial skill would seem practically like superpowers to a child. Though that perspective, having his father pass that knowledge and those techniques down to him was a particularly sacred type of apprenticeship. He was expected to carry on his father's legacy, fighting the forces of darkness, while sacrificing his own normal life for the greater good. It was every child's dream: it was Dean Winchester's reality. It's no surprise also, then, that he took to the role with so much enthusiasm, and attempted in every way possible to imitate his father.
Dean's mimicry of his father extended to more than just learning the tricks and trades of fighting the supernatural. He also mimicked his father's "costume" - wearing the same sort of battered leather jacket and same style of clothes as his dad. Sam points out that Dean even listens to the same music as their dad, and Dean is deadset on not even trying to listen to anything more modern. Being given the Impala by his father was a huge symbol to Dean of "becoming" his father, as he long hoped to do, as the Impala was as symbolic of John's heroism to him as the Batmobile was to Batman.
Speaking of whom, it also only makes sense that Dean's favored superhero is who it is: if John Winchester is any sort of superhero archetype, it's most definitely Batman.
John and Dean might not have come from a family of wealth and privilege, but they find a lot of their wealth in freedom - and with a string of fake credit cards, money's never been something Dean's really had to be too anxious about. But the real Batman similarities lie strongly in John's motivations. Bruce Wayne transforms into Batman so that he might enact vengeance on the one who killed his family - and anyone like them. He felt his action were tied to the greater ideal of justice, but in truth, they were rooted in a very personal desire for revenge, that turned his personal crusade into an obsession that warped his entire sense of reality.
Unlike Superman, or other heroes whose powers are derived from some supernatural source in and of itself, Bruce Wayne's powers came simply from his own resources, physically, mentally, and tangibly. To Dean, this seems the ultimate sort of hero: someone normal, who through their own cunning and training turns themselves into something that the dark side of the world needs to be afraid of.
Most importantly, perhaps, Dean's view of his father as a superhero did a huge number on the development of his actual personality. When it comes to hunting, Dean's serious, sharp, and dangerous, but when it comes to interacting with people outside of this context, he's come to view himself as presenting a "secret identity" of his own. Problematically, when this is the majority of the interactions he has, this becomes his prominent personality, so that he, for all intents and purposes, is the face he chooses to show the world. Just like with Bruce Wayne, most of this personality is designed specifically to keep others at bay, to throw off suspicion, or to disarm others so that he might extract whatever he wants from them. Bruce himself comes off as someone entirely self-involved, irresponsible, superficial, and hardly heroic by any definition of the word. Dean comes off as equally self-involved when he is in fact, probably the most selfless character on the show. It's that selflessness, actually, that keeps him from wanting to advertise the fact, so that he won't be celebrated for the trait. In the same way, Dean's incredibly responsible when it comes to things he actually cares about, and he prides himself on the fact, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would actually call Dean responsible. Dean's personality seems incredibly superficial, given his tendency to turn even the most dire situations into jokes, but he knows exactly what the reality of the situations he's dealing with are, and he doesn't screw around when it comes to the safety of others.
Dean's 'secret identity' personality is also what is responsible for his inability to connect with others readily. It's his natural instinct to hide things about himself from people, whether they're the reality of what he does, or simply the truth about what he's feeling in any given situation. Having any of this laid out makes him vulnerable, and puts his entire "quest" at risk. Obviously, it's much easier for him to keep relationships with others on a superficial level, and this is especially applicable when it comes to women. He maintains the same sort of tendency towards a number of casual surface level flings that Bruce Wayne has, more to cultivate an image of himself (and as part of the coping mechanisms I'll discuss in a later essay) than anything.
Even Dean's perspective on Sam is influenced by this superhero lens. In almost every superhero story, the hero keeps his identity a secret from those loved ones in his life that he needs to protect, and who wouldn't be able to handle protecting themselves. The fact that Dean knew their father's secret for a long time before Sam ever did, meant that during those interim years, that's how he saw Sam: as someone who needed to be protected, which is obviously a sentiment that has stuck with him for the entirety of their lives. Sam's inability to look over their father's flaws, which Dean has always justified as simply necessary evils, is a threat to Dean's carefully constructed fantasy about their lives, and is why it's such a point of emotional contention between them. Very little is as effective at getting Dean pissed off quicker than when Sam attacks his view of his father.
Of course, as the series progresses, Dean is forced to face up to the possibility that Sam is right. Dean's been able to make it to his late twenties without ever having to really grow out of his childhood fantasies, and so it's especially difficult for him to try to realign his way of looking at the world at this point. He still continues to scrabble to justify his father's actions, but the truth is, that the attention his father always directed towards Sam, as a result of Azazel's plans for him, made Dean feel as if he was always second best, no matter how hard he tried. There's a level of resentment that simmered under the surface of Dean's relationship to John, that despite toeing the line to an extreme degree throughout his life, he still got cut less breaks than Sam ever was. Given the degree to which he hero worshiped his father, and aspired to be like him, so much of his self-worth became tied to his father's approval, and the fact that John rarely ever evinced it is one of the main reasons that Dean's seeming egotism is nothing more than a front for his incredibly low sense of self-esteem. The fact that his father managed to last as long as he did under Alastair's knife without giving in, while he gave in after only thirty years was just the nail in the coffin of his self-delusion that he could ever be the kind of hero he sees his father as.
By this point in his canon, Dean's been forced to face some of his father's more questionable decisions at face value, and been sent back in time to learn that his father used to be a perfectly normal person, both of which rearrange Dean's own ideal end game. Dean used to think that there was no reason he would ever want to hang up the cape, so to speak, but now he realizes that what drove his father was the impossible desire to be able to return to that state of normalcy. Dean ends up reversing roles with Sam: he wants the white picket fence and family, and retirement. Problematically, however, at the end of the 5th season, his experiences, his time in Hell, losing Sam, and his anger at God all culminate to one very terrible truth: there is no going back for him, because he will never truly escape what he's been through, like a veteran returned from the worst of wars. Just like his father, just like Bruce Wayne, just like so many heroes, his identity
is the hero within, and escaping it may simply be an impossibility.
In terms of his "surface" personality, Dean comes across as a real 'man's man', indulging in women, booze, pie, classic rock, cars, and guns, and bashing on anything he considers to be below his tough guy image. It seems to take a lot to shake him to the point of tears (though in reality he cries more than like anyone else on the show combined, shh). He's always ready to face things with (maybe too much) bravado, and probably some foul language, just to spice things up. He's stubborn as hell, and he'll break whatever rules (or faces) he needs to in order to get the job done.
The reality behind these quirks of his is much more tragic than it seems - even down to his pie fixation. His reliance on alcohol and women has much more to do with his own ineffective internal ability to cope with the crap he deals with on a daily basis. Alcohol's what he relies on to numb himself to the lives he's taken, friends and family he's lost, and the price it's all exacted on him. His flings with women serve an almost diametrically opposed purpose: they're the closest he can allow himself to get to 'feeling' something, even if it's mostly just a meaningless physical release. Having the attention of those women is part of what keeps his shreds of self-esteem stitched together, and the lack of a strong female figure in his life easily led him to view most women as 'disposable', despite he way he idealized the relationship that his father had with his mother. In his eyes, that's just that: an ideal, not something that can last, or ever be real. The only time Dean ever attempted to circumvent his own illusions on the subject, with Cassie, he got his heart broken, which only convinced himself more than ever that he was right in erecting those walls in the first place. Hell managed to remove a lot of Dean's inclinations towards using hook ups as a way to ~feel~, both because of the fact that he'd been literally faced with the consequences of dehumanizing people when he had to torture them in hell,
and because he was so jacked up that he didn't think he could feel anything anymore.
Dean's time in Hell did quite a number on him all around, and forced him to face some of the darker sides of himself. He was already emotionally stunted before he did time there: but coming out the other side has screwed him up royally. He has an even
more difficult time forging new emotional connections than he did before, and he's never been particularly good at making himself vulnerable by making friends in the first place. Dean may rock a serious ego on the outside, but in reality, he hates himself, and the things he's been through, and feels a constant need to prove himself. It's important to note that when Dean started his stint in hell, he
had no idea he was ever going to leave. When he began his tutelage under Alastair, he expected to be doing that for the rest of eternity, and had
ten years to try and emotionally equip himself to deal with that realization and harden himself to it. This involved grasping onto a certain level of disconnect, while very stubbornly attempting to hang onto what made him human, so that he wouldn't become a demon and a failure to his brother. This was a major source of angst for him when he returned from the grave to find Sam on demon juice: after he'd struggled so hard to maintain himself, Sam had all but thrown himself at taking a step towards becoming a demon while he was
still alive.
There's a part of Dean that is always going to be subconsciously jealous of Sam's independence, however. He was jealous of the love that their father had for Sam, even when Dean was the more obedient son, and he's incredibly envious of the fact that somehow Sam can compartmentalize the 'hunter' thing, and make attempts at a normal life: college, girlfriend, career, etc. It's one of the reasons he pushed so hard to get Sam to admit he couldn't escape these things; because if he could, it meant that maybe there was something wrong with the choices Dean had made, and he didn't want to face that.
Abilities: While he doesn't possess any innate superhuman powers, Dean's been trained since a very young age in hunting supernatural beings, and he possesses a wide array of knowledge on that subject. He's proficient with a variety of firearms and bladed weapons, but also skilled in utilizing improvised weaponry, and able to combat hand to hand in a fist fight. He was apprenticed to the demon Alastair for a decade in hell, and as such, is highly qualified in the art of torture. Dean's skilled in tracking as well, and has a life time of experience in the realm of investigation, including questioning people and reading behavioral cues. He can be an incredibly charming individual when he... wants to be, and is especially good at getting his way with women.
He has extensive knowledge of creating explosive devices, often from limited resources, and seems to have a good grasp of practical chemical and electrical engineering, as far as it relates to his profession. He's got a lot of shady skills as well, manipulating credit cards, creating fake IDs, picking locks, escape artistry, stealth, carjacking, etc. etc. He knows how to use a variety of supernatural tools, and even learned the spell to banish angels back from heaven. He's a great driver, pool hustler, and mechanic.
He's also adept at ruining lives.
Sample Entry: Various links! If you need something more, please let me know and I will gladly provide. ♥
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counted_stars A
more recent network post using the equivalent dreamwidth account also @
counted_stars First person sample used for Woods Between:You know, it really never freakin' ends.
I'm Dean, I'm here to rescue you, blah blah. Let's get this straight though: I'll do the job, but then I'm getting out of here, as soon as it's done.
I'm not here to make friends. I'm not here to have sharing time after every mission.
But you need some weird-ass monster killed? I'm your man.
So what kind of skills is everybody packin'?
First person sample used for Counted Stars: Did someone typo my contract? Because last time I checked, sending me to rock out with the Jedi wasn't exactly my personal idea of what Hell was gonna be like.
Not that I'm complaining over here. Maybe I did enough good deeds to make it through the pearly Lucas ranch gates anyways.
So where's the Falcon? I wanna see that baby up close and personal. And bring on the alien babes. Blue chicks, green chicks, Jabba dancing chicks, ones with crescent rolls on the sides of their heads - I don't care. If this is heaven, I'm not gonna be choosy.
... Also, what the shit is a 'gizka' and do I want to order it for dinner or get tested to make sure I don't have it?
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