Hey foxy lovely!

This is a fun prompt - I thank you!!

Here is my off-the-cuff impression of Dean, food, pie and cake and yes, I’ll be restating previous meta, but so be it! I’ve not talked about this on this blog so I’m excited to get to do it now! Yayyy! *claps hands*

Firstly: Yes, Young Dean eating cake is absolutely relevant, because of - as you point out - what food and pie and cake represents to Dean Winchester.

Trash Food: the life of the hunter = saving people, hunting things
Pie: home and stability (the longing for his mother and his longing for love)
Cake: at first being reluctant, but open, to trying new things

Now, I nabbed this off superwiki  –>

There have been occasions when Dean has been tempted by cake:

• 3.02 The Kids Are Alright: Dean is seen eating birthday cake with a young Ben Braeden at his birthday party.
• 7.03 The Girl Next Door: While laid up with his broken leg, Dean asks Sam to go on a food run. When Dean asks, “Where’s the pie?” Sam says, “You got cake, that’s close enough, right?” Dean does not eat the piece of cake.
• 7.06 Slash Fiction: Dean ask Sam to buy him something that “rhymes with songs songs” i.e. Ding Dongs which a small chocolate cake with a creamy center.
• 10.12 About a Boy: 14-year-old Dean snacks on cake while he is held captive, he didn’t much care for it.
• 10.15 The Things They Carried: In a police station, there is a birthday cake on the desk. The police officer offers cake to Sam and Dean, but Sam declines on their behalf. Dean looks disappointed, and sneaks a fingerful of icing.

So, let’s talk about this progression of Dean and cake. 

At 14: he’s brought cake and tastes it, but he doesn’t much care for it

At 28: he absentmindedly chows down on birthday cake that he got for himself while ogling a woman (having just escaped the ogling of two women himself)

At 32: he refuses to eat the piece of cake Sam has brought him to substitute pie, but a mere few episodes later he makes an actual request for a cake-like snack

At 35: he eyes the cake at the police station the same way he eyes his male crushes (same freaking lopsided little grin) and then he quickly pulls a finger through the thick frosting, stealing a taste

It’s interesting that every time cake is brought to him he rejects it or doesn’t much care for it, while if he can request it or get it for himself he’s increasingly into it over the years. 

I kind of love the contrast here between how Dean’s performing persona is something that has been forced upon him by how he was raised, how John instilling in him from so early on that he has to protect Sammy made it imperative that Dean dress himself in the same exact visage as his ex-marine father. 

Whereas all those layers underneath, those layers that make up who he truly is, are safeguarded by a deep need for individuality, which is why he won’t have cake thrust upon him: he wants it to be and needs it to be his own choice to eat that cake.

Originally posted by ilovedean

This simple scene is amazing.

• Dean is attracted to the cake (like wow CAKE)
  
• Sam gesture for him not to indulge on the job
  
• Dean can’t resist the temptation of the Cake
  
• Not even in front of a man in uniform who is representative of the authoritative figure Dean has always struggled with –> a reminder of John Winchester, and around and around it goes
  

But in this small moment we see Dean Winchester, at 35 years old, finally, albeit surreptitiously, being unable to resist indulging in his craving not only in front of Sam, but in front of someone representative of his father.

Big. Step. Forward. Toward. S11.

Where all the walls he’s built up begin to show their cracks thanks to Amara and the theme of Love that takes focus throughout that whole season. The entire plot progression of S11 forces Dean to admit to himself that what he feels for Cas - however much he’s doubted it, questioned it, refused to acknowledge it, pushed it down, fought to ignore it - is the real thing: he’s in love with that dick angel, and he’s pining for him, and there’s no way around it.

And so, with as small a scene as the one above, set in some random police station where Dean indulges in a piece of cake, it still is a gorgeous character reveal of how he’s progressed from his 14 year old self to his 35 year old self. I don’t think it’s by accident this progression is actually shown to us in the same season and only a few episodes apart.

Everything connects.

I love this show!!

Hi, uh, so I read my entire Dean vs Cake tag yesterday. Apologies for walking right into this post while it’s all crystal clear in my mind :P

It’s more complicated than that in 10x12 - he’s chowing down on that (pink, flowery) cake enthusiastically, until Tina voices her opinion it might be poisoned. Dean freezes, as if only just thinking, oh shit, maybe she’s right, and he puts the cake down as if it is poisoned.

Later he recounts this to Sam, and tells him flat out the cake was horrible, too dry, like it was the Worst Thing That Ever Happened To Him, and he had never liked it in the first place.

The thinking is, this is a metaphor for Dean learning not to like things for himself, that the idea of the cake being poisoned is cultural toxic opinions and very much a metaphor for and ACTUAL 14 year old Dean (using a proxy of a temporarily 14 year old Dean) learning that, for a wild example, liking guys is a Bad And Terrible Thing, and despite his initial interest, when society tells him it’s bad he not just stops doing it but presents a facade to deny he ever liked it and cut off all connection to it (and in 9x10 he equates his being toxic with hurting people and hurting Sam especially and that’s sort of a different thing entirely except that I think Dean’s sense of the word “poison” has sooo much mileage for making him feel bad about himself that using it in this context about the cake to me also feels like it connects much deeper into his psyche). 

It’s essentially the first big break we got in the performing Dean meta that the show was intending to seriously break down the facade, and started us off by presenting a little parable of Dean Likes The Thing, Dean Learns Not To Like The Thing Because It Is Bad, Dean Says He Hates The Thing Forever. All while in an adolescent face so we could connect to this happening to him for real on more serious subjects in his actual formative years. I think until that point while you could talk about performing!Dean it was very much in incidental cracks and breaks or things which were much more ambiguous about the writing.

The writer knowingly asked fans what were the ~most Dean things~ while writing it and incorporated rock music, hook ups, and pie into the episode as Taylor Swift, not hooking up with Tina even at the bar while adults (instead having a sweet conversation and not even getting plastered, and Tina walks out with exchanged fond looks but nothing more), and Dean enjoying cake. It was a knowing attempt to game everything we know and assume about Dean and present it in a different form. 12x11 is a similar episode gaming the knowledge we have about Dean and turning it on its head, and I read the episodes as having very similar intentions. As well as earlier examples like 12x11 playing off of 4x06, which did similar. All of these episodes compromise the core Dean in some way for the sake of exposition on his character. 

At the end of 10x12 (in a scene they had to wait to get permission for the music, went back to film, and Jensen tried to protest but it was too important to the story so they HAD to do it in the end because no of course it’s not like Dean and OOC, that’s the entire point Jensen) we see the demonstration via Shake It Off that Dean has changed and his complaint about enjoying a TS song on the bus under the mask of being a teenager earlier in the episode was either more The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, or else Dean thinking that was a rational explanation for why he enjoyed the song when Dean Winchester Does Not Like Pop Music. At the end of the episode as an adult he in sound mind decides not to do what Sam expects, and turn the music way up and drive off with the car practically dancing to the music :P

This was the next most important thing - that Dean embraced liking something un-Dean like in front of Sam with no pretences or comment. It betrays that he had liked TS already in the episode and his pretence about it was all BS, while the cake itself was still veiled in teenage shame.

In 10x13 the first thing we see Dean doing is eating a croissookie, a hybrid food, a best of both worlds pie&cake monstrosity, a hybrid *word* which will be important in season 11 - it’s a harbinger of that theme. Later we see a dating app with a sexy photo of a woman in a bikini holding a pie in about the most … well a whole bunch of us had to go out and google the opposite word to “phallic” which I think we agreed was “yonic” …. way possible. (point down, over her lower stomach, dripping cherries and a nice pile of cream on top >.>). At this point it was abundantly clear that pie had left the building for the other meaning they went back to in season 12, of Dean’s comfort/soul food to do with mother and home. (5x15 kills me with this theme of pies and mothers.) Pie and Cake was officially bisexual subtext.

In 10x15 Dean sees cake and he wants it BAD, and it’s freely offered, and Sam says no, and stops him, physically, from accepting a slice. (It mirrors 3x08 and him knocking Dean’s hand away from taking the peanut brittle from Mr Pagan God, which was maybe more sensible :P) There was a lot of discussion of Sam policing Dean’s behaviour, but at least on my side of the discussion & people I was agreeing with, it swung around to being more of a metaphor for Sam unknowingly doing this (he was trying to keep up FBI appearances - in 9x13 you can see his discomfort and annoyance about Dean chowing down on the powder doughnut, EVEN THOUGH Donna (also of “salty and sweet” connections from 11x07, mirroring something else bi that Dean said that episode) is eating hers JUST as messily and therefore it’s socially acceptable behaviour, as Donna is the authority figure who sets the tone of their behaviour. Dean socially chameleons his way into this fine. In 11x15 he is being offered cake by the authorities again, so why not. 

(The guy’s partner made it - ambiguous references to gender.) 

Sam drags them off to “Sammy’s” where they get socially acceptable burgers.

Anyway the point is there was a long discussion about Dean self-policing FOR Sam and the TS moment being one of the only times he doesn’t do it. (Similar to him saying he won’t apologise for loving Dory in 12x11, but nothing was altered about him any more in 10x12.) All of it seemed to offer a fairly sensible food-based metaphor for Dean’s behaviour, with cake standing in as the forbidden and withheld desires, and for one reason or another Dean is held back from getting the cake.

That’s the bare bones background to the later pie and cake stuff. :P 

Fast forward to 12x05 and :

- Sam calls Dean out on his sublimation and Dean acknowledges that he does this
- Dean doesn’t WANT pie, meanwhile he’s upset because Mary and Cas are gone.
- Mary represents pie through the family/home theme and Cas cake as Dean’s male focused romantic attention
- Dean has apparently enjoyed a big slice of actual chocolate cake IN FRONT OF SAM and neither one said anything about it, it just HAPPENED and no one made a big deal of it
- Dean then says he now “deserves” pie after doing his job well

(Dean’s later stuff with Mary is all about him learning that he deserves more from her and therefore deserves love and happiness and this helps him move forwards in general but in big part to accept himself and the fact that he likes cake/men/Cas in particular).

In a season focused entirely on Dean letting go of his facade, a ton of Dean/Cas romantic upping the ante, where Mary represents pie through family and Cas cake because well Cas is now Dean’s focus for his bisexual male-focused attention as he’s not just kinda fancying but full on in love with the guy.

Where Dean outright acknowledged his sublimation to then start not doing so after 12x22.

*Nothing to see here*

I love you both. I do so love you both. YESSSSSS ^^^^^^^^

Okay, so I will add this: I see Cas as food and pie and cake all rolled into one delicious meet-every-desire-Dean-Winchester-has-ever-harboured. Cas is Dean’s longing personified and he represent love, home, family and the freedom to choose for himself how to live his life - hunting or hanging it up or a healthy mix of both. Cas is stability and sunsets and the future. He’s hope and faith and happiness. And that’s what Dean is to Cas as well. It’s so beautiful! They’re so good for each other - I cannot wait to see them actually communicate and begin to open up to one another. 

(yeah I completely expect S13 to melt the world) (and steep it in its own image) (world domination by 2018) (#spn family)

I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR

all of the this.

Sometimes Im *put off* by long metas cos my attention-span wavers cos Im always tired but when the evidence and explanations pull me through Im SO glad because stuff just makes so much more SENSE and makes my heart smile and I just wanna hug all these lovely meta writers through the screen !!!