mittensmorgul:

Reblobbed because of @almaasi‘s tags, and I want to help:

#SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY DEAN DOESN’T APPROVE OF/WATCH/READ HARRY POTTER#HE LOVES EVERY OTHER THING MEANT FOR CHILDREN UNDER THE SUN#AND HARRY POTTER IS COOLER AND DARKER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE MEANT FOR CHILDREN#WHAT THE HECK IS HIS PROBLEM#HOW DOES TOXIC MASCULINITY EVEN REACH THAT FAR#I DON’T UNDERSTAND#IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE TO ME#my only theory is that he knows it and loves it but rejects it??? why though???#Dean Winchester #Harry Potter#no really I want someone to explain this to me in a meta reblog#I feel like I understand all of Dean’s facets and him disliking Harry Potter just isn’t something that fits#is it just OOC?? then why is it a recurring theme#I WANT TO UNDERSTAND

I’ve always just sort of understood and accepted Dean’s disdain for Harry Potter, ever since 7.20 when that was the ONE thing that differed between Dean and Charlie. And even more obviously, between Dean and Sam. Charlie and Sam both may have had fucked up childhoods, but they were still able to escape into a fantasy world of magic and wizards and witches and an Evil Dark Threat to all that is good, but Dean did not have that luxury.

The first Harry Potter book was published in the U.S. in the fall of 1998. Dean was 19, almost 20, and more than likely hunting full-time with John at that point. Sam was 15, and most likely left on his own much of the time. We don’t really know much about Sam’s high school years beyond that one case from 4.13 when he was a freshman struggling to assert his own identity. Two years later he likely would’ve grown more comfortable with himself and maybe found some sort of comfort in a series about an outcast boy who was largely on his own facing this strange magical universe– his true inheritance– that was left to him by his parents.

The books didn’t really rise to a national level of popularity among adults until a few years later (maybe around 2000? at least that’s when I heard of them, as an adult, and decided to give them a read. Before that I think they were largely seen as merely children’s literature… but I was 24 when they first came out and didn’t really read a lot of “books for kids” at the time so…) Dean would’ve been 21, and Sam would’ve been 17-18. I.e., right around the time he began preparing to leave for Stanford…

Yes, Sam wanted to be normal, to not be a freak, and here was a series of books that was normalizing his very abnormal life experiences. I think it would’ve been very reassuring to him on this very basic level.

Dean, however, out hunting on the regular with John, probably relieved that Sam was largely being left out of their family business for the time being and was therefore “safe,” was in a situation where he was forced to conform, forced to keep secrets, and continue playing his role.

Even on a very surface level, I don’t think John would’ve approved of Dean’s choice of reading material even if he had an interest in the books in the first place.He would’ve seen it as a “waste of time,” filling his head with a bunch of bullshit about wizards and dragons and house elves and a magical school with talking paintings everywhere. It was childish and contemptible for a Good Soldier Son like Dean. And that’s just on the surface.

I think that for some of the same reasons that Sam would’ve latched on to the stories, Dean would’ve been repulsed by them. Knowing that Dean had long stood as a barrier between the worst of John’s influence, protecting Sam as best he could from some of the darker aspects of their childhood however he could, I think some of the themes of Harry Potter may have touched far too close to home for Dean.

The first thing that happens to Harry Potter is that his parents are killed, and then he’s abandoned by the entire community that understands and respects him into the care of his last remaining blood relatives, who expect him to conform to their rules, force him to live in a cupboard under the stairs, and punish him severely for stepping out of line.

I mean, if Dean even got past that first chapter, it would’ve been a freaking miracle. How does that not sum up his life under John Winchester’s rules?

Yes, Harry learning that he’s a wizard whose mother sacrificed her life to save his and essentially having his legacy returned to him may have appealed to Dean if he even got that far, but then the next thing he learns is that the life he should’ve had all along was stolen from him by an Evil Dark Wizard who was bent on destroying the world, and it’s now his fate to save not only himself but the entire rest of the damn world, too…

It’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?

What would’ve been an escapist adventure of finding your place and fitting in despite having felt “other,” and “like a freak” his whole life would’ve appealed to Sam in a very basic way. Reading Harry Potter would’ve felt like an escape from the reality he understood for him. But this was already Dean’s life. This was already a sign of the “sanitized for Sammy,” and “the story became the story,” and the darkness that Dean had protected him from by taking it all on himself. Harry Potter wouldn’t have felt like an escape into his lost childhood, it would’ve felt like a full, fantasized account of the worst parts of his lost childhood.

I read some old meta recently explaining why Harry Potter would appeal so much to Sam, because that was the story he needed to hear, and why Lord of the Rings would appeal so much to Dean because that was the story he needed to hear. But really, Dean didn’t only need a different story to identify with, I think the whole concept of Harry Potter would’ve distressed him on a deep level.