The Player
User Name/Nick: Tiffany
User LJ:
arcessoAIM/IM: to boldly trek on AIM
E-mail: live.infamy [at] gmail.com
Other Characters: None
The Character
Character Name: Dean Winchester
Character Journal:
obiwanningCanon: Supernatural
Age: 30
From When?: After he makes it out of the hospital post-4.16 On The Head of a Pin.
Abilities/Powers: Dean isn't a super freak like Sam, so he doesn't have any inherent supernatural abilities or superpowers or anything demon-y like that. He's a pretty average guy, except for the part where he has the finesse, knowledge and general physical readiness to fight and kill the shit that does have demon-y, inherent supernatural abilities and superpowers.
Dean's been raised since he was a child to be a hunter. It's not only a way of life, it's a state of mind, and it puts him always on his guard. It gives him something of a hair trigger when it comes to adrenaline-fueled situations, but it also gives him a readiness and a fight-inclined state of mind. He's physically strong for a human, he's trained in all sorts of firearms and is skilled with small to medium-sized blades. Being a hunter also has imparted him with a collection of exciting yet probably illegal skills, such as lock-picking, forging identification, general breaking-and-entering, hot-wiring vehicles, general MacGuyvering, and rigging explosives. Dean likes thinks that flash and bang.
The time spent Dean in Hell unfortunately imparted Dean with a couple interesting skills too, and they don't include picking lollipops out of a gumdrop meadow. He's, as Ruby puts it in 4.18, a "torturemaster" thanks to Alastair's tutelage. He can carve and burn and gut demons and humans alike with the best of 'em. He knows where to pick and prod for the highest pain and the lowest overall damage, so he can keep you ticking while he tears you apart from the inside out. On top of that, and perhaps a little ironically in the Alanis Morrissette definition of the word, while it doesn't give him any cool powers of his own, he's the chosen vessel for the archangel Michael, which makes him a pretty cool guy.
Power Limitations: His dick is going to need limiting. Preferrably in the form of a chastity belt, mostly because he can't keep these bitches off of it.
Inventory 1 pair dark denim jeans
1 t-shirt, loose-fitted
1 black leather jacket
1 pair socks, black, boot-cut
1 pair work boots
1 flip phone, silver and prepaid
1 EMF reader
1 1836 Colt Texas Paterson 5-shot revolver, fully loaded
1 .45 caliber, semi-automatic Colt 1911, nickel-plated with an ivory handle, fully loaded with a 7-round magazine and an extra bullet in the chamber
3 extra 1911 Colt magazines, fully loaded
1 journal belonging to John Winchester
1 set of keys belonging to a 1967 Chevy Impala, black
2 6-inch lockback pocket knives
1 10-inch Bowie style hunting knife
Personality: The first level of Dean that you have to understand is his most basic, outer shell. Dean is truly his father's son in that he tries to emulate everything about the man. From the car he drives to the type of music he listens to, he's all about being just like dad. His great loves in life are witty pop culture references, the Impala, mullet rock, (apple) pie, women and liquor. He's sarcastic, slightly crude, excessively flirtatious and isn't known for taking situations seriously. He appears very easy-going and agreeable, even if his general rough-around-the-edges attitude may not be necessarily "likable."
Beneath that, he has two important layers, because I just love describing Dean as an onion apparently. The first is the layer that Sam and Cas and Bobby, etc., get to see. It's the good brother, the good soldier, the loyal and determined hunter. He may not broadcast the fact, but he puts Sam before everything, even himself -- hell, he sacrificed his own immortal soul for the kid. He's spent so much of his life being this cross between a big brother and a father to Sam that he's matured in a lot of ways that he doesn't show outwardly. Most people see Dean as this overgrown frat boy with a penchant for conning people, but to those close to him, he's Dean the soldier. The Michael sword. He's level and collected and neutral, he puts the plan first. He strives to keep his emotions in check, and though sometimes anger, indignation and betrayal creep through, particularly in regards to Sam and Ruby, he mostly does a good job of it.
And, then there's Dean's deepest level, that he likes to think he does a good job of hiding from everyone. Deep, deep down, Dean has a lot of insecurities. He feels guilt over Jo and Ellen's deaths, over Meg Masters, over whether or not he's done a good job protecting Sam. He feels guilt for ever letting things get to the point they did with Ruby, because if he'd been there, if he'd actually survived and been there when Sam needed him, he never would have had to turn to a demon to help him. It's almost fatherly how he feels like he's to blame for the way Sam turned out that he was so enraged at Dean's choice, which reminded Dean of how angry he was at John for it, that he had to go hunt Lilith. This is the Dean that still wants to be daddy's little soldier and rely on everything that John taught him, that still makes every move to make John proud, even though the man's dead. It's the level that bottles his emotions for the sake of being everyone's rock and being the one who can remain tempered through all situations, which is what makes his break in Point of No Return so key.
It's important to note how much of Dean changed during Hell. The above covers pretty much any canon point for Dean, but to really understand post-Hell Dean, you have to look at how he felt in it and how he acted after it. In Hell, he developed a lot of self-loathing during those last ten years. He really, genuinely enjoyed what he was doing -- he took pride in his work. He was having his humanity physically carved out of him for the first thirty, and mentally carved out for the next ten. He liked feeling powerful, something he hadn't gotten the chance to know in as much time as he'd been alive on Earth, and he liked feeling in control. While he was down there, he became very close to Alastair and showed him parts of himself that no one else would ever see. That's why he hates Alastair as much as he does. He hates the person he was in Hell, he hates what Alastair made him, but he hates, above all, the fact that someone actually witnessed the monster he became. Alastair is a constant reminder of this fact and it's why he has the effect he does on Dean in Season 4.
That said, when he comes back from Hell, he feigns amnesia. He pretends like he doesn't remember any of it, because that's the kind of person Dean is. He's avoidant. He buries things. He'd rather pretend something didn't happen than actually acknowledge the emotional toll it's taking on him and with something like Hell, ignoring it entirely is far easier because then he can compartmentalize. If he pretends hard enough that everything is normal, there's this faint, childish hope that maybe everything really will be normal. It's times like these, when he's trying his hardest to bury something -- be it his fear of death in season 3 or the horrors of Hell in season 4 or the trauma faced at the end of season 5 through the loss of his brother -- that he relies most heavily on his coping mechanisms.
And so, we come full circle. Dean's first, outer layer is one big coping mechanism. It's how he handles what he does. He puts up these walls of defense mechanisms like wit, sarcasm, pop culture and geniality. He makes a joke of himself to try and keep people from seeing that he's breaking inside. He strays to women, pie, booze and mullet rock in the hopes that one of them will make him feel something, because ever since Hell, as My Bloody Valentine confirms, he's felt nothing. He's been empty. His soul was literally carved mostly hollow, with the exception of the love he has for the people close to him. He doesn't have the capability to form new bonds, or the luxury of feeling more than that, so he tries to avoid the negative feelings that he's getting from the people he loves due to the situation they're in by searching for those feelings in his coping mechanisms, because that's the manly thing to do.
That's the James Dean lifestyle, and that's what Dean's perfect avoidance maneuver embodies. That is to say, he strives to, on top of the aforementioned, be as hypermasculine as humanly possible. He teases Sam for being open with his feelings by calling him a girl/chick/etc., and scorns most displays of emotion and affection just to put the figurative cherry on top of his "bury it" cake.
History:
SupernaturalWiki's version of events The abridged version: Dean's story starts like every other. He was one of the 2.5 kids to Mary and John Winchester's apple pie and picket fence, born January 24, 1983 on a sunny day in Lawrence, Kansas, and he spent the first few years of his life growing up normal and playing t-ball. When he was 4, his mother burned along with their picket fenced home and life was never the same. He grew up to be the perfect son, the perfect soldier, and took John Winchester's word as law while he followed his one objective: keep Sammy safe. Their dad was never around much, so Sam and Dean spent a lot of holidays alone, and Dean became half a father to Sam to compensate.
Dean was approximately seven years old the first time his father took him shooting. When he's 10, he saves Sam from his first monster, and by the time he's 12, he can make a sawed-off shotgun of his very own. Dean grew up knowing what monsters where hiding under his bed and learning how to fight them instead of being afraid of them. He knew to be afraid of the dark, and he had to be the strong, hardened one to support his younger brother all the while, even though he was just a kid himself. Also, at 12, Dean tells Sam the truth about it all and Sam gives Dean a Christmas present that was meant for John, an amulet that Dean would never take off.
Eventually, Sam chose to abandon Dean and their father for a college life without a word, and Dean was ready to let him go. Dean tried a piece of normal himself in the form of Cassie Robinson, the only girl he ever admits to caring about (at that point) or having spent more than one night with. But, when he breaks it to her that he's a hunter, she calls him nuts and bails. A few years later, he finally tracked Sam back down when their father went missing, and Dean interrupted Sam's law school interview prep to drag him away from his beautiful girlfriend to hunt a woman in white, back into the world of the supernatural. The hunt is a bust and Sam only permanently rejoins Dean for tracking down their dad after his girlfriend burns alive on the ceiling in the same manner their mother did.
Over the course of the first two seasons, Dean and Sam fight against the Yellow-Eyed Demon who killed their mother (YED/Azazel) and try to find their father. Key points for these seasons for Dean include the finale, where Yellow-Eyes outs himself to be possessing John Winchester when he compliments Dean, something their father never does unless it's a very special occasion, John's deal with Azazel to save Dean and his subsequent death, the fact that on his deathbed he told Dean to either save Sam or kill him, and in 2.20 What Is and What Should Never Be, when a djinn gets a hold of Dean and projects his subconscious desires into a fantasy world where his mother never died. Although he chooses to escape it (he'd rather have the close relationship with Sam that they've nurtured through season 1 and 2 than the job, girlfriend and mom he has in the fantasy world) he tells Sam that he didn't want to leave. The season ends with Highlander where Sam gets offed and Dean trades his soul to a crossroads demon to bring him back. They accidentally let the Devil's Gate get opened by Jake while they're distracted with Azazel, and then use the colt to kill the YED.
In the third season, they try their hardest to keep Dean from going to Hell, but that doesn't work out too well. Sam tries to put all his chips on Ruby, a demon who says she'll help them, but Dean pretty much calls her bluff and hates her guts because he's a racist. Turns out, she's trying to get Sam to use his psychic mojo, and Dean spends his dying wish begging Sam not to go down that road before they charge off to fight Lilith, the demon who holds Dean's deal, in hopes of breaking it. Also, a trickster kills Dean several dozen times and they meet Bela, a hunter who Dean understands on a personal level. Yeah, Dean still dies at the end. :( On Sam's Birthday.
Dean goes to hell. For thirty years, he gets tortured by the demon Alastair, and at the end of every day, Alastair offers to take him off the rack if he'll put souls on. Every day, for thirty years, he refuses, until finally he gives up and starts learning the craft. He spent ten years torturing people in Hell before Castiel finally dragged him out.
And four months later, he wakes up in a pine box outside of Pontiac, Illinois. Turns out, an angel named Castiel dragged him out of Hell and now he's supposed to stop that dumb bitch Lilith from starting the Apocalypse to end all apocali. He pretends not to remember anything from Hell, but, well, it's hard to deny anything for too long, and he comes clean to tell Sam that he enjoyed his last ten years there. Ruby, who Dean still hates with a fucking passion, tips them off to some weird girl who the angels and demons are going after, and it turns out she's a fallen angel. Dean fucks her, they get her groove back, and then Dean tries to torture information on who's killing angels out of his old buddy Alastair. Yay. Turns out Lilith isn't killing the angels, though; Uriel, another angel, is. Anna kills him. Dean and Sam keep working to stop the seals from breaking and eventually it comes out that Sam is drinking demon blood. Ew, sick. Dean gives him an ultimatum of Dean or the demon bitch, Sam picks his demon bitch and sets Lucifer free. Joy. On a random note, over the course of this season they learn that thanks to the prophet Chuck, they're fictional characters. Oh, and they have a half-brother, but ghouls ate him.
The blast probably should have killed them, but God saves Dean, Sam and Castiel and puts the former two on an airplane. And they set about the impossible task of killing the devil, only to find out that they're the respective vessels of Lucifer (Sam) and Michael (Dean), the latter being the only angel who can kill Lucifer, Supposedly. The Trickster reveals himself to be the black sheep of the family, Gabriel, and encourages them to play their roles. Either way, they get the Colt back from a demon named Crowley who's said to work directly under Lilith, and try to shoot the devil. The opportunity costs Jo and Ellen their lives, but doesn't faze Lucifer much. This is when I'll be taking Dean from. After that, following some hopelessness and general floundering in the hopes of finding God, Joshua, God's direct line, tells them to solve their own problems. Talk about a bummer. Dean wants to say yes and get it over with. He resists, finding out that they already found their half-brother and Michael is planning to use him as a vessel, so Gabriel tells them that they can use the four hoursemen's rings to trap Lucifer again because he doesn't want to see the world end thanks to his brothers' stupidity. They acquire the rings, Sam says yes, and after some serious struggle, they wrassle Lou back into his cage.
Oh, just one problem. Sam gets stuck with him. Dean follows Sam's "dying" wish for Dean to stop trying to save him and to just have a normal life, because he kind of got a cautionary tale of what would happen if he didn't by Sam dicking around with psychic powers like a douche while Dean was in Hell. He settles down with Lisa Braeden.
First Person Sample: Sammy? SAMMY. Dude, can you hear this? [ A long pause, then a groan of disapproval. ]
Yeah, all right, not that I don't appreciate all this, uh, fun surprise teleporting, would it be so damn hard if just once one of you guys would give me a freakin' road map?
Seriously, I'm usually not a complaining kinda guy, but I don't even know where the hell I'm supposed to be headed, let alone what I'm supposed to fix or learn or whatever. Come on, throw me a bone here, am I supposed to be hunting for the ghost of Christmas future now or the great … forest spirit. [ There's some shuffling as he judgmentally bats some tree branches out of his way. ]
Look. All I'm sayin' is that when I get outta this goddamn jungle? There'd better be some pie involved. Friggen' angels.
Prose Sample: It was harder than he wanted it to be, losing Jo and Ellen. They were the last semblance of family that Dean or Sam had left, and leaving them behind for the hellhounds to enjoy was the same as leaving every last piece of human Dean had left in him behind. He wanted to be strong for Sam, he wanted to be the older brother that Sam needed him to be right now and take it in stride and just keep moving -- if they could just keep moving …
They didn't have time to dwell on it, anyway. The Colt was a bust, big goddamn surprise. Wasn't it just their luck that the one thing they needed it to kill was one of the four things in Creation that it couldn't? He slammed his fist into the wall of Bobby's house. It was dark, and he'd probably woken someone up, but they'd keep it to themselves. They all knew how Dean liked to handle his business, and it was by himself. In the dark. In an insomniac state of bewilderment and denial.
In the morning, they'd be leaving. Looking for another answer. But for now, he just needed some time to himself to mourn what was lost in that explosion, 'cause it was a helluva lot more than just two lives. It was any chance he had at hope. Dean was running out of people to fight for, and it wasn't as though he was acquiring new reasons to fight this thing on a regular basis. He'd already dragged Jo and Ellen down into it and gotten them killed, he wasn't about to do it to anyone else -- assuming there was a hunter in the world who hadn't heard that they'd started the goddamn Apocalypse who'd help 'em, anyway.
Defeated, Dean took a seat on the floor beside the bed, leaning his back against the framework and tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. He held the picture of the six of them together up above his face, frowning as he stared at Jo and Ellen's faces. He wasn't usually this morose. He didn't usually mourn to such an extreme degree, but it was hard to let go of the fact that their big plan had blown the big one -- it had been for nothing and it had cost Jo and Ellen their lives.
They'd died so Dean could fail them posthumously. And that was a reminder that was going to continue slamming into his chest until his heart stopped beating -- or Lucifer's did. Whichever came first.
Special Notes:It should be noted that while the majority of characters involved in the RP will not notice because of Dean's inherent "bury it" stance on life in general, because of this particular canon point, he is not the man they think he is at home. Oh no, no, no, he's a rocketman. Rocketman. Burning up his fuse out here alone. he once was. He's pretty broken, and he's in a really shitty place, and it's going to come through with castmates. Particularly any potential Sam and Cas.
Other than that, I think shipping notes are pretty important. He does not, under any circumstances, swing for the fence, so that's a no-go on Wincest and Cas/Dean and ... whatever other slash ships. Long term relationships are also a no-go, since he was fucked royally by Hell, though he's up for one-night-stands to excessive degrees as a way of drowning his emotional torment. He's a healthy guy.
I'm prepared to disappoint a lot of people with this canon point, BASICALLY.