It broke my heart in WINASNB that despite their "normal" childhoods, Sam was still a lawgeek, and Dean was a highschool graduate working at a garage. Even in his fantasy he couldn't imagine himself in a white collar profession.

I don't see anything particularly heartbreaking about it, aside from how Sam (and Mary) seemed to include that with the drinking as signs Dean was Throwing Away His Life. Blue collar work is honest productive labor, and it can pay as well or better than a lot of white collar jobs up through middle management.

Or what Anne said.

What Anne said, definitely. I think Dean would love working on cars, and that's got to be a good feeling -- getting something running ("Listen to her purr"), polishign it up, making it shine.

I think Dean is just wired into "usefulness" -- I can see him, raised the way he was, being a fireman or an EMT or a mechanic or even a cook. But anything that's not immediate, and really practical, wouldn't give him the same sense of purpose or satisfaction, I think.

But anything that's not immediate, and really practical, wouldn't give him the same sense of purpose or satisfaction, I think.

I think a desk job would be his idea of a living hell.

Fireman/EMT is my dream job for Dean, actually. In the 'verse they grew up in, if we posit that John never went hunting, that he accepted the accidental version of Mary's death, stayed in Lawrence, possibly remarried, and the kids went on to have an ordinary life, Dean would have seen fire as the enemy to be fought, from which to save people. In the alternate 'verse where Mary didn't die, he'd still be a killer EMT, I think.

I have a blue collar kink, myself. I identify much more with Dean than I do Sam, despite the fact that I came from a blue-collar family and had pretty much Sam's experience in trying to break with family tradition and go on to college. An arts college, at that. People who know how to make things and repair things with their hands are my heroes.

But in light of Nutty's series of essays on the division within the family between white-collar-aspiring Sam and solidly blue-collar John and Dean, what troubles me is a possible caste prejudice within the family, which is what upset me about WINASNB. And the fact that Dean apparently couldn't even fantasize about being a college grad--the idea never occurred to him that he *could* be. That bothered me some.

killer EMT

Er, unfortunate choice of phrase.

StE was in accelerated classes all through school, and he had good enough grades to get into most colleges. He dropped out of the college track his junior year of high school, after months of the three of us wrangling about it, to take trades classes at the local Tech college. Being in a classroom bored him, and he was the ultimate hands-on, intuitive tweak-it-make-it-go person. So, I know intelligent and smart isn't restricted to academia.

Fireman/EMT is my dream job for Dean, actually. In the 'verse they grew up in, if we posit that John never went hunting, that he accepted the accidental version of Mary's death, stayed in Lawrence, possibly remarried, and the kids went on to have an ordinary life, Dean would have seen fire as the enemy to be fought, from which to save people.

I love, love, love this notion.

To me, there is some prejudice between Sam and Dean, no matter what universe they are in, though I am not sure if I would call it caste or intellectual. (I think if Sam really had become a fat tax attorney living in the suburbs, it definitely would have been caste, but I'm not sure Sam got far enough removed from his roots for it to have been caste by the pilot.) It was much stronger when Sam first came back into the hunting life (his disdain for Dean's home made EMF reader; the way he felt he needed to tell Dean that "Christo" was the right term), but it never went away completely (Drunk!Sam calling Dean stupid in Playthings).

My big theory about WIAWSNB, WRT Dean's career choice (taking into account that it was all a construct, and going on the theory that all blanks were filled in by his own brain) was that the only kind of career he could picture involved following in his father's footsteps, even then, and thus his brain filling in the missing job piece by having him working the same sort of job John did, back in civilian days.

I don't see anything particularly heartbreaking about it, aside from how Sam (and Mary) seemed to include that with the drinking as signs Dean was Throwing Away His Life. Blue collar work is honest productive labor, and it can pay as well or better than a lot of white collar jobs up through middle management.

While it is honest productive labor, and my high school dropout brother makes more money than I do, and I have a pretty decent tech job (he's a marine diesel engineer, which required a GED and two years of trade school; I work for the tech Wolfram and Hart), I still find that part where he couldn't even conceptualize of a life outside his father's shadow kind of sad.

And the fact that Dean apparently couldn't even fantasize about being a college grad--the idea never occurred to him that he *could* be. That bothered me some.

Or, rather. This.

Dean is sort of the ultimate in tunnel vision, for me. He's so closely connected to John that I totally buy his "wish" choice to follow in his footsteps, whatever those footsteps might be. Because I agree with Plei -- Dean's brain is filling in all the blanks in that wishverse, and even in a wide-open place where he could be whatever he wanted to be, construct any kind of reality for himself, his brain instinctually puts Sam and John first.

I still sort of think no matter, the way Dean's wired he wouldn't be really happy in any sort of desk job, that's a very hands-on person. But I also agree that if the circumstances changed -- let's say they fight the war, kill all the demons, all of that is over -- it would be interesting to see what he might decide to do. Would it still be something so practical? Would he ever want to go to school to study something?