promisedlanddean

[promisedlanddean]

I recently saw a teenager get kidnapped right in front of my eyes. I was the sole witness of this event. I was taking a mental health break though so I didn’t call 911. My mental health comes first. 😌

[promisedlanddean]

I will say that it is very ~interesting~, as someone who has dedicated a lot of hours to working out What The Hell Is Going On With Supernatural, to be simultaneously watching Leverage and Supernatural the way I am right now, and comparing them both in terms of queer content.

Leverage started airing in 2008, roughly when Supernatural was on season 4. so season 5 of supernatural is kind of analogous, time-wise, to season 2 of Leverage, which is what I’m currently watching.

now, at this point in Leverage, we have had:

- bisexual Parker reveal (good, excellent, we like)

- that one time in season 1 where Hardison and Eliot pretend to be gay by making their voices higher (weird, did not like)

- that fashion episode where everyone is kind of mincing and Eliot wears mascara (hot, but otherwise a bit weird)

- Eliot’s general gender Thing (you know what i mean. you feel it. Friend of Dean Winchester in all our hearts)

- Mark Sheppard playing his classic Menacing Gay Man character (perfect, no notes)

I can’t currently think of any client they’ve had who’s been visibly queer, or much general acknowledgement of queerness as a force in the world - I might be forgetting something, but that’s my impression. No main character really displays familiarity with queer culture or makes repeated queer references.

Which is as you’d expect of a late 00s show, but somehow it is actually shocking me, because after watching 11 seasons of Supernatural I was all ready to believe that I’d just never noticed how completely gay American TV in general was during these years. I still have these lingering feelings that what I notice when I watch spn has to be either me being gay and seeing gay in everything as a result, or it just being latently where the world was at that point. BUT NO, friends! No.

Because once again, when compared to another network show that should be fairly analogous, Supernatural turns out to be a huge outlier.

Think about it. By 2009/10 on Supernatural, we had already had (and this is just top line, top of my mind stuff):

- Mark Sheppard playing essentially the same naughty little gay man but being allowed to kiss MULTIPLE other men, with tongue.

- all those cursed fucking jokes about Dean and Sam being gay for each other. absolutely hate it, but we must acknowledge it. King or two queens! Antiquers! Well, you are kinda butch!

- gay Bert and Ernie reference, on it like Divine on dog dookie reference, my own private Idaho reference, really uncountable queer cultural references

- that whole rehymenation thing post Dean’s resurrection

- Dean and Agent Henriksen’s little thing, and also every other man Dean has hit on

- Dean’s siren was a man

- Gripped you tight and raised you from perdition, I did it, all of it for you, for the first time i feel, and so on, and so on

- In fact the entire Destiel season 4 and season 5 plot. i mean!!! An essay in itself!

-the episode Free to Be You and Me in its entirety. Like jesus christ. come on.

- Doctor Sexy

- whatever the hell Bobby and Rufus had going on?

- gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day.

- gay Sam and Dean cosplayers

I. COULD. GO. ON.

There’s so much on Leverage about the nuclear heterosexual family as the dream - it’s what Nate lost pre-show and it’s what he’s trying to get back. Sophie is the mom and he’s the dad and the OT3 are their children. It’s the straightest possible version of the found family. But Supernatural is all about masculinity, how men relate to each other and hurt and help each other, how they live with each other and forge familial and sexual bonds, how they fuck each other up and fuck each other.

Queerness is so clearly what the Supernatural writers are specifically thinking about in a way it’s just not in Leverage, and I’m so fascinated by the contrast. I keep waiting for Eliot to have a thing with some security guard or mark and he doesn’t really and I’m … confused. Like what is going on. Where are my gays??? And then I realise I’m not watching the men are gay show right now.

#OH FASCINATING OKAY. #YEAH.

[promisedlanddean]

fathers make bad gods

#oof

[promisedlanddean]

happy trans day of visibility. destiel is t4t

[promisedlanddean]

So, there are three parts of Supernatural that I absolutely dislike. I can't do a poll about least favorite parts overall because there isn't enough room for all the options, but I want to know if you dislike my least favorite parts as much as I do.

#damn thats tough. gonna have to go s13 the apocalypse world stporyline was soooooooo boring #and bringing back bobby and charlie but not really was so like?? why no one wants this

[promisedlanddean]

Jensen Ackles | Critics Choice Awards 2006

[promisedlanddean]

I'm still so heartbroken that it happened in their HOME. Whatever defects the bunker might have, it was home to them for years. It was the first time Dean had a stable living situation, a bedroom of his own, a place to collect and display things he liked, a place to truly relax and unwind since he was FOUR YEARS OLD. And he loved it and he felt safe there and he took care of it. And then God invaded it, and Death literally chased him through the halls, and he lost Cas there, and he sat there at the end of the world, alone on a cold concrete floor in an empty place that was no longer home and no longer safe, and sobbed into his hands.

[promisedlanddean]

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

#that’s castiel 💗

[promisedlanddean]

misha's fics are buried deep in ao3 and completely unknown because nobody likes his cas characterization

#that’s pretty good

[promisedlanddean]

what a shame she's jugged in the head

[promisedlanddean]

one of the funniest scenes in the show. to me

[promisedlanddean]

spn 1x02 // spn 4x10 // spn 5x17

dean flirting with relating to his character mirrors about family

[promisedlanddean]

DESTIEL IN EVERY EPISODE: 5.04 - “The End”

[promisedlanddean]

you're a crisis of my faith

#HOLYYYYYYYY SHIIIITTTTT SOO GOOD

[promisedlanddean]

internet archive temporarily down killing myself. does anyone want jensen ackles wallpapers from 2006

[promisedlanddean]

You know what to do.

#jesus fucking christ

[promisedlanddean]

it's concerning what people are saying and thinking is activism. I've unfollowed someone who unironically reblogged something that said death to israel. how is that going to help? if anything that's just making a more hostile environment. support palestine but maybe cool it about what you say about israel considering why it exists in the first place

There are a few reasons for this, and the first is that the western left is so absolutely goddamn terrible about recognizing its increased and violent radicalization. I can't tell you how many posts I've seen to the effect of "the far right wants to kill everybody but the far left just wants healthcare for everyone uwu." First, by their own extremely warped and constantly biased perception, that would actually make the mainstream Democratic Party "far left." The party might disagree about how exactly the actual mechanism for better/more equitable healthcare should be implemented (etc. etc. if you oppose instant Medicare for All with no other transition period or hybrid options, YOU ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS A FASCIST!), but that's now a central and uncontroversial plank of official Democratic party policy. But since as we know, BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME!!!, clearly that can't be what the self-defined "far left" actually wants. Witness how we've had several days of intense and valedictory social media approval and worship of a mentally ill person's violent and public suicide, because it was done for the "right reasons." This person should have been given help and support, yes, and we never know what's going on in anyone's head. But if I was someone also contemplating suicide, this whole "it's the right thing to do and you should just burn yourself to death and announce it's for the Right Cause and you will have legions of adoring admirers" would be hella hard to resist. This is going to directly cost more lives.

We point out all the time that the far right has become a fascistic death cult of authoritarian personality, but the online far left is now absolutely just as willing to make "you should die and/or kill yourself for Ideology" a central part of their platform. We've had constant rhetoric about how the violent revolution is the only answer and society is irretrievably broken. This is casual, constant, inescapable radicalization, and it's presented as the only way to "do" leftism. So of course the rhetoric gets increasingly insane and genocidal (while insisting that all they want is to "stop the genocide"), and it's more and more normalized. We've had people reblogging posts that are almost entirely lies, because they "want to highlight" one sentence or crumb of half-truth they agree with (and apparently decided the best way to do this was to uncritically amplify the misinformation, rather than making their own post and trying to push back on it). We've had the people admitting they're afraid to lose friends or be attacked on social media because the Groupthink is so pervasive and violently radicalized. This is not normal and this needs to fucking stop.

Secondly, and this is inescapable especially in regard to this particular conflict, the western left is absolutely steeped in antisemitism through and through, and it has no desire either to examine that or even think it should. It has become absolutely mired in the "antisemitism is a Good and Necessary and Correct belief to have and it's not actually a prejudice, it contributes to social justice because all Israelis and/or all Jews are evil settler colonialists constantly genociding innocent Hamas and/or Palestinians." This is why, as I keep saying, it's not actually that hard to support Palestinian self-determination, statehood, dignity, freedom, and a stop to the indiscriminate slaughter of Gaza, while not actually thinking that the way to do this is just to be wildly antisemitic at all times and calling for the genocide of Israel to be substituted for the genocide of Gaza. That does not actually reduce the net amount of genocide in this world!!! I thought you wanted to stop it, not turn it loose on another group of people who "deserve it more!" JESUS CHRIST!!!

On that note, even if you don't agree with every single premise or point the article makes, a lot of people on this website (and on Twitter, but yeah, uh, good luck with that) need to read the following article in order to understand, as I keep saying, how deeply virulent antisemitism has become an unquestioned article of virtuous faith among the western left. Content warnings for some very graphic depictions/discussions of violence, including sexual violence, but that's not an excuse. If you've found yourself posting or agreeing with any version of "Jews/Zionists/Israelis are all collectively responsible for this while evilly torturing innocent non-Jews" statement, READ IT. Y'know, read it anyway. Try to get the first and most basic grip on the fraught and violent history of antisemitism, which is quite literally the oldest prejudice in the world, and how that interacts with and negatively informs the way in which supposedly well-intentioned western leftists are reacting to the current situation. As I said in an earlier post, I don't care if your "good intentions" (the road to hell is paved with, etc. etc.) are solely about stopping the current slaughter directed against Palestinians. That does not excuse you from the consequences of the lies you spread and the genocidal violence that you advocate as a "better" or "more correct" kind of genocidal violence then that already taking place. So. Yeah.

If you run into a paywall, you can either disable it by disabling JavaScript on the page (this can be done with most ad-blockers) and someone has also helpfully provided the full text as a pdf in this link. Read it.