#as a writer personally I would have put off Dean's death to a later season and bet on compressing the apocalypse if I had to | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

naruhearts · 3 years

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I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired.

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

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jockpoetry · 3 years

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supernatural sees women as a tool for development and strengthening of narratives/motivation and dean sees his body as a tool. is that anything?

When I saw this ask I really made the 🥴in real life. So, yeah anon, I do think there’s something to this.

Quick Disclaimer before I actually launch into my thoughts™: A lot of my read of Dean stems from my experience as both an oldest daughter and a transman. Being the oldest daughter was an experience I lived for many years, but I am also a man. I wasn’t raised as a man, I wasn’t socialized as a man, and even though once I came out upon reflection my masculinity was obviously there. Like I was a man™ before I knew I was a man. Even when I actively tied my identity to femininity for a long time! A lot of my prideful moments were based around statements like: “I was the only girl who (fill in the blank).”

So I am just putting that out there before I launch into my spiel about Dean/Gender/Tool because they all interlock for me.

I am also going to apologize in advance because I know this has fully gone off the rails and I’m not even done writing it yet. If this is incomprehensible ! Well, happens to the best of us.

First off, most importantly I guess before we discuss womanhood and Dean and the way both are utilized on the show I need to say that I personally don’t subscribe the whole Dean is female coded thing.

It’s a read I can absolutely understand. But for me..he’s not.

He’s a hypermasculine man to the point that when (and because he is written as a punchline, as the stupid™ brother, as the whore™, as the mother/father™, as daddy’s blunt instrument™, etc) Dean deviates from the pre-accepted definition of hypermasculine it’s Wrong.

It’s Instantly Feminine.

I think the internet has made the world very black and white, or blue and pink maybe. This point, I think, colors a lot of these discussions. Dean cooks, he cleans and so therefor he’s female coded. When that really just feeds back into the whole toxic masculinity loop. You can’t be masculine and cook and clean and cry. That’s for feminine people only.

I get the argument! I do, I just think that Dean’s actions are not inherently feminine, it’s just in the vacuum of Female and in the Absence of Traditional Masculinity it makes sense to assign him female coded and move on.

IN FACT the way that Dean is the action hero of the show, the Masculine™ one on the show - but he cries, and he rages, and he cooks (Again and Again) and cleans (Again and Again). The fact he’s macho and confident but he has so little self esteem. Is frankly insane to me. You have this blaze of glory character who is so depressed that they have him kill himself. Twice. In explicitly “I hate myself, I hate hearing all the things I hate about myself, I want to destroy myself” ways.

On just a regular ol’ network show that is just ungodly bad at times. They let their Male Hero cry - all the time (if I linked every example of this the essay would be...longer than it already is, but just take my word for it). Dean tears up and grieves and shows more than just Angry Horny Violent™ (he shows plenty of that, don’t get me wrong) but he’s Emotional (Again and Again and Again). In many different ways!

I mean, beyond even just tearing up, they make their Male Hero™ face sexual violence in pretty, uniquely horrifying - and queer! - ways.

Let’s make it clear, they did a lot of this unintentionally.

Or they do it as a joke.

Off of dean for a moment to say women are plot devices in this show. I could probably count on one hand female characters who have sincere depth to them that have roles outside of progressing plot, filling a filler episode, and who are still alive. Like even characters such as Charlie who are wholly developed, and interesting, are only remembered/mentioned/utilized to progress plots or fill an episode out - and then she dies. For pain™ for plot™ for no other reason than to traumatize a character.

Which let’s also make it clear Dean’s trauma is also only used as a plot device (as is Sam’s but in a different way, and Cas’ trauma is a whole other barrel of fish we’re not gonna dive into right now). Like wholesale full stop they don’t actually care about what happened to him. Unless it’s relevant in an episode.

Oh that boys home he was left at when he was 16 for months? Sure we’ll sprinkle that in in the back half of the series. Oh he was covered in bruises and said it was from a hunt (when it’s clear contextually they were from his father but saying the fantastical but true is easier than saying the uncomfortable but true). As Dean says though the story became the story, he was sixteen. He just went along with what John said.

We only see Dean ever truly rage at John, by the way, when either Dean is dead (when he’s between life and death and he rages at John, right before John “apologizes” for traumatizing him, for putting too much on Dean’s shoulders, and fucking dying) or John is dead (the Djinn episode where Dean is straight™ and John is dead™ and he goes to his grave and just yells and rages like he should have to his father in the real world).

Dean’s trauma from being both tortured and torturer in hell? Yeah, we don’t talk about that after it’s Relevant™. Even though it’s clear - especially in the demon!dean, mark of cain era, all those years later - Alastair still has his hooks inside of Dean. I stopped watching originally after s8 ended. I was fed up with the show, and with this whole renaissance I’ve been doing a rewatch and I’m into season twelve now and it really has never come up again.

Even when he had the mark of cain and he was tasked with questioning and accused of torturing it was “the mark has changed you” and not “you were victim and victimizer in hell for forty years, which is longer than you’ve been alive on earth” (and, was about as long as he wound up living. Which is desperately sad.

Because we talk about Sam’s desire for a “normal” life but, Dean wanted out too. He was tired in the first few seasons of this show, he never had a chance to taste freedom (we don’t count the boys home, because that was a different kind of regimented life, and it was a false freedom) the way that Sam did in Flagstaff with Bones or at Stanford with Jessica. Love for Dean is sacrificing, it’s putting himself/his happiness/his well-being last.

Because Dean only knows love in the context of violence (like all of these fun examples, for starters) is a phrase that I’ve said a lot both in private chats and on here, and I absolutely think it goes to him being a tool (a blunt instrument, a plot device, so both textually and metatextually) instead of a person. Which Cas sees Dean’s shame/guilt and sees that side of Dean because he touched his soul, and saw more than just the Righteous™ man, more than just the tool, he saw A good man, not a machine.

On the other side though you have how “bad guys” view Dean: Desperate, Sloppy, Needy, Dean’s hole (Again), which is again so wildly counterintuitive to the story of a Macho Man Hero™. You’re using vocabulary that is both queering him and feminizing (and I know this a meme format, but sincerely it is done in a derogatory way it is feminizing. It’s breaking him down to bare parts, to a sloppy hole).

My whole rewatch I have been absolutely fascinated by how identity and free will is utilized/conceptualized on this show. Castiel has been my main focus, but Dean and how he is framed by himself and others is...fascinating - and frustrating. The writers inconsistency lends itself not only to this unintentionally queer character, but also one that again is incredibly easily read as a non-traditionally masculine character.

As a feminine character.

This show has so few female characters that of course it had to foist the roles/behaviors/plots that a female character might have onto a male character. Which I think is part of why reading Dean as trans (either transmasc, or transfemme) is so easily done like.

Half of these are shit posts, but you can find trans allegories/textual evidence in this show again, again, again, again, and again. And this is unintentional, they don’t want you to look at Dean and see woman, former future or present. Like a lot of these I’m sure are punchlines for them, because women/queer folk are punchlines to them.

Sometimes the only women in an episode are random witnesses who get two sentences of dialogue, and then the main guest character is a man. Who flirts with Dean, and Dean is receptive to it.

They paint themselves into a corner, there are female Rabbi. So easily could Aaron have been a woman instead of a man, but they made the choice to play up the HaHa Dean & Men card.

Because, again, Dean has filled the slot of Woman™ of Female Lead™ and the flirting would’ve been straight if Dean was a woman. It’s a plot device, they needed to have the guest character be disarming, be cute, make the main character flustered.

It’s just the main character is a man, because they’re allergic to women. But they still need those female plots, tools of femininity, to move their show forward. I mean I am a big subscriber to transmasc Jo (no idea if anyone else is with me on this one, but let me explain). Jo is in love with Dean (concept) not Dean (actuality). Which, we’ve all had our eggs cracked by someone like that. We were in love with them until we realized we just wanted to be them.

He loved her like a little sister, she loved him like a lost idol. He’s a golden calf and she dies for him, because she believed in him, she was the original character dashed at the altar of the Winchesters.

I fully believe if she had lived and if this show had a crumb of actual good writing Jo could have been a deeply compelling transmasc character. But I also think she’s a fascinating inversion of Dean. Dean is a Masculine Character who subverts Toxic Masculinity, Jo is a Tomboy™ she’s not your (if you take it straight, literally and metaphorically) average female love interest. She’s angry, she’s not soft at all, all edges and corners and thorns. She isn’t helpless, she’s stubborn but not in a “you’re going to get punished for this” way. She’s right when she’s stubborn. She’s helpful, she’s a martyr.

I could do a whole other essay just on Jo (and Ellen, and Ash, what a fucking trio!) but needless to say Jo was one of the first...plot device feminine tools sacrificed to this show. She was a regular, she was unique, she was an engaging character, and she still died (to progress the plot? no. for man pain? yeah, for like three episodes maybe, and then it’s forgotten just like the rest of Dean’s trauma, as we mentioned above).

Dean and Women and Love is a very interesting tool used too because. Boy they sure try to make Dean love women and it fails in small ways, and in big, meaningless, failed het domesticity (again) ways. Not to mention whatever Lust (in the form of a woman) having no effect upon him, when they could have used that moment to assert his Masculinity and Heterosexuality. He behaved normally? And...also...whatever the fuck the Adios thing was!

Like they have these opportunities to make him Traditionally (toxically) Masculine, but make the choice to...not? To soften him. Because it’s a tool. He’s their female lead, textually he had to take on the role of mother(/father) to Sam, but...I mean this is a million miles long already. I know, but we absolutely can’t not talk about his Paternal/Maternal behaviors. (Which appear again and again again and again, outside of his relationship with Sam even/especially). He’s the mother hen, sage, safety net, beacon, home to so many side characters they meet.

I mean in many ways Jody is also a Dean comparison. Lost her family. Found a new family. She is non-traditionally feminine, but easily flustered and Silly™ (let’s just drop the entire sex talk over family dinner scene with Alex and the boys and looking to them for help, even though she was already a mother, and she’s a cop, and a hunter and this confident no nonsense individual.... She’s not). We are meant to see her as this hard ass, but she makes extra food for the boys to take back to the bunker. She’s deadly in a fight, but also still easily overwhelmed and put into damsel mode, and she cares so much even in the face of adversity.

It’s also fun to see how Jo | Jody are reflections of Dean at different points of his life. Younger, cocky | Older, settled.

Even when the text tries to tell us that he’s not.

When it reminds us that he’s violent. That he is his father, even if he says that Sam is more like John (which was reflexive, which was angry because of Adam and how Sam was behaving like Dean in that episode, and yes there are parallels to be drawn between Sam and John, the show barely dives into them). Instead we’re told that Dean is John (Again and Again and Again and Again).

So intensely that a fanfictionalized version of the Winchester Gospels makes it an entire fucking musical number.

And yet, despite the texts insistence to make Dean Macho Man Father Reborn™ We get this Dean who is silly (and directly compared/contrasted to the female character in this scene), soft, in heels, nagging, and... Sully (you know Sam’s imaginary friend who has the same Haircut Dean has, who is a softer, shorter, friendlier, campier, version of Dean who was a replacement For Dean until the real one let Sam back in? That? Sully?) it’s hard to take them seriously.

Hell, even when he was A DEMON? What did they do? They had him sing off-key drunken karaoke, they had him doing this ! Like that’s your hero, unhinged, free to be as bad as he could be, and you put him in a cowboy hat in a romance with the king of hell.

The Female Lead, everyone. Who’s biggest betrayal(s) comes at the hands of his love interest (again, a man even though it was an angel who could’ve taken any vessel! who could’ve been recast, who canonically dies admitting his love to Dean - that one), who he tries so hard to be loyal to.

The contradictions of his character are laughable. He is so emotional, but if he is engaged about his emotions? He shuts down, or he’s exasperated about being asked about them. It really is Female Lead/Only Here For The Plot disease, because everything is more important than him. How’s he doing? Doesn’t matter outside of the context of how x character is doing or that y character is dead. Or his emotions only matter if they’re done in penance.

They also really do frame him as Pretty Boy™ in a violent way, or in a derogatory manner. They’ll give us homoerotic shots like this or these and never really acknowledge how these are gay shots. Sorry the gun scene is a a straight up sex scene, the beer sip spilling out over his mouth is oral, the scene where Cas fills up Dean’s glass with whisky is also a sex scene, they do this shit on purpose but accidentally queer it up. If Dean was a woman these scenes wouldn’t even matter. They’d be passing moments, but because he is not just a man but A Man™ they’re insane to see.

Not to mention all of these scenes and all the ones I haven’t linked where Dean dresses up. He performs masculinity, but he performs femininity too. He’s a plot device that is slotted in to whatever role they need. He’s Super Straight Butch Man™ but coaches the lesbian on how to successfully flirt with a man. He’s Action Hero™ who sits through a montage with the same lesbian and yays and nays her outfits, and enjoys himself.

Fuck he loves dressing up, he feels better in these costumes because performing a character is easier than being himself. Because who is Dean? He’s a tool, both textually and metatextually. It is exactly how the women and because of the women on the show that Dean is the way that he is. If there was a more steady female presence Dean would not be half as much of a plot device or half as camp/gay/feminine/non-traditionally masculine/queer coded as he is.

In conclusion....

#dean winchester #supernatural #spn meta #spn #gender #anon #replies #messages #my writing #ANYWAYS PHEW okay anon i don't know if i even fully got to your point but i woke up at like 3:30 to this ask and i've been fixated on it #HOPE THIS IS EVEN JUST a little bit coherent #the way i meant for this to talk so much more about transness and eldest daughter syndrome and just FORGOT #oops #oh well

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gra-sonas · 3 years

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was the year time jump because of the pandemic? To sidestep making that too central to the plot, or was that always the plan?

JEANINE MASON: That was always our intention and it was just sort of a saving grace in that way. We also don't acknowledge the pandemic in real-time on our show. There are no masks and that was just so wonderful just to get work in that way and have that time where it was a little more normal. Also, that's just our show — we want you to come to us the way you always do, which is for nineties nostalgia, sexy Cowboys, brilliant scientists, you know? CHRIS HOLLIER: So we wanted to drop our characters in a year later, let them stew in their individual decisions that were made last season. We want everyone to root for our poster couple but we want to honor what happens in real life, which is sometimes you step away from that person, even if you are entwined with them in a very particular way. So we wanted it to be a real enough time and distance so that they could live a little life on their own.

With showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie departing at the end of season 2, has much changed? Or are you still working with ideas she had in place?'

HOLLIER: It's a little bit of both. There are things that Carina and I built that live all the way through and then once the story got up on its feet, discoveries were made with our new crop of people that we were like, "Oh, we're going to bend it this other way."

Jeanine, how is Liz doing in her new life in L.A. when we pick up this season?

MASON: Well, it's been a year and at this point, her life is actually pretty great. She just hasn't taken a second to acknowledge that. She's doing what she does best, which is just full head in her work and trying to figure out what she could use of her discoveries and her brilliance to save Maria. She has a great job, a really nice place, and an awesome partner at work who is a good time and a real match for her in terms of intellect and ambition. He begins to ask her to recognize that and to maybe give something a chance that she's been reluctant to because of how drawn she is to Roswell and to Max. It's a fun first episode. It's sexy. It's fun to find opportunities for her. She's our hero so she's got a lot on her shoulders and anytime where we can find levity for her is always a real treat for the writers and for me.

And no Crashdown waitress uniform must be nice?

MASON: Honestly, I miss it quite a lot right now. I have a note in my notes with Chris, I'm like, "I gotta tell him we gotta find him more opportunities for it."

Should Liz and Max shippers be worried about them finding their way back to one another after he destroyed her work and didn't follow her to L.A.? Should we resign ourselves to a season apart?

MASON: This season really is about these characters having themselves mirrored to each other. Max and Liz need some growing and ultimately they can't do anything but be orbiting each other. We found so many opportunities to have such a beautiful language around the cosmic element of their connection. They're asking, "Is this our decision, or are we just acting off of a decision that the cosmos made for us?" It was so fun to navigate that. I always have such a good time with Chris Hollier and with Nathan Dean, just finding the little tiny notches, a tiny bit of movement towards where they're going next. I really loved following them. It's my favorite Max and Liz season to date.

HOLLIER: It's not a season apart. I'll tease that they, in an unexpected way, end up in front of each other relatively soon. But it's really about when am I ready? And what does it mean to talk to my ex? When someone makes such a big influence in your life, when do you know it's over and when do you know you should fight again? We tried to give them real grown-up lives.

Steven Krueger (The Originals) also joined the cast as Heath this season. What can you tease about his character?

HOLLIER: He's just an awesome human being. I know him from The Originals and we were like, "If we're going to have to be stuck with people in the desert, who do we want?" You want to be stuck with a handsome and lovely and charming Steven Krueger. So really this was looking at, "Well, what did Liz want and what does it look like when you start to give Liz versions of what she wants?" Heath is somebody that is beyond being just a lovely person, he is smart and wants to advance science and that's appealing to Liz. It becomes, "What does it look like when the man that I hang around with all day is also into the same things that I am?" MASON: I love him. Heath is just such a fun, whip-smart, fantastic character. His humor was so fun. We've been having a good time with kicking the humor up really through season two and in season three, we just took it up another notch. There are some moments that are like, "Is this a drama or is it a sitcom?" Looking back on it, he was such a fun partner to spar with. They're both such intellectual characters and I love that there's a real meeting of the minds. It makes it competitive and sexy. I know a lot of fans are so excited because they know him from The Originals and he's going to be a great addition.

Technically, Mr. Jones is a new character too. Can you tell us anything at all about him?

HOLLIER: I'd say he's a new character — and a fully-fleshed interesting new character. Mr. Jones has an awesome beard. At some point, he might lose that beard. A lot of people are asking me, "Is Jones good or bad?" And what I would argue is that's a perspective based upon who you are in the conversation that you're having with him. He knows a lot about our heroes' story and he knows a lot about home. He'll be able to answer questions for them. This season our heroes will get to learn why they ended up here on earth. One of the things I think that people will love is that they're going to get to see that home planet this year. We asked ourselves a lot about this whole season, "What have we set up for the past two?" We look at these first three seasons almost like a trilogy so a lot of things are going to be paid off.

Has Nathan enjoyed pulling double duty this season? Or is he just exhausted?

MASON: He's exhausted, but he's such a champ. That really is the beginning of this mirroring thing that starts with Max and Jones with him actually getting to look at himself to a degree and those questions that come up. The self-analysis that it provokes in him is really the beginning of what is happening to all of our characters this year; everybody's being confronted with themselves. I loved that the Max/Jones of it was also a real sci-fi element.

Did he really grow that beard or was that not possible if he had to go between the two characters?

MASON: That was a prosthetic beard and our makeup team killed it. He was not accustomed to early mornings, which, of course, all of us babes are. It was a lot of extra time in the chair for him.

Can Jones dupe Liz into thinking he's actually Max since she doesn't know he exists?

MASON: You're totally on to something. It's a real and pressing threat. I mean, she's totally in the dark and he looks like her cosmic lover!

HOLLIER: What I will say is that, Liz — beyond her being number one on the call sheet — is integral to this story in a way that she and none of our characters are going to perceive when they start episode one. We're bringing [the characters] to a new crossroads moment in their lives and they're getting, through Jones, a mirror into their own lives to decide what they're going to become next.

How's Rosa (Amber Midthunder) doing this season?

MASON: By the end of season two, Rosa really makes the decision to start taking care of herself. She really becomes an incredible asset to the Scooby-Doo gang. It's something that Liz is in constant adjustment to. As much as she's the younger sister, she feels very protective of her sister and Liz has had to make adjustments in her trust and faith in Rosa. I loved it because it just felt like a real personal, authentic thing that sisters would go through, but also that Hispanic sisters would go through. I think we sometimes, culturally, have a tendency to baby our women — maybe that's the wrong word — but just to underestimate their physical ability and what they might take on, and sort of 'queen' our women in a way where we treat them tenderly. I hate that. I'm a tough bitch and so is Rosa. So Liz has to confront that and go, "I'm an idiot to underestimate you. You've done nothing but prove me wrong."

What about Maria and her visions?

HOLLIER: This year I think Maria has the most complete arc of any season, as she recognizes things about herself that cause more questions about who she is, who her family is, how she's linked to this story. We dive into it in the present-day and we dive deliciously back in time too.

In the exclusive clip above we see her have a vision of a funeral, can you tease anything about who potentially might be about to die?

HOLLIER: Maria is front and center in driving the first half of the mystery for us. She's burdened with trying to figure out whose death she is seeing. It takes a few episodes to unravel and we use it to ask, is this linked to our supernatural stories or real-world stories that are going on politically? Is it bad luck? Is it herself? There's a whole gambit at play. We joke that we solved a past murder, now we're going to try to stop one.

Can Malex (Michael and Alex) shippers have hope that this might finally be their time?

HOLLIER: What I would say is that I think that Malex fans are really going to dig this journey. We, as writers, put them at the same level of importance as Max and Liz. So we wanted to really honor the next step in what they may or may not be. How did they grow up and how did they have those hard conversations just like Liz and Max are going to have?

Is Isobel going to continue to date women this season?

HOLLIER: Isobel is going to go on a more personal journey. You got to love yourself before you can love someone else. We lean into those possibilities by the end of who she might love. It's not something that is dropped all season — it is something that you'll see. We play some romantic comedy stuff with her character this year and with Maria that I think fans are gonna dig. There's a lot going on in the world and wanted to pump some humor and hope into it.

Will see more of Liz fighting to challenge the perception of the Latinx community?

MASON: I think that just by nature of it being one of such few shows that are led by a Latin woman, it's always going to be, to an extent, a protest or an assertion of the space that I get to fill and that Liz Ortecho gets to fill on network TV. I was really excited to just have Chris as a collaborator. Over our hiatus, before the season started, I was doing a lot of reading. I chronicled the books that play into Liz every season on my Instagram. I was reading some Sonia Sotomayor. Her book is just incredible. I was texting him screenshots of pages of the book with things underlined. Ten episodes deep into season 3, he's like, "Remember that page you sent me?" He's a real dream collaborator. I loved him for that. A pressing struggle for people of color is going through the ranks in these big corporations and then sometimes coming to find out that those corporations are purporting to support marginalized groups but actually aren't following through. So how do you, as someone who's having your success, your dreams become reality, navigate supporting the company and giving so much of your intelligence and your work — that they often legally own, especially with science — to a company that isn't going to be for your people?

Roswell, New Mexico returns Monday at 8 p.m. on The CW.

#long post is long #jeanine mason #chris hollier #liz ortecho #max evans #echo #isobel evans #rosa ortecho #malex #alex manes #michael guerin #rnm spoilers #maria deluca #rnm cast interviews #roswell new mexico s3 #roswell new mexico

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thegeminisage · 3 years

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my secret galaxy brain reading of spn s11 is better than yours

or: why season 11 is good actually. this is a long-ass meta, so it's going behind the cut

some disclaimers before we get going

absolutely all of this is accidental. nobody does this shit on purpose. this is ~my interpretation~ or whatever. i'm not actually trying to argue the writers meant to do this lol. what i'm saying is that this is the way to make season 11 make sense in your brain because it makes sense in mine and it's one of my FAVORITES. it could be one of your favorites too if you stop limiting yourself

there is heavy discussion of sexual violence in this meta so read safely etc also spoilers for all of s11 obviously

unless you watched the anime, i've seen more supernatural than you have, so i'm right >:)

for the uninitiated, the basic plot of season 11 is that eons and eons ago, before there was heaven or hell or earth or humans or angels, there was only god (chuck) and the darkness (amara). amara kept destroying what god made, so he and the archangels locked her away in a cage, which removing the mark of cain from dean's arm opened. amara escaped and dean was the first thing she saw, so she spends the season using some kind of thrall over him to make him feel drawn to her and unable to hurt her, and also looking for chuck so she can give him a little payback.

ALRIGHT HERE WE GO

season 11 & sexual violence

you don't need to look very far to find examples of sexualized violence and outright sexual violence on supernatural, but s11 is lousy with it. just to name a few examples:

amara's "thrall" on dean, which we will absolutely get into more later

crowley's jokes about altar boys and the tastes of catholic priests

ALLLLL the pedophile jokes made when crowley was raising baby amara

angels torturing cas and threatening to cut his genitals off, only to send in hannah (an angel who formerly had unrequited romantic/sexual feelings for him) to play good cop(/honeypot??) in hopes of making him talk

the return of lucifer, who possessed sam (spn has a history of equating possession and sexual violence) and is heavily implied to have raped sam in hell, and the MULTIPLE times he menaces sam throughout this season, including forcibly touching his soul

lucifer possessing castiel and using him to enact violence on the winchesters, his loved ones

i absolutely REFUSE to acknowledge the lucifer/crowley stuff but if you know you know

the episode with the kissing curse, using "love" as a means to deliver death

dean's possession in the soul eater episode

the "chitters" monsters involving mating, orgies, and forcible impregnation

you get the idea

i could write a whole essay on almost all of these but for this post we'll be sticking mostly to dean & amara

@marcusantonius pointed out while we were watching season 11 that what amara does to dean is basically speedrun his two major attachments - sam and castiel. she starts out as a baby, someone in need of protection, and quickly grows into an adult who attempts to romance/seduce him. the feelings dean has around amara aren't feelings FOR HER, they're feelings he has for SAM AND CAS that are being TRANSFERRED onto her through means of her power. (this is important for later.)

what amara does to dean is sexualized violence bordering on outright sexual assault. compelling him to feel drawn towards her and to protect her, frequently getting in his personal space and touching his face, and even kissing more than once when he is quite literally unable to resist (it's stated many times that he is unable to kill or even harm her, so he is completely helpless in the presence of someone who makes no secret of her intentions for him, sexual or otherwise).

dean says many times that what he feels for amara is not love or desire or attraction. he can't put a name to it at all - not once in the entire series is he able to properly define this thrall she has over him, which leaves us the audience a little confused (amara asking "what IS happening between us?" in 11.06 as a teenager making sexual advances on a grown man does give me a good laugh, because it was written SO WEIRDLY)... BUT we know that it is definitely sexual in nature, and not at all something dean wants to be happening.

this is addressed kind of strangely in 11.13. the villain of the week is a witch moonlighting as a hairdresser, who puts a kissing curse on her clients. the curse must be passed along like a hot potato - if you kiss someone else, it's passed along to them. if they kiss someone else, it's passed along to them. but eventually, a monster called a qareen will show up in the form of "your deepest desire" and kill you, and work its way backwards to the original curse-ee. in the episode, dean kisses the vic (i'll point out this was also technically done w/o her consent, though it was a very businesslike kiss) to put the curse on himself and protect her. the qareen takes the form of amara, and she gives Dean this little speech:

Qareen!Amara: You're a mystery. I can see inside your heart. Feel the love you feel. Except it's cloaked in shame. When it comes to this, you can’t help yourself, so why fight it? Just give in.

then, at the end of the episode, after dean reveals who the qareen was for him, we get this conversation between sam and dean:

Dean: You seriously think the sister of God is my deepest darkest desire? Sam: She isn't? Dean: No! She can’t be! Sam: Why not? Dean: Why? Because if she is that means that I'm… Sam: Means you're what? Complicit? Weak? Evil? Dean: For starters, yeah. Sam: Dean. Do you honestly think you ever had a choice in the matter? She's the sister of God, and for some reason she picked you and that sucks, but if you think I’m gonna blame you or judge you…I'm not.

the "shame" part of both of these is really what stuck out to me - the word itself isn't in the second passage, but dean's vibes are absolutely filled with shame. to me, this always read as being shame about the sexual violence and about the complicity/weakness that "allowed" that violence to happen.

and as a reminder, sam is just a few episodes past the confrontation with his own rapist (he returns to the cage to speak with lucifer in 11.09 & 11.10, and canonically struggles with what happened there even after the confrontation ends). sam made a point earlier in this episode of making sure the victim of the curse knew it wasn't her fault her husband died, but the fault of the witch who cast the curse. sam is VERY emotionally intelligent, and i honestly believe that he was speaking as one survivor of sexual violence to another here. what he's telling dean is something victims often need to be reminded of: it's not your fault. you weren't complicit, or weak. you didn't have a choice. you don't deserve blame or judgment.

we've had bad guys make sexual threats at both dean and sam many times before this and a few more times after, but as far as i can recall, this is the only conversation in the entire series that even attempts to address the impact of that particular kind of violence on dean. it's short, and strangely written, but nonetheless: there it is.

season 11 & the dean in the closet

for the purposes of this post, i'm not going to go through the entire series and find examples to try and prove dean is bi and has feelings for cas. if you don't believe that then what are you doing here? we're skipping to the goods.

actually, i always got annoyed at people who read the fake-amara's speech in 11.13 (or any of the other times people spoke about dean's shame regarding amara) as being about dean's sexuality, because in my mind it was ABSOLUTELY about his being a victim of sexual violence, which was far more important to me, as it is discussed far less often.

BUT, knowing what we know now (that cas was always canonically in love with dean, and it's all but canon that dean really was bisexual), i'm willing to entertain another notion:

Sam: ...you're what? Complicit? Weak? Evil? Dean: For starters, yeah.

the "evil" bit never really sat right with me as part of the narrative of sexual violence, aside from touching on dean's general self-loathing, but it fits the narrative of being closeted MUCH better. dean, a self-hating homophobic bisexual, would probably use a similar word, if not something heavy as "evil," to describe the way he feels about other men. it's a malevolent feeling. (if you're like me and ascribe to the jackles headcanon that dean resorted to turning tricks to make food money when he was underage, we could also consider the extremely fucked up fact that almost every queer man dean's ever met is someone who hurt him.)

dean is ashamed of who and what he is, and the way he feels about cas. living like that, that's violence. he lives violently day in and day out with that feeling. (and amara knows it. it's worth nothing that she uses cas to communicate with dean MULTIPLE times in this season, both by carving messages on his body and psychically, through his own connection to dean - and when dean "betrays" her to rescue casifer, she's horrified at whatever she sees in his head.)

equating sexual violence to the violence of being closeted

but what's amazing about this weird badly-written little 11.13 conversation (and indeed, the season-long plotline of dean and his shame) is that we don't HAVE to assign it to the purposes of being about sexual violence OR about being closeted. it can be and IS both.

my favorite reading of this is that BEING IN THE CLOSET IS INHERENTLY A VIOLENT AND TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE. many of the same feelings are involved: shame, guilt, self-loathing. sam's comforting words to dean - that he will not be blamed or judged - are equally applicable in both cases. dean is a victim of sexual violence, and he is also in the closet, and both of these experiences are traumatic ones, and they are intermingled with each other in a big way (again, if you're into dean-turned-tricks headcanon, they are intermingled INSEPERABLY - the sexual violence being one of the direct causes of dean not wanting to accept or address his own sexuality).

the bait-and-switch

the real galaxy brain moment of this whole thing begins at the end of 11.22 (an otherwise lackluster episode that played sam's lucifer trauma for laughs how dare they ugh god whatever that's off-topic but i HATE IT) when amara and chuck finally have the confrontation she's been fighting all season for. she is attacked by witches, demons, angels, and then stabbed by lucifer himself, before she's finally on her knees before chuck, and then we get this little exchange:

Chuck: I'm sorry. For this, for everything. Amara: An apology at last. What's sorry to me? I spent millions of years crammed into that cage alone and afraid...

maybe you already know where i'm going with this. a cage isn't so different from a closet when we're working with metaphors, right?

amara talks about her grievances with chuck many times throughout season 11 - that he was spoiled, that he created the earth to stroke his ego, that he couldn't handle her as she was. and once he finally makes his appearance he tells it his own way - that he had no choice but to lock amara away, that she couldn't stand the things and people he made, that he did it to protect people. but something about THIS conversation in particular - even though it's not written into the dialogue - gives me a particular kind of vibe.

there is something innately, unspeakably WRONG with amara. i don't mean unspeakable as in very bad, i mean unspeakable as in LITERALLY undefinable. it's just like dean being unable to put a name to the pull she has over him. no one talks directly at it or about it, they go in circles around it, but facts are facts: amara simply couldn't be allowed to exist as she was because there was just something innately wrong with her. and it's this conversation in particular, the first one they have together onscreen, that really slams that feeling home for me.

the entire time chuck and amara are talking, the camera repeatedly cuts to dean - he is so visibly upset that the first time i watched this, i was certain he was about to jump into the middle of things and put himself between the two of them. we're meant to believe that dean has trouble hearing this because he "cares" about amara, but i have a different take.

i think it's empathy. real, actual empathy - not the kind of feeling that amara had to force out.

stay with me here. eventually, after chuck tries to lock amara away again, she gets her second wind, attacks him, and leaves him for dead - and as he dies, the sun dies with him, and so too does all life on earth.

in the following episode, the finale, amara finds her way to a park, where she takes in god's creation, visibly upset as she realizes that his flowers die at her touch (again, hammering home the point that there is something innately wrong with her that means she cannot live in this world), and eventually speaks with an old lady feeding the birds.

Woman: Do you want to feed them? Amara: I shouldn't. Woman: I've been feeding these birds going on 20 years now. They're practically family. And I know that makes me sound like a crazy old bat, but...heck. My husband died a couple of years ago, and my son keeps slipping me these brochures for retirement communities - a.k.a. where they send old folks to die, but not to make a fuss about it. Amara: So you hate him. Woman: Well, a little bit. Sometimes. But you know family. Even when you hate them, you still love them.

this speech brings tears to amara's eyes. what's more, she spends this entire section with her hands in her lap. after a season of killing her way through humanity to get god's attention, she is afraid to touch these birds for fear of killing them. she feels empathy for them. she and dean are connected, after all - so as soon as he began to feel true, genuine empathy - so did she.

when dean shows up to kill amara (via a bomb made out of souls hidden in his chest), she immediately clocks his plan. she practically dares him to do it, and - he can't. he is, as always, helpless against her.

what dean does instead is talk to her. more importantly, he listens to her. when she says her brother sent dean here to execute her, he tells her chuck actually didn't want this - that it was actually his very last resort. he asks her if this, the death of everything, is what she wanted, and she tells him all she really wanted was payback. again, dean EMPATHIZES:

Dean: Yeah, that's revenge. It'll get you out of bed in the morning, and when you get it, it feels great... for about five minutes. I've been there. Me and Sam, we have had our fair share of fights—more than our share. But no matter how bad it got, we always made it right because we're family. I need him. He needs me. And when everything goes to crap, that's all you've got—family. Now you might be a—an all-powerful being...but I think you're human where it counts. You simply need your brother.

what's really neat about this section, and the scene before it where amara confronts her brother, is that they mark the first times dean felt any sort of genuine emotion for amara at all - one that she didn't force out of him or one that he felt for someone else that she just took for herself. dean genuinely EMPATHIZES with her - after everything she's done to him and his loved ones, and to the people on earth, dean sees the humanity in her. that's kind of his and sam's M.O., loving monsters into men - the number of non-human adversaries who eventually became allies because of the winchesters’ empathy or liking for them or even just their influence is staggering. cas, gabriel, meg, benny, crowley, rowena, metatron, to name a few off the top of my head - and now amara.

and then we get THIS:

Dean: You don't want to be alone. Not really. I mean, hell. Maybe that's why you wanted me. But deep down, you didn't really want me... 'cause I'm not him.

(emphasis mine)

and here's my galaxy brain take: dean empathizes with amara - TRULY empathizes with her - because they're both queer (or queer-coded).

I KNOW THIS SOUNDS NUTS BUT LISTEN. this weird creepy stalkery hetero "romance" was fake on both sides all along. dean and amara are the same. that unspeakable and innate wrongness lives in both of them. they're self-loathing and furious at god for his failures and callousness, outcasts in a world that isn't for them, a world that has HURT them simply on account of them being what they are. the violence done to amara was done to her BECAUSE of this unspeakable wrongness about her - her queerness, or her queer-codedness - and we already decided this was, for the purposes of this season, functionally the same violating and traumatic experience as sexual violence.

amara's been using dean to try and replace chuck this entire season. it's some weird comphet bullshit tied in with the fact that dean was the first part of chuck's creation she ever saw. it stands to reason then that she was trying to force dean to be with her and love her the way she wanted to force CHUCK to be with her. that's part of why she started life as a baby - as someone he'd protect as he did his own sibling.

so in some weird, warped, very roundabout way, amara was enacting on dean the violence that chuck enacted on her - making him feel the same shame and weakness that chuck made HER feel when he locked her away eons ago. if amara unknowingly replaced chuck with dean, then she also unknowingly took part of her revenge on him. the only way she knew how to love someone was to force them to do it, because the only ways she had ever been loved until now involved violence - until dean and his moment of genuine empathy.

consider this final speech:

Dean: Maybe I can kill you. Or maybe I can't. Maybe if I pull this trigger, we all live happily ever after, or maybe we die bloody, or maybe it doesn't matter, because maybe there's a different way. So I'm gonna ask you again. Put aside the rage. Put aside the hate. And you tell me...what do you want?

dean is the only person in BILLIONS of years to ask her this! one queer to another! and it turns out that and all she wanted - the ONLY thing she needed - was to be understood and accepted by her family. immediately after this, amara summons chuck to their park, and the two of them talk it out in what is genuinely a very moving scene. amara - perhaps because of her connection with dean, perhaps because she's finally admitted to herself that she does still love her brother - sees the beauty in the world now, and feels love for it, and she doesn't want to destroy it anymore.

and at the end, after she's made her peace with god, and the sun has been turned back on, amara says:

Amara: Dean, you gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you.

and what do we get at the end of this episode? mary winchester, risen from her grave. dean's family. and - SPOILERS FOR SEASON 12 - though at first mary rejects dean (and sam) as being the same children she remembers from 1983, after a long and rocky road, at the end of the season, they eventually come to a reconciliation where she sees them for who they truly are. it's never ABOUT being queer because this show uses the fucking hays code when it comes to dean's sexuality, but it's still about being queer!!

dean gave amara what she needed - acceptance from her family - and she gave him that back in turn. all it took, the entire time, was one SHRED of empathy from one queer to another. all dean had to do was recognize her - REALLY recognize her - not as a replacement for sam or cas but as who she really was. and he saw himself in her, and the empathy that followed was genuine because it was the most natural thing in the world. in the end neither dean nor amara needed the "romance" they thought they did/were forced to want. they never did. they only needed acceptance and understanding.

supernatural is always about family and the power of love, and this season is no exception.

other great parts of season 11

if you're still not convinced, season 11 is full of other things that make it amazing:

GOD'S RETURN. after SIX YEARS he's back, this is canon, we finally get to hear what he has to say. they did more with him in a handful of episodes in this season than all of season 15

also, something else returns after six years. i'll give you a hint: it glows hot in god's presence. it was last seen being dropped into a motel trash can.

and of course the big one: lucifer and sam. what great callbacks to seasons 4-6 when lucifer and what he did to sam in hell was actually scary and mattered a lot! lucifer returns to being scary in this and i can't get enough of it.

this is also inseparable from sam's arc involving his faith - he begins praying again, having visions again, and is GUTTED when those prayers and visions lead him back to the place of his worst trauma. he gets to MEET GOD this season. it's fucking insane

the inherent melodrama of castiel, someone loved and trusted by the winchesters, being possessed by someone who they hate and who has hurt them. you get all of the sam drama with him accidentally trusting lucifer with his soul and his brother's life, and all the dean drama where he watches the devil run around in his boyfriend. also, misha collins does an uncanny impression of mark pellegrino. it's actually really creepy

somehow, they managed to make metatron, a deeply hated villain by all, ACTUALLY LIKEABLE. for TWO whole episodes. it was NUTS

this season starts off rowena's long arc with lucifer and her lucifer trauma that eventually becomes the catalyst of her bonding so profoundly with sam <3 best friends forever <333

sam and dean bond with a pair of canonically gay hunters who DON'T DIE

billie is introduced in this season and she's super hot and cool and awesome

eileen is also introduced in this season. her arc mirrors sam's so well, it's SO good. i never though i'd care about sam and a girl who wasn't jess, but i care about them SO MUCH it makes me insane. if you don't love eileen you're wrong!

anyway, watch season 11. it's weird but it's really fucking good. THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

[spn masterpost]

#supernatural #dean winchester #amara #supernatural meta #destiel #in a roundabout way #i needed a 5th tracked tag lol #i stayed up ALL NIGHT writing this but im gonna be a smartie and schedule it to go up at noon when ppl are awake #liz watches spn #liz's meta #liz's spn stuff #liz makes stuff #long post #just in case the cut fails #this meta really is 3800 words long lol #as a bonus it was implied in late season 10 that amara is the older sibling #even though they retconned it and made them twins later #like amara and dean are both eldest sisters.......

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unforth · 3 years

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Why does everyone always recommend Twist and Shout for destiel? Like what happened in fandom at that time to make it so popular that it's now a staple? I haven't read it. I refuse. I know there is major character death and people complain it is OOC so I'm just wondering why do people love it so much? I have read so many long fics written by immensely talented writers in this fandom that end hopefully and tackle difficult subject matter while maintaining character voices that it seems a shame that T&S is always recommended

So, I also haven’t read it - I don’t do MCD, no matter how highly recommended a fic comes. However, here’s what I’d say in answer to this question.

Twist and Shout came out, it was during a period when the fandom was huge, and exploding. Season 8 was something of a Destiel renaissance (it’s when I started shipping it, for example) and it’s not a coincidence that a lot of the best known fic came out in 2012 and 2013 (for reference, T&S started posting on October 15th, 2012, according to AO3). I wasn’t active on AO3 Destiel fandom at that time (I started reading fic on FF.net in early 2013) nor was I active on Tumblr or in fandom circles where shipping was a big Thing, so I don’t know what the general fandom reaction to it was at the time, but presumably it met with a fair degree of popularity. People liked it. People recced it. I have no idea if it had the MCD tag at that time, but presumably it did. People read it knowing that. And presumably, some people didn’t like it, and some people didn’t rec it, but like any other fic it went through a process of developing popularity.

Why did it get to be first?

In my honest opinion?

Utterly random chance. If you look at ANY developing fandom, some of the trends are in fact totally random, at least to begin with. Once the avalanche starts, though, it’s self-perpetuating.

Think about it. You’re in a brand new fandom. You don’t know anyone. You haven’t read anything. You’re desperate to read something. What do you do? You go to AO3, find the ship you want to read, and you sort by most hits, or most kudos, or most comments, and decide - I’m gonna start by reading these. You see the first fic...okay, MCD, a little off putting...but it’s got SO MANY HITS and SO MANY KUDOS...just take the chance!

So, you (my hypothetical fan) read this fic. One of two things happen - you either love it or you hate it. If you hate it, you may not even finish it, but regardless, you’ve added to the stats - your views count, and maybe you liked the early chapters and kudosed, or maybe you remember everything you’ve heard about authors liking comments on early chapters of fully posted works, and you commented. So those stats have gone up, even if someone HATED it. And on the second, you love it - and you come out gushing! You kudos! If you’re super enthusiastic maybe you log out and give it a second guest kudos! And, as you start getting into the fandom and meeting people, you want to spread this love - you tell your friends - hey, I just read this great fic, and yeah, it’s MCD, but just give it a chance!

And so it begins again - if you tell four people, and they read it, and two hate it, and two love it, and those two tell four people, and two hate it, and two love it, and it just cascades.

Why is Twist and Shout the most popular fic in this fandom? Because Twist and Shout is the most popular fic in this fandom. Yes, it’s a tautology, but it’s entirely self-perpetuating. People read it because it’s listed first. People read it because they like it, and re-read it and re-read, and re-read it, to get that high. People hate read it. People read it just to find out what the big deal is. In a fandom with coming up on 100,000 posted stories, Twist and Shout has almost twice as many kudos as the fic in second (by the, in my personal opinion, far more deserving Annie D, though it’s also not their best work in my opinion, and the reasons it’s up there are likely the same), and almost four times as many hits. By any measure on AO3 surveys, it’s number one when people sort, and lots of people will read it simply out of curiosity.

That kind of popularity is self-perpetuating. And of course lots of people love T&S - it has 1.2 million hits, and almost 35000 kudos. Even if we go extremely conservative and say, 35,000 people have read T&S, that’s simply a shit ton of people, and if even only 10% loved it, that’d still be 3500 people gushing about that single fic. I’ve been writing for 5 years and I don’t have a single fic with even 3500 kudos, and I’m considered a relatively successful writer in this huge fandom.

But here’s, to me, the most important thing - I truly believe any fic can be a Twist and Shout. It’s a confluence of events that makes a fic such a juggernaut, and the vast majority are simply luck. Random drift means one fic is gonna end up on the top of the heap - and once a fic is there, reading tendencies, confirmation bias, and exposure guarantee it’ll STAY on the top of the heap.

I started the Destiel Favs Survey because I felt that the “top 20″ fics by hits in the Destiel fandom didn’t reflect the fics people actually like. I got curious, so I made a list.

In February 21st, 2017, the top 20 fics on AO3 by kudos were:

Twist and Shout by gabriel and standbyme (which, at the time, had 25,507 kudos)

Dean Doesn’t Listen to Eurythmics by Annie D

An Exercise in ‘Worthless’ by beastofthesky

Revealed by Valinde

Angel’s Wild by LimonadeGaby and riseofthefallenone

Into Your Hideaway by thepinupchemist

How (Thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (Accidentally) Raised Each Other (and Sam) by Vera_DragonMuse

A Room of One’s Own by NorthernSparrow

Out of the Deep by riseofthefallenone

Grey by Valinde

Convenient Husbands by Annie D

Forget-Me-Not-Blues by noangelsinthegarrison

When Charlie Met Cas by riseofthefallenone

Real Slick Dean by trilliath

In This Secluded Spot I Respond as I Wouldn’t Dare Elsewhere by RhymePhile

The Breath of All Things by KistmetJeska

Unfamiliar by riseofthefallenone

Shut Up (Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is) by kototyph

A Hole in the World by AnnelieseMichel

A Beginner’s Guide to Communing with the Dead by suspiciousflashlight

Today, 1/9/21, four years later, the top 20 fics by Kudos are:

Twist and Shout by gabriel and standbyme (no change in rank, now has 34,907 kudos)

Dean Doesn’t Listen to Eurythmics by Annie D (no change in rank)

Revealed by Valinde (+1 in rank)

An Exercise in ‘Worthless’ by beastofthesky (-1 in rank)

A Room of One’s Own by NorthernSparrow (+3 in rank)

How (Thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (Accidentally) Raised Each Other (and Sam) by Vera_DragonMuse (+1 in rank)

A Turn of the Earth by microcomets/mishcollin (not on the old list by kudos, but it was on the list by 2018 when I did another check in)

Angel’s Wild by LimonadeGaby and riseofthefallenone (-3 in rank)

Into Your Hideaway by thepinupchemist (-3 in rank)

Unknown Quantities by xylodemon (the first work to break through, and it’s in tenth)

Forget-Me-Not Blues by noangelsinthegarrison (+1 in rank)

Grey by Valinde (-2 in rank)

Convenient Husbands by Annie D (-2 in rank)

Professional Couple Only by saltyfeathers (our second new work)

Real Slick Dean by trilliath (-1 in rank)

A Beginner’s Guide to Communing with the Dead by suspiciousflashlight (+4 in rank)

When Charlie Met Cas by riseofthefallenone (-4 in rank)

Unfamiliar by riseofthefallenone (-1 in rank)

The Breath of All Things by KismetJeska (-3 in rank)

Out of the Deep by riseofthefallenone (-11 in rank)

In 4 full years, only three works managed to break into the top 20, even though - based on my original data, which you can view here - most of these works have nearly double in the number of kudos they’ve had in that amount of time. Further, the most recently written fic on EITHER of these lists is from 2015 - A Turn of the Earth and Professional Couple Only are from 2015 - and all the rest is older.

These fics aren’t the top 20 because they’re better, and if there was even an ounce of objectivity in this list, it would have actually shown any change in 4 years instead of looking virtually identical.

Twist and Shout, and the other “most popular” and “most recommended” works in the Destiel fandom have that distinction because they’re the most read, so more people read them, so they’re the most read, so more people read them, so they’re the most read, so...ad infinitum.

And that’s not a judgement call against them! There are fics I LOVE on that top twenty list. But, dear anon, you ask me why I think Twist and Shout is the most popular?

All of this is why. Twist and Shout is the most popular because popularity in fic culture is the only perpetual motion machine in the universe. It is self-perpetuating, and as a result, Twist and Shout will always be the most popular fic in this fandom.

And that’s why I do the faves list - because the tops on AO3 tell us abso-fraggin’-lutely nothing, and I thought we needed a list that actually meant something for what fics people active in the fandom truly love - which DOES include some of those top 20 fics by AO3 data, and includes lots and lots of others that are just as or more wonderful.

*steps off soap box*

(sorry this is stupidly long, I have Opinions.)

#destiel favs survey #unforth rambles #spn #destiel #t&s has also due to this popularity #found itself in the unique position of being the only fic i know of in any fandom #that people feel critiquing and publically criticizing #it has grown so big it has surpassed dldr and people feel totally cool with trashing it #myself included #which makes it a fascinating and unique work in more ways than one #Anonymous

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sortasirius · 4 years

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“Drag me Away (From You)” and the Tipping Point

Anyway stan the writers of Supernatural.

As I thought, this episode felt very much like the pause at the top of a roller coaster before the big drop. It set up A LOT, sometimes with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and sometimes so quietly it took me a second look to catch it.

Our themes today: Dean and Sam and secrets, Dean’s trauma and how that informs his choices today, free will, escaping Chuck at any cost, and, once again, CHOICE.

So lets dive in.

Guilt is the name of the game right off the bat. Caitlin’s guilt, Dean’s guilt, they are present throughout the entirety of the episode.

And right out of the gate, we find out that Dean has not told Sam about what will happen to Jack if they follow through with this plan. Sam immediately asks if he and Cas had another fight like the true brother-in-law he is, but the point remains that Dean, like he has done a billion times before, is keeping the big thing from Sam, because he knows that Sam will argue, will put up a fight and, in my opinion, Dean doesn’t want to change his mind, and he doesn’t want Sam to give him the opportunity to do that.

Also can we please discuss the “Have you told Sam yet?” from Cas? The peak married energy of it all.

My main takeaway from the young Dean and Sam scenes was, as usual, that the abuse that they have suffered is already apparent. Sam is already looking for a way out, looking for a way he can get away from the life, while Dean has settled into his unhappiness, accepted that this is destined to be his life. He’s already got that edge of aggression, the survival edge that he cultivated to not get hurt.

Did I cry over the mention of Sully and Dean’s “Americana” theme? Who’s to say.

Caitlin, Travis, Dean, and Sam are such cuties when they work together. I feel like Caitlin and Dean have a nice compatible energy, the immediately bond with that older sibling energy. She doesn’t take his shit which is refreshing when he literally starts the episode with pointed snark at Sam..

Another theme of the day: lies. Dean lies to Sam about Jack and Cas, Caitlin lies to the boys about why they’re there. Lies, and coming clean from those lies, are vital to this episode as well.

My bb boys hunting monsters, I love them.

“I’m sorry Caitlin, but that thing? It’s not here.”

“You’ve changed. Back then you believed him even before I did.”

Shall we remember 13x05, “Advanced Thanatology”?

Hm. More on that later.

I also want to point out how much Sam and Dean split up in this episode, and how much they’re aided by Travis and Caitlin when they’re separated. I think this is one of those things that we’ll see, at the end, that this is what they were leading us to. It has to be their choice of course, but Dean and Sam are being set up to part ways.

Sam and Travis playing Boggle???? I cry??? #letthembekids2k20

Dean’s guilt. Manifesting as his younger self.

“You failed.”

His failure sends him to his knees.

Sorta like:

Which, no biggie, was featured in the “then” for this week.

“Guys there’s one more thing...she keeps some kind of a nest.”

“A nest?”

“Yeah, when I was a kid I saw it...with a bunch of bodies. Dead kids.”

“That’s what you were hiding from me.”

“They were all about the same age we were back then. I guess she keeps them there, feeds.”

“Dean, why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

“Because I’d never seen anything like that before. So after I killed it or...thought that I killed it, I phoned in the bodies, let the authorities take care of it, shoved it down the old memory hole. I had nightmares about that for the longest time. I’m sorry, I shoulda told you.”

“No man, it’s okay. I mean you were just a kid. We were both just kids. Hell, we used to keep a lot of secrets from each other.”

OOF.

Dean’s growth. His growth has been the catalyst of the season. And we know he’s keeping a secret from Sam, so this whole exchange is just a neon sign that says “growth potential.”

And because nothing ever slows down anymore, we smash cut right to a scene with Death herself.

“Yeah, fill him up with your cosmic TNT so he can die. How’d you talk the kid into that one?”

“I told him the truth. Jack killed your mother, and all he wants is your forgiveness. And I surmise that the only way that he can get that is ending God and freeing you from the...what did you call it? Hamster wheel? Was I wrong?”

I mean not to be that guy but I literally talked about the repetition of key phrases in last week’s episode, including the hamster wheel here. Once again we are being told that nothing, even the smallest details of this season, are done on accident. Every episode is a callback to an earlier episode, showing growth, or change, or a pattern. Nothing can be discounted, nothing is without purpose.

Also. The Truth.

“According to Chuck’s book, I’m not in this part of the story.”

Sound familiar? I got the receipts babey.

Ok.

“I don’t like loose ends, Dean. I don’t like disorder. So clean this up. I need to know that you’ve got your house in order.”

This all feels very...deliberate in it’s phrasing. Getting his house in order, tying up loose ends, cleaning things up. I can certainly think of something that needs tying up in regard to Dean. Something that is, in all likelihood, is coming to fruition in two episodes.

That clown statute was a personal attack and I will not be accepting dissenting opinions at this time.

“Hey, that thing. Were you scared?”

“Always am.”

“You have changed. The old you never would have admitted that.”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“I think so. What do they say about getting older? You tell the truth more because you know that lies, they don’t make anything better.”

So uh. Well. Let’s start with 13x05 again shall we? This is also an episode about Dean’s guilt. It’s an episode about his anger. It’s also the first episode we see Death’s library, where we hear about the books, the books that everyone has, that not even Chuck knows the ending to.

Dean’s fear.

His guilt.

What losing Cas does to him (again).

Choice.

There is no subtlety here. This is a loud as hell megaphone, this is a bright neon sign being put in front out our faces. Dean’s anger, his guilt, his fear, his fear of being abandoned, his fear of losing the people he loves most, the fear of losing the battle against Chuck, it’s all right here, right in our faces, paralleled directly by the only conversation in Death’s library, where we’ll be next week.

And Dean’s growth potential is realized. He has finally learned his lesson. Maybe from Caitlin, maybe from Billie, maybe from Sam himself, but he tells Sam about Jack’s fate.

Predictably, and completely fairly, Sam blows up.

The anger. The anger that’s easier for Dean to deal with than the grief.

“So... you’ve been sitting on this. What the hell, Dean? I thought we were past stuff like this.”

“I know, Sam-”

“I can’t believe you, you know that? I mean how can you keep me in the dark about something so huge?”

“Because I knew you couldn’t handle it! You didn’t trust Billie’s plan, and then when we found out about Amara you started second guessing, you raised these ethical questions!”

“And I shouldn’t? Jack’s going to kill himself and I should just shut up about it?”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“This is how we end Chuck! Okay? This is the only way we’ll ever be free. So I’m sorry, Sam, you don’t get a choice! We don’t get a choice!”

“Oh we?”

“Look-”

“Stop! Alright? Just stop! Please.”

“I’m sorry I-”

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Just...just drive. Just drive.”

Free will taken. They don’t have a choice. Even fighting for their free will, to make their own choices, they don’t get one.

And if that wasn’t enough, our preview for next week. With Adam, the first man. Sam and Cas headed to Death’s library, to read (presumably) Jack’s book, to meet Billie (though they don’t know that).

Once again, there’s so much to unpack here, there’s so much to discuss, but for the millionth time, we’ve heard about anger, fear, and choice, the three main themes of the back half of the season. Barring what I suspect is coming in 15x18, the main thing to take away is the importance of the brothers working with others. Even as kids, they have always worked better with others, even if it meant they had to split from each other.

#supernatural #spn #my meta #spoilers #lilly liveblogs supernatural #spn 15x16 #sam winchester #dean winchester

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killianmesmalls · 3 years

Note

On your comments about Jack: ye-es, in the sense that Jack is a character who definitely deserved better than he was treated by the characters. The way Dean especially treats him reflects very badly on Dean, no question. But, speaking as a viewer, I think the perspective needs to shift a little bit.

To me, Jack is Dawn from Buffy, or Scrappy Doo. He’s an (in my opinion) irritating kid who is introduced out of nowhere to be both super vulnerable and super OP, and the jeopardy is centered around him in a way that has nothing to do with his actual character or relationships. He’s mostly around to be cute and to solve or create problems — he never has any firm character arcs or goals of his own, nor any deeper purpose in the meta narrative. In this way, he’s a miss for SPN, which focuses heavily on conflicts as metaphors for real life.

Mary fits so much better in that framework, and introducing her as a developed, flawed person works really well with the narrative. It is easy for us to care about Mary, both as the dead perfect mother on the pedestal and as the flawed, human woman who could not live up to her sons’ expectations. That connection is built into the core of SPN, and was developed over years, even before she was a character. When she was added, she was given depth and nuance organically, and treated as a flawed, complex character rather than as a plot device or a contrivance. She was given a voice and independence, and became a powerful metaphor for developing new understandings of our parents in adulthood, as well as an interesting and well-rounded character. You care that she’s dead, not just because Sam and Dean are sad, but for the loss of her development and the potential she offered. So, in that sense, I think a lot of people were frustrated that she died essentially fridged for a second time, and especially in service of the arc of a weaker character.

And like, you’re right, no one can figure out if Jack is a toddler or a teenager. He’s both and he’s neither, because he’s never anything consistently and his character arc is always “whatever the plot needs it to be.” Every episode is different. Is he Dean’s sunny opportunity to be a parent and make up for his dad’s shitty parenting? Yes! Is he also Dean’s worst failure and a reminder that he has done many horrible things, including to “innocent” children? Yes! Is he Cas’s child? Yes! Is he Dean’s child? Yes! But also, no! Is he Sam’s child? Yes! Is he a lonely teenager who does terrible things? Yes! Is he a totally innocent little lamb who doesn’t get why what he is doing is wrong? Yes! Is he the most powerful being in the universe? Yes! Does he need everyone to take care of him? Yes! Is he just along for the ride? Yes! Is he responsible for his actions? Kinda??? Sometimes??? What is he???

Mary as a character is narratively cohesive and fleshed-out. Jack is a mishmash of confusing whatever’s that all add up to a frustrating plot device with no consistent traits to latch on to. Everything that fans like about him (cute outfits, gender play, well-developed parental bonds with the characters) is fanon. So, yes, the narrative prioritizes Mary. Many fans prioritize Mary, at least enough that Dean’s most heinous acts barely register. To the narrative (not to Cas, which is a totally different situation), Jack is only barely more of a character than Emma Winchester, who Sam killed without uproar seasons earlier. He’s been around longer, but he’s equally not really real.

I debated on responding to this because, to tell the truth, I think we fundamentally disagree on a number of subjects and, as they say, true insanity is arguing with anyone on the internet. However, you spent a lot of time on the above and I feel it's only fair to say my thoughts, even if I don't believe it will sway you any more than what you said changed my opinions.

I'm assuming this was in response to this post regarding how Jack's accidental killing of Mary was treated so severely by the brothers, particularly Dean, because it was Mary and, had it been a random character like the security guard in 13x06, it would have been treated far differently. However, then the argument becomes less about the reaction of the Winchester brothers to this incident and more the value of Jack or Mary to the audience.

I believe we need to first admit that both characters are inherently archetypes—Mary as the Madonna character initially then, later, as a metaphor for how imperfect and truly human our parents are compared to the idol we have as children, and Jack as the overpowered child who is a Jesus allegory by the end. Both have a function within the story to serve the Winchester brothers, through whose lens and with whose biases we are meant to view the show's events. We also need to admit that the writers didn't think more than a season ahead for either character, especially since it wasn't initially supposed to be Mary that came back at the end of season 11 but John, and they only wrote enough for Jack in season 13 to gauge whether or not the audience would want him to continue on or if he needed to be killed off by the end of the season. Now, I know we curate our own experiences online which leads to us being in our own fandom echo chambers, however it is important to note that the character was immediately successful enough with the general audience that, after his first episode or two, he was basically guaranteed a longer future on the show.

I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure why the perspective of how his character is processed by some audience members versus others has any bearing on the argument that he deserved to be treated better overall by the other characters especially when taking their own previous actions in mind. I’m not going to tell you that your opinion is wrong regarding your feelings for Jack. It’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it, it harms no one to have it and express it. My feelings on Jack are clearly very different from your own, but this is really just two different people who processed a fictional person in different ways. I personally believe he has a purpose in the Winchesters’ story, including Castiel’s, as he reflects certain aspects of all of them, gives them a way to explore their own histories through a different perspective, and changes the overall dynamic of Team Free Will from “soldiers in arms” to a family (Misha’s words). In the beginning he allows Sam to work through his past as the “freak” and powerful, dangerous boy wonder destined to bring hell on earth. With Dean, his presence lets Dean work through his issues with John and asks whether he will let history repeat itself or if he’ll work to break the cycle. Regarding Cas, in my opinion he helps the angel reach his “final form” of a father, member of a family, lover and protector of humanity, rebellious son, and the true show of free will.

From strictly the story, he has several arcs that work within themes explored in Supernatural, such as the argument of nature versus nurture, the question of what we’re willing to give up in order to protect something or someone else and how ends justify the means, and the struggle between feeling helpless and powerless versus the corruptive nature of having too much power and the dangerous lack of a moral compass. His goals are mentioned and on display throughout his stint on the show, ones that are truly relatable to some viewers: the strong desire to belong—the need for family and what you’ll do to find and keep it.

With Mary, we first need to establish whether the two versions of her were a writing flaw due to the constant change in who was dictating her story and her relationship to the boys, which goes against the idea that her characterization was cohesive and fleshed-out but, rather, put together when needed for convenience, or if they both exist because, as stated above, we are seeing the show primarily through the biased lens of the Winchester brothers and come to face facts about the true Mary as they do. Like I said in my previous post, I don’t dislike Mary and I don’t blame her for her death (either one). However, I do have a hard time seeing her as a more nuanced, fleshed-out character than Jack. True, a lot of her problems are more adult in nature considering she has to struggle with losing her sons’ formative years and meeting them as whole adults she knows almost nothing about, all because of a choice she made before they were born.

However, her personal struggles being more “mature” in nature (as they center primarily on parental battles) doesn’t necessarily mean her story has layers and Jack’s does not. They are entirely different but sometimes interconnected in a way that adds to both of their arcs, like Mary taking Jack on as an adoptive son which gives her the moments of parenting she lost with Sam and Dean, and Jack having Mary as a parental figure who understands and supports him gives him that sense of belonging he had just been struggling with to the point of running away while he is also given the chance to show “even monsters can do good”.

I’d also argue that Jack being many ages at once isn’t poor writing so much as a metaphor for how, even if you’re forced to grow up fast, that doesn’t mean you’re a fully equipped adult. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I believe Jack simultaneously taking a lot of responsibility and constantly trying to prove to others he’s useful while having childish moments is relatable to some who were forced to play an adult role at a young age. He proves a number of times that he doesn’t need everyone to take care of him, but he also has limited life experience and, as such, will make some mistakes while he’s also being a valuable member of the group. Jack constantly exists on a fine line in multiple respects. Some may see that as a writing flaw but it is who the character was conceived to be: the balance between nature or nurture, between good and evil, between savior and devil.

Now, I was also frustrated Mary was “fridged” for a second time. It really provided no other purpose than to give the brothers more man pain to further the plot along. However, this can exist while also acknowledging that the way it happened and the subsequent fallout for Jack was also unnecessary and a sign of blatant hypocrisy from Dean, primarily, and Sam.

And, yes, Jack can be different things at once because, I mean, can’t we all? If Mary can be both the perfect mother and the flawed, independent, distant parent, can’t Jack be the sweet kid who helps his father-figures process their own feelings on fatherhood while also being a lost young-adult forcing them to face their failures? Both characters contain multitudes because, I mean, we all do.

I can provide articles or posts on Jack’s characterization and popularity along with Mary’s if needed, but for now I think this is a long enough ramble on my thoughts and feelings. I’m happy to discuss more, my messenger is always open for (polite) discussion. Until then, I’m going to leave it at we maybe agree to disagree.

#long post #long ask #so long answer #guys it's 1 am #i hope this made sense #watch me read this after sleep and register things i wish i said #oh well #jack kline #mary winchester #spn #supernatural #spn critical #supernatural critical #kinda?#eh just in case #spn meta #supernatural meta #jack meta

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shirtlesssammy · 3 years

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Anger and Love

I can tell you this. I still hurt over the ending of this show and the reasons roll into each other, like tangled yarn tossed in a bin. (In this metaphor, I am the bin.)

Castiel

The BURY YOUR GAYS trope. My GOD when will this show learn. (The answer is never. Never, because it’s over.) In 15x18 Cas confesses his love and then dies. Guess who else dies in this episode? Charlie and Stevie! The writers said, “Who will hurt the most to lose? Ah, yes. Charlie in the new and terrified bloom of love.” We can ASSUME that Charlie and Stevie come back, but we don’t get to see it or hear about it. And we get the barest throwaway line that Cas comes back in 15x20, but not seeing him physically return after over a decade on the show feels like a blow that just won’t stop.

More EMOTIONS below the cut.

On Thursday, I said to Boris that it would have been better if we’d never been tossed that crumb about Cas’s love. Why give us this FEAST and then take it away like Chuck poofing away a dog? Many people have pointed to network cowardice, and that’s certainly a possibility. Some people have put forth the theory that exposing Cas’s love for Dean was simply a season-ending ratings move. Either of those could be true, or some mix of them. Listen, I can spin myself around that stupid knot for days and we’ll probably never get the whole story. Instead, I have to look at the core of what Castiel coming out means for me. And the truth of it is, it means A LOT. It means I love him a whole lot more. Cas is mine, he’s ours, he’s one of us. And I’m angry as hell at how it went down, but I’m still glad we got Cas’s side of the story. I have a pride pin on the lapel of my Cas trench, and it’s never felt more perfect.

So I’m angry, but I’m also incredibly glad. Ugh. Knots.

Boris: We’ll never know what actually went down during the production of this season and the hiatus changes or the show’s narrative arc, but I have to believe that Robert Berens was given some kind of go ahead and planned for a lovely and beautiful ending for Dean and Cas. That his story was taken from him at the end (much like Wayward’s eventual ending), is so unfair. Because Cas’s story wasn’t completed. Dean and Cas’s story will forever float out there for us to ponder. Like Natasha, I will cling to Cas’s confession and see it as a beautiful coming out moment for a character I love very much. I’ll be forever despondent that we didn’t see Dean’s story play out on our televisions.

Dean

I didn’t come out as bi to more than three people until my late 30’s. It was something I was first in denial about, and then it just seemed “not relevant” for a large swath of my life (married for 18 years now). Talking about that with my family and friends surprised me - how relieved I felt. How free. As I was working through this, I was also slipping into Supernatural fandom, and watching a show where Dean COULD BE bi. Reader, I projected myself right onto Dean Bean. Maybe he was like me. Clueless, then in denial, then thinking that part of himself irrelevant. So giving us Cas without Dean, given the scenes we watch on the show, feels like a personal affront. I know I’m projecting here, so I’ll acknowledge those feelings and move on to the next…

I am also PISSED about Dean’s story. All his life he’s been “daddy’s blunt instrument” and ready to die bloody on a hunt. It’s spoken about so often that we think surely - at the end - we’ll subvert that. SURELY he’ll survive. The last couple of seasons, he’s fighting for control - freedom from Michael, freedom from Chuck. He finally achieves that freedom and then loses everything anyway. There are no rewards on Earth. He died solving one last case from John’s journal. Daddy’s little soldier to the end. It’s disgusting to me to take this beautiful, complex character who is textually SO FULL OF LOVE and then take a pass on imagining what he might do with a real life on earth. It’s lazy writing, used for a cheap, fast, emotional reaction. The more I unpack Dean’s fate against the rest of the series, the angrier I get.

Boris: I think so many of us confused and discovering things about ourselves later in life see Dean as a character that matters. His story, had it been told fully, would have mattered. I don’t buy his death or his peaceful afterlife. It’s still too raw to process because he deserves happiness in life!

Billie

“I know Supernatural has a history of killing off characters of color,” I told people, “but Billie’s a main character now!” W O W 15x18 is the kick that keeps on kicking. I did actually enjoy Billie’s arc quite a bit, but losing her still makes me angry, in the broader context of the show.

Women

“Supernatural isn’t great with women,” I said. “But we have Mary now! And Billie!” Please picture me as Olaf when I say. “Mary DIES. Billie DIES. Only sad men remain.” Sure, we get some throwaway lines. We know Donna’s alive in 15x20 because of the call to Dean’s phone. Actually, scratch that, we know someone talked to Donna…because this show didn’t want to address that literally no other hunter knew about or mourned Dean’s death so they had a random stranger call Dean’s “Other other phone” for help. Great. Now I’m mad about Dean again.

We can probably blame some of how the final episode shakes out on COVID. Presumably, the final scene in Heaven would have been a party with Mary, the roadhouse crew, original Charlie, maybe Eileen? Kevin? etc etc. Instead, it’s an empty, lonely end on screen.

Which brings me to Eileen. Sam’s romance was laid out carefully throughout season 15, so what the fuck happened here? We assumed we’d at least get some confirmation that Sam ends up with the woman he brought back from the dead and then dated as recently as a couple episodes ago. Instead, there is literally NOTHING. No attempt is made to say that Eileen’s the one Sam ends up with other than his son having dark hair. There are no family portraits. No sign language to the faceless mother by the house. (Standing in a floral dress, like a good housewife.) Is she dead? Did Sam end up with someone else? Even without dialogue, there are ways to show Eileen’s presence that weren’t used. I’m so angry that she was an element of the season and then…hand waved away as irrelevant. The faceless wife MY GOD, SHOW.

Boris: Yikes, I cynically see the reason to not include Cas in the end because homophobiaTM but to not even give us Eileen and Sam? Clearly, they wanted to erase every person that mattered to the brothers from the end. Ugly.

Heaven

The funny thing is that I’m constantly trying to write a “happy eternity in a now-free Heaven” in my own fan fiction. If anyone should like 15x20 it should be me! I’m always trying to argue that it isn’t major character death, because their souls are infinite and now free, blah blah blah. So ultimately, my problem isn’t with peace in Heaven. It’s with Dean’s EARLY DEATH, and how empty Heaven feels. How desolate and devoid of life. Dean leaves the Roadhouse and drives alone until finally Sam dies and joins him. It reads like the ultimate fuck you to the “family don’t end in blood” storyline. If COVID filming got in the way of filling Heaven with life, then we have all suffered a great loss. It should feel ecstatic and full of community. Instead, it just feels wide and lonely.

Ultimately, boiling the season finale into an intimate portrait of brothers should work on paper. It SHOULD, but the show leaves so much unsaid and unshown about the community and family they’ve built along the way, and tells us to be happy with the scraps we’ve gotten instead. It tells us they were never that important, in the end.

The Future

I’m still going to watch the show. I’m still going to enjoy the show and the characters. There are reasons I have watched all along, and they don’t have anything to do with needing the show wrapped up in a neat bow. I’m angry with Supernatural’s conclusion, because I love it. And I’m okay with that.

Boris: I love this show so much, and I know I’ll continue to love it. I need time to lick my wounds and forget about this episode. This show is about the characters and the journey and that’ll never end.

#spn spoilers #supernatural season 15 #spn 15x20 #carry on #spn 15x19 #inherit the earth #spn 15x18 #despair #spn thoughts #about us

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jawritter · 3 years

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Pieces Of Me

Summary: It can be so hard to let go, no matter how much you think you’ve prepared yourself.

Warnings: **SPOILERS** Season 15 episode 20, Carry On spoilers. Read with caution! Angst, Character Death, language, heartache, panic attack, fluff, Jensen is a sweetheart. I think that’s about it.

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Word Count: 1908

Request by: @msmarvelouswinchester! I hope you like it love!!

A/N: This fic is completely unbeta’d so all mistakes are mine. It’s personal, and it was hard to write. There are alot of emotions in there, but I tried to be a switzerland as I could manage, because I’m still feeling it too guys! Feedback is golden! I hope you all enjoy this one!

**MASTERLIST** **BECOME A PATREON**

“Ready sweetheart?” Jensen asked you not even an hour before as he sat down next to you on the sectional that was spread out in the living room, pulling the blanket from the back of the couch and draping it over the pair of you as you settled into his side, letting the scent of his body wash and the warmth of his body comfort your nervous, restless heart as only he could.

“As I’ll ever be,” you responded, tucking yourself deeper into his into the warm little cocoon the two of you had created for yourselves.

Jensen flipped the TV to the CW and grabbed his beer from next to the couch where the two of you were sitting.

This was it, the final episode of Supernatural. “For now,” as Jensen has been saying. You knew he was having just as much trouble letting go of Dean as you were. Dean had been such a large piece of Jensen’s life for the past fifteen years, and being a part of anything for that long, no matter what it was, was going to be really hard to let go.

In fact, the two of you had already decided to continue writing Dean’s story in hopes of a revival sooner rather than later.

He’d called you the night he wrapped for the last time crying like he’d lost his best friend. That was a part of him the world didn’t get to see. The part of him that seemed to be grieving the loss of his “best imaginary friend.” It scared you, but you wouldn’t let him spoil the final episode for you.

You’d been watching Supernatural for years, and even though you were in a relationship with Jensen, it didn’t take away from your love for Dean. In fact, you enjoyed seeing the little glimpse of Jensen here and there in Dean. The little traits that Dean had “picked up from Jensen”. He’d put so much of himself into the role that sometimes it was hard to tell the two apart. He brought Dean alive in more ways than on the screen. He made him real, relatable, a person that everyone fell in love hard with. Including you. Jensen had said so many times that “Dean is a piece of me,” and anyone who knew Jensen personally could see that without a struggle.

Dean was your best imaginary friend too. Whether Jensen realized it or not, Dean had gotten you through some pretty hard stuff in your life long before you had even met Jensen. He was woven into the fabric of your past and present. He was a part of you, just like he was Jensen and so many other people.

You had been crying for days in secret, knowing that tonight would bring the end. You didn’t want to let it on to Jensen just how hard of a time you were having accepting this ending of an error. So you kept it hid, and prepared yourself, promising yourself that you wouldn’t cry tonight no matter what.

Boy were you wrong.

At first, you weren’t sure what was happening was real. At first, you were confused. Just as much as Sam was even. Then you figured it out, and man, that’s when the waterworks started. Still, you held out hope that at the last minute someone was going to step in just in time and save Dean...but then no one did. It crushed you.

The pressure started to build in your chest, and the tears started to flow down your face like floodgates had been opened. You couldn’t accept it. No, Dean deserved more than this. After all he’d lived through, after everything he’d been put through, all the trauma, all the heartache, all the sacrifice, and they killed him like this? It didn’t seem right, it didn’t seem fair, but most of all it was devastating.

You felt like you couldn’t breathe. You wanted to scream, but couldn’t, you had no real expression for the utter agony that was ripping its way through your very soul.

Jensen quickly paused the TV and got down on his knees in front of you to cradle your face in his hands.

“Sweetheart, hey, hey look at me, baby. It’s okay, I’m here. Breath with me baby girl,” he said, taking a deep breath which you tried to mimic with so much difficulty that it physically hurt.

“That’s it, baby, just breathe me,” he cooed in an attempt to calm you.

Your head was racing with thoughts that seemed to only make you feel like you were spirling worse, and you were having trouble getting the image of Dean impaled to a pole in a dirty barn out of your mind even though Jensen was physically kneeling in front of you doing all he could to help you calm down.

After a while, you got your breathing under control, but the tears seemed like they were never going to stop. Jensen got up off the floor once he was certain you weren’t going to pass out on him, and pulled you into his lap on the couch, rocking the two of you slightly as he wrapped the blanket back around you, kissing your forehead and holding you tightly to him while you tried to process what you had just witnessed.

“Talk to me baby,” Jensen said, brushing the hair away from your face with his free hand, nuzzling into your hair to get as close as possible as he could to you.

“Why?” was all you could seem to get out through the still free-falling tears.

Jensen swallowed the lump that had seemed to feel as if it were closing off his own throat and placed a chased kiss to your forehead again as he tried to come up with an answer that he really didn't have. He’d had his own struggles with the ending, and this, seeing your reaction, only made his own feelings that much more prominent in that moment.

“Baby I wish I had the answer to that, but I don’t,” he said, his own thoughts were still a mess on this subject, and if truth be told, he didn’t want to let go of Dean either.

“It’s not fair,” you tell him through choked sobs that are still wracking your grief riddled body.

“I know sweetheart, but what death in life has ever been fair? Dean died doing what he loved to do, he was saving people. He died saving those kids, and he gave his baby brother one last chance to have a real-life away from the horrors they had grown up in. He died doing what he loved. He still died a hero.”

You sat there for a moment as Jensen’s words sunk in, but you just couldn’t let it go, you couldn’t digest it.

“Jay, they killed him by impaling him on a pole! He deserved so much better than that! Why couldn’t he get the chance at a normal life? Why couldn’t he have a happy ending? It’s not fair that Sam got a chance to experience a family, it’s not fair that Dean had to die that way. I can’t accept it. I can’t.”

Jensen placed two fingers under your chin and guided your gaze up to his, searching your gaze for a moment as you searched his before wiping away the tears that had stained your cheeks.

“Dean’s still right here, he’s a piece of me, sweetheart, he’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” he said, dropping his voice at least a whole octave to Dean’s deep gravel for a moment, and a chill ran through your system at the sudden change in him. Jensen never ceased to amaze you when it came to his ability to do that. Just turn it on in an instance, and lose himself totally to the character he was playing at that moment.

He brought his lips to yours in a deep and slow kiss that took your breath away before looking back at you with your Jensen firmly back in the center of the conversation, resting his forehead against yours and holding you close to him as physically possible as if he were trying to hold you together.

“Nothing in Supernatural ever really stays gone, and Dean’s right here sweetheart,” taking your hand in his he placed it to his chest where you could feel his heartbeat just below the surface of his thin shirt.

“He’s grown with me for fifteen years. He was my best friend, he was the guy I’d hide behind and talk to when I couldn’t find the words to face whatever it was myself. He was there on the nights I spent alone in Vancouver filming, and I didn’t have anyone to come home to. He listens and knows some of my deepest, darkest parts of me, and more importantly, if it weren’t for him I’d never have met you.”

Jensen’s hands brushed past your cheek and into your hair as if he were grounding himself against his own emotions, kissing you quickly again before he could continue.

“Death is a part of life, and Dean died on his terms. He died saving people, hunting things, and he died just as much of a hero as he would have if he would have gone down in the biggest blaze of glory money could buy. He was happy, he was at peace, and most importantly he can rest now. The load is gone, and he can have the peace he’s deserved for so long. It’s not how we die baby, it’s how we live that matters, and Dean lived and died by his terms, not chucks, not the writers, not anyone else, and if you ever miss him just remember he’s right here.”

You took a shaky breath and buried your head in Jensen’s shoulder, breathing in his scent and his comfort that only he could ever give you as the two of you sat wrapped in each other's embrace.

“I’m so proud of you Jensen. I’m so fucking proud of what you’ve created through Supernatural and through Dean. I know it will get easier, but right now it’s a hard pill to swallow for me. I can only imagine what it was like for you to have to do that after fifteen years of playing this character. I see so much of you in Dean. He’s such a big piece of you.”

Jensen brushed his lips over your own again before grabbing the remote and turning off the TV before standing with you in his arms as if you weighed nothing at all, and carried you towards your shared bedroom to lay you down in his arms.

Sure, Dean was a piece of him that was larger than he even realized until he had to let him go, but you were a big part of his heart too, and tonight he knew your heart was heavy with the loss that he’d been dealing with for months alone, not able to tell anyone or warn anyone of its outcome. So tonight you’d both grieve the loss of your best imaginary friend, and tomorrow you would pick up the pen and continue writing Dean’s story, because as long as you kept it going Dean would never truly be gone, so that’s what you do. He still had work to do, after all, the world would always need Dean Winchester.

Forever Tags: @deanwanddamons @rvgrsbrns @chevyharvelle @onethirstyunicorn @i-love-superhero @akshi8278 @lyss-dw79 @magssteenkamp @lemondropirwin @squirrelnotsam @hobby27 @spnbaby-67 @mrsjenniferwinchester @defenderrosetyler @screechingartisancashbailiff @thecreatiivecorner @aflamboyanceofgays @vicmc624 @busy-bee-angel-misska @justanotherwinchester @brilovesdeanwinchester @idksupernatural @lyarr24 @amandamdiehl @love-jackles @miraclesoflove @Waywardsistershy @emoryhemsworth @dean-winchesters-gardian-angel @softsebastian @tatted-trina6 @anaelsbrunette @hayleeharling @flamencodiva @coldmuffinbanditshoe @bxbyizzy @dirty-pan-goblin @itmejado @supernatural3002 @teresa-67 @thoughts-and-funnies @hearteyes-j2 @miss-nerd95 @writers-whirlwind

#jensen ackles #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles x you #jensen ackles fanfiction #jensen ackles fanfic #jensen ackles one shot #jensen ackles comfort fic #dean winchester #jensen x reader #jensen x you #dean winchester x reader #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #spn one shot #spn comfort fic #x reader inserts #jawritter #pieces of me

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elizabethrobertajones · 3 years

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SPN deserves flak for handling sensitive topics irresponsibly, especially since it has a teenage audience. Castiel confessed that he's suicidal in season 8 (written by dabb!), the brothers were in a toxic codependency, Sam was sexually harassed by lucifer, a little kid -Jack- was driven to self-harm/suicide. and none of those issues were addressed or solved in 15 years. instead, the message was that people with troubled pasts could only "be forgiven" if they sacrificed their lives (Jack) or died

Yeeeeaaaah that’s something it was always getting criticism for consistently as it went along as a case- by-case basis of the treatment... There were some woke episodes later on with the newer writers which did handle some subject better but honestly usually in a motw way with side characters proving better examples to the Winchesters’ messed up coping.

I guess one thing that I was leaning on a bit was that if it was all going somewhere that the resolution would be okay because the writing was aware that they did have these issues. For example, Carver era was really heavy on the codependency stuff but it was painting it in such a bad light that it was beyond romanticising it in any sense and the message seemed to be that the writing wanted them to heal. I personally think this was healed a fair amount over Dabb era along the way... But the finale as far as I can tell let Sam move on with his life and break the cycle or whatever, but also was so wildly unsatisfying on every front it probably would have been HEALTHIER for the fucker to go straight to Hell and petition Rowena for giving her an eternity of foot rubs in exchange for Dean back. Just so he could be like “what the hell what that, you nearly married that BLURRY WOMAN? What’s WRONG WITH YOU”

(I don’t know the fine details on this death scene to know or care how the Sam and Dean relationship wrapped up because it was clearly garbage and in my head they’re both still happy and alive and have a normal freaking relationship :P)

In any case, I know so much was carried by these characters that, to be serious for a moment, I don’t know if they ever could have lifted the whole weight of what we needed them to be, even in an ideal end. But I do know that by giving the show such a shaky resolution, especially with bringing Cas back off screen and not giving any real closure and telegraphed final scenes with anyone - i mean even the love confession and empty yeeting feel like Dean’s supposed to have another moment with him later and it doesn’t feel death scene-y enough to me because of the complete lack of closure the confession gives it by opening the new possibility moments before death - vast amounts of character work which could have HELPED bring some of these things to a conclusion just never showed up, it seems.

Like, Sam’s Blurry Life With The Blurry Wife seems like an even worse state than his season 7-8 hiatus time with Amelia because at least she had a FACE and BACKSTORY and LINES ON SCREEN. At least she and Sam talked through their issues and related to each other and they had a reasonable reason for it not working out and they got to see what they both needed from each other at the time and what they couldn’t get from each other moving forwards.

Even ignoring that Sam got the perfect endgame with Eileen, a Generic Blurry Wife ending for him is such garbage because so much of his bad coping is bound up in his hiding and running away... Just because Dean once waxed poetic about wanting Sam to grow old and boring and live a normal life doesn’t mean it’s what his character was best suited to or what he would really have been comfortable with long-term, especially when as far as I can tell Dean dies and he just up and abandons his hunting life and goes to be normal. If for garbage reasons you were ditching Eileen a happy ending for Sam would still probably involve a hunting-connected life, even if it was a montage showing him holed up in the Bunker being the new Bobby while nothing else changed and Dean was having bad drinks with the original Bobby in Heaven. Like just that one change would make Sam’s journey make sense that he stopped running away and accepted who he was and that the trauma shaped him but didn’t break him, and that he had moved beyond the harmful relationships with women who he valued for their normality, who he then told nothing about his life, bottled up his trauma and dismissed his past and then lived a sliver of existence right on the edge of sanity and coping. Blurry Wife might have the benefit that theoretically the cosmic nonsense is over and Sam might not be called back to that battlefield but the toll on Sam’s life from his history can’t just... disappear overnight. Literally his entire mental health arc which was based on his trauma and addressing it and overcoming it, and how Sam learns who he is beneath it and how it has made him uniquely Sam and stronger for it is all washed away.

And that of all the examples you mentioned is like the only one I can talk about with any coherence without devolving into screaming about how better endings were owed all around. If the characters are denied meaningful narrative closure than everything they’ve carried with them, from just the way a plot will feel resolved or not, to all the stuff we reflect onto them about our own issues that we see in theirs, ends up dumped to the side and it leaves painful holes.

I don’t think a better ending in terms of just wrapping up the show as it seemed to be on track to, until it abruptly wasn’t in the finale, would have ever fixed all of it or meant enough to some of us when it comes to things we’ve carried alongside the characters for a long time. Like I doubt even a full canon Destiel ending by their pen could have addressed ALL the issues we put on Dean and Cas and in our explorations in fic and meta and headcanon and crackposts and whatever else, feel like they’d need to talk out or resolve to be fully content on screen with each other. But there sure were things that could have been done with a few meaningful lines here and there and obviously Cas visually on screen with Dean at the ending that would have made things easier, or provided the paths to seeing these things resolved in our ongoing imaginings.

A lot of the finale pain seems to be the abrupt wall that the story just STOPS like that and so much of this is all left hanging and we’re all feeling the pain of many things that we forgave the story for along the way because there was a trust in the way storytelling works that we’d get that catharsis and closure at the end, and that all the painful stories we were told were being told for that reason. Like, the main reason to write painful stuff and dark themes is to explore it and look right at the horrible stuff, but then to find ways to bring it back down and let some of it go. And most of why I’m refusing to watch the end of the show is simply because it sounds like none of what any of us wanted to get out of it actually happened and there were NO paths to get these things we needed out of it. And at which point many of the terrible things that happened along the way now feel uncomfortable in a way that it’s torture porn without any relief or reason for doing it. The feeling is so universal and the descriptions of that last episode so laughably bad on that front that it’s the main reason I don’t want to watch it. Like, I can get a better sense of satisfaction bitching about how it should have ended than I’d get watching it so why would I do that? :P

Anyway. Guess you got me ranting but this really is something I think in hindsight that might make rewatches really awful way back into the show just because you’ll be watching something and realise that for all the character is going through, they’re not going to get a resolution that actually would do anything to make any meaningful comment at all on what they’re going through. So now you’re just watching them suffer for the hell of it? Idk, this fear haunts me >.>

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deans-haunted-baby · 3 years

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Lately I can’t stop thinking about Adam, like I’m legit crushed over what this show did to him. I know Supernatural was never perfect but the way it treated this character was so damn vicious, condescending and nasty; no different than a high school bully picking on an injured elementary schooler.

He never stood a chance. The thing is I don’t know what it was that made me latch onto Adam so strongly for over a decade. Maybe I could just sympathize and easily relate to his situation of being discarded and forgotten by family members. Or maybe I saw potential in this character and couldn’t fathom why no one else on that writing staff and the SPN fandom couldn’t.

I want you to take a second and absorb these pertinent facts about Adam Milligan that this show put forward. This is not anti-anything this is all the truth so bare with me:

He was the illegitimate youngest child of hunter John Winchester; a man who treated his older sons Sam and Dean like soldiers on his platoon.

Adam only saw his bio dad ONCE A YEAR and it was only to take him to ball games not to train him so that he could protect himself and his mother from (supernatural) threats.

He never knew the existence of his older brothers nor did they know about him because John deliberately ripped those pages out of his journal. Essentially trying to erase any evidence of Adam and Kate.

Because Adam grew up having no clue what was out there or about the “family business” he and his mother suffered VIOLENT PRE-MATURE DEATHS at the hands of ghouls which Adam STILL REMEMBERS long after being murdered.

Oh and John failed to kill those ghouls, providing them the golden opportunity of impersonating him and his mother so they could kill John and his half-brothers.

Adam was only an 18 year old pre-med studying medicine. Probably wanted to follow in his mother’s footsteps in helping people as she was a nurse.

Because Kate worked nights as a single mother, Adam had to grow up being his own parent at times; cooking his own meals and putting himself to bed.

Adam was ironically born on September 29th (1990) which is also known as Michaelmas aka the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. A potential storyline that could’ve gone somewhere but didn’t.

Adam is also by birthright a Men of Letters legacy though his brothers fail to mention that 10 years later.

The last thing Adam was doing while he was in Heaven, designed to look like his Prom, he was kissing a girl Kristen McGee; whom we’ll never know about or if he’ll ever see again.

Adam was ripped out of Heaven against his will by the angels to be used and manipulated as their backup device in the Apocalypse because Sam and Dean refused to comply with their demands.

After being resurrected, Adam was then recovered, kidnapped and held hostage by TFW (Sam, Dean, Bobby and Castiel) where they all took turns mouthing off at this angsty teenager about why he should trust a bunch of complete strangers over those who made him promises.

Adam only wanted to work with the angels in order to stop Lucifer and return to his mother. Highlighting that this character had a sense of justice, responsibility, cared about doing the right thing but also had his own reasons for wanting to save the world.

Sam tried to emotionally manipulate Adam with excuses for why their dad never told him about his family. And actually had the gall to say that him and Dean would’ve looked for him had they’d known he existed so they could be a family. Forgive me if I just laugh at this for a moment 🤣

Zachariah was able to get into Adam’s head because he knew how vulnerable he was. Telling him that trusting the Winchesters would only let him down which *SPOILER ALERT* turned out to be true.

Zachariah tortured Adam for hours before the Winchesters arrived to save him. And Dean was only willing to submit to the angel when Sam was just briefly tortured.

One of the last things Dean says to Adam in 5x18 after he was shocked to see his half-brothers come to his rescue was “Cause you’re family”. Again I have to...🤣🤣

At the moment of their escape, Dean doesn’t even help Adam (WHO’D BEEN INJURDED AND TORTURED) out of the room nor does he care about ushering him to safety. Dean just grabs Sam and hurries out the door. So much for being part of the family.

The last thing Adam screams before before being possessed by Michael was “Dean, help!” and then he hears Dean say “Just hold on!”

Adam, not being Michael’s true vessel yet born from the powerful Winchester bloodline, was able to look directly at the archangel’s true form without his eyes burning out. And this is NEVER explained why.

Dean mentions Adam only a total of THREE TIMES after this happens in 5x19, 5x22 and 6x11 while Castiel mentions it to Sam in 5x21. And Sam, WHO’D BEEN THE MAIN EMOTIONAL MANIPULATOR, just doesn’t give a shit to remember him.

Castiel threw a Molotov cocktail at Michael (who was using Adam’s body) to briefly cast him out which Adam probably felt in excruciating detail based on what Michael says in 15x08.

Sam, possessed by Lucifer, pushed himself and his innocent half-brother possessed by Michael into the cage for all eternity.

Castiel somehow managed to pull Sam out of the cage but decided to leave Adam behind.

After Dean bargains with Death to get Sam’s soul and Adam out of the cage. Only to get just Sam’s soul and leave Adam to his fate. The issue is never brought up again between the Winchesters.

Adam sits a prisoner in a cage with an archangel for 10 years our time but thousands of years Hell time.

Michael most likely protected Adam from some of the horrors in Hell which is why he was able to keep his sanity.

Sam and Dean went to Hell to talk to Lucifer in the cage but continue to ignore Adam’s existence and don’t bother releasing him yet they let Lucifer escape.

Dean also went back to Hell to retrieve Bobby’s soul so he could go to Heaven and again doesn’t even bother with Adam.

Season 10 for Supernatural’s 200th episode, Sam and Dean were reminded by SPN fans putting on a musical that Adam was still in the cage yet THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

Mary Winchester STILL doesn’t know about Adam even though she was reunited with John during the 300th episode. He’s never mentioned during their big family get-together. I guess he never counted.

Adam and Michael are finally set free of Hell only because Chuck threw a giant hissy fit at the Winchesters and opened all the gateways.

The first thing Adam wanted to do as a free man in 15x08 was not seeking revenge on his brothers for abandoning him, but to eat some diner food, change his clothes and get a “little job”

After years of imprisonment, Adam actually befriended the Prince of Heaven aka the one friend he has/the only other person besides his mother who actually gave a damn about him.

TFW trapped, kidnapped and imprisoned Adam and Michael at the bunker in order to force them to help against Chuck.

And Adam, though still angry, hurt and worn out over the situation; chose to help his brothers when there was NOTHING in it for him and successfully convinced Michael to do the same.

Despite how his brothers treated him, Adam STILL believed in their best and vouched that they “always try to do the right thing”

Adam went to Hell a cranky, sassy, angsty, naïve teenager and returned a kinder, wiser, more patient, humble and rational-thinking man who still managed to smile and laugh after enduring centuries of pain.

Dean gives Adam his much due apology for not saving him but Sam doesn’t. In fact Sam doesn’t even bring him up the next time the Winchesters see each other.

Adam’s last words on this show are to Dean and they’re “Since when do we get what we deserve?” and “Good luck” 🤓

Chuck Thanos-snapped Adam’s soul out of existence OFF-SCREEN yet Michael somehow remained in his body.

Adam was 90% of Michael’s impulse control hence why he was so dark in his last appearance without Adam because that’s the only way I can cope with that disgusting character assassination in 15x19

Jack supposedly revived Adam along with everyone else after becoming the new God. BUT his current status now reads “Unknown” instead of “Alive” so what the fuck am I suppose to think now?!

Sam and Dean didn’t even think about checking in on Adam to make sure he was okay before they hit the road on their last solo bro-outing.

If Adam really is alive then he’s doomed to a miserable, lonely existence without his best friend (who’s now dead). Broke, homeless, jobless; his brothers STILL DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS after he’d helped them in good faith. He’s legally deceased thanks to the ghouls. And he gets to look forward to demon city the moment he dies cause guess where he’s ending up?

No one remembers him even after he’d returned in 15x08

The car and the dog are more important to the Winchesters than their innocent half-brother.

Okay I realize I just unloaded a whole mountain of salt but this is the full outline of Adam’s tragic story on Supernatural. These writers never cared about him and why? What did he do to deserve this gross treatment from the show’s protagonists or just in general? Why was he even introduced if this was going to be the outcome of it all? I don’t know what’s worse leaving him in Hell (cause at least he had Michael for company) or bringing him back and not knowing what became of him after. It’s insufferable 😣 I just want everyone to know that the showrunners and writers may not care about him BUT I DO.

#adam milligan #supernatural #SPN #michael the archangel #midam #the winchesters #supernatural season 15 #supernatural season 5 #supernatural season 4 #adam x michael #michael x adam #spn meta #spn rant #Archangel Michael #the forgotten 3rd winchester brother

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mattzerella-sticks · 3 years

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Thoughts on "Carry On" after I've mulled it over:

Now that I've had time to sit on it, I can be a little more precise on my thoughts of this finale:

- Dean's 'ending': Taken out by a rusty nail... I hate it. Then I heard some opinions - without Chuck there were no magic fixes, and this was bound to happen if they continued hunting because of that. It was a human, ordinary, accidental death meaning the Winchesters are just ordinary. Still, being taken out by a nail or rebarb or whatever wasn't a satisfying death for Dean Winchester. Added to the fact he most certainly wanted to live (Miracle, job application, etc.) And he didn't want to hunt anymore either! He wasn't looking for hunts (like Sam was). They stumbled onto that hunt by accident.

From a writer's point of view, I can say now it makes sense with the plot of the episode (only). Dean's death was a catalyst - to give Sam 'freedom' and to show us, the audience, what Heaven was like now that Jack is God. His own sort of 'freedom', I guess.

Unfortunately the plot of the episode still sucked. Just because it makes sense 'story wise' (and I say that very loosely because Dean didn't even get his loose ends tied up nicely). A death during a hunt was something Dean figured would happen in his youth, and he didn't care because he practically was a ghost without many physical attachments. Now he has so many they decide to take him away and for what purpose? It is the last episode. A series finale should only hurt in saying goodbye to the characters, but not like this.

And a goodbye like this, for a character who has had suicidal tendencies and from the looks of it was moving past that, who never really thought about his wants until this moment, and who was on the cusp of being textually confirmed queer (which would have been monumental just saying), it felt like we as fans were stabbed by the rebarb. Which goes to show how much we love the character, one thing. And I think that's why they knew it would hurt. However, they were so wrapped up in this 'shock' they didn't think about any of the consequences listed above as to why this would hurt not only us but their legacy. They figured it'd be a bookend, only for a book whose story ended a decade ago.

- Cas: A one-sentence reference sucks. That's just it.

Fanfiction was mostly built around Cas, too, and I had a feeling they wouldn't show his rescue because leaving that to us would be a good gift. "Here, Cas is alive and human but we won't tell you how - our last fanfiction gap". But Cas's absence wasn't a fanfiction gap, it's a canyon. So much of this episode doesn't make sense without Cas. And, honestly, a good chunk of outrage could have been avoided if Misha was allowed to film (or, if rumors were true, if they left his scenes in). Like it's been proven the majority of fans love Cas, and Jensen and Jared love Misha, so not having him in the finale gives credence to, that the cast and crew might love Misha, TPTB certainly didn't. And doesn't that tarnish your legacy, that you have a man dedicate 12 years of his life to your show and this is how you repaid him? Even if they decided to 'no homo' Cas's declaration (which i doubt they would have because those optics are much worse) at least show it.

Which leads to why he wasn't included in the finale. If he was there, they'd have to have him and Dean talk. About that night, when Cas told Dean he loves him. And if they did, and had there be a reciprocal confession, I bet things on Tumblr would have felt a little different. An equal exchange instead of plain highway robbery.. Yes we would all still want Dean and Cas to live long, human lives, but at least Dean and Cas's emotional arcs were resolved by the SHOW WRITERS, whose job it is to do so. Not ours! But they never understood how to give Castiel good things. Clearly, they know how to make Castiel give good things (like creating Dean's perfect Heaven for him) but not receive them in kind (reciprocated love from Dean). By not having this, it plays exactly into the bury your gays trope we were all afraid of, even if Cas is back. Because he, a queer character, is still living his life for a character he believes doesn't love him back - even if Cas 'doesn't need to know if that's true'. The audience does, and I'm sure Misha did as well.

The writers set up such an easy win but what this finale did was put every character back to season one, and given Misha didn't show up until season 4, makes sense why he wasn't in this episode.

- Sam's life after Dean: Sam liked being a hunter. We had how many countless episodes show that? He enjoyed saving people, research, being a leader - he was good at it. Hell, they even made it a point to have him find someone in the life who understood what it was like to hunt and wrote a beautiful relationship that also gave disability rep.

Only they never followed through.

Like, with Dean, so much of this lead up was then tossed out the window by Sam starting a family, which he never had any indication he wanted to do in these later seasons. Since season 8, really. What we got was that he liked to hunt, he was good at it. He could have restarted the Men of Letters, America chapter, and made the hunters even more connected than before!

Not saying he didn't do that, but knowing how Sam was raised I doubt he would let himself hunt with a kid. So, by showing him marry and have Dean Jr., it's a non-textual confirmation he retired. Which, like with Dean's ending, didn't make sense with what he wanted. It felt like a "might as well" since Dean wasn't there any longer. Like, whats the point of doing something I love now that I don't have my brother with me?

Instead of leaving the Bunker he should have transformed it into a bustling center of activity so he wasn't alone. Extend the Winchester family further and become the hunters' patriarch. Eileen being the matriarch.

Which, circling back, Eileen should have had textual confirmation, too. They showed a brunette woman standing far back, and I get if the actress couldn't be there to film why they would do that. But why not show pictures of him and Eileen if they did marry? I mean, there's a giant picture of Sam with Dean, Mary, and John I DON'T remember them ever having. Why he would blow that up after having two previous episodes talk about how much of a bad father he is...

Sam's ending falls in the same vein as Dean's in that it's unsatisfactory and doesn't fit the character anymore. Not saying Sam didn't want this in the past, but we all saw him change. Hunting was in his blood, and he was fantastic at it. It used to be a way for him to hang with Dean but it would have also been good to see him carry on the legacy in Dean's honor. A better way then by naming his son Dean.

Which strikes another nail on the head. We have Dean, a subtextually queer/textually ambiguous sexuality character, die, and because of this Sam can go on and live the 'apple pie life'? Cas's confession scene wasn't homophobic, but damned if Sam didn't spend the thirty years after Dean's death yelling 'Straight Pride'.

Textually, giving characters a family is a common trope in these sort of epilogues. Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. A way to show they've moved on from trauma and are trying to be happy (albeit in a very antiquated way). But at least it fit with those characters and stories. This was Sam trying to be a person who he wasn't anymore, who clearly would rather be on the road hunting (given that ugly wig scene in the garage with Dean's Impala). Actually, worse, it felt like Sam was trying to live a life Dean always wanted. Which shows that even if he's alive Sam isn't happy with what his life was, he was content. He was waiting for death.

- Dean's time in Heaven: Like I said previously about Dean and his 'death', it makes sense to have Dean die early if the goal was to show how Heaven had been changed. Which hurts worse because that again reinforces how Dean's storyline truly is left unresolved for plot development.

And, honestly, they should have cut this entire sequence if they weren't gonna have the cameos. They should have changed the script so that Dean didn't die, because there was no emotional pay-off of Dean going to heaven. We're told it's freedom, however it's more like a waiting room. For Dean, driving endlessly until Sam dies. And for us, being told we can't start writing until Sam gets there and we finish his montage.

Like, is it beautiful that Jack and Cas remade heaven so Dean would be happy? Yes. Did I need to know this until like maybe the last few minutes? No. Dean could have lived a long life, with Cas/without Cas, and then die first and be taken to Heaven. And then after Bobby gives him the rundown, about how time works differently here, we get the Sam end of life and see him pop up too. And when Sam asks what happened to Heaven, Dean could have clapped him on the back and told him he'd explain in the car and they drive away knowing they lived a good life, and have eternity of peace.

Because having Heaven be an open sandbox, for us, to let characters roam free and see those they love without them being memories - beautiful and exactly how Heaven should be. It definitely is something we as writers would have enjoyed if we didn't get it how we did.

Because it hadn't felt like Dean nor Sam deserved the deaths they got. Making Heaven, ultimate freedom, seem such a dangerous idea. That the only true peace is in death (Dean) and life is spent waiting for death so you can be reunited (Sam). What about any of that makes it seem like any of what Sam and Dean did was worth it? Was good? At least on Earth. Sure, without them (and Cas and Jack) Heaven wouldn't be the way it was. But that doesn't seem like a good reward for them. Their reward should have been living long lives (both of them) and them buttoning it with those five to seven minutes of how Heaven changed (more if they decided to leave Cas as an angel despite that being, again, zero character growth and not aligning with how the story was unfolding)

And after a painful, undeserved death, we get Dean in Heaven but still not happy? It was clear Dean was still waiting to let himself enjoy seeing all his family, his friends, Cas, because Sam wasn't there. Which shows he hadn't broken the sacrificial cycle because he's not putting himself first! "Oh but he has eternity to do it!" Yes, but he shouldn't have had to wait still. His whole life has been spent waiting and he gets killed just before he gets his due, and we never see him particularly 'enjoy' his reward, which is too tragic for a series finale. "He could have done more than drive, we don't know!" Yes, but if they're not showing it then why should I read into it? This finale isn't deep. "But covid-" Yeah, I get that. They should have changed the script because without those cameos Dean's time in Heaven was more than pointless and this whole finale was just an exercise in how to hate your main characters.

What this boils down to is that we, as fans, were told that this was for us, except we already knew Heaven was ours because Heaven was supposed to be the implied. Heaven is whatever we make of it. We didn't need to be told this through the show. Having this be the goal of this episode, of the finale - which sums up the goal of the entire series, really - be totally focused on the life we get after death instead of doing the most to make life on Earth paradise for you, was rotten. And Sam's 'happily ever after' was cheapened because of Dean's death.

- Family Don't End in Blood?: Taking into account all of the above, the show has failed the core message of what we as a fandom loved. Family don't end in blood.

Again, I get that covid stole any chance of reunions in Heaven, but it also stole so many others. Like Sam wouldn't have called Garth, Jody, Donna, the girls and Eileen, to have them here for Dean's funeral? Sam wouldn't have burned Dean alone! We know there was some time that passed since the hunt and Dean's funeral by the dog being there, but it should have been more people. Which, again, they should have axed it from the story if they couldn't get them because, like these side characters have done from the beginning, they change the context of the show! Sam's loneliness would have hit harder if it was a room full of people all telling stories about Dean to then just him, alone, in the Bunker trying to move on.

The writers thought we didn't need all these cameos, but we did because - as we keep repeating - while the show, at its heart, is Sam and Dean, there were so many more people who gave their characters depth and allowed for this show to continue. It should have been a celebration of who the boys became and how it was through these bonds they were able to overcome so much.

Which, if redone in that context, Dean's speech to Sam could have been so much better. More poignant and hopeful instead of sad. I mean, I could barely focus on what was being said because I was in too much shock of what was being done to Dean. If they had a similar speech, given with Dean and Sam parting ways to start new lives. Dean reminding Sam he's done so much good, that he's proud of his brother and knows he can do so much even without him, the emotional beat would have still hit! Probably even better than with his death. Because my takeaway from Dean's death isn't "Dean is proud of Sam" it's "Dean died stupidly".

Going to show that this entire script was a series of choices that were all the worst possible outcome, stitched together and handed in. It didn't feel congruent to the story and, instead, a bunch of items checked off of a list the writers were given. It didn't feel like the culmination of the series like we were promised, instead a 'what if the show skipped fourteen years after season 2, John's dead, Mom's killer dead, and no demon deal'. It felt like (even if it wasn't intended) the writers telling us "don't expect people to change or that happy ending exist in life" which, given current climates and attitudes, is dangerous.

Overall:

They were trying to satisfy an audience built around fandom and fanworks, they wanted to leave so much "up to interpretation" so we can continue crafting our narratives through this open sandbox. What they failed to consider is that we don't care where the brothers, or any of the characters, physically are in this show, we care more about the characters themselves and their emotional goals. That's why we write fanfiction. That's why there's a lot of canon divergence. We thank them for the world and play around in it. So, by giving Sam and Dean these 'half-lives' on screen, letting loose threads hang so we, as an audience, can fill in the blanks (Dean and Cas's heaven reunion, who Sam married, what Dean did while driving for fifty years, etc.) was a poor and lazy decision because we are tired of having to do your job! Supernatural is a collaborative effort yes, but they misunderstood the assignment. We still need textual goalposts, like seeing Cas or Eileen. We needed them to finish what they were saying, so we could then take over and continue the story.

A series finale should feel poignant but the only really emotional moment was Dean's death (not for good reasons), and the rest was filler. Your series finale should not feel like filler. It felt rushed. It felt sloppy and - because of not including a certain character - plain rude. Just... it didn't work. The short of it is that the finale, as a whole, didn't work. It didn't wrap the show up in its entirety like we were promised it would. And if they do revive this show for a mini-series or movie, they best forget what happened in episode 20.

#supernatural #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #destiel #spn15 #deancas #jack kline #eileen leahy #saileen #15x20 opinions

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roswellnmsource · 3 years

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Jeanine Mason and Roswell, New Mexico showrunner preview season 3 of the extraterrestrial drama

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was the year time jump because of the pandemic? To sidestep making that too central to the plot, or was that always the plan?

CHRIS HOLLIER: So we wanted to drop our characters in a year later, let them stew in their individual decisions that were made last season. We want everyone to root for our poster couple but we want to honor what happens in real life, which is sometimes you step away from that person, even if you are entwined with them in a very particular way. So we wanted it to be a real enough time and distance so that they could live a little life on their own.

With showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie departing at the end of season 2, has much changed? Or are you still working with ideas she had in place?'

Jeanine, how is Liz doing in her new life in L.A. when we pick up this season?

And no Crashdown waitress uniform must be nice?

MASON: Honestly, I miss it quite a lot right now. I have a note in my notes with Chris, I'm like, "I gotta tell him we gotta find him more opportunities for it."

Should Liz and Max shippers be worried about them finding their way back to one another after he destroyed her work and didn't follow her to L.A.? Should we resign ourselves to a season apart?

Steven Krueger (The Originals) also joined the cast as Heath this season. What can you tease about his character?

MASON: I love him. Heath is just such a fun, whip-smart, fantastic character. His humor was so fun. We've been having a good time with kicking the humor up really through season two and in season three, we just took it up another notch. There are some moments that are like, "Is this a drama or is it a sitcom?" Looking back on it, he was such a fun partner to spar with. They're both such intellectual characters and I love that there's a real meeting of the minds. It makes it competitive and sexy. I know a lot of fans are so excited because they know him from The Originals and he's going to be a great addition.

Technically, Mr. Jones is a new character too. Can you tell us anything at all about him?

Has Nathan enjoyed pulling double duty this season? Or is he just exhausted?

Did he really grow that beard or was that not possible if he had to go between the two characters?

MASON: That was a prosthetic beard and our makeup team killed it. He was not accustomed to early mornings, which, of course, all of us babes are. It was a lot of extra time in the chair for him.

Can Jones dupe Liz into thinking he's actually Max since she doesn't know he exists?

MASON: You're totally on to something. It's a real and pressing threat. I mean, she's totally in the dark and he looks like her cosmic lover!

How's Rosa (Amber Midthunder) doing this season?

What about Maria and her visions?

In the exclusive clip above we see her have a vision of a funeral, can you tease anything about who potentially might be about to die?

Can Malex (Michael and Alex) shippers have hope that this might finally be their time?

Is Isobel going to continue to date women this season?

Will see more of Liz fighting to challenge the perception of the Latinx community?

#jeanine mason #chris hollier #roswell new mexico #press #cast #rnm spoilers #follow link for a maria/greg/vision clip!

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