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quillquiver · 3 years

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On SPN, Burying Your Gays, and Being Heard

I am shaking, I feel sick, I feel like I’m insane. And did I run a little wild with the theories? You bet. But you know what didn’t help? The botched clusterfuck that was this entire goddamn finale debacle. How was I supposed to believe anything they said in panels when M&G dialogue would leak saying the exact opposite? How was I supposed to grieve and move on when there was nothing from the cast and crew? Nobody said anything! And any info leaked just destabilized what we already knew or directly contradicted what we’d been told. In light of that, how was I supposed to trust anything anyone said? One rogue translator reciprocated the love confession and I was practically sold, because there were so many questions surrounding the English text that this was something good, something that logically fit, and something I wanted to hold onto.

Because they hurt me. This is about so much more than one episode or a ship; for years queer fans have seen ourselves in these characters and been told that we were crazy. That we were reading too much into it. I’m not sure how people get upset and offended when a storyline that doesn’t exist... doesn’t exist! said Guy Bee (2013). And then, after all of that, they turned around and said magnanimously, you have your version, I have mine... and that’s okay. But it’s not okay. It’s not okay, because that doesn’t erase what came before - that doesn’t erase the baiting and the gaslighting, and that invalidates everything we felt in the time leading up to that episode. It gave them an open window for all the subtext that came after. It allowed them to brush us off.

And then we got Cas’s love confession. I watched that scene about 500 times. Added to the rest of the season - to the fandom avatar being presented as successful and intelligent, to arc being the death of the author - I felt seen. Really seen, by a show that made it its mission to erase me. I had been okay with Cas dying at first because I had been sure the romance arc would carry through. I had been convinced that after everything, there was no way they would give that to us and then take it away.

But they did, because this is Supernatural. To anyone saying this is not bury your gays, I implore you to read up on the Hays Code. This link is to an amazing queer history podcast and the episode that covers it. In short, the Hays Code was a legal document that came about in 20th Century Hollywood during the puritanical war on the American entertainment industry, and it stipulated what was not allowed on screen. Not all of it was queer - there’s a whole section about kissing - but what the Code is most remembered for is that queerness was not allowed on screen. But queer people are resilient, and so they started testing the waters... and it turned out that you could in fact code queerness into a narrative, as long as it was subtextual, or as long as the queer character died/was punished, or both. The point is that the character is not allowed to live their truth openly. They are buried, either in the ground or punished in the narrative. The former is normally what we refer to these days, because the latter just doesn’t really happen anymore.

Until Supernatural.

Castiel is immediately punished for speaking his truth - and please don’t tell me he leveraged that punishment and so he had agency. Literally the only thing that could make him happy was confessing his feelings, and so the Empty deal was directly related to this idea of queerness-as-punishment. That being said, Bobo wrote a beautiful scene. Cas’s confession was a love letter to queerness and coming out... but everything that came after buried him. Castiel may have ended the series alive but he was effectively written out of the last two episodes, and that means that he actually never really got to live his truth. He was silenced by the narrative - that is punishment.

Dean is a whole other can of worms. Does one rogue translator confirm canon bi!Dean? Or do we have to read our own version of the text? The fact that we even have to ask these questions firmly places us in the realm of queerbaiting. Were the writers trying to get bi!Dean approved but were unable to? I have no idea, but queerbaiting requires proof that the writers encouraged a reading they had no intent of following through on, and we certainly don’t lack in evidence of that. Not from this writers room, but from those of previous eras. Did these writers try? They might have, but the funny thing about queerbaiting discourse is that there has never been a show to bait this long, and I’m making the call that even if you tried at the end, you baited me with half the ship and all the years that came before.

Of course, the narrative leaves open the possibility of bi!Dean so if you do read the show that way, that means Dean also falls into the bury your gays category; if you read the show this way - which many of us do - the mere suggestion that Dean Winchester was bisexual was enough to punish him. And he was punished. We’ve all written extensively on this, but he was given a random death, on a case his father never finished. All that growth, all that time spent having him accept himself, love himself, that was all taken away. He died the way he always thought he would: as a tool, in service of his father, protecting his brother. He had always believed he’d been a body to throw on the sword and in the end that’s all he was. And when he gets to Heaven? He’s also silenced. He barely speaks in the episode except to monologue during his death, and that is 100% Sam-centric. He is scared.

It was horrific to watch. I sobbed so hard my roommate was seriously concerned.

I had been fully prepared for Supernatural to end disappointingly. I had figured everything would end with a huge heaven reunion because white, straight, cis-male S&F writers love the idea of death as a reward, but instead of being disappointed I felt like I had witnessed a slaughter. Every single one of the queer themes intrinsic to the show: found family, resilience, speaking your truth... were gone. And I know we’ve talked about this too, but it bears repeating, because in doing this, in writing the queerness out of its narrative, Supernatural effectively looked every one of us queer folx in the eye and said: you are not important. You don’t matter. All of that stuff that came before is all good and well, but what really matters at the end of all things is blood family. It’s two brothers in a car. Life sucks but at least we get to die and go to paradise - real paradise, that your angel buddy died for and then made for you and who we never hear from again.

I felt insane. I felt cheated. I felt humiliated. I felt devastated. I still feel all those things, but listen to me. You have been heard. Not by Misha Collins, who is a great guy, but doesn’t get it. Not by Jensen Ackles, who is a similarly great guy, but also just doesn’t understand. And not by anyone else who worked on this show.

You know who heard you? Me. The people who follow me. The people who follow you. We saw each other, and heard each other, and we gave each other a leg up. We made memes. We wrote fic. We drew fanart. We made gifs. All for ourselves and all for each other. We broke Tumblr multiple times. We donated over $60,000 USD to multiple different causes. We got multiple hashtags trending at multiple different points, and today kept it up because we demanded answers and then we got them. There were at least 5 articles written about the show today. We made that happen. We made people listen.

Supernatural didn’t deserve me, and it didn’t deserve you. It didn’t deserve Dean. It didn’t deserve Cas. It didn’t deserve Misha and Jensen. But this show ended with a bleak, awful message and we turned around and showed them that love is loud. So what about all of this is real?

We are.

#alex talks #spngate #archived #this was very therapeutic #and i honestly don't know if i will ever be able to love something like this again #because i have been burned oh man #but this fandom is amazing #and i am proud to be a part of it #and i am not going anywhere #journaling #15x18 #15x19 #15x20 #castiel #dean winchester #destiel

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prince-of-elsinore · 2 years

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Oooh G and S for the ask game!! :D

Thank you for the ask! 😊

G - Do you remember your first OTP, if so who was in it

Ahh you're really gonna make me call myself out, huh? 😂My first fandom OTP was Gilbert Beilschmidt/Ludwig Beilschmidt from Hetalia (aka Prussia/Germany, aka Germancest--I am predictable 😩). Mostly I wrote and read human AUs. The fun of it was how much room there was for interpretation when the source material was so remote and two-dimensional. I've still got a fond place in my heart for the versions of those two brothers that lived in my head.

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon

You know, it's funny--I've come to realize that my way of interacting with spn and especially writing for the fandom is pretty light on headcanons, simply as in, I prefer interpreting the text we're given to projecting external ideas onto it. But I guess there are a lot of different meanings to the word "headcanon" itself; sometimes it's "I think this is true in canon" and sometimes it's "hey it might be fun if X." Headcanons are great to play around with, but I don't have that many stand-out ones that I stick by all the time. Where I do have a few is mostly where there are significant gaps in the text: pre-series, time jumps, and post-series (heaven 2.0).

However, I did just think of something sort of headcanon-ish: I tend to think of Dean as aromantic (or really, Sam-romantic). He's definitely not ace--he loooves sex and is a very sexual being, and he enjoys sex as a genuine form of human connection. The idea of a romantic relationship, though, as in dates and courtship and anniversaries and marriage and commitment, is just something that has never really clicked for him or been something he desires. He wants sex, and he wants companionship, which Sam generally fills his quotient for. And here's where there's somewhat of a gap in canon that I'm filling in the way I want (I don't think canon contradicts this but it also doesn't exactly support it): with Lisa and Cassie, I think Dean saw a potential for and/or felt the companionship that he missed in Sam's absence. It wasn't a "I want to marry this woman" romantic feeling, it was a "maybe she could be a confidant and companion like Sam was" feeling. They were brother-surrogates with whom Dean could also have sex. Complicating this, I think Dean also desires domesticity, which especially comes into play with Lisa--I think being a caregiver to Lisa and Ben had its appeal for him--but domesticity is separate from romance. I don't see his relationships with either Cassie or Lisa (the only true "relationships" with women he ever had) as containing much "romance," in the true sense of the word. His feelings for Sam, on the other hand, are so intense and full of longing that they approach the romantic--nothing he feels for any woman ever comes close. (Pondering now whether longing is, perhaps, the truest indicator of romantic affection 🤔)

I think a similar headcanon can apply just as easily to Sam, but for some reason I see his relationships with Amelia and especially Jess as containing more traditional "romance." But, while I see romance/the desire for a romantic relationship making more sense to Sam than to Dean, and it being something he has the potential to desire, it's worth pointing out that in general, he... doesn't, because Dean is there 😜

Ask meme

#ask meme #fandom #about me #spn headcanons #weirdchesters #aro Dean #Dean meta #spn #musings

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zandracourt · 3 years

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I’ve been reflecting a lot on Cas’ recent confession of love and the responses I’ve been seeing across tumblr and Twitter. As a Destiel fic writer, I am thrilled to see this become canon and as a queer woman, also really touched to see how much Misha has embraced this as a really significant thing. I already ordered my Only Love merch. So I’m content with it all as much as it is. SPN has never made queer representation its issue. SPN *has* responded to its fanbase, who have both pushed the importance of representation and also brought the actors into a realm of growth over queer issues that they may never have come to without this show and this fandom. For that reason, I don’t think it’s helpful to be mad at Jensen or the Showrunners for Destiel not being perfect. You don’t have to celebrate them as allies, but the anger and vitriol just doesn’t help, in my opinion.

BUT...where my thoughts have been going is around what it means to be an actor in a ‘ship and what the impact of the story has on the actors, the fandom, and the constant dance of who controls the story because I think this has been something that even with straight characters has had serious impacts on how fans feel about an ending.

My first fandom, Starsky & Hutch, was mostly written by a gay man who wrote “straight” characters because that was what they had to be in 1974. The characters and show plots were such that the actors felt the love underneath the words and acted accordingly. Back then, it wasn’t so much queer baiting as queer coding. I find it amazing that my parents never thought for a minute Starsky and Hutch were gay, but even as a 7 year old, I knew they were in love and saw them that way. And anyone who watches the show now, it’s so clear that it’s almost laughable. When their show won the Peopel’s Choice award in 1977, David Soul said in his acceptance speech that the best part of being on this show was that people saw two men who “could be anything”. He knew that queer folk read their characters as gay and that straight folks saw them as straight and he was happy for both to be true. While the show never had an explicitly romantic declaration, the characters held hands, hugged, and in the final episode, their final scene is Hutch crawling into Starsky’s hospital bed with him, something done with amusement, but was completely coded to mean something else. It was never “canon”, but the ‘ship has lasted 46 years with new fic being written even now.

In the new SW films, actor Oscar Isaac was not at all quiet about his feelings that his character, Poe Dameron, was in love with Finn. He stated he played him that way (and was not directed otherwise) and he even explicitly asked for that ship to be made canon. He was told no and that is not how the story ended. The romance plot was instead focused on two other characters. Some fans liked that. Many didn’t. In general, though, the story is open-ended enough that shippers could have Stormpilot be their ship and there is nothing that really contradicts that. In that scenario, Oscar had his sense of who this character was and felt strongly about that, but in the end, it wasn’t his story, so the ending was what it was.

Hawai’i Five-0 ended its 10 year run last spring. Actor Scott Caan said in an interview during the show’s 5-year mark that he wanted to see his charcter have a romantic story line with his other lead, Steve McGarrett. And while Scott did not go so far as Oscar Isaac did to say he made his acting choices based on that, watching him and Alex play their characters, there was definitely some intention to show their characters as loving one another. Actor Alex O’Loughlin voiced a few times over the years that he felt his character would not get back together with Catherine, a woman his character was on-again, off-again with, because he felt Steve had reached his limit with what Catherine had done to him. The series made a decision to end with Steve leaving Hawai’i behind and flying away with Catherine. Neither actor has commented much about the show’s ending, but clearly it went against what both actors had publicly expressed in the past. Again, they don’t control the story, but they do understand their characters after playing them for so many years and they are invested in that. In that sense, the actor’s subsequent silence about how the show ended says quite a bit. And McDanno fans were very unsatisfied with the show’s ending, myself included.

So we come to Destiel. Over the years, this ship has been very controversial in part because one actor (Misha) has clearly been OK with his character being perceived as being in love with Dean, while the other actor (Jensen) has not. At times he has been very negative about it, and that has been taken by some fans to imply how Jensen feels about homosexuality in general. I’m not convinced it does, but I understand why people feel that way. Over the 12 years since Cas’ introduction on the show, there clearly has been a shift from the writers and showrunners avoiding the topic entirely, to talking about it, and now to having Cas confess his feelings of love to Dean in canon. In the days since, Misha has been unequivocal in saying Cas is romantically in love with Dean and that he has played him that way, at least for this season and likely longer. Misha is proud that he was able to advocate for Cas to be gay and he clearly understands why it is important for the show to have made this choice. For Jensen’s part, however, he has stated he has not played Dean that way and from video clips of him talking about the show’s ending, it appears that he needed some convincing to accept this as the story. To his credit though, once he was convinced that this was something show creator (Eric Kripke) could envision as part of Dean’s character arc, he was on-board with this ending and feels statisfied with it. And I think some of the frustration folks feel stems from both in how the actors portrayed their characters and in which takes were chosen to be in the final cuts of episodes. In that way, the show has fed this ship, whether the actors realized it or not, and that is why Destiel has felt particularly painful at times. The fanbase has been gaslighted for seeing it at all (from actors and showrunners) while the directors have seemed to go out of their way to choose shots where the actor’s choices were more tender and affectionate and write lines where characters make explicit statements about Dean and Cas as romantic. I can’t help but wonder if Jensen really didn’t see Dean as being in love with Cas, but that we saw Jensen’s own affinity for Misha bleed through in their incredible chemsitry together or if Jensen has just been in denial of this ‘ship having teeth for his own personal reasons. I don’t know and so far, he hasn’t been willing to talk about that. Maybe he will once it’s over. Maybe he won’t and I’m not going to be angry with him for it. He’s an incredible actor and he’s lived this character for 15 years, so he has a right to who he believed Dean is and isn’t.

The issues of representation continue to be pressing and what I see happening with Destiel and these other ‘ships is exciting because it shows growth on all sides. We have audiences able to voice not only how they perceive characters without shame but can express a desire for characters to be together. None of that is new for straight characters, but it is for queer characters. We have actors who not only can see these same things, but feel enough ownership of their characters to expresss what they believe their characters would do or feel. And we have showrunners who are going to make their story, sometimes in response to feedback from their fans and actors, and sometimes in spite of it.

What Destiel becoming canon gives me hope for is that as new shows come into being, characters that take off, actors who have unexpected chemistry, and ‘ships that gain a life of their own, will lead to shows that are less inclined to care if those ships are queer or not and just go with what fans respond to. That it will normalize that people can (and do) come out an all different times of life, even after being het-married, having kids, or presenting as straight to everyone else for 40 years. That it will reflect that sometimes, it’s not about having been queer or straight from the beginning, but be about that ONE relationship that just is different, special, or grows into a deep love regardless of the genders of the people. I hope we can get to a place where deep intimacy between same-gender characters doesn’t have to be a war over romance vs. platonic and the story can just develop without the pressure of representation because queer characters will be so prevalent that we don’t have to feel like we must cling so tightly to every one we get. I hope we can come to a place where sometimes relationships don’t go romantic because one person (regardless of gender) just doesn’t feel that way, because that is very fucking true in real life. I want to watch shows where the sexual identity of any character doesn’t have to be etched in stone from the word go, never to change ever because that’s boring and limiting, and honestly, not real life.

I am deeply grateful for actors like Isaac, Caan, and Collins who are willing to see characters outside the heteronormative lens and to advocate for queer romantic arcs. I’m thankful to showrunners who are making shows with greater queer representation than ever before. And I’m grateful to actors like Ackles, who while it wasn’t who he thought his character was, was able to expand his view enough to go where the story was going to go. The arc of the universe does bend towards justice, and we will get there. Until then, there’s fic. And thank God for that.

#mcdanno #starsky and hutch #supernatural #destiel #stormpilot #zandra writes stuff #Scott Caan #Misha Collins #Oscar Isaac #Jensen Ackles

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deans-haunted-baby · 3 years

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The Ones Left Behind

Alrighty time for some truth bombs. I’ve had almost a week to absorb the end of Supernatural and season 15 as a whole. And I think this is the moment where I need to throw in my two cents. For all intents and purposes I won’t go in-depth into 15x20 seeing as that conversation will just open up a whole other can of worms and I don’t need that headache. I have my reasons for being less than indifferent with how the Winchesters’ story concluded. So I won’t go there.

Instead I’ll be focusing all my energies on the unsatisfying conclusions of 4 particular characters. Two of which were main cast members (one that was on the show 12 years and one 4 years) while the other two (played by the same dude) were brought back after a decade long hiatus for a much-anticipated comeback only to be wasted and mangled unfairly by Dabb and his hack horde of a writing staff. Call this a follow up to my last post. If I sound bitter I am because these people don’t have a single clue on how to helm these characters, their relationships or their storylines 😠 Nor do they deserve them.

And yes I’m well aware of Kevin Tran, Rowena, Ketch and several others who got the shaft on this show. Those could be future posts for another time.

But I cannot stress this enough; ADAM MILLIGAN, JACK KLINE, MICHAEL AND CASTIEL ALL DESERVED FUCKING BETTER. There is no arguing these facts, none whatsoever. Not one of these characters deserved that exit to be the final chapter in their story. I won’t do an entire analysis of each character’s arc and role in the show as I’ve already done that in my rant about 15x19. But I will highlight how much season 15 royally screwed over these characters and tossed them aside like trash; as if none of them were ever part of/contributed anything to Sam and Dean’s history/world building of Supernatural’s universe.

*WARNING* This is going to get heated.

Before I dive into the heart of these issues I want to state this is not a “shipping post”. I don’t ship anyone on Supernatural, hopefully this blog has been pretty self-explanatory. So I have no arguments/opinions in those areas. I’ve been a fan of this series for 15 years because of the characters, the familial bonds and relationships formed between characters throughout its run. And I’m well-aware that the Winchesters are the lead protagonists of the show, no need to remind me. These are purely my own thoughts based what I’ve obtained from show canon. Let me just say I can’t get over just how much these writers contradicted and ignored what they put forth in the journeys of these four individuals. its a real headscratcher.

You mean to tell me that after TWELVE DAMN YEARS of Castiel being a rebellious warrior angel, searching for his own identity and meaning in life; making that promise to Kelly Kline about raising Jack as his own/risking his life for him. After sacrificing himself for his son a year ago, acknowledging he was satisfied with his role as a father which restored his faith; that it was all because of/for Dean Winchester?

You mean to tell me that after Michael, THE PRINCE OF HEAVEN and PROTECTOR OF HUMANITY, was locked away in a cage with a human whom he emotionally bonded with for thousands of years (10 years our time); who was abandoned, betrayed and manipulated by his neglectful/abusive father. After choosing free will and aligning himself with TFW for humanity’s sake, just sided with the Earth’s destruction because his little brother called him names?

You mean to tell me that Jack, A THREE YEAR OLD CHILD, who’s barely just beginning his life and spent his entire duration on the show wanting to be normal and not wanting to be special. Connecting and being integrated with humans; a child who’s biggest fear was outliving everyone he ever loved. Is suddenly ready to walk away from his family, his home and his teddy bear; to give up being a kid forever and run the universe?

You mean to tell me that Adam, SUPERNATURAL’S MOST INNOCENT CHARACTER and FORGOTTEN THIRD-WINCHESTER BROTHER, after being eaten by ghouls; pulled away from his mother out of Heaven, manipulated by angels, trapped in Hell for thousands of years because Sam and Dean left him there to rot. After coming back and helping his neglectful siblings save the world only to be ripped away from his best friend and THE ONLY OTHER PERSON who gave a damn about him; is sentenced to a life of loneliness, homelessness and turmoil until he dies and ends up in Hell where he’ll mostly be tortured and turned into a demon?

NO. I DO NOT AND WILL NEVER ACCEPT THIS BULLSHIT!

Season 15 not only manages to contradict itself where these characters are concerned (while assassinating them before the final curtain). But the writers deliberately discarded them before giving us that *sarcasm inserted* epic solo-Winchester conclusion. Regardless of how you feel about Adam, Castiel, Jack or Michael, ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS are connected Sam and Dean’s story and part of Supernatural. And when you throw them away like they mean nothing, you’re essentially throwing away a part of the show’s history. You’re ignoring 15 years worth of story building.

As I said I’m not going to go into 15x20 for reasons, it doesn’t offend me as much as what was done before that finale. Because I think those other show exits really affect 15x20 even worse than people realize. You want to know why, I’ll explain.

Lets start off with Castiel and Jack, OH BOY! We know where they end up; running Heaven and the Earth together which is all fine and dandy. I love my Dadstiel father/son duo being an endgame family unit. But here in lies the problem, we never saw it. Not even a cameo. And technically their onscreen storyline ends at 15x18 and 15x19 which is an ugly, anti-climatic bookend to an incredibly deep relationship that had 4 years of development. First you have Castiel who completely forgets why he made that deal with the Empty to begin with. HIS FUCKING SON. Not to mention it wasn’t about true happiness it was about giving himself permission to be happy; there is a difference. And then you have Jack wandering around next episode, vacuuming up power cause suddenly he’s a machine now, acting like he doesn’t give a shit over losing his dad to an entity HE’S BEEN DREADING ABOUT FOR A FUCKING YEAR.

Towards the end of season 15 I noticed neither of these characters were acting like themselves. Their motivations, their personalities and strong ties to one another had mysteriously dissolved. Castiel became less concerned about the danger his son was facing after 15x15 (what the hell was that in 15x17?) and more about speaking when spoken to by either Sam or Dean. Does he know how Dean truly feels about Jack; proclaiming the child is “not family”? I doubt the in-character version of him would let Jack leave with Dean after that insult. Castiel’s not even worried whether or not his son is alive or safe before he makes the big confession later. And for some reason Jack (who’d become heavily suicidal) was more concerned with clinging to the Winchesters, willing to die for them, instead focusing on himself and the one person who’s shown him nothing but unconditional love and given him strength since birth. Both of these characters are canonically depressed and suffer from low self-esteem that was never resolved which makes me furious.

When Chuck killed Jack at the end of season 14, this devastated Castiel in the first half of season 15. He actually got to grieve that loss throughout the episodes and deal with his anger over it, allowing the audience to anticipate the day they’d be reunited one last time. This part of Castiel’s S15 arc also ironically mirrors Jack’s S13 arc of mourning Castiel’s death until resurrecting him. And when this son finally returned to his father, who got to rescue him, it was such a poignant moment between the two. It was a cathartic payoff after witnessing Castiel in so much pain over Jack. There was so much building up between that Dadstiel reunion in 15x11 and the Empty’s pact in 14x08; this was suppose to be a tragic yet pivotal plot-point in both Jack and Castiel’s stories. And with SPN wrapping up we all expected something BIG. Yet somehow the writers retconned the whole thing by making it all about Dean, which is such a gross disservice to these characters and 4 years of storytelling.

For instance, since 15x18 was Castiel’s exit episode, why wasn’t he allowed to hug his son or Sam goodbye one last time? Why didn’t he have more of a focal role instead of standing around majority of the episode with barely any dialogue as so much precious air time was wasted on frivolous things? Why didn’t he get one last badass fight scene with someone like Death instead of being choked out and tossed around like a powerless mortal? Why did the group need to be split up to begin with when it served no purpose either than that *ugh* moment? Why wasn’t Jack allowed to call Castiel “dad” once before the show ended? He deserved to hear his son address him as dad!

AND WHY THE HELL COULDN’T JACK FEEL CASTIEL’S DEATH THE MOMENT IT HAPPENED?

The show already established to the audience the significant cosmic bond these two characters shared since before Jack was even born. It was so powerful it boosted Castiel’s grace. Jack could remember who Castiel was from the womb and that he’d protected his mother. Not to mention HE FUCKING RESURRECTED CASTIEL OUT OF THE EMPTY ONCE WITHOUT GOD’S POWER. You’re telling me Jack couldn’t feel his dad being taken away forever despite how far apart they were? No, he’d feel it in his heart. Had we’d been given a scene like that at the end of 15x18 (something of substance) with actual grief shown in 15x19 maybe the episode would’ve faired better for them.

That said it wasn’t, because Jack was treated the exact same way in his final exit. Hardly any lines and just a bunch of scenes of him standing/walking around until that pathetic reveal at the lake. HE DOESN’T EVEN GET TO INTERACT WITH JAKE ABEL’S MICHAEL/ADAM which would’ve been a great follow-up to the AU!Michael storyline in seasons 13 and 14. I swear these directors didn’t give Alex and Misha any motivation during their last three episodes and it’s evident in their hollow performances. But why would they when the scripts are basically telling their characters to quickly fuck off so the brothers can have their final outing. Jack doesn’t even behave like himself after he becomes the new God. His personality is apathetic, cold, alien, stiff and way too mature for the 3 year old child so closely connected to his family/the human world. In that moment I saw Alex Calvert not Jack Kline. It’s bad enough he doesn’t get a meaningful farewell but again Castiel, HIS DAD, is a complete afterthought to this kid 🥶

And that’s what we’re left with. Forever. A frigid, hollow ending to one of Supernatural’s most healthy, touching, family dynamics. It makes you wonder what was even the point. I can’t even fully enjoy the fact that its canon Jack and Castiel are together fixing Heaven because of what the show presented onscreen as their last hurrah. It’s not sitting right and it makes 15x20 even less appealing to me.

Moving onto Michael and Adam. Get ready for this. I could rant forever about how dirty my boys were done by this show. How they were discarded in the SPN series finale recap etc. just as they were FOR THE LAST TEN FUCKING YEARS. Was there even a plan going on here or was this just everyone making things up as it went? Their ending is the most unsatisfying and cruel thing because its INCOMPLETE. There is no real closure or resolution with them thanks to the monstrosity that was 15x19. AND NO ONE CARES ENOUGH ABOUT THEM TO GIVE A SHIT.

Much as I’ve enjoyed this show for many years, it NEVER deserved Jake Abel, his talent or his time. I keep seeing so many anti posts about Dean Winchester’s final fate in Supernatural and all I can think about is “try being an Adam Milligan fan for the last decade”. I’ve had to watch this boy go through hell with nothing to show for it either than years of memes. ridicule and the show’s mockery in forgetting him. Actually he’s the ONLY CHARACTER in this series you’re encouraged not to remember 😡 Also quick question: why give us this really interesting and healthy relationship between an archangel and its vessel if nothing was ever going to become of it?

At this point I don’t know why Adam or the idea of him was even introduced way back in season 4 let alone revisited in season 5. Because the only thing I see when I look at this character now is SAD WASTED POTENTIAL. Storylines never explored. Relationships that never got off the ground. Backstory we never got to see (like for instance his past with John Winchester and his time in the cage). A character’s birthright (Men of Letters) that was never actualized. AND the unexplained factor that Adam could look directly at Michael’s true form without his eyes burning out (making him a special case). And the thing is he could’ve been a really great character, both him and Michael. They could’ve easily reached popular status just like Castiel given the chance since Jake is a freaking acting-powerhouse. We were given a taste in 15x08 just how awesome these characters could be and how they could’ve contributed so much to the story and its core group. But unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.

Michael will never redeem himself after years of scrutiny and being made out to be some kind of unhinged monster. This show constantly enjoyed pounding into our brains how fearsome Michael was. Warned us via Lucifer (LUCIFER, PEOPLE!) that he wasn’t rational, compassionate and didn’t care about anything except war, death and destruction. And that he was incapable of feelings and emotions. This is how Supernatural saw Heaven’s Prince and guardian of the Earth. Christ, they actually did a two-year storyline about an evil Michael from the AU world who enjoyed torturing and killing while trying to destroy the universe. I want to know WHAT THE HELL THIS SHOW’S WRITERS HAD AGINST THESE CHARACTERS? Why they felt the need to bring back Jake Abel, AFTER A DECADE OF FANS WANTING THIS, if it was simply to piss all over his characters one last time before the show wrapped. This is absolutely unprofessional and childish; the fact that Jake is taking this bullshit in stride makes it all the more shameful 😡

We could’ve learned so much more about Michael’s past and his present relationship with Adam. These characters didn’t need to sit in the cage for a decade they could’ve easily been incorporated back into the show as far as season 8 or 10! And been an asset to the Darkness storyline in season 11.There were characters and storylines introduced that served no purpose. Why did we need to keep seeing characters like Charlie Bradbury or (as much as I like him) Crowley or Garth (love him too) or Lucifer or Abaddon or the Wayward sisters? I would’ve much preferred having Adam and Michael around and got to know them instead; especially after 15x08. I would’ve wanted to see what their dynamic with TFW could’ve become had they been long-time allies. Did John ever tell Mary about Adam’s existence? I’d like to see what her reaction would’ve been like had the Winchesters remembered him during that damn 300th episode. I guess that’s another loose end untied.

But because of what Supernatural did to these two characters, it forever taints Sam and Dean. I don’t think Dabb or purist fans realize this. But when new viewers come into this show about two brothers preaching important things like “saving people”, “family first” or “family don’t end in blood” they’re going to see how badly the main protagonists treated their innocent half brother. How Castiel and Jack were treated. They’re going to see the heroes of the story abandoning this kid in Hell forever with no intention of EVER rescuing him. And that’s why their final appearance leaves such a bad taste going into 15x20. Cause as much as Dabb and co didn’t give a shit about Adam and Michael they also didn’t give a rat’s ass about protecting Sam and Dean’s integrity. That’ll be a stain they can’t undo.

So through all of it, we’re stuck with the abomination that is 15x19 aka the eye-soar to an unfinished/unpolished story of two horribly disregarded characters. Michael gets the pleasure of being character assassinated right before he’s stupidly killed off instead of going out a hero or becoming the next God (as it was his birthright and the setup was there in the narrative). And Adam gets killed off-screen, OUT OF HIS OWN DAMN BODY, then brought back by Jack only to live a miserable, isolated existence since his brothers have nothing to do with him (the dog and car are more important); his best friend is dead, he has no job or money or a fucking home and he’s legally dead! Really what is there left for him besides the brutal fate awaiting in Hell when he dies?

SERIOUSLY THEY COULDN’T GIVE US ONE SCENE WHERE THE WINCHESTERS CHECKED IN ON ADAM TO MAKE SURE HE WAS SAFE?! 🤬 His last scene pretty much sums up this shit for what it is. Tragic. I feel like crying for this poor sweet boy.

Congratulations Dabb, BL and co for giving us these much deserved broken story arcs of characters you destroyed and made OOC before leaving the airways. You did your show’s protagonists justice by doing this *sarcasm inserted* after 15 years of being onscreen. I doubt these idiotic decisions are going to age well in the long run. They certainly don’t look good on the Winchesters. Anyway that’s my hot take for the day.

ALL THESE ACTORS AND THEIR CHARACTERS DESERVED BETTER.

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aceandart · 3 years

Note

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.) the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc). the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else. hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were. (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot.

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.)

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast. I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season. aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot? spn should have it's own page for both.

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser.

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc. huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke.

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind" (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women. {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.}

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes" (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development.

usually Black men but in general men of color:

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color. again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc)

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie. they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub. the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically. (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.)

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.) other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.)

d) "buddy"

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???) minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are). How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one.

#spn #fandom stuff #inbox and admin stuff #//#also this focuses on canon #(and ok a little abt the cast/crew)#(though among other things not mentioned is how actors of color and actresses got treated re cons & crew demographics)#however fandom has it's own fucking list and I can come for them at any time too #anyway that was a very nice ask #and if you want actual details about any of these I could provide #but I wanted to stick with patterns because I feel like that says more than the individual things they do #of which there are legion #anyway a summary of what I and many other people have discussed over the years about how much this show sucks #////#i really do get the urge though #one of my mutuals makes s15 destiel sound good #but fool me once shame on you and fool me 50x fuck you spn #//////#this is long (you asked a very wordy person) but tbh I've written longer meta #and oh man back in the day this thing would have been full of links that would have taken you to other metas #///////#eta: fucked up my formatting I had to add a) because bullet points wont indent

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readinginthereadyroom · 3 years

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— Nevermore (Supernatural #1), by Keith R. A. DeCandido

so I’m pretty sure decandido is writing more along the lines of a too-cool-for-school dean rather than a secret-english-major dean. which of course is incorrect.

it’s canonical that dean reads—widely—so the simpsons comment actually makes more sense if you read it as dean trying to throw sam off the scent. deflecting. take the focus off of him. this is dean’s typical self-deprecating behavior.

dean = dumb:

you gotta remember that dean grew up in a “household” that didn’t prioritize his needs, let alone his education. his job was to babysit, bodyguard, and follow orders. so dean likely has a lot of internalized feelings about his intelligence. he constantly refers to sam and john as geniuses.

I did some math and if dean had stayed in school he would’ve graduated at 17 in the spring of 1997. which means he got his GED sometime between then and when we first meet him in the pilot, 8 yrs later. it takes, on average, 3 months to get your GED.

but I can’t imagine dean having that much downtime between hunts. but I can imagine him finding one of those GED textbooks—probably at a thrift store while shopping for flannel—and carrying it around in his duffel for...a year? reading it on motel beds, his practice tests mixed in with pages of lore. or while driving, an audio cassette version playing in place of music.

dean never does any of this when john is around. he’d tell him he’s wasting his time. what do you think you’re sammy or something? focus on the job. dean is a tool. a blunt instrument of destruction. you don’t need book learning or a GED for that.

sam = smart:

in phantom traveler (spn 1x04) we learn that, away from his sons, john actually brags about sam going stanford. he knows that normal non-hunting people would see that as an accomplishment. bragging is playing the proud dad card. just a normal guy, who’s more than happy to help you with your pesky ghost problem.

it also smacks a little of jealousy to me. john knows sam’s smarter than him (likely dean too) and we’ve seen plenty of instances where he’s withheld knowledge from them. as a means of control, yes, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s just to be petty as well. father/author/god and all that.

but it also occurs to me that sam was probably their researcher from the get-go. holed up in the motel of the week, waiting for john and dean to return from a hunt, with nothing else to do but click around the internet on his second-hand laptop.

and maybe dean calls him. from payphones and later burner cells. it’s to check in but he says it’s for directions or to confirm information. and sam wants to help. and he also finds that he enjoys the research. it’s a hunt of it’s own—but without the visera. and the payoff is being able to contradict john.

by the time sam’s old enough to really hunt, full time, he’s already cemented himself as the winchester researcher. and it works. sam’s the database, dean is the soldier, john the general.

all this to say, I think dean is lying about “eddie albert poe.” in their line of work authors like poe—an iconic purveyor of supernatural tales—is likely part of their day-to-day lore.

and since poe is taught in a lot of US high schools, he’s definitely going to be on the GED. so I don’t buy that dean hasn’t read “the raven” or “the tell-tale heart” or “lenore.” not for a second.

#dean winchester english major in repair #smartie dean is very important to me #edgar allan poe #spn nevermore #keith ra decandido #spn books 01 #I headcanon that dean’s always got a battered book or two at the bottom of his duffel bag #grabs them from coffeshops or thrift stores #reads them then leaves them behind #except kerouac’s on the road #he keeps that one #spn

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frozen-delight · 5 years

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Escalation of Commitment in Fandom

You know that feeling when you’re standing at a bus stop at the end of day, and the bus doesn’t come and yet you keep waiting, even though it’s already been fifteen minutes and you’d aready be almos home if you’d walked instead? That feeling that the bus has to arrive any minute now, even though you know that at rush hour all bets are off? That feeling that keeps you rooted to the spot, because you don’t want to admit that you made the wrong decision? That feeling that makes you invest even more time even though you’re already invested too much time in waiting as it is?

That feeling right there is what behavioural economics call Escalation of Commitment. It’s a useful concept to explain why people make irrational investment decisions, be it that they’re investing time, money, or any other resource known to mankind, to justify a previously made investment that hasn’t payed off.

In fandom we invest time, love,and thought, to name just three. We spend a lot of time watching and re-watching our favourite shows, we write long analyses about them, and, above all, we are deeply invested in them on an emotional level. And the more committed we are, the more it hurts to leave that fandom behind, even if we haven’t been happy with the direction canon has taken for quite some time.

(Of course, the paradox of being a fan is that you’re more likely to spot the flaws of the thing you love, but that discovering them also hurts you more than a casual consumer.)

Perhaps the strongest form of fannish commitment are endgame and tinhat theories. The level of wank in the Sherlock fandom surrounding TJLC certainly testifies to this, as does the fame of spn_gossip well outside of SPN fan circles. What distinguishes these types of fannish commitment is the ensuing level of escalation, i.e. the abjuration of all reason in favour of more and more convoluted conspiracy theories.

For instance, a lot of people watching the early seasons of SPN probably thought that Jared and Jensen looked hot together and had great chemistry. Quite a few fans could probably get behind the idea that the two of them were dating. But then they got married. And while a lot of fans then abandoned their previous tinhatting and stuck to writing fic about them, a small group interpreted these weddings as proof that they were secretly together. Because, you know, if they weren’t together, they’d have no need to be married to prove their heterosexuality. Jensen and Jared then added a couple of kids into the mix, probably causing yet more fans to jump the ship (pun intented!), while the remaining tinhatters only became more convinced that they were secretly involved.

What we can witness here is the evolution of a particular fannish reading practice that takes every new canon detail as a confirmation of the existing hypothesis even (and especially) if it openly contradicts it. What follows is a more and more vicious and violent attempt to bend reality to fit said hypothesis, including death threats sent to actors or producers and the bullying of other fans who dare to disagree. Anything rather than having to admit that the inital hypothesis might have been wrong.

In the case of endgame theories this type of escalation usually comes along with accusations of queerbaiting. Unfortunately, this drowns out the critcism of actual queerbaiting in favour of calling out what is essentially fans queerbaiting themselves. (Which is what fans truly want, so the remarkble conclusion of Britta Lundin’s remarkably awful novel Ship It.)

If one of the actors or writers comments on the strength of Dean and Cas’s frienship, this is proof that Destiel will become canon.

If one of the actors or writers states that there’s nothing going on between Dean and Cas, this is also proof that Destiel will become canon. Because it’s obviously a lie, meant to protect the secret.

If Dean and Cas share a scene, it’s proof of Destiel.

If Dean and Cas share less than ten minutes of screen time over the course of a whole season, it’s likewise proof of Destiel, because clearly the entire significance of the season rests in said absence.*

And, true to the nature of escalation of commitment, this type of reading the show only intensifies year after year. When I first entered fandom during season 9, people were already saying that Destiel would be canon any day now, writing long, long metas to prove their point. When S10 aired, people once again stated that there was no way Destiel wouldn’t become canon by the end of the season, only more intensely, insisting that the clues this season were even more significant than they’d been the previous one. Which is what led us to endgame Destiel meta for S14 stating that S9 was nothing compared to what’s going on now. The overall message being: That we were wrong in the past only enforces our present argument.

We might find that ludicrous, or we might not; we might believe or we might not. It’s all fine.

Except that what’s not fine is that a lot of very young and easily impressionable fans are being set up for a huge disappointment.

If I spend forever waiting for a delayed bus, to come back to the introductory example, that’s my problem. However, if a manager of a multi-national enterprise decides to invest more resources into a project that’s proven to be a mistake, chances are that he’s not the one who’s ultimately going to pay the price for that. Just think of the financial crisis of 2007/2008 - the product of massive failures in executive and supervisory boards, yet the cost is being shouldered by the (future) taxpayer.

So I really wish that there was a bit more awareness in fandom of how endgame narrative theories can impact other fans. I’m not sure how often I’ve seen asks in the SPN tags where some poor fan pinned their entire hopes and happiness on their OTP becoming canon. Way too often. And while no fan’s meta is the root of another fan’s neurosis, we (as in: fandom as a whole) might consider a little more closely just how much we’re enabling other people’s escalation through our own.

*Needless to say, but I’m pointing it out all the same because this is Tumblr, the same logical fallacies colour the anti-shipping discourse within fandom. Shipping isn’t irrational per se, no matter what canon vs. fanon wankers would like us to believe. It’s a perfectly valid reading of canon - and canon as such isn’t accessible to us without some kind of interpretation.

#supernatural #on fandom and fanart #queerbaiting #canon vs fanon #my meta #metaish thoughts #potentially unpopular opinion #frozen rambles

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destielette1 · 5 years

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I just wanted to tell something : I wouldn’t celebrate too much the Jaxcon “event” if I were a bronlie .

I wanna remind everyone that two years ago we got the famous :”Destiel doesn’t exist”, which, funnily enough, happened at Jaxcon, and while most of Destiel shippers were sad and disappointed, bronlies were celebrating hysterically “the end of Destiel” and were like : Destiel is dead , Jensen just killed it.

1 week after that, we got 12.10 as in “human weakness”, Dean and Cas bickering like an old married couple, female’ Cas….

One month after that, we got 12.12: one of the most Destielly charged episodes since season 9.

A few weeks later 12.19 : The mixtape , etc…

At the time I said that Destiel had never been more alive than since Jensen‘s “Destiel doesn’t exist”

Every now and then, Jensen feels the need to say or do something to no-homo Dean’s relationship with Cas, or tell us how much Dean is the most hetero to ever hetero, maybe it’s just a coincidence that this happens generally a few days or weeks before a “big” Destiel episode or scene.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, Jensen has always been anti bi!Dean, he HATES the idea of bi!Dean, i have my own theory about why he hates that idea but I’ll keep it for myself .

But Jensen can say whatever he wants about Dean’s sexuality, the fact is he played Dean as Bi in so many scenes that it can’t be unintentional, either he plays Dean deliberately like a bi , or he is the worst actor to ever play a straight man, and we all know that Jensen is a really good actor.

Yes Jensen knows Dean very well but Jensen IS NOT DEAN , he didn’t create Dean, Dean is Jensen’s character not his property, The character Dean belongs to the CW network, not to Jensen, if Spn’ tptb ever decide to make bi!Dean canon or to make queer Destiel canon, there will be nothing Jensen can do about it.

I can already hear some of them saying but but Dean changed the “I love you” and they can’t possibly go for canon Destiel without Jensen’s seal of approval .. etc..

With all due respect, I think that’s wrong, I’m gonna repeat that Jensen has always been anti bi!Dean , it’s not something new, but being anti bi!Dean didn’t keep him from perfectly playing all the scenes where he was flirting with men, checking them out, the countless scenes where he was “eye-loving” Cas , where he was looking at his lips, the boner scene, hating the idea of Destiel didn’t keep him from saying sentences like : I prayed to you Cas, every night ,you’re gonna bring him back,morning sunshine, devastatingly handsome …playing heartbroken or jealous, pining or possessive towards Cas, playing a scene where he screams Cas when Amara is right here, another scene where Dean literally altered his own memory because he couldn’t bear the idea of Cas deliberately staying behind in “purgaytory”, a scene where he gives Cas a zeppelin mixtape (come on), didn’t keep him from playing a drunk depressed Dean in S7, and a grieving-like-a-widow’ Dean during 6 episodes in S13, cradling Cas face or touching him the way he does, looking at him like he is the most tasteful cake ever in 9.06 and you know that I can go on all day with all the scenes Jensen played that contradict plainly with his affirmations about Dean’s sexuality .

What I’m trying to say is no matter how much Jensen hates bi!Dean and queer Destiel, no matter how important Jensen is for the network (for now) , but today’s truth in not necessarily tomorrow’s, so many things can change by the end of the show, if by then the network decide to go for it, Jensen will have to do it, he is a professional actor after all and he’s far from idiot.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Destiel is endgame nor do I believe in the slightest that they will make queer Destiel canon, hell no! On the contrary, I’m more and more convinced that queer Destiel will stay a dream.

I say “queer Destiel” because what I fear the most, knowing the cw, is that they are perfectly capable of making Destiel canon without having to confirm that Dean is bi. Cas is an Angel and his vessel can be changed, we’ve seen him in a female’ vessel, I fear that in one of their stupid scenarios, Cas end up killed, his vessel destroyed , and he come back in a female’ vessel and boom: The physical boundaries that prevented Dean from declaring his love for his Angel are completely gone, and the show ends with Dean finally confessing his undying love to Cas, that would be a way for the Cw to clear themselves from the accusation of Queerbaiting that followed them and will surely continue to follow them for years if the show ends with Dean and Cas as friends only. The writers and the actors would then claim that they never intended to queer-bait us, they would argue that: Yes Dean has always been in love with his Cas, the Angel, not with his vessel, but since he’s straight he couldn’t make any move as long as Cas was in a male’ vessel ….blah blah blah …..

Yes that would be utterly homophobic and stupid , but when did I ever say that they were intelligent ? I mean they killed Charlie and Eileen and brought back nick a.k.a Lucifer’s vessel without any explanation ,so don’t underestimate their power of outdoing their own stupidity.

None of us can predict how spn’ tptb will end Deancas story, I honestly think that they will leave things as vague as they can, Destiel will continue existing in subtext, and they will give us an ending open to many interpretations like they have always done, until then, they will continue to unscrupulously queer-bait and milk the fans.

I’ll finish this long post by asking bronlies to thank Jensen (no, not for ending Destiel shippers hopes ,stop mistaking your fantaisies for reality, Destiel shippers are hopelessly hopeful ) , it would be nice to thank him for giving you a new gif to use in the next months, years? Because let’s be honest the “d.d.e” gif has been overused and abused, it deserves a peaceful retirement.

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

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Why destiel shippers should not speak about destiel endgame?

@the-winchesters-ruined-my-life asked the following question.

Thank you for the ask. A short while back, my prim and proper side, would have responded diplomatically that its a merely ship, an artistic platform, and therefore does not warrant any hate from most level headed people. However, I have to realize that even art activates the tolerance threshold. I used to read destiel slash out of curiosity. There are many more like me who dipped their toes in the destiel cesspool, only to recoil in disgust when they realized that it was probably going to give them gangrene. Destiel was a sweet little ship, once upon a time, until things dramatically changed for the worst. Most people who ship destiel are extreme by design because that is how the meta writers designed their thinking. Non heller fans contradict each other. I don't see that with hellers. Some upper echelon hellers says something and these fans just accept it without question. Take for example, the following post, recently penned by @anti-anti-destiel, lamenting the impending end of SPN.

The first flaw, is the OP's name. They are glitching the tags with a name like this. Everything and everyone has an anti tag. What makes destiel so special that it must never have an anti tag? That is manipulative and delusional because nothing will disappear just because you wished it away. People that are going to despise destiel are growing, whether OP sticks her head in the stand or not.

Anyway, here is the post, which I edited where necessary and italicized. My responses are in bold.

....Season 15 will be the last, with another 20 episodes.

There has been talk about queerbaiting in the past, and whether or not SPN will go down in history as a show with a slow-burn queer romance, or whether it will be forever known as the most queerbaiting show in existence.

This is why non-destiel fans get infuriated. If there are any ''good'' destiel fans out there, why don't they tell this entitled princess to stop ruining the reputation of a show that has genuinely made people happy? SPNFamily is very ironic when you want to tear apart a show that gave made you smile for 14 seasons. This alone makes me wonder if there are any ''good'' destiel shippers out there. The other hot topic is that of queer baiting. Notice how queer baiting is NOT up for debate. I have seen the master list of ''proof'' that SPN is queer baiting. The parallels, metaphors and prop analysis are extremely insulting to adult human intellect. Performing Dean is perhaps the most biphobic concept I have ever come across. There is a reason these meta writers don't want their head canon's discussed because they know that people with logic with wipe the floor with them. I can almost picture Jensen bursting into laughter if he ever read that master list. It is that nonsensical. The meta writers claim they are being queer baited, and everyone believes it. Nobody questions the writers. Why?

All the cards will be on the table in the writers’ room.

Dabb is destiel friendly.

Bobo is destiel friendly.

Davy is destiel friendly.

Steve is destiel friendly.

Meredith is destiel friendly.

Buckner and Ross-leming are ???

Singer is ???

When a meta writer writes something like this, how come low level destielers don't ever question her? Why not ask her: if Dabb and gang are destiel friendly, then why is it that Cas didn't even get invited to 300th episode family dinner party? They practically forgot about him. BuckLeming are NOT destiel friendly, because Leming [along with Misha] claimed that an episode with a turning point was coming up. Turns out there was no turning point. Leming and Misha were just making a mockery out of the destiel fans. Why is it that Leming was called out for that lie and NOT Misha?

And why is it that the most important people in this equation are always left out? Both Jensen and Jared have said time and again, that destiel is not part of SPN canon. How come they get left out? Do you think their opinion doesn't matter? And if it doesn't, then why is that? I would really like to know.

Other numerous cast and crew are destiel friendly. And before someone starts, regardless of previous statements, Jensen is more friendly to the idea than you may think.

Why don't any of the destielers ask this meta writer HOW she knows that Jensen is friendly to destiel? One fool told me that Jensen told her during a photo op that he was OK with destiel. But yet he says on stage that destiel doesn't exist. Now, why would he do that? What makes these idiots think that Jensen is two-faced or spineless. This meta writer said it, and everyone believed it. Not a single person decided to cross-examine her regarding her claims. Jensen doesn't like destiel. He destroyed the only panel he shares with Misha. I think getting death threats from hellers did it. I don't blame him.

Our main barrier is convincing Pedowitz and the Network Powers that be that it should happen. Fandom has campaigned, tulpa’d, prayed, begged, etc. We will know by May, 2020, what the decision will be.

So she wants to rally a bunch of delinquents to annoy and aggravate TPTB. And what fandom is she talking about. There are many fans who HATE destiel, because of Jensen's death threats, as well as arson, kidnapping and vandalism threats. Ordinary fans of SPN are fed up of destiel meta writers speaking up for every one of us. The destiel fans are only a subsection of the overall fan base. We would prefer if they didn't speak for us all. Pedowitz has already acknowledged only J2 as the leads and TPTB has told them that the show will go for as long as they want. So TPTB are acknowledging the leads opinions. Neither of the actors are going to say yes to destiel.

We have seen the hints in Dabb’s era, where it could go. He is ON BOARD, people. Whether you want to believe it or not. It’s so close to being fully textual canon.

What did she see in the Dabb era? Cas admiring Dean's looks? No, he admired Sam's looks. Dean telling Cas he loved him? No, he said that to Sam. Dabb is giving every other pairing its day in the sun, but not destiel. Why is that? I think it has something to do with the reputation destroying queer baiting accusation. This person is fooling you in order to stay relevant. I can tell you now, there are personal stakes involved in shipping. In order to stay popular and relevant, meta writers will spin mile long yarns. Meta writers are like a step up from a slash fic writer. In a weird way, they are revered without any merit or qualification. That is how gullible the destiel fan base is. They never probe a claim. And they never just enjoy their ship. Everything has to be about canon destiel, ship wars [their latest victim is sastiel] and they never acknowledge criminal threats. Being loyal to them means that you are popular with the bad crowd. Let that sink in.

So while some may be preparing for the eventual let-down, it is completely acceptable to keep the faith. If it doesn’t happen, it won’t be the fault of writers, cast, or crew.

Oh, no it will be the fault of the meta writers, like this joker, and Misha Collins. Misha has actively queer baited his fans for ten years. Its funny how Jensen is the bad guy for saying that destiel doesn't exist, but Misha is such a kidder if he says anything destiel and even cockles friendly. Misha Collins is the only person on the cast, crew and writers who actively and vocally pushed destiel consistently for ten years. So much so that he ignored sastiel. He changed that at Nashcon for reasons unknown. If you want to lash out at anyone for destiel not being canon, please go ahead and lash out at Misha. The only one who gave you any hope was Misha.

In conclusion: I have only met one destiel shipper [receipt on my blog], who acknowledged that destiel shippers were becoming ghastly and that Misha was egging on the troublemakers. She admitted that she didn't approve of his behavior. Other than her, I have not come across another. Other than this one person, nobody else deserves my empathy. When SPN ends without destiel being canon, prepare for the hellers being mocked by all and sundry, due to all the many enemies they earned for the threats, attacks on J2 and the vandalism. No one will feel sorry for them, because they ruined this fandom. Remember, Destiel is not a religion. Loving and believing it is not a prerequisite for being an SPN fan.

Excuse the typos.

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mittensmorgul · 6 years

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I love your meta so much. Especially right now. I've been seeing so much negativity on my dash recently complaining about Gabriel, the AU, Charlie, Buckleming, Cas' absence, etc, etc. Idk why, but it seems like every spn blog I follow rn is simultaneously freaking out about something, and it's really putting a damper on my enjoyment in the fandom. So just thanks for your meta, and so clearly explaining why everything makes sense. I wish all these ppl I follow would just come read your stuff 😟

Aww, I’m glad you’re enjoying my lil oasis of relative chill, and yeah I’ve been saddened and frustrated by some of the negativity too, but I’ll tell you what...

I do 100% understand where folks’ negative feelings are coming from, and I don’t expect everyone to watch the show the way I do. Everyone’s got stuff that bugs them, everyone’s got their own personal headcanons that they have accepted and held on to-- sometimes for years as regards characters that have been absent from the narrative as long as Gabriel has, for example-- and any suggestion that those headcanons and personally accepted theories can feel like a direct challenge.

A lot of what we do in fandom is purely emotional, you know? We love the characters, we see parts of ourselves in them, and when the show challenges our understanding of them, it can feel like a personal attack. I completely get why people might be upset about Gabriel returning.

Aside from his appearance in 9.18, where he wasn’t even real but Metatron’s literal narrative device inside the false reality experience he put Castiel through, we haven’t been given any reason to believe that Gabriel’s apparent sacrifice in 5.19 wasn’t exactly what it seemed.

The thing is, Fanon Gabriel has evolved into something very different from what Canon Gabriel ever was. He’s one of those characters where a LOT of people doubted his death had been real back in s5 just because his standard operating procedure had been deception and evasion.

There’s a post that I saw years ago regarding angel deaths that said, “Wings or it didn’t happen.” Because we know that when angels die, we see their wing prints burned into the ground/wall/whatever. But then Gabriel’s “death” scene was added with some commentary along the lines of, “Oops.” Because we saw his wing prints, and people STILL refused to believe they were real, and that it wasn’t just another trick of the trickster, and that he’d be back to fight another day.

Thing is, over the years that Gabriel DIDN’T return, people began to assume it was because he really was dead, because why WOULDN’T he have come back to deal with any of the other nonsense-- beginning with Raphael’s attempt to restart the apocalypse even after Gabriel’s presumed self-sacrifice in an attempt to stop it? People accepted that Gabriel had been convinced to nobly sacrifice himself trying to stop Lucifer, and that he’d truly “redeemed” himself in doing so. That his supposedly selfless act had tied up his character arc with a tidy bow.

But... that’s not what happened, and at first I was ???? about why they would want to open this long-closed set of wounds, but then I actually used my brain to contemplate WHY they would choose to bring him back now, and WHY they would supposedly “retcon” what on the surface had appeared to be a “good death” for Gabriel.

And I realized they haven’t retconned anything, and those old wounds had been festering for the last eight years, because nothing about Gabriel even remotely suggested he’d redeemed himself. And not just for Gabriel’s own personal redemption arc, but because how UGLY the fact that Gabriel having been allowed a “noble death” somehow excused all the bullshit he’d lumped on Sam since 3.11. Mr. “Shut Up And Play Your Roles” was only playing his own role all along... he was the messenger, he delivered the message, and then got the heck outta Dodge. I mean... this is the most in-character thing Gabriel said:

SAM: No, Gabriel, don't -- you -- you can't just walk away. If Michael comes here, he will end this world.GABRIEL: And the last time the world was ending, I put my money on you. I think you can pull it off again.

He’s still delivering messages and flapping off again. Like he said way back in 5.08, he doesn’t care who wins or loses, he just wants all the fighting to be over. He doesn’t care how it happens or even if it takes all of creation with it.

So what’s the one thing he’s said that contradicts this read of Gabriel? What he said to Lucifer in 5.19 about humanity:

LUCIFER: So you're willing to die, for a pile of cockroaches. Why?GABRIEL: Because Dad was right. They are better than us.LUCIFER: They are broken. Flawed! Abortions.GABRIEL: Damn right they're flawed. But a lot of them try. To do better, to forgive. And you should see the Spearmint Rhino! I've been riding the pine a long time. But I'm in the game now, and I'm not on your side, or Michael's. I'm on theirs.

But then we learn what actually happened... because why would Gabriel suddenly have gone from teaching lessons to humans who didn’t live up to his personal code to willingly DYING, and dying POINTLESSLY on their behalf?

CASTIEL [reading the Enochian]: “Per usual, my brother had double my brawn and half my brains. He assumed the counterfeit me was what vanished that night, and he thought that he'd stabbed the real thing. The truth is, the thing Luci skewered was a fake. [flashback showing the real Gabriel watching Lucifer kill an illusion.] There are plenty of fakes to go around. Everyone believed Gabriel was gone. And suddenly, I was free. No obligation to God or Heaven, or mankind. And so, I did what anyone would do -- I moved to Monte Carlo and shacked up with porn stars.”

THAT is actually in line with everything we’d learned about Gabriel up to that point. If, you know, you don’t apply any of the fanon!Gabriel stuff that’s been draped around the actual canon!Gabriel’s character.

For one, I am THRILLED that he’s back, because if ANYONE deserves to give Gabriel a piece of his mind, it’s Sam Fucking Winchester.

And I’m willing to wait for Gabriel’s return in 13.20 to get the full story, because I’ve NEVER actually been satisfied that Gabriel’s redemption-by-death in 5.19 wasn’t just the final cruel trick he played on Sam. And his parting words to Sam in 13.18 kinda proved that point to me.

Now as to the AU, I have no idea how AN ALTERNATE, ENTIRELY DIFFERENT UNIVERSE is supposed to be anything other than a point/counterpoint comparative tool to the original narrative. I have no idea how it’s even possible for A DIFFERENT WHOLE UNIVERSE is supposed to change any of the facts we know about the regular SPN universe, so people getting pissy about “retcons” in the AU are just spinning their emotional wheels in the mud here. If it makes them happy to be mad about stuff, I guess go off or whatever, but it’s like comparing Portland Maine to Portland Oregon and being mad they’re not the same place.

Now as to AU Charlie, I wrote a post the other day that pretty much covers my feelings on the fandom reaction to her:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/172915586795/how-do-you-feel-about-the-au-characters-that-are

But Gabriel? Yeah, I’d been meaning to post something about why I felt like it was the perfect time for him to return to the narrative, because he never really did earn any sort of a REAL redemption, and I love the fact that the show is truly acknowledging that.

He was the original “Play The Roles Destiny Has Written For You” character that TFW (and ESPECIALLY SAM) has desperately needed some resolution with for YEARS. He’s absolutely central to the “As Above, So Below” apocalypse era stuff that was only even remotely resolved by 11.23. And since he’s part of the unresolved threads that spun out of the post 5.22 fallout when the original ending was torn up, and Sam didn’t end up spending the rest of eternity in the cage with Michael and Lucifer, because locking up problems to make them go away isn’t actually a real solution to the problem here, and we’ve been going back and looking for the roots of all the actual problems and digging them out and actually dealing with them properly... well, if you like Sam at all, and hate the idea that he’d ever have to sacrifice himself and his autonomy and his own humanity in order to save a world that he wasn’t responsible for breaking... I mean, Gabriel didn’t break it either, but Chuck’s already dealt with his “original sin” of locking up Amara. Now it’s the archangels’ turn to deal with the problems of their own making...

And even if he was only ever a side player in that original apocalypse nonsense, Gabriel still played his own role, delivering the message. Now he gets to write his own script. Let’s see if his message is different this time around. If he’s got some better words.

#spn 13.18 #spn 5.19 #spn 3.11 #gabriel #spn s13 speculation #Anonymous

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