#spn critical

[soullessjack]

it’s been a hot minute since ive gotten critical but like. To clunkily summarize a lot of shit: the main problems with the babyjack au is that

1) a majority of the fandom have taken it a step beyond just being an au and either insist that it’s actually canon (it’s not) or call you a pdf-file for seeing jack as an adult (which he canonically is considered as). like one of the survey questions mentioned, the idea of jack as a baby is treated as the only acceptable way to view him and you will get pitchforked in the ass if you think differently. that’s what stops it from being a silly au where ppl are just having fun

2) the entire concept of it either banks on making dean and cas domestic dads with a baby-shaped accessory, parentifying dean so he beats the abuser allegations, parentifying cas and sam so they beat the bad dad allegations, etc. jack isn’t the center focus of it at all even tho the au is literally in his name. it’s not about what he wants (he canonically hates being considered a child & it’s narratively only ever used to belittle him) and babies in general are effectively non-characters in any given story bc they inherently lack agency

3) the persistent portrayal of jack as just some baby sitting on Cas’ hips means that his canon self (+ arcs + complexities + trauma) are completely erased & unaddressed bc again, this au literally rests on the premise that jack stops being an autonomous person and is instead essentially there to fix dean and save his marriage to cas.

4) canon age aside (which has been shown to not effect jack being perceived as a young adult by other characters), plenty of ppl in the fandom have pointed out that Jack’s traits & mannerisms are similar to autistic traits & mannerisms, just like Cas. those same traits are often used as an argument for him being “mentally a child,” and I really shouldn’t have to explain how that’s ableist, but this site has let me down on that before so here’s a summary: equating autistic traits & behavior (including unintentionally autistic ones) to childlike/toddler behavior is infantilization and infantilization is a major part/contributor of ableist rhetoric.

*it’s literally the same shit that happened with Entrapta from SPOP if you need another frame of reference. also, you may not be doing it intentionally, you may even be autistic yourself, but that doesn’t make it any less ableist as it is still just regurgitated sugar-coated rhetoric.

5) point number two and point number three both contribute back to, and perpetuate, point number one, and they all swirl around into a little vicious cycle of misinterpretation:

-> jack as a baby is the most persistent portrayal of his character -> his canon character/trauma/arcs/general autonomy are removed & erased in all capacity including fandom discussion -> the baby au becomes seen as “canon” & ergo the only acceptable way to interpret jack ->

*these interpretations also have a bad effect on how TFW are interpreted, based on how they parent jack. ie dean is most prominently considered an abuser or magically redeemed by babyjack, & sam is considered the uncle bc Destiel. cas however usually doesn’t have many criticisms even tho he should but that’s for another post. jack has almost zero autonomy or responsibility in any of his relationships with them bc he’s “just a baby” per the fandom’s interpretation; dare I say he’s not even really considered a part of TFW2.0 more than he is their adorable mascot/pet

capisce?

#TLDR nobody understands jack the right way and nobody wants to either #cal.txt #spn #jack kline #spn critical #spn fandom #baby jack #dean winchester #tfw2.0 #sam winchester #castiel #destiel #fandom critical #fandom discussion #autistic jack kline #fandom ableism #TLDR again it stops being a silly little au when you accuse ppl of being predators for not agreeing with a non canon interpretation

[musclesandhammering]

Hard pills to swallow: Cas isn’t gay & Misha Collins is annoying

#spn #to clarify: castiel is 100% absolutely not straight #he’s most likely panromantic and somewhere on the ace spectrum #he’s not a male homosexual factually speaking #he’s been attracted to women in canon #and he’s not even a man he’s nonbinary and angels don’t even seem to gaf about the gender of anyone #he’s a multidimensional wavelength of cosmic energy and consciousness like…. #why would you want to reduce him down to ‘He’s a male who only likes other males uwu’ #and Misha continuously pushing the ‘cas gay haha’ narrative just to pander to the d*stiel dumbasses is just- ugh #and I haven’t forgotten about him claiming to be bi for shits and giggles and then going ‘SIKE I’m actually hetero’ #and then not rly understanding why folks got so upset #anti supernatural #anti spn #spn critical #castiel #anti destiel #anti destihellers #dean critical #anti misha collins

[vaicomcas]

I want to do a rewatch of all Castiel episodes but I don't know which one is going to be more gut-wrenching, in the forward order to see how badly his character got degraded, or the reverse order to see how badly his character got degraded

#castiel #bitter cas girl #spn critical #only partially a rhetorical question

[fratricideknight]

imho (feel free to tell me your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree), the introduction of the angels spelt the beginning of the end for spn. by this i don't mean that nothing good could possibly come after; that's not true, there's plenty of good content after season 3. i mean that it dealt a fatal blow to the framework of the show. spn was not built to facilitate angels - kripke literally said that he used to have a "no-angel policy" in the first three seasons of the show (see bottom of post for link). despite being sci-fi/fantasy, at its core it was always a relatively small, intimate show. everything felt confined: within the us, within a select group of people. i know that sam was quite possibly always supposed to spell the end of the world, but the threat always felt so much more personal. sam and dean would be torn apart by something outside of their control, dean would have to kill sam - those were the stakes. it took their mom, it took their dad, their family tree was closing in on them, and with the way spn ditched characters quickly, it sometimes felt like they were the only two real people in the entire world. you could argue that those are still the stakes of seasons 4 and 5, just wrapped in apocalyptic packaging, and i agree, but it doesn't feel that way as viscerally as it could. they weren't supposed to deal with cosmic plots and religion beyond the spectre of it, sam having faith and dean not. the world was dirty and gritty and, all in all, shit. for all the audience knew, everyone either went to hell or just ceased to exist when they died. that's what the episode Road Kill was about. it brought meaning to the sacrifices that john and dean made when they weren't just preventing someone from being at peace in heaven. (although, to be fair, that allows for a different kind of horror; selfishly refusing to let someone go, even to a better place.) death was actually a scary prospect. everything was scarier because there was so much dark with no light, no counterbalance besides a handful of hunters. there was so much uncertainty, which bred fear. so, sure, the angels were douchebags, too, in the end, like everything else in the spn universe. but that doesn't change how much the world was expanded, how the afterlife became clear-cut, and sam and dean eventually ceased to be real, relatable people dealing with issues that, ultimately, resembled real life ones. crisis of identity, grief, strained familial relationships, child neglect, living in poverty, loss of humanity. even sam's story could have felt intimate and allegorical rather than literal if the show didn't pull out all the stops and throw itself down the pit of angels and demons and a ✨️ cosmic war ✨️ and everything that came after.

#spn discussion #spn critical #supernatural #spn #what is and what should have been #mine

[laf-outloud]

"Sam's question to Chuck about why the planets are round being an easy, but glaring example" What's wrong with that question? It's a great question. It's actually more interesting and important than all that heaven and hell shit. I would ask God about planets and galaxies too. It's very in character for Sam.

If anyone remembers the convention where Jared talks specifically about this, please share. But, basically, Jared talked about how Sam would already know why the planets are round because it's already been answered by scientists.

Not to mention, Sam's been an adamant believer in God from the very beginning, but instead of asking a deeper question about his purpose in life, demon blood, his family's mission, he wants to know about planets, or what's up with ears? It just doesn't fit with the character and his journey. The writers ended up giving Dean the hard questions, Dean, the one who's never believed. It was just a really weird disconnect between the characters.

#ask box #spn critical #spn 11x21 #spn discussion

[ruinedsam]

Random demon!Dean thoughts. His actions in the show didn't make sense to me. Regular Dean was pretty feral about his brother and I cannot imagine a completely unrestrained version of Dean not basically locking Sam in a cage to protect him forever.

Preach!!! Demon!Dean was a joke. How does it make sense for him to get drunk and do karaoke and basically act like a fratboy because he's a demon?! Demonhood is supposed to turn you into a darker version of yourself, not a more ridiculous version. What demon!Dean needed was some of shifter!Dean's energy:

As you say, Dean is insane about Sam as a human (and that's such a foundational part of his personality), he should even be more so as a demon as he no longer has any moral/human restraints. Which form Dean's obsession with Sam would take when he's a demon is debatable imo (personally I think it would be more about owning Sam than protecting him).

The one good thing about canon demon!Dean sucking is that some talented writers have explored demon!Dean in various directions, from feeding Sam blood, to possessing him to torturing him to wincest to killing anyone that looks at Sam wrong...💜

#ask #demon!dean #spn critical #carvertransgressions #also pro tip do not ever type spn skin in the gif finder

[sweetpapercroissant]

i’m sorry but the bmol simply should not have had stupid angel depowering knuckles or any kind of knowledge let alone weapons that could be used against angels.

so much of what makes the angels on spn so terrible and terrifying is that they absolutely do not interact with humanity more than they have to and that includes taking human vessels. most of them probably see that as an insult, to trap some aspect of your being in the inadequate body of something so much lower than yourself. and what makes them so formidable is that there is no way to know of their weaknesses unless they specifically reveal them. the angel banishing sigil, the angel blades, the wards against angels, holy oil they all come from angels themselves (anna, castiel, castiel, and again castiel).

sure a few high ranking demons had some defenses against them (alastair in s04e15 death takes a holiday) but even lilith didn’t know how to kill an angel (and so probably didn’t know about the existence of angel blades). apart from these few chosen beings no one even knew of their existence and you’re telling me a bunch of nerds who liked role playing as military somehow have a number of weapons and spells that can kill/banish/overpower them? i know nobody was taking anything seriously in later seasons but c’mon.

#supernatural #angels #bmol #spn critical #canon critical #.txt

[confusedkittensposts]

Am I the only one who thinks the time gap in 9x06 Heaven can't wait is there for the sole purpose of Dean not having to directly acknowledge the fact that Cas was homeless

Because if Dean had dropped Cas at Gas-N-Sip at night and left, then He would have presented him in a bad light, and since SPN can't do that to their golden boy. It was morning.

I mean nothing wrong with dropping your "friend" at the place of his employment in the Moring, right?

It also saved them from a fanfom riot.

#castiel #spn critical #spn 9x06 #heaven can’t wait #I hate the way human Cas arc was handled #I have so many problems with thay episode

[crowley-the-1-true-king-of-hell]

The show was so wrong not to make Godstiel the badass antagonist for most of season seven. Dick was a great antagonist but he doesn't show up until the last 6 episodes??? 6 right? That's when the leviathans can be let out into the world

My problem wasn't that Godstiel was an antagonist to Sam & Dean. Live your truth, Godstiel! It wasn't even that Godstiel did bad things like how can you be an antagonist if you don't do anything morally questionable?

My problem was there wasn't enough of Godstiel telling Sam and Dean off and just being a total BAMF

#spn season 7 #castiel #dean critical #sam critical #spn critical #supernatural #godstiel #dick roman

[soullessjack]

so one of my other problems with babyjack is that the fandom just seems to have this sort of collective cognitive dissonance about it, in almost any context or discussion. like this post as probably my only standing example (bc it’s the only one to have gotten traction), there are all these tags about how babyjack leads to bad dean criticism, or how it’s nice in aus but they want canon complex jack, and like I’m not entirely disagreeing with that, but it is so fucking frustrating that people are still ignoring the actual problem with it and either only focusing on the most surface level issues that personally affect them or their corner of the fandom, or making up some point of acceptability for it that frankly isn’t theirs to make.

it’s the autistic experience of our struggles never being seen or cared about until they become other people’s inconveniences, and our voices being used to say something else entirely. when the main takeaway of that post is how the fandom’s treatment of jack being in a way he’s explicitly shown to hate being treated directly mirrors autistic people’s struggle for autonomy in the real world, I really do not need you to make it about how it makes your golden website boy dean look like a big meanie pants, okay? that’s definitely a part of it, but it’s not at all what we are talking about, and it 100% should not be the only reason you care.

and especially when the other takeaway is how this is just a smaller scale issue that comes from autistic infantilization, the absolute last take I want to hear is that you find that infantilization acceptable as long it’s an AU or something else separated from canon. believe me, I’m beyond glad more people actually prefer canon complex jack—like, I don’t think you guys understand that that is legitimately a rarity to find here— but the thing about babyjack is that the concept itself is inherently ableist, and directly relies on his complexities (and the representation he means for us) being removed and erased so that he can even exist in the context of those AU’s. It feels very… ‘have your cake and eat it too’ to me.

I’m trying not to sound angry or accusatory, but I am also tired of having to force civility on a problem that’s pretty much just an open secret thar everyone collectively ignores and beats bushes around solely because they prioritize #domesticdestiel over all. I mean, do you guys even hear yourselves sometimes? Like half of it just boils down to “Autistic infantilization is always bad, except for this one context where it makes my ship look domestic and redeems my blorbo,” and it’s getting really fucking annoying to have to constantly explain something that is not only painfully easy to understand, but is understood and actively ignored, and still play nice so that somebody out there might listen.

So many people will say they like canon Jack and want more of him from the fandom, and I more than agree, but motherfucker you have a blog! You have the tools! Be the change you want to see! He doesn’t have to be your fav or your blog thesis blorbo, but if you want it, you are literally fully equipped to make it! Write some meta, draw some fanart, whatever. Better yet, you could even stop engaging with and perpetuating content that actively pushes down on what you want and, I must reiterate, is actively harmful and ableist. If you want domestic silliness go right ahead, but you don’t need to resort to ableism to do it.

I don’t think I’m asking too much or asking rudely, and frankly I don’t even think I owe niceties to anyone when it’s a problem that has been openly ignored for 6 years and holds plenty of bearing in the real world concerning my identity and community and shit we face constantly. Outside of our screens, we are constantly fighting for autonomy and recognition and representation, and even to be seen as people. Online spaces, especially fandom spaces, are a huge source of escapism and support that we wouldn’t get otherwise. So for the love of god, please stop bringing that fight here.

#sorry I’m horribly caffeinated #spn #supernatural #spn fandom #spn family #fandom critical #fandom ableism #autism representation #autistic characters #jack kline #autistic jack kline #baby jack #toddler jack kline #baby au #baby jack au #spn critical #sam winchester #dean winchester #castiel #destiel #domestic destiel #sastiel #samcas #deancas #tfw2.0 #team free will 2.0 #dadstiel #dad!dean #dad!sam #dean critical

[420technoblazeit]

also can i juts say? christ almighty i do not remember the racism crimes in spn being this bad. like ik people talk about the misogyny all the time but oh my god do htey give the black characters the most awful deaths in the early seasons. it's weird too bc they had a season 1 episode about racism in southern america and police brutality but hten they gave gordon walker THAT death it's like ok? what's up????? ??

#supernatural #spn #spn critical #spn spoilers #the pig squeals

[vaicomcas]

I'm back to bitter Cas fan mode. 12x09 First Blood.

MARY: Yep. What do you think we’re walking into? CASTIEL: I don’t know. MARY: We may want backup. CASTIEL: Crowley and Rowena? MARY: The King of Hell and his mother? The witch? [scoffs] Hope we can do better than that.

It's nice to see that Castiel's first instinct was to get help from Crowley and Rowena. This is immediately after 12x08, "I agree with agent Zapa", where he had enjoyed the partnership with Crowley, and I fully believe that he considered Crowley a friend without reservation at this point.

The one Winchester left in the plot promptly shut him down from reaching out to his friends, indeed disparaging his friends, just like Sam and Dean.

Also: Why does Mary get to scoff at the King of Hell and a powerful witch?

It may not be Mary's fault. This is just the continuation of the show's 1) systematic and unrelenting refusal to let Cas have his own friends outside of the Winchesters; 2) gratuitous and nonsensical disrespect of Crowley's character in the later seasons.

But there is another strike against Mary:

MARY: You left them. CASTIEL: No, I… Dean told me to go. The woman-- MARY: The one you lost? CASTIEL: I didn’t. I… I thought that she-- MARY: Stop making excuses. [Cas looks down, and Mary sighs heavily] MARY: Why… if they needed help, why didn’t they call me?

What angers me most is not "stop making excuses". (Mary apologized later for her lashing out because she was worried about her sons). It is "Why...if they needed help, why didn't they call me?"

This line is meant to set up Mary's angst about not being there for her sons. But this line is so insulting and so humiliating to Cas. Why didn't they call me...implies, "why did they rely on you instead?"

In just 11 lines of dialog we see a crisp summary of the Winchesters' treatment of Cas: they belittle him, they humiliate him, they blame him for everything that goes wrong, and they isolate him from his friends and allies.

I will observe that this doesn't actually make me hate Mary very much (maybe a little). This is because I feel both of these lines are not really integral to her character, she was just saying things put in her mouth by the writers.

#castiel #crowley spn #Winchesters critical #mary winchester critical #spn critical #justice for castiel #bitter Cas girl #bitter Crowley fan

[fratricideknight]

i am constantly bouncing like a brain-rotted pinball between appreciating the later seasons, pretending that the show ended after season 5, and pretending that the show ended after season 3.

currently, i cannot believe that dean has been in hell since 2008. how many hell years is that? over 1600? is he a demon yet?

#spn critical #supernatural #spn #mine

[laf-outloud]

https://www.tumblr.com/laf-outloud/735629084520022016/unpopular-opinion-or-maybe-not-idk-the-shows

I totally see where Anon is coming from about the bunker, but I actually liked it. I think, they’d been travelling with no true base, and no Bobby’s anymore, for 7+ years. For me, it was okay to have a change. I liked this change better than the season 7 approach of taking everything away from them. What bugged me the most about the bunker was as how unutilized the different areas were. Sam and Dean are the most incurious people ever. They didn’t even know they had a garage for like a year. It was sort of wasted on them.

I also hate that some fans wanted them to invite everyone and their dog to come live with them once they had the bunker. That would have been the absolute worst. It was bad enough we had Apocilypse work hunters cluttering up the place. Best thing AU Michael ever did was kill most of them.

What bothered me more was how often the guys just fell back to pretending to be FBI. It was so lazy. I wish they had more variety in who they pretended to be.

I do agree it took some of the interest out of the show to have them just use the bunker for research (and just be FBI most of the time).

I loved the design of the bunker and all the different rooms were really cool, but yeah, it would have been fun to see other rooms utilized more than just once (like the man cave, the armory, or the shooting range.

I just really missed the trips to the different libraries, reading newspapers, you know, the analog stuff, lol!

(Full on agree about the AU hunters, though. I kept waiting for Sam and Dean to kick them out of their home!)

I can understand sticking with one alias (in their world), but see how that could get boring as a viewer. Another thing that changed was them having unlimited funds (I believe through Charlie). They still hustled, but it was mostly for fun and not because they were broke.

Basically, it's all the little things I suppose that contributed to the changing vibe of SPN, so much so that by the end, we ended up with ghosts in the daylight, Dean tapdancing, and the guys acting like idiots because apparently their skills were God-given rather than honed throughout their lives. (Sorry... S15 rant came out!)

And yet, I still watched because the early seasons established such a strong relationship between Sam and Dean that you couldn't help but see it through to the end.

#ask box #spn critical #spn is about sam and dean #it's what kept people coming back #even when the plots made no sense #or dragged on way too long

[ruinedsam]

What I hate about spn is that Dean & Co are constantly like "demon blood made Sam Evil and made him kickstart the apocalypse" when it is totally not what happened. Ignoring the ethics of excorcising demons with powers vs killing possessed people for a moment, fact is Sam ended up kickstarting the apocalypse because heaven and hell manipulated him into it, having planned the apocalypse for ages. Sam's powers were just the tool he used to kill Lilith, not the ultimate prerequisite for her death. The exact same thing would have happened if he had shot her with the Colt. But spn keeps going on and on about the demon blood, effectively gaslighting the audience and Sam into thinking demon blood is inherently evil and his choice to drink it was Wrong and Stupid, even though it was actually perfectly reasonable.

#like obviously addiction isn't great #but sam's addiction isn't the reason he killed lillith it's because everyone told him that would prevent the apocalypse #it's almost like... addiction is not actually evil #spn critical #bittersamgirl #mine

[normalcoresam]

Trying to watch later season supernatural, and why is the editing SO bad

#spn critical #spn #supernatural #spn liveblog