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nymph1e · 3 years

Note

Okay fuck it, I gotta give in, I gotta watch through Supernatural. AFAIK, it's all on Netflix; at least I saw it on there in passing. Going into this, is there anything I should be aware of? Are there any episodes I should skip, any seasons? Should I start from season 4? I know the basic plot and concept, and I know it's very monster-of-the-week. But aside from me highkey shipping Destiel already, that's all.

Well my first piece of advice would be

but uh, let’s fucking ~GO~

If you’re actually jumping into this hellhole (why why why) don’t start at season 4. It’s tempting, but seasons 1-3 are some of the best shit in the whole show, also having context for Sam and Dean’s characters, and their relationship with the supernatural up to season 4 really highlights how fucking wild the introduction of angels is in the show. it’s basically a complete paradigm shift.

I would recommend you watch seasons 1-5 basically as is, though if you’re in a rush, season three is kinda skippable as long as you read a general synopsis. This is the original arc of the show and it shows. A friend of mine, @sammwinchestersdimples has said she’d have been fine if the show had ended there, and I can totally see her point. After season five things start to get... uhhhhh... not as good. THAT BEING SAID some really amazing seasons come later, and you’d get nowhere NEAR the Full Destiel Experience without them. What REALLY sucks is that all the seasons have good moments in them, so even if the seasons are generally bad, they’ll have episodes of GOLD. But fuck it, here’s a season-by-season breakdown.

Season 6 - This is the first... “eh” season. There’s a lot of character choices made in this one that I don’t like. The plot also doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with itself and it has no real main villain... or I guess it has a twist villain? This is also the season where they start chucking in the typical “no homos” you get when a show is queerbaiting, so they can point to the no homo bits and claim the queers are delusional.

Season 7 - The absolute WORST season, imo, is season 7, and it features Cas the least out of all the post season 4 seasons. You can tell the writers genuinely tried to write Cas off here. Not to mention the main plot is completely stupid. HOWEVER this is the season where we get golden things like Cas showing up to Dean’s prayer naked and covered in bees, and the episode where Charlie (best girl) is introduced and Dean subsequently has to flirt with a dude because she, a lesbian, cannot. (Wow so straight, Dean)

Episodes Not To Skip:

6x03 - A good Cas/plot episode (spot the famous destiel quote)

6x04 - A good all-round episode, also Jackles directed it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6x09 - This is one of the Batshit Episodes. Definitely watch.

6x10 - On the one hand, Cas episode. On the other, no homo, megstiel episode. Your choice.

6x11 - Good episode.

6x15 - THE ULTIMATE META EPISODE. Sam and Dean are teleported into Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles’ lives on the set of Supernatural and it is so batshit.

6x17 - Jolly good episode, and nice destiel content.

6x18 - Time travel episode, which is always fun.

6x19 - “Baby in a trenchcoat.” ‘Nough said.

6x20 - The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode. It is infamous in the fandom, and for good reason. It’s not just a good destiel episode, but one of the best episodes in the series. With banging lines like “Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.” and “For a brief moment, I was me again.”

6x21 & 6x22 - The last two episodes are kind of must-watches after TMWWBK, trust me.

Episodes Not To Skip:

7x01 & 7x02 - follows on from s6 final. You don’t wanna skip.

7x05 - Good general episode

7x06 - Again, good general episode. Sets ups plot for the season.

7x08 - Ugh. So the A plot for this episodes invoves Becky, the insane, stalker, fandom-insert character, roofie Sam into marrying her (and it’s heavily implied they have sex - and it’s treated as a joke despite being LITERAL RAPE). BUT this is the episode where Garth is introduced and Garth is fucking amazing. So. IDEK.

7x10 & 7x11 - Plot important.

7x12 - Time travel episode! See if you can catch the bi!dean moment ;)

7x17 - Cas is back! Or is he???

7x18 - GARTH EPISODE

7x20 - CHARLIE!!!! WATCH THIS EPISODE!!!!

7x21 - Cas episode. It’s... interesting.

7x22 - The tagline for this episode is “Sam and Dean seek out an Alpha” 😭. It’s a Cas episode.

7x23 - If Cas weren’t in this episode I’d say skip it.

Season 8 - A fantastic season. If The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode, season 8 is the destiel season. When you watch this, DM me so I can RANT about all the amazing destiel this season. It’s also, again, a great season in general I remember watching it as it was airing it was soooo good. You have the arrival of the Bunker, you have Kevin and Charlie being awesome, some nice sprinkles of batshit episodes, BEST BOY BENNY rocks up in all his glory. Fucking epic season. Only downside it Sam’s character takes a bit of a dive. I’d recommend you watch through all of this season.

Episodes To AVOID:

7x13 - I literally pretend this stupid fucking episode doesn’t exist. Basically Dean impregnates a woman with Super Pregnancy and she has a daughter who becomes an adult within hours and then dies. The end. Everyone hated it. Man fuck this episode. Of course it was written by Buckleming.

Season 9 - Sadly, after how amazing season 8 was, and how spectactularly season 9 was set up, this season is a disappointment. It’s an ok season. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just a bit all over the place.

I was going to give you the normal episode list to not skip, but looking through, most episodes this season should be watched for one reason or another. Either they’re Cas heavy, they do some interesting character building, or they feature one of the awesome side characters like Charlie or Jody.

This season is probably the height of the war in the writers’ room about destiel. Some writers want to no homo the whole thing and back way off, while other writers want to lean into it hard. So in the same season where SPOILER Cas loses his virginity to a random reaper woman and Dean kicks Cas out of the bunker to fend for himself, you also have Cas’ fatal flaw used as propaganda against him by Metatron being that he’s "in love” with humanity Dean. /SPOILER Whatever you do DON’T SKIP THE FINAL FEW EPISODES. TRUST ME.

Season 10 - Haha oh dear. This season is likely the biggest for wasted potential. You saw the end of season 9, right? You go “HOLY SHIT YES LET’S DO THIS” and then they do... season 10. They really became experts at setting up an awesome season only to fuck it up in delivery, right? Again, not a bad season, per se.

Episodes To AVOID:

9x05 - In which Dean wants to fuck a dog. I am not joking. I wish I were. Basically a spell-gone-wrong makes Dean doglike. it’s weird. it’s batshit. Not the good kind.

Season 11 - Season 11 is a pretty good season! They tried to give Dean a female love interest but Jackles said ✨No✨ and played Dean as brainwashed and uncomfortable the whole time and I love him for it. Of special note this season is the episode Baby (11x04), which is my favourite episode in the series! It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, it’s weirdly shot. I love it! We also get casifer this season which is awesome! Some episodes are skippable, but they’re generally good episodes.

Episodes NOT to Skip (ignore the 10 year special):

10x01 & 10x02 - Great episodes, Dean in this is *chefs kiss*.

10x04 - *sighs* Fan Fiction. A 200th episode that is simultaneously a love letter to fans and laughing in fans’ faces. I’ve never liked this episode for the second-hand embarressment of it all, but you should watch it and see if you like it.

10x06 - Pretty good episode.

10x07 - Jody AND Donna! Fantastic episode!

10x08 - Dadstiel rears his ugly head. I fucking love how Cas adopts two (2) kids over the course of the series and in both cases Dean eventually goes “ah fuck, I guess I gotta co-parent this thing”. Also we get some KILLER destiel this episode. hey go on a DATE and Cas tells Dean he’s a good person ^_^

10x09 - Good episode. Much destiel.

10x10 - Charlie episode!

10x11 - Teen!Dean! Need I say more?

OK so I just had a look, and you really just need to watch every episode from this point in the season on. Enjoy!

Season 12 - Another example of a TERRRIBLE season, is season 12. Season 12 is also one of the most destiel-heavy seasons in the show. You see the issue? Like, it’s got a stupid plot that makes no sense and has no fucking cohesion, but you also FINALLY have the writers going “fuck it” and all in on the destiel. After this point Dean never has another non-Cas love interest and vice versa, they stop giving us whiplash from baiting and no-homoing. IF the conspiracy theory is true, and the end of the show is shit because of executive meddling, this season is the one where the writers decided they were gonna push for destiel endgame.

I gotta tell you the truth, I skipped this season in my rewatch, so all of my memories are from years ago when it first came out. This seson was the last that I watched live (for a reason). Should you skip it? No. But I’m not well informed enough about this season that I can point out what episodes you should or should not watch.

Season 13 - Congratulations! You’ve reached the point where the show’s gotten consistently good again! (just in time for most of the audience to have already left lol). We start off with SPOILERS Dean mourning Cas like he’s lost the will to fucking live. I’m talking complete despondence, praying for Cas to come back, lashing out in anger at everything, one of the darkest points we’ve ever seen him at on the show, then pulling a 180 and being super happy the second Cas comes back. /SPOILERS They also introduce Jack, who is the SECOND child Cas decides to adopt and Dean ends up co-parenting (Sam too). In fact, Jack is explicity Sam, Cas, and Dean’s kid.

Season 14 - Another good one. My only issue is where they decided to take the plot at the end of the season. I’d recommend watching it all, regardless.

Season 15 - And so we’ve come to the end of the line. This season was... well it was actually pretty good. It started off with what we hellers lovingly refer to as the “divorce arc” where Cas and Dean have a big blow up, and Cas leaves, but that ends with Dean praying on his knees for forgiveness and a nice hug. Honestly this season you can cut the tension between the two of them like a knife, and you can tell Misha and Jensen were doing it deliberately.

I’d say watch up until 15x18, then you decide what to do with the last two episodes. If you want you can watch them to understand just why people put their conspiracy theory hats on, or you can send me another ask and I’ll rec you some post 15x18 finale fics! There’s one fic that’s a replacement for 15x20 written in script format that is particularly good.

Anyway that’s it. It’s kind of left me a little sad, to break down the show in this way. Especially coming up to season 15 nd remembering all the wasted potential. Honestly if you do decide to watch the show, good luck. I hope you enjoy it. I’m also glad you never had to be put through the bullshit false hope that came about after 15x18.

#supernatural #destiel #deancas #spn

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incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Time for a rant

And some hard fucking truths about this fandom. And shipping culture. And related LGBT issues.

Edit for reblog: Since everybody’s trying to be highkey mad about everything right now, if the cut didn’t warn you, or the title, that this is going to be an unpopular AF opinion you should read all of before jumping to any conclusions, let this edit notice be that. But this post includes a bunch of shit. History I more recently and more fully talked about. The LGBT men I know that won’t touch this fandom with a ten foot pole because of shipping dialogue. And the accidental two season canon Destiel RP troll that we finally snapped and voiced beyond the meta wall from PURE EXHAUSTION.

(related posts in reference: (x) (x) (x) )

we know season great we know season 9 and its potential we know season 10 -- and most of us know its cut scenes humanity, being human, colette, the altar of winchester, the secret admirer, the boyfriends that strapped into the abaddon/colette parallels, all of it we know carver himself wrote the s10 finale and got it to film and then it got cut we know s9 he gave misha a note to play as jilted lovers from the showrunner but then we ask why did this never make it well nobody in fandom was paying attention nobody paid attention to SPN struggling the first seasons nobody paid attention to gamble's era almost getting nuked they all swore up and down this outdated americana show was about to have a queer pairing go canon because, yes, at that point *reads crumbled note* wallpaper

In fact that last one, to this date, no much how much legitimate structural meta or even deadass text current meta fandom breaks down, whether they just study the microcosm of Destiel or the macrocosm of the text with Destiel as a piece of it, can not escape the claims of *reads note again* wallpaper and T-shirts.

one year into Carver who was pulling the show out of the cancellation trashcan and vying for it to continue now that it was on netflix a DUMBASS EXEC wandered into twitter and opted to talk to fans

the goddamn network CEOship had just rotated even

”Well I blame” [disembodied force outside of our own]

no honestly I blame (parts of) pre S9 meta fandom, and I say that as a meta author they had been convincing people of intent for years When these showrunners and even rotating network execs were thrashing for life Like literally even the heads of the CW were changing not even just SPN but some fucking how the “sages” of that era didn’t have any gat damn insight onto how that might influence future engagements So out of the blue a newish network crew gets BLINDSIDED by accusations of queerbait and giant danger articles that are huge PR bombs and it turns into protect the product mode which turned into the new S10 press releases with the spontaneous sexuality field on the characters and half the filmed content ending up on the floor the short end of it is fandom fucked up hard Carver was fighting for them But in result he got a corporate shut down on a product he had ironically exploded globally too well that was earning too much profit too quickly to catch that kind of bad PR Chad Kennedy was a fateful fucking day Ever since then showrunners have had to pitch the idea at corporate when it was a nonissue before And prove why it's a valid move with test groups and marketing You can say "prove it" I really don't have to in this rant, I really do not give a SHIT if you believe me, I don’t CARE if you want to reject what is otherwise logic because I’m not about to throw anybody under a bus I really like not getting people in trouble, but this alone is a glint in the fucking RADAR of how I'm going off.

hell ask yourself why we went from Robbie calling Destiel canon to being eviscerated by queerbait claims because it didn’t fulfill what a specific audience wanted or expected, to deleting his post, to only annual actors free of their contracts daring to talk about Destiel, to corporate shutdowns where it’s crickets until Emily’s return where she’s started YOLO posting about it -- but why, why, why did we go from actual support and discussion to silence that you still rage about

Without the season nine kennedy explosion I'm pretty sure we would have had inarguable destiel canon in season 10 like late s10 Carver passed his torch to Dabb mid S11 where they kept stringing it out and ramping it up within restrictions which is why Dabb runs a very weird fucking line Dabb knows he has no promise of getting it as far as his forebearer wanted or even had written AND FILMED but he will hedge out as many lines, esp with the hand of Berens that Carver originally passed the directorial note with, as he can Wayward was a huge factor in that and tbh my hope died when Wayward died that was a HUGE weight in the network Berens was pulling

I'm at a point where i've conceded to our jane austen novel but want to see how far they take that to completion, though in reality that completion was 13.5/6 that's when I went from like, I passively enjoy and accept this content to screaming into the dumpster it's not the landmark people wanted but story structure wise within how SPN handles it's the sufficient one Recalling Dean's implicative hookups since like season six I mentioned on one hand The fact that they went full circle and bookended it in direct script mirror to Lisa after the S13 lead in would be amply sufficient to het drama and I refuse to enable hets running around the goalpost on queer people I would love better open blunt representation but I also recognize the genre of the show It's something Dean and I struggle with our server actually DeanCas have been canon for a season and a half here but maintaining that without taking a distracting romantic genre tilt or whatever is its own form of challenge We write established relationship openly, without bars, to the point we DMed each other for months like WHEN WILL THEY CATCH ON WTF but the problem, ironically, is that it's so parallel to the show nobody caught on

which really, though it didn't start as a conscious experiment, and was natural tells me everything I need to know even wiping what I knew on production and itk ends even if I just had that it says e v e r y t h i n g I have literally watched people laugh track completely serious content, because it's gay ergo it's funny LGBT people. Shippers.

I wrote subtle lines. They got ignored. I wrote blunt lines. They flew past heads. I wrote lines designed to be overt to the point of painful. They got laughed off. Het culture is a hell of a drug. Both in this RP and in how we interpret romances like DeanCas, even LGBT people and shippers, because people are expecting performative results and statements where either for the former they don't fit the show or genre or for the latter, there's some sort of restriction or imposition but there's authors writing their gay little hearts out and tearing their hair out after.

I've been the author tearing my hair out until I wrote a Cas, explicitly, in a moment, to be as blunt and straightforward and unmistakable as I could, to the point I felt I was bending the character to even make it happen, and debated my options for like ten minutes before doing it, just to free myself of this purgatory. And STILL got a wash of questions wanting me to *confirm* the content they just saw instead of going, gee, that’s PROBABLY WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

Dabb is fighting the good gay fight and being woefully under respected for it, with Berens as his copilot, carrying a torch given to him by Carver, but people are too wrapped up in a mix of prior bitterness, performative culture, personal demands and shipping culture to see the forest for the trees, because he's deadass just writing an established fucking relationship but people would rather yell either queerbait or destroying the relationship. PR deadass pitched Absence like a het breakup drama and nobody blinked, just yelled how mean it was

Am I hinging my hopes on hammer-on-head-overt-canon-kissing-scene-DeanCas for the final season, no. Would I be surprised if it happened, knowing the execs? No, beyond breaking past corporate walls fandom dropped like a curtain in S9

But considering how "fuck performative culture" Berens is, as a gay man, fangirls absolutely should not fucking expect that either in even the most wild "the chains are broken, burn it all" method

Every queer man I know ships Destiel. Simultaneously, every queer man I know fucking loathes the sum of shipping culture with a vengeance.

Because it's grossly out of touch with MLM and is mostly WLW people trying to speak for what they think MLM should be when we already pretty much have the MLM right there.

YOU WANNA KNOW HOW THE ACTUAL QUEER MEN I KNOW SEE HOW THIS FANDOM HANDLES DESTIEL DESPITE BEING AVID SHIPPERS WHO SEE IT AS CANON ALREADY AND GET SCREAMED DOWN?

And since everyone likes to imagine the straight male audience as some borg, have a straight male friend exploding when someone called a fandom speakpiece a trainwreck. Bless his heart for not getting what queer or bi really mean situationally but his heart’s in the right place

I’m tired. Tired of trying to illustrate this to an audience I realized I have never once in my life been straight-coded enough to incorporate myself to much less understand the lensing of. Tired of watching queer men that I know who love this shit hide away in the recesses of DMs to hide from conversations lest they be accused of being homophobes or whatever by people refusing to read context, and/or just be smacked down by actual homophobes or just deadass rival shippers that refuse to see anybody be happy with something they don’t like in something that was never realistically a rivalry to begin with, because rivalry implies relative equality-ish and while all ships are equal in fanon, they aren’t necessarily in canon, and despite the thrashing and baying of antis this isn’t and will never just be a “fanon ship.”

Unpopular opinion but the biggest enemy to LGBT people isn't hets, it's the LGBT community, because we're too busy invalidating own own content and creators to make a truly unified front against het culture (or in this case, the network), and waving a flag with a lot of letters doesn't do anything to fix that. Yelling online into tumblr doesn’t fix that. @’ing creatives who have no power in this beyond the option to drop any attempt at queer resonant content cold turkey for you all to yell at them about THAT too doesn’t fix it.

No, yes, DeanCas are perfectly valid as Thebian warriors where one is clearly ace spectrum and the other is bisexualish if repressed as long as they are clearly enamored with and engaged with each other; no, nobody needs to fulfill anybody's migrating quota list when every romantic checkbox has been hit already that would be respected if they're het; would coming out statements in this sort of complicated relationship be great, sure, but they aren't in the kind of show that even addresses that and there's no way to make them even perform as the isolationists that they are without breaking or damaging the characters, not in the public eye, not in a show that hasn't shown a single sexual dean encounter for six-plus seasons for any other reason than to highlight a major traumatic problem in his life.

No, I wasn’t “hiding my gays.” My gays just didn’t have their bedroom times put on blast while they even openly made comments about the nature of their relationship everybody flagged down because they weren’t making out in front of everyone, even if that hand *did* drag a shoulder too long, even if Dean *Did* inexplicably drag a naked flatlining human Cas into the FUCKING med bay out of the Dean Cave at like 6 AM in the morning. Yes, your dedication to talking down content is that fucking loud even if you don’t realize it.

SPN is never going to be a show where the characters distinctly identify "I'm a nonbinary demiman ace-spectrum demisexual" and "i'm an aromantic bisexual with a female inclination", it's just not, stop trying to make it happen, it isn't gonna happen, realistically they are not the kind of people to engage gender politics, they're just going to be themselves. And it's queer, and it's beautiful. Fandom needs to stop moving goalposts because it's becoming more and more transparent. They just need to __. Go to dinner, check, have lingering touches walking past each other, check, admit love for one or the other, check, watches the goalpost run off into the horizon Kiss, you mean kiss, you want them to kiss, but Dean hasn't had that in how many years and what was the framing of the last moment of that.

SPN isn't about romance. Antis are right in that. But romance exists in SPN and one needs to mind the framework of it to not tilt the entire central focus of a genre show. One can have romance without being about romance, but people need to be conscious of what that means before they advocate about it. When Ruby or Anna were around they were dangerously close to becoming "about romance" which is why there was such a goddamn fit because these women were clearly tailor crafted to be plugged into a light/dark parallel in the back of the Impala

They haven't had a kissing-based romance in SPN for eight years. Ten if you cut past Lisa as a literal prop.

And if we wanna demand creator confirmation before we consider ace-y romances valid we'll talk about the biromantic commentary of S8 or the jilted lovers of S9 or the confirmed parallels of S10 or any of the overt shit after that, which got hit by marketing walls. We had that. They got yelled at for queerbait. Because it didn't hit people's quota. So we yet again hit a wall. Shipping fandom exhausts me. And I say that as a DeanCas shipper

I am literally watching people run their own goalposts around all the goddamn time Cas is so much more than becoming background commentary in the back of the impala like ruby and anna were geared to be He's his own goddamn individual, currently all but free of the wants and lusts of man from food to sleep to drink to urination to sex to PBJ, but deeply enamored -- per actual citation on the S8 DVD -- with humanity by proxy of a man he's given everything for Dean is a complicated individual who is growingly aware of his tug and pull with Cas on all emotional spectrums but has never once cheapened him to just being a sexual tool, reasons of which we can headcanon away, but he's never turned Cas into one of his bad coping mechanisms like Porn Star or Amazon or Deanmon's Fling And those, plus one waitress and a vague strip club incident in grief he came home from, sum up his post-lisa excursions, from a man who used to lay a different woman every episode in early seasons WelCoME to mlm cuLTURE In the actual L for love, not lust because kinda like jensen's headcanon of prostitute Dean there's even a chapter of feeling tossed away that's not what it's a b o u t and never was so performative DeanCas enrages me genuinely And if people have a genuine kink okay I guess but like, admit that's what it is. Otherwise assess the actual state and stasis of the characters in play and the cultural/gender issues involved, because it's soooo often either WLW or straight girls looking at MLM and deciding what they think it should be and it m i s s e s t h e m a r k b y a a m i l e and then the gay dudes hide in nooks or get besgieged by fangirls or are a Ben and avoid fandom entirely best Deans I've ever written with were with gay dudes tbh Kemi got the art of it enough to pre-write some scenes before they ever aired but there's elements that just vanish into the aether with either queer women or straight dudes. Different parts disappear Never had a straight girl write a Dean, don't intend to ever try wE nEed RepResEntAtiOn [sweeps hand at the show] if people stop running their goalposts around to the calls of straight girls, homophobes, and shipping culture it's right there. Is it monumental and groundbreaking, no, but SPN started as an outdated callback piece to begin with and has vaulted into the almost-current, so let's check ourselves in what we expect out of it. It's not gonna be a banner. But it's content actual queer men AVIDLY invest themselves in only to be told it's not enough/whatever in a world where there is dangerously low bi male representation, most is gay male, and most of that is hugely problematic stereotype easily replaced by a rainbow lamp wearing a boa and a sticky note pointing people towards plot. And in generous cases, are like Malec, which are a mix of creepy and stereotype. Yes let's nevermind the ancient warlock drawing the 18 year old dude into the allure of his thick eyeliner and glimmer and spandex pants, nothing to see here folks. but somehow we've reached a point as a culture that the above is considered better than "ageless deity becomes enamored with humanity through bond with one man, falling into him regardless of gender, surrendering all it knows to become like that man and protect that man, and becoming like unto a man, and learning the ways of man, through all classic romantic tropes known to man, and even classic endings and bookends of all romances given to man, only to settle in to a stable relationship baseline with a man, after sharing courtship gifts with a man" just because somebody, some fucking where, in a mix of bitterness, homophobia, and goalpost moving decided "public kiss or it doesn't count" even if we're left to wonder how that timeless thing knew what was under his pillow he kept safe that he came into his room and played him to get after a classic romantic gift.

Stop. It.

Yall may be wanting to victim pose because somebody else convinced you that you were a victim here but I’m a middle aged person willing to view history and accept basic FUCKING responsibility.

Because there’s a distinct fucking difference between “victim blaming” and “have some perspective and some basic adult responsibility in the unfolding of history as it happened rather than reframing it post-event because somebody else convinced you that’s what happened”.

The only people anyone is victims of in this fandom is people they took the word of as gospel without them having any sort of actual developmental insight at the time.

You wanna play victim?

Take it up with them.

As a modern meta author that primarily deals with actual legend and theology mytharc with a side of DeanCas structure I STILL run in to walls from antis erected by the people before me that did, indeed, use the methods they whip up as excuses, so if you’re gonna victim pose, I’m just as much of a victim of those people as you are, difference is I wasn’t enough of a follower to believe them when they preached “performative queer canon gospel to meet fangirl hetnorm performative demands of MLM we mainstreamed into our basic expectations because somebody told us to” at the time or now or ever.

In fact, here’s the conversation that LED INTO THIS RANT.

CastielToday at 12:27 AM Old SPN has its values in a form of nostalgia or genre-searching it had a sort of drifter grifter americana vibe the later seasons lost

GarthToday at 12:27 AM Ah, early 2000's

CastielToday at 12:28 AM Well it's more than just year it was definitely a genre piece back then

GarthToday at 12:28 AM No, I know, but shows that span a long time you can track in it where you can tell writers styles started clashing in a way

CastielToday at 12:28 AM and that genre was pretty much dead at that point so even when it was new, it induced nostalgia "This is familiar I miss this where did this go" but in being so oldschool as it aged forward it aged worse and worse against the modern and Misha was the first bolt that really sparked a dynamic shift it was a breath of fresh air that carried it through kripke's plan and almost doubled its respective viewership in scale but still kept the old spirit Gamble desperately tried to capture that spirit but did not understand the actual essence of that spirit and budget restrictions didn't help due to twitter buzz she thought that spirit was "just duh brudders" which is dangerously reductionist

GarthToday at 12:30 AM Hey, Misha saved it in more then one way.

CastielToday at 12:30 AM the brothers were ironic vehicles for that spirit that gave it faces but it was a weird form of american dream that america hadn't realized its dream had warped into 50 years ago the american dream was a 3/2 bed bath and business degree

StarfiraToday at 12:31 AM I don't get how Gamble thought Misha's Cas was expendable. She just couldn't get her mindset out of s1-3 mentality I guess.

CastielToday at 12:31 AM but as that became labored with culture and debt the american dream drifted into freedom, exploration and the road with some sense of familiarity in classics, be it cars or music

GarthToday at 12:31 AM Funny, I can watch some episodes and go "huh... well... it gets better" and that says a lot that I view Se1-3 like that

CastielToday at 12:32 AM Once security was no longer a security, and people became anchored by their illusions of security into desperate survival to maintain that illusion of security, the idea of roadster americana was the new american dream

GarthToday at 12:32 AM Hmmm good point

Aryn Prime #TokenStraight😘Today at 12:32 AM I just looked at spn Facebook comments and geeeezzz

GarthToday at 12:33 AM I keep having to remind myself about a few details outside of SPN because being able to just wait for Netflix to get a new season then rewatch it all from the beginning has made me have a different view then others.

CastielToday at 12:33 AM So especially to the older generation older SPN has a strong nostalgic value you were lik six when it aired so that era is gone to you

GarthToday at 12:34 AM Yeah, 1996 Nov is me

Aryn Prime #TokenStraight😘Today at 12:34 AM One dude on Facebook said he resents that the actors have kids since he heard that part of the reason that it's ending is because J2M want more time with their families Wtf

CastielToday at 12:34 AM Whereas when it first aired

GarthToday at 12:34 AM I first watched when I was 14

CastielToday at 12:34 AM it was reflecting an age lost

GarthToday at 12:34 AM Aryn, wtf?

CastielToday at 12:34 AM to people desperately trying to find it but in reflecting old times it aged very poorly Gamble still didn't understand what made the appeal so regressed it to brothers without that true americana vibe while culling Cas which was a disaster

GarthToday at 12:35 AM See, it's like the same thing on how I can enjoy some older shows while understanding that it no longer works anymore. Older shows don't age well normally. And yeah, Se7 hahahahahahahhahahahahaha man once I stepped back and looked at the details of season 7 during the third rewatch I was like "hmm..... yeah. this sucks."

StarfiraToday at 12:36 AM I graduated high school in 2000 so those of you were kids when you watched SPN make me feel old. LOL

GarthToday at 12:36 AM lmao

CastielToday at 12:37 AM MOOD STAR MOOD

StarfiraToday at 12:37 AM AT LEAST I'M NOT ALONE WITH THESE YOUNG WHIPPER SNAPPERS

CastielToday at 12:37 AM You were probably in the generation that if you had tuned in when it was fresh you would have been like OH I REMEMBER THIS

GarthToday at 12:37 AM LMAO

CastielToday at 12:37 AM I MISS THIS it's not by fluke that Dean's theme song is literally titled Americana

GarthToday at 12:38 AM Ah yes.... the theme song....

CastielToday at 12:38 AM It was a whole beautiful craft

StarfiraToday at 12:38 AM I'm actually in between Dean and Sam's ages

CastielToday at 12:38 AM But it had to get with the times and Gamble took it in the worst direction possible

StarfiraToday at 12:39 AM I was born in 82

CastielToday at 12:39 AM Carver... people have their issues with carver but IMO he recovered the show as well as he could with the plate he was handed in the times he was There were still problems sure

GarthToday at 12:39 AM It's gone through some ups and downs, yep.

CastielToday at 12:39 AM but to boot out of Gamble era into the modern world was no small task The WAY HE HANDLED THE PR he basically was like THAT SHIT WAS A HOT MESS AND I FLUSHED IT but eloquent it was some shit like REWATCHING THE LAST FEW YEARS I REALIZED THAT OUR LORE HAS BECOME A BIT DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW SO I DECIDED TO REVISIT MORE FAMILIAR ELEMENTS

GarthToday at 12:40 AM When the people working on the show go "shit, I forgot to make notes"

CastielToday at 12:40 AM It's not that Carver didn't make notes

StarfiraToday at 12:40 AM Oh man were so ecstatic when Carver was announced as a showrunner. Ultimately, he let me down in s9 and s10 but s8? Season 8 will always have a special place in my heart.

CastielToday at 12:41 AM it's that there was no kind way to voice that Gamble was a disaster He had a three year plan and for reasons™ got even derailed in that plan and half of it ended up in the cut footage Destiel fandom do not like hearing my take about it I'm a shipper but I recognize

StarfiraToday at 12:41 AM Is season 8 perfect? Nope, but I don't think it's easy to describe what breath of fresh air it was after the shit show of season 7 to those who weren't there when it was airing live and binged through it

CastielToday at 12:41 AM yall fucked up b a d nobody will ever own responsibility for it but carver's intent is clear as day on the creatives wall and season 9/10 became a fustercluck as a result I want everybody in this room to think about this from a creatives angle, first carver then corporate Carver said when he joined he had a three year plan with final notes on his desk from the second he walked in the door again he entered in season eight We know what happened seasons eight, nine, ten on screen

GarthToday at 12:43 AM Yeah, Star, I don't have as many problems with the seasons as others do because hello Netflix, but I can see where the issues are after some explaining and some insight into the PR stuff that happened with the fandom points at Min and others like her

CastielToday at 12:43 AM we know season great we know season 9 and its potential we know season 10 -- and most of us know its cut scenes humanity, being human, colette, the altar of winchester, the secret admirer, the boyfriends that strapped into the abaddon/colette parallels, all of it we know carver himself wrote the s10 finale and got it to film and then it got cut we know s9 he gave misha a note to play as jilted lovers from the showrunner but then we ask why did this never make it well nobody in fandom was paying attention nobody paid attention to SPN struggling the first seasons nobody paid attention to gamble's era almost getting nuked they all swore up and down this outdated americana show was about to have a queer pairing go canon because, yes, at that point reads crumbled note wallpaper

GarthToday at 12:46 AM Urgh, gotta go help with dinner prep. Mom doesn't like me being on Discord lately so I'm going to have to cut out now guys. Min, I'll catch up to your info drop afterwards lmao

since that still surprising some people too.

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sharkinlovewithadolphin · 5 years

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hello. you know that now in the fandom everybody are really trilled with their own ships (which is fine) for free! main characters ,,, the writers've just - to give 'something' to the fans- decided to make asahi/kisumi and ikuya/hiyori look like some suitable couples to make it kinda canon for the fans and stop them to ship their main characters ??

I don’t know how to quite answer this to be honest, so forgive me if this doesn’t make any sense, and do keep in mind this is mostly just opinions, but:

I disagree a lot. Like, the season 3 was a mess, but as far as ships’s concerned, it’s nothing but fanservice - so they weren’t trying to stop fans from shipping the main. They just had a bunch of new characters introduced in Starting Days (and also in season 3 as well) and I think they wanted too much out of it all.

They wanted to give so much time to everyone that it just pilled up and became messy af. Instead of prioritizing the main storyline, which has always been Haru’s storyline, they went ahead and wanted literally everyone to be main and it was hard to watch tbh. When you have a group of 5, it’s difficult to give screentime to everyone. In season 3 they tried to give screentime and lines to legit everyone, which is really not recommended to do, especially when you’ve done differently for so long up until there (s1, s2, even Starting Days all focused on Haru as first priority, Rin as second and then the rest of the two “main groups” - Nagisa, Makoto, Rei and Momo, Ai and Sousuke).

So point is, I feel like they had a lot of characters they wanted to give screentime to, but couldn’t do so individually because then there wouldn’t be enough time, so they paired them up in what made sense to them and then went with that.

Asahi and Kisumi had moments in Starting Days, so it’s not completely off to have them have a moment or two in s3 as well, since the moments in Starting Days they shared were very popular among fans at the time (not gonna lie, their individual energy pairs up quite well, whether you view them platonic or romantic). Do I think they should have had /that/ much screentime? Less screentime? Idk dude. I personally would prefer other characters’ bonds to be explored more than theirs, but I didn’t mind it much either, they were entertaining but not really a whole lot more than that.

Now for Ikuya and Hiyori. That whole charade and storyline was… yikes. It makes sense with Ikuya’s character to befriend someone as controlling as Hiyori but the massive focus Ikuya and Hiyori got, down to their moments and all was just.. yeah I do not want to go into that, but I highkey did not enjoy watching it at all. It also felt very badly written and very much copied from the previous seasons.

None of the two ships were ever shown in any was as “canon”, btw. So the accusation is even more off. I don’t think KyoAni will ever make any of the ships canon, especially not the same sex ones. And while that fact makes me a sad, of course, I’m also, in some really disturbing way, quite glad ‘cause the fandom would riot if so. Let’s say the dream came true and RH became canon, which would fit a lot to the storyline I might add, everyone else other than RH fans would get pissed, both the antis (obviously) and the “my ship deserved to be canon more than your ship”, so yeah. I think I would feel this too, if say MH or SR became canon, like I would hate it so much and it would give me quite the heartbreak, which would make it extremely difficult for me to support the fact that they just made history for my community (the LGBTQ+ community, rather than my RH fandom community). And if a minor ship I don’t mind became canon, I would feel happy of course, but at the same time in some weird way I would still be disappointed that they chose to fetch representation through background characters rather than the main. But yeah, I would prefer that at the same time, ‘cause then there would be much needed representation without the fandom going negatively apeshit over it.

It would be groundbreaking if Free! had a same sex couple, it would make history for an anime to do this, especially a sports anime, like with Yuri on Ice, but even more so with a show like Free! that’s run for ages and had a massive hype to it. But yeah I don’t think KyoAni has the guts to make that stand and do this. And I also don’t think the fandom is mature enough, either. Because if they made a main character canonly queer, it would create backslash from fans bc they disagree and if they made a background character canon it would backslash bc fans would feel it wouldn’t be “enough”, due to it feeling like less representation and all. I would rather see another anime do this, so there would be no hard feelings and so that there won’t be any illogical backslash from the fandom in any way.

KyoAni makes their ship hints but it’s for no other purpose than queerbait, and that’s sad yes, but it’s always been like this since the very beginning of Free!.

To end this, I think, or hope, season 3 was just one big filler season which introduced us to all the old and new characters in order to give them closure or to allow us to get to know them more and see where the child characters winded up as teens and adults, and so on. Basically the introduction step before moving on from there to the main (the main top 5, y’know)’s futures. I look forward to what KyoAni has in store for us, but I don’t have much hope for it either.

#asks #anon #opinions #free!#free! dive to the future

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awed-frog · 7 years

Text

The Season Finale/Bye, Boys

I know I'm late - I had to work all day yesterday and today, and when I first got those jobs I’d anticipated I'd be frustrated about missing the finale live, but, well - after last week's episode, I mostly wasn't interested at all. When I sat down tonight to watch it, I almost didn't want to. I was highkey convinced I wouldn't like it, and, yeah, I didn't. Not particularly. I've suspected for a while that Supernatural lost its grandeur and sense of tragedy years ago, and all that's left is a bunch of occasionally magnificent, but mostly unconnected, monster hunts - that they're grasping at straws to avoid going down paths that would actually make sense because they don't want to go there - and this finale confirmed all that with the subtlety of a badly driven tank.

(Really - I was hoping things would be different, but they're not. As much as this show held my hand and made me laugh and cry in difficult moments and distracted me when real life was plain unbearable, the magic is no longer there. I watched the finale with that same awful weight in your stomach you feel when faced with that one person you no longer love - when you look and look and you don't understand how you could ever love them in the first place, and then your eye catches something - they way their mouth curves into a smile, perhaps, or the once beloved lilt in their voice, and you realize that oh, that's how.

But still, it's over.)

So, what happens next?

The honest answer is, I don't know. I've been mostly off tumblr for a week, and while I missed chatting and talking with you guys, this self-imposed break really brought home just how my world has shrunk. I tend to be very intense in what I like, and over the last year, 90% of my free time has been Supernatural. Writing stories, writing metas, creating the odd graphic, reblogging other people's posts and ooohing and aaaawing at their creations and insight - that was great, but it also cut my mental landscape into a tiny little postcard. And this past week - I did things. I discovered new stuff, I read real books, I faffed around weird Wikipedia pages, I lost myself in other series, I planted beans and basil and edible flowers. And I liked it - a lot. So whatever I do next, I'll be on tumblr a lot less, because - I’m sorry - I’ve been fearing for a while that Supernatural simply wasn't worth this level of devotion, and this finale pretty much confirmed that. So - really - I’ll keep reblogging gifs and I’ll probably write the occasional headcanon and feel free to ask me things and come talk to me and everything else, but please know that I'm not that positive about this show anymore, so if you want rainbows and ponies, my blog's probably not the best place to get them. I'll definitely keep writing, and I hope I've got enough love left in me to finish my DCBB, but other than that - I think I'm done. It's likely I'll watch the show next year, but I'll certainly not anticipate new episodes and squeal at the screen and bleed my own blood all over it or anything. And maybe this will hurt at some point - God, I loved this show so goddamn much - but for now I'm just numb.

So, here goes - quite possibly, my last meta.

Cas: Yes, They Went There

This is what we’re all wondering, isn’t it? Is Cas really dead?

No, he isn't. If Misha was leaving the show, we'd know about it. Like, of course they'd keep it under wraps until the last episode, but it'd be out today - no reason it wouldn’t. Plus, from a narrative point of view, Cas' death doesn't make any sense. He just died after fucking up - again - and he never got to make his Big Choice between Heaven and *coughs* humanity, plus they're having so much fun jerking us around with that yeah so maybe he and Dean they're in love thing, why would they stop now? So, honestly, his 'death' was his only good moment during this season finale. Like, he obviously wasn't brainwashed brainwashed, so it didn't make any sense he wouldn't involve Sam and Dean in his overly simplistic scheme, plus he's been acting stupid and out of character the whole time he was on screen - and, I get Cas is hard to write, but come on. Renting a cabin under the name James Novak when he can hypnotize it out of some guy without leaving a paper trace? Reading books and taking online classes about childbirth? This from a guy who's not a guy at all and has instinctive knowledge of physics and whatever and knows perfectly well that thing inside Kelly isn't a human child, anyway, so he might as well take woodworking classes for all the good that would do him? Uh. Not to mention his random snooping into alternate dimensions he knew nothing about when he was supposed to be taking care of Kelly - if AU!Bobby had killed him, or if he'd fallen into a pit or whatever else, Kelly would have remained alone in that cabin basically waiting for Lucifer to find her. Honestly - why do they bother writing Cas at all if they can't get him right?

Destiel: Still Subtext

And more bad news: five seasons of queerbaiting - and counting. This season finale had to be the one with the least amount of UST or pining or any kind of fuckery between them since, I don’t know, ever? Sure, there were moments, and I could list them, but why should I? Look at Cas doing his own thing, and what does it matter if he was staring at the water (possibly thinking about that fish which started everything, and by everything I mean Cas’ love for humanity, and by humanity I mean Dean), and what does it matter if Dean, as usual, is the one fretting about Cas and worrying about Cas and being all undignified and unmanly? It's been years, and Dean was unusually chatty during the whole finale, so I'm sure some of us were like, ALERT ALERT THIS IS WHEN IT HAPPENS (not me, because I'm grumpy and disillusioned), and nope, not the time. Better luck next season, guys.

Honestly, at this point there are no good options.

Like, I’m sure there are already two hundred codas out there about the Nephilim resurrecting Cas and Dean kissing him out of sheer relief, but yeah - that’s not gonna happen. My bet is - if they’re being decent about things, Cas will be saved in some way and the eye fucking will start again, dragging on and on to some series finale which, no doubt about it, will indicate the two of them are actually sleeping together, because look at that painting in the background and the label on that beer - it’s obvious; and if they’re not being decent about things, our Cas is definitely dead and Sam and Dean will meet AU!Cas in their search for Mary and at that point things will get Weird, because Dean will be Grief-stricken and Unhappy, and Cas won’t know or love him at all, and then what? Again, at best the whole thing is definitely gone and buried and Supernatural will remain the main Wikipedia example for queerbaiting (but until that very last moment, we’ll speculate this is really about destiny and falling in love in every universe and whatever), and at worst we’ve got yet another cringeworthy dance between the two of them as Dean gets over AU!Cas just as AU!Cas falls for Dean, cue romance tropes, cue will they/won’t they, cue shoot me now.

Guys - I still believe there was something there. More: I believe it was subtextually indicated, for years, that Dean and Cas were in love, and this season kept giving us confirmation that subtext is a thing and that it matters (the latest hint to date is Dean’s I’m actually Sam’s parent speech), but the fact is, subtext is not enough. There are dozens of ways to bring a romance into text without resolving it so it stays ‘interesting’, and the fact they haven’t done it yet - we should stop excusing their behaviour. If Cas had been a woman, the possibility of a relationship would be confirmed by now. So, whatever.

Gold Star, Sammy!

For someone who's been pretty much a secondary character in his own story for the whole season, or, let's be mean, the whole show after S5, Sam suddenly got some unexpected attention, and was the only person to get a win out of this finale. His character development was mostly subtextual, but it was clearly leading somewhere, and this was exactly it. Sam's naturally ambitious and driven, and he's suppressed this aspect of his personality for years because freak and vessel of Lucifer and whatever else, but now, after years and years of penance and invisibility and praying to a God who didn't give a flying fuck about him, it looks like Sammy's all grown up. Yay. There he is, a leader of man, a consummate warrior, a witch. Not hiding, not underplaying his skills, not feeling guilty at all - and finally. Sam got to hug his mother and defeat all of his archenemies - the BMoL's gone, Toni's gone, Lucifer's gone, and Crowley's gone. And none of them need to weigh on his conscience, because, lookie here, Sam sort of forgave them all (except Lucifer, but, then again, he's not really dead, is he?). No, Sam got to reject the BMoL's pernicious influence on his pure, noble soul, he got to work with Toni, who'd cruelly taunted and tortured him, and he got to be nice to Crowley, which mostly didn't make any sense because Crowley and Sam always hated each other. And even the fact he lost Mary and Cas in the end - that doesn't affect his shiny character arc at all. Sam's been ready to lose Cas several times before now, and he's accepted it in a way Dean never has; and as for Mary - narratively, Sam got what he needed from her: a declaration of love and an admission of guilt - the confirmation that nothing was ever actually his fault. Now he can finally move on.

I have to say - despite the fact it was a fucking long time coming, this sudden bout of character development felt hurried to me. All that talk about leading others - when had Sam ever expressed an open interest in it? Until last season, he seemed warily determined to settle down with ‘someone who understands the life’ and be as normal as he could, and now out of the blue he’s King bloody Arthur? Like Crowley’s sudden meekness and suicidal schemes, Sam becoming the top pilot of the Rebellion was not out of character, exactly, but was rushed and badly written - this whole episode felt like someone had said, Okay, these characters need to get here, and there’s this chapter in the middle which explains how but lolz, who’s got time to write that? Let’s skip to the good parts. Rewrite, try again

Dean “I hate that I love you” Winchester

Dean is Sam’s parent - this has been my Dean tag for a while, and boy, they went to such lengths to finally confirm it textually it was very nearly out of character. Because, I mean, this is Dean, and as much as I appreciated that whole speech, that's so not who he is. I'm going to be generous and say he was under the effects of a lot of drugs, but still - this is the guy who never blurted out more than one tearful line in his entire life when under threat of imminent death, and speaking from the heart with such eloquence is not really his thing. Jensen pulled it off, but only just. But, whatever - nice to see some of the subtext they weave in this show is actually significant - and, full offense, now that it's textually confirmed Dean always felt like a parent to Sam, more than a brother, I hope that those who are convinced he actually wants to bend Sam over a couch and do “bad things” with him will finally take a cold shower (possibly with holy water) and step away from the whole thing.

Other than that moment, though, which, dreamworld or not, Dean really needed, this season was disastrous for him. His arc's been downwards as much as Sam's been upwards, and, as we predicted, Dean ended his year in a very low place. Both his parent figures are gone - Mary swallowed by an alternate dimension, Bobby who flat-out didn't recognize him - Cas spent weeks ignoring him and now he's dead, Crowley's also dead (and however much they tried to downplay their relationship in this finale, we know there was something there), and the world is ending - again - because Dean didn't need to wait for the birth to know in his heart Lucifer's kid's gonna be a threat to, like, everything.

So, uhm, I really don’t know how to feel about things. Dean tried to be more open this season, which mostly went badly for him, but he also fixed things with his family - look at him letting Sam step away into danger (and, I mean, we don’t need any more confirmation because text, but in that moment he was definitely coded as Sam’s parent) and focusing on helping his mom instead (anon - I know I still have to answer your question about why I think Dean’s perfectly happy fixing cars and baking pies for his family while Sam’s off to Congress, and that meta’s mostly written, but here you see it again - Dean, the feminine, blue-collar character, is content with staying at home while his masculine, Ivy League educated brother goes off to war). I guess this means the brodependency is definitely over? Too bad Dean will be too busy mourning Cas and saving the world to actually appreciate it.

(Then again, #NoHomo.)

Crowley: At Last, We Know

Crowley's arc has trasparently clear for a while, and it's mirrored Cas' so precisely the question of his death was becoming a when, and not an if. When we were speculating about his fate, I wrote somewhere that much would depend on the kind of story they were writing - if this is a coming of age thingy, then Crowley wouldn't have needed to die, because he's not a father figure (no matter how many times Dean’s called him Daddy); but if this is a tragedy, then the textbook solution was to have him die for the heroes. It's a The Last of the Mohicans ending: an überdramatic I know you'll never love me but I care so much about you I'll sacrifice myself all the same thing, and, look - what can I even say?

I'm upset because I really liked Crowley and there was so much we didn't know about him and Mark is outstanding and aaaaaargh. On the other hand, at least they did him the courtesy of a noble ending (Rowena, of course, being a silly woman, got a humiliating and prolonged off-screen death, because, yeah, who cares, and the same pattern was applied to Toni and Ketch) and he got to bow out on his own terms: for Dean, and with a self-inflicted wound.

Still, his death, like Eileen's, signals there's no believable happy ending in sight for our forlorn heroes. They'll probably stay alive long enough to kill the Nephilim and fall into the Apocalypse World of Doom™, and then they'll die*.

*Terms and conditions apply, because it would make sense if they died and it would make for a heartbreaking, tragic ending, but hey, the movie deal's still on the table so better leave everything unresolved and have them drive off into the sunset on their own.

Mary: No Means Yes

I know some people like Mary, and I do think she was a good character, but as a person, she was kind of awful. I won't go back to everything she did wrong all season, but I will point out that her only redemptive point is that she sucked as a mom because she was not a Traditional Woman, and that sort of made her interesting and we raved about their courage all season, right? How Mary could have been a 1950s housewife and instead look at her - much BAMF, such wow. And yet we now know that Mad Max woman I do what I want façade was just that - a façade. Because when Mary was brainwashed, where was the real part of herself? Her most cherished piece of soul? The writers left no doubt, no margin for error: back in the kitchen, preparing horribly unhealthy yet terribly American lunches for toddler Dean, cooing at baby Sammy, her flat spotless (where are Dean's toys?), her ironing almost done. This is, apparently, the person she wishes she could be - what every woman should aspire to be: a mom who's 100% dedicated to her kids - someone who hovers around the house in her nightgown, ethereal and effortlessly beautiful and probably shaved bald (legs and armpits and lady bits shaved and trimmed and waxed and moisturised and perfumed and pleasantly soft and babyish), humbly content with this family God has given her. And, by the way, when she gets back to reality, that's who she becomes - she shoots Ketch, who'd dared to sully her marital bed and hurt Dean, she sobs in Sam's shoulder, she anxiously looks after Kelly because women always bond over periods and pregnancy and mascara and stuff, she tearily reassures Kelly that yes, dying for your unborn son, even if that son is a demon and the scourge of the Earth, is the done thing and anyone would do the same; her final act - punching Lucifer in the face - is completely out of character for the smart, ruthless hunter we know she can be. Instead, it speaks of a mother’s love - a kind of adrenalinic - you hurt my baby boy, I’ll make you bleed sort of thing. This, of course, is supposed to speak in her favour, because give me an emotional woman over a rational one any day. Honestly, if I didn't find Mary so annoying I would welcome the moment when she'll meet the other Mary - the woman who let her boyfriend die rather than dooming the world. As it is, I’m finding it hard to be excited about anything S13 has to bring, though.

Kelly: Blessed Are You among Women

I know that Supernatural doesn’t have the best record with women, and this finale, even coming as it did on the legacy of Eileen’s death, did not disappoint: from Toni playing her mother card and then dying off-screen, to Rowena left a burned husk in a non-descript room, to Mrs Hess cowardly attempting to escape as her operatives kept fighting around her, both episodes were a testosterone festival of testicles and bad beer. Still, what they did to Kelly was very nearly unforgivable. To recap: they basically took a smart, modern, career-driven woman, had her raped by her actual lover (marital rape’s still not a crime in 49 countries, by the way, and it was completely legal in many Western countries until the 1990s), got her pregnant, and then turned her into a Stepford mother. Because, of course - what else could she do? Get an abortion? I know we’re all theoretically in favour of that, but who can really go through with it, the heartless monster? And as for killing yourself - it may be your life, your body and your decision, but it's also a sin, and a big no no. Just be grateful your demon baby still needs your internal organs to survive and shut up. So, well - they basically sucked away her every choice Kelly had until she was this bouncing pregnant ball who got no say over her own destiny and on top of that, her last few days were spent building Ikea furniture and painting a nursery for the literal Antichrist who'd claw his way through her stomach to be born. Honestly - I'd say I haven't seen such a demeaning and antifeminist storyline since the last encyclical letter - except I saw the exact same thing on The Magicians only three weeks ago, so apparently misogyny's back in fashion?

Then again, we already knew that. Just look at how people are voting.

(If you're interested, hedge witch Julia, raped by a god, manages to abort after a series of mishaps - like, the Planned Parenthood doctor who tries to help her is brutally murdered by a demon of some kind and Julia has to rob a bank and doom a friend to certain death in order to get another procedure because pregnant women are selfish bitches - only, what do you know, that part of her soul who could feel love and empathy is snipped right up along with her uborn child, so whooopsie. She'll only get her back if she forgives her rapist, and she does, because that's apparently our role as women in 2017 and fifty years of feminism taught us nothing.)

Bite-sized Rants

Toni being a mother - yeah, that didn't have anything to do with anything and that last scene of S11 was just proof of how little they plan ahead. I just read somewhere that this is the problem with modern television - that series will be automatically canceled or renewed no matter the storyline depending on how much money they make, and this means nothing makes sense anymore - stories that were supposed to last one season are artificially stretched to last forever because ratings, while things that were conceived as trilogies - we’ll never know how they end, because not enough people were watching. So, I mean - I am sort of pleased that I got there before they did and wrote a line one year ago about Dean eventually forgiving Toni because ‘a parent’s love - that something he understands’ - because, yeah, that's exactly the ploy Toni used on Dean and it worked, so, points, but at the same time - that whole BMoL thing was so wonky and stereotyped and Nazi-shaped and My God, really? The only character who barely made sense there was Ketch, but, unfortunately, that’s also the easiest character to write and the one who’s most commonly found on our screens: Trigger-happy Psychopath Charms Everyone with His Wit and Good Looks.

(Plus, Ketch was yet another piece of the Dean is Bi mosaic that went nowhere, so I’m not feeling very charitable right now.)

The other hunters - look, it's just not believable anymore. So apparently Sam and Dean know who everyone else is, people are okay following Sam anywhere even if he used to be the actual Antichrist or whatever and there are rumors about how he went to Hell and I don't know what else, and on top of that this Men of Letters thing is just something everybody knows about now? And yet Sam and Dean never contact these people, and more importantly, don't share their super secret Bunker full of weapons and lore with any of them? Not even Jody? Nice, guys. Real grand of you.

(Plus, what is this bullshit - why do Sam and Dean send everyone home after torching the BMoL’s HQ when they know perfectly well Lucifer and/or the Nephilim are about to destroy the actual world? Maybe ask for some back-up there?)

Cosmic consequences, shmosmic consequences. Dean killed Death, and so what? Cas killed Billie, and so what? There is no way to even argue the current mess has to do with the cosmic consequences Billie promised, because all of it is basically of their own doing: Mary walking away when she should have stayed, Sam trusting the BMoL even as they kept kidnapping him and threatening him and killing random people, Cas being his usual self-sacrificing self and Crowley thinking he knows better than anyone else (or, well, as this episode pointed out - they both “needing a win”) - there was no supernatural involved there. So...?

(Plus, this is yet another example of a big narrative thing of the Destiel variety going nowhere. Cas killing Billie for Dean, Cas nearly dying while confessing his love right, left and centre and then - out of nothing, here is the ‘divorced parents’ routine - Cas is decorating a nursery with a brainwashed Stockholm victim and Dean’s priority is to - who even knows?)

That reference to Romani people was almost worse than that bit about the Arab Spring. Please, for the love of God - your show is watched abroad. If you do use history or politics, maybe Google it first?

The BMoL have te power to create ‘mystical dampeners against magic’ and yet they absolutely needed to kidnap Mary to ensure the continuation of their evil schemes?

Sam and Dean can become virgins again but can’t mix themselves some old-fashioned explosive?

Mrs Hess had people studying the Winchesters for years and yet she doesn’t know which is which?

Dean finally got to fire his grenade launcher and we didn’t even see it clearly?

Handful of Disorganized but Well-meaning and Kind-Hearted American Mavericks Defeat Superpowerful European Organization Complete with Private Army Without Breaking a Sweat - Jesus, enough.

Claire was too busy to save the world? Where was she? Coachella?

Crowley looking at Dean when he called them beautiful, that fight between Ketch and Dean being heavily paralleled with Dean beating up Cas...when are they going to bring that stuff out of the subtext?

Cas being so easily seduced by Paradise - didn’t Dean reject those exact concepts back in S4, and didn’t Cas switch sides because of it? But I suppose he’s just, forgotten, because that’s what happens when you take online lamaze classes or something?

Honestly - I apologize for being so negative. There were some brilliant bits here and there, but as I said - on the whole, I’m just tired. Supernatural seems determined to tell a story by not actually telling it, and at this point I’m really tired of doing the job it for them. I’m fed up by how little Dean cared about Crowley (because, if nothing else, that was one complex and interesting relationship and a narrative dream they threw away out of fear it would awake old ‘Dean is Bi’ ghosts) and I’m fed up by how anticlimatic Dean’s reaction to Cas’ death was (we’ve seen more dramatic scenes over a nose bleed, but I guess these two episodes were so action packed they had no time to insert a random #NoHomo lady, so even a Merthur hug would have been way too much) and I’m fed up by the fact that Jesus Christ, they have such talented people working for them and why won’t they just let them?

Guys, I don’t even - I’m going to bed.

#spn meta #spn 12x22 #spn 12x23 #destiel #sam and dean #kelly kline #spn ending #i didn't like it #so read at your peril

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