#Charlie and Dean are the one thing in the whole show the writers did right

[shallowseeker]

okay so, yesterday I found your spn meta by chance and fell in love with them 'cause more than writing they're like images, like they really depict things and I just immediately understand what you mean instantly + I started to rewatch Steve Yockey's episodes 'cause I feel like I like his writing (lots of queer! lots of rom-com references! but it's all done so intellingently, I love it!) but ALSO sometimes it doesn't translate to me + I just saw you wrote about "Optimism"= I GOTTA ASK: what's your take on "Optimism"? I don't understand what the Zombie story and the Musca one should reveal about the characters. Visually, it looks like the Musca = Charlie, so Harper and the zombie are ??? I'm mad at myself 'cause I don't seem to get what the show is telling me so I'm hoping you can share what the show tells YOU and, vicariously, I can get it as well (lol). THANK YOU!

Hi! Hello!

Oh, really? That's so cool. I still have trouble thinking of myself as a "meta writer." I don't mean to be. I just like to ramble. But cool! It's probably mostly that we think alike and are sympatico in some key ways. :-) Always fun to find kindred spirits!

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O P T I M I S M

I have so many thoughts on Optimism. It's one of my fave episodes! I actually did a re-watch-slash-convo with some friends on Discord and just transcribed the very, very, very LOOONG bulk of it today!

I haven't written much on the Musca. After spending a lot of time of @scoobydoodean's blog, I've just about decided the Musca plot is actually a Sam's emotions-through line more than it is a true dark mirror. Even AU Charlie is cheeky about it:

AU CHARLIE (annoyed at Sam, about the Musca): Your nifty metaphor has holes.

Basically, Charlie is saying that mirrors aren't one-to-one, and that trying to force-fit them into being one-to-one can be super annoying sometimes.

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CHARLIE - Every two hundred years there is "bad egg". When a male fails to find a mate, he abandons his community and starts using peoples bodies to "nest". Binding them together with a viscous goo. And when the goo fits...

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The Musca/fly is at face-value:

A) A bodysnatcher plot: In that regard, it could be like all angels, demons, or anyone inhabiting a body. (Cas, Lucifer, Michael, Crowley, etc.) Ergo, it's a dark, uncharitable Cas mirror the way Dave Mathers outlaw wraith was in Tombstone. It could be saying that Cas "failed" among "his own people" and cruelly took up space in a human body. But that would be grossly oversimplifying the whole situation, saying that Cas "should have stayed with his people," which ofc doesn't work.

It, as Charlie says, "has a lot of holes." @ilarual has written a lot about the totalitarian structure of Heaven. And Sam himself wants Cas around. As far as metaphors go, it's a dud for Cas.

B) It's a failure to thrive plot: Because the Musca "failed" in The Real World with its Own People, perhaps failed to live up to The prescriptive Dream of Success (TM), now it's wreaking havoc on others.

Sam himself "failed out" of Harvard. He "choked." Kevin Train and Patience Turner are also Failed Gifted Students. Losers who didn't live up to their potential. This could even apply to Chuck, binding together his characters because he's a Loser with a capital L.

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ANYWAY, I feel like the Music plot is a "red herring" for a few reasons.

One: The main Harper plot is about breaking narratives, about not relying so much on books. And then Charlie says this:

CHARLIE: Goo. So, yeah. I'd say this is the right place. Now, I'm just trying to figure out what we are dealing with. Thus, books.

Aside: Later Cas says sarcastically in Ouroboros that Sam and Rowena, "Have many, many books."

So, there's this niggling indictment of trying to find too much truth in books...

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Two: Sam has a tendency to see something and, like, imprint on it. He tends to fall into "It's just like me!" instead of speaking frankly about the present situations and emotions.

*In American Nightmare, he sees Madga Peterson, an abused child* -> "She's just like me!"

*In Somewhere in Between Heaven and Hell, he sees someone lying about something completely unrelated to his current situation* ->"Omg, they're lying to them, like I'm lying to Dean! It's just like me!"

*In Lost & Found, he meets Jack Kline, who is Lucifer's son "OMG, he's just like me!" -> *spoiler alert* Jack is not in fact much like Sam at all. -> Sidenote: instead of speaking frankly about how Dean is grieving, how Lucifer killed Cas and likely killed Mary, he uses complex euphemisms with Jack, ones that actually obscure the reality of the situation! This winds up annoying Jack and making him pull away from Sam.

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IMHO...Sam isn't...naturally all that great with emotions.

He tries really, really hard, and he loves patterns, but he's always seeming to force-fit situations and scenarios into neat little boxes so he can passively-aggressively use it to indirectly communicate something he feels about himself.

He has a very cognitive empathy style. Bless him.

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So what's REALLY going on here?

Well. In this episode, he wants Charlie to stay. He wants Charlie to stay and fill a void the other Charlie left behind. He wants Charlie to stay really, really badly. And he beats around the bush about it.

At first, he sidesteps his own emotions by passive-aggressively implying that it's Dean that in fact needs her.

CHARLIE: He'll be fine. Your brother, I mean. He's got other friends, right? SAM: Plenty. Uhm, he used to have a pretty damn good wingman. CHARLIE: So call that guy to check on him. SAM: That guy was you. CHARLIE: No, it wasn't. SAM: Right, I, uh, sorry. I didn't mean that.

And then by trying to make the case fit her.

He's very indirect and weird about it. Because he's Sam. (It's a contrast to the effortless, awkward-but-honest communication style we see from characters like Jack and Dean in this very episode.)

SAM: Charlie, you can't just quit and go live on a mountain somewhere. People need people. CHARLIE: Why? Cause they're the luckiest people in the world? SAM: Look, come on. We just do. We're social animals. CHARLIE: Emphasis on animals. SAM: Yeah, but you're also a hunter. The things that we've seen, it's not so easy to just walk away from it all. Believe me, I've tried. Our Charlie tried. CHARLIE: Yeah, well again, she ain't me. It's my life, Sam. Not hers. And not yours.

Ah, yes. Instead of saying, “I want you here,” it’s, “people need people.”

And Hell, sometimes indirect communication works! Like how Dean and Cas use Felix the snake to indirectly communicate with Jack in Peace of Mind!

But the difference with Sam is...he's not using this indirect communication style to find out how Charlie feels (the way Dean and Cas use the snake to suss out how Jack feels).

No, he's using the whole thing to try to tell Charlie what he thinks is best for her! To tell her things, not find out things.

Eventually, he breaks and says what he actually thinks, but only after AU Charlie is starting to lose her patience with him:

SAM (faux-sadly): Got to say, I do feel kind of bad for the Musca. I mean, he could have been happy if he'd stayed with his people. Didn't have to go off on his own just because... CHARLIE (exasperated): Okay, I get it. I am just like the bug and I shouldn't go out on my own.

OMG, Sammy! It's okay if we want to hit Sam sometimes, right? I too wanted to hit him after he said this to Charlie.

CHALIE: But your nifty metaphor has holes. I wasn't looking for love. I found it and I lost it. And I didn't kill people and literally nest in their body parts so...(Scene cuts to other Musca removing the body of the dead one) SAM: Okay, yeah I know, I know, How about this? Don't leave. 

(Aside// I think this is a cheeky nod to the fact that Cas and Dean weren't looking for love either. In fact, they tried (and keep trying) really, really hard not to love each other. Their real life was faaaar more complicated than some simple "bodysnatcher plot.")

But thank God--Sam finally says outright what he needed to say to Charlie: Don't leave.

Now, it probably would've been better if he's gone a step further: "I don't want you to leave," but for Sam, this is pretty good progress.

SAM: Hear me out. Sure some people can do bad things when they're desperate or scared. But the guy we just saved, he has a wife and children. I'm not saying that all people are good people or even that most people are but if we help people then maybe they'll help people and all that. And that's worth it. Even with all the tears and death. It's worth it. CHARLIE: Just to be super clear, I am not like the fly monster. (Sam chuckles) But, I'll think about staying.

So I think OVERALL the Musca plot is really about highlighting Sam's difficult communication style, and I think it's intentionally being cheeky about it how it's using a "really "dumb metaphor" with gaping holes!

It's about how Sam tries to force-fit the case of the week into saying what he wants it to say...instead of just saying it.

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I think Sam has a little bit of a "mental main character syndrome." He sees a scenario and moves directly into cognitive empathy, reading the situation and thinking:

How can I apply this to myself? Or make it a stand-in for either something I want to believe about myself or a stand-in for something I want to say indirectly?

Sometimes you'll see ppl insist that Sam is the "MC" because every storyline tells you "something about Sam." But I'm more in the camp that it's Sam's inherent cognitive style of empathy at work, desperately reworking anything and everything to make it apply to himself.

Whereas Cas and Dean (and Jack) have a truer emotional style of empathy, connecting with people for who they actually are, as they are.

That's not to say that both styles can't be manipulative when we want them to be. But Sam really struggles with his style in a way I feel like Dean and Cas do not. Dean and Cas perhaps don't even realize what effective communicators they actually are!

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My other thoughts on Optimism:

[jjongleurs]

Sometimes I just think about "Pac-Man Fever" (8x20) and feel... a little gutted? Obviously because Charlie has had a hard life and because she holds on to her mom so tightly, but also because of a multitude of other reasons. 

Charlie is someone starved for family and love, riddled with misplaced guilt. Dean understands her because he's also that person. While Charlie was able to immerse herself in fantasy and fandom and developing her tech skills, all Dean had was hunting. That's why they seem so externally different, a juxtaposition, when they are truly a mirror of each other. 

We see that in Charlie's djin dream where both her mom and Sam are in the hospital beds. They both fought long and hard to hold on to them, but ultimately they come to the realization that they have to let go. Charlie and Dean began to let go of the guilt and the weight of responsibility that comes from holding on to their respective loved ones so fiercely.

I think the biggest difference lies in how they cope with the hard parts of their lives. Charlie’s coping mechanisms are relatively healthy, but Deans? Yeah, no. Charlie is the more well-adjusted version of Dean. She is unapologetic in the way she loves both people and her interests. She is this way because she’s learned that things and people can be taken away so easily, so it’s best not to leave anything unsaid, unloved, or undone. She’s nerdy and weird and odd and out—she embraces all of those parts of her. Dean on the other hand? Dean who turned out to love LARPing and all the same nerdy stuff Charlie liked? Dean the painfully repressed bisexual? He has spent his whole life overcompensating and playing up this mostly unfeeling, macho persona. He threw himself into hunting, hardened himself, forced himself not to get attached to anything or anyone that wasn’t family, and modeled a hypermasculine façade for himself after his father.

Dean calls Charlie the little sister he never wanted. There was this inexplicable bond between them from the moment they met. Knowing her made him face himself, learn to love and accept himself more. He saw himself in Charlie, things he hated in himself, but he loved all of it in her. 

In the last scene with them both in the episode, Charlie says to him, so easily, “I love you.” She doesn’t expect to hear it back, but she doesn’t need to. She says it because she feels it and because he needs to hear it—because he deserves to hear it. Dean is still processing and working through his issues, so he can’t say it back yet. He’s also just become the kind of person that has a hard time getting the words out despite feeling them. Instead, he gives her a sweet hug and kisses her head. His actions convey what he can’t say.

[orionsangel86]

SPN Conspiracies - Applying Logic to Chaos

Its been over 2 months now since the Supernatural finale aired. I am still so angry, hurt, and confused by it and I don’t think I will ever get closure unless someone like Andrew Dabb, or Jensen Ackles, actually opens up and gives us an explanation that makes sense.

What annoys me most right now is people trying to gaslight fans into believing that we should accept the narrative we have been given at face value: That the finale was always planned to be that way, that Destiel was never on the cards, that there was no Network interference, that the only changes made were due to covid and were minor at best.

This harmful gaslighting is FALSE.

NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAPPENED.

Look, I don’t agree with some of the crazier conspiracy theories. I don’t believe that there was some huge campaign among the CW Network execs to remove anything remotely gay out of homophobia. I don’t believe that the finale was changed because of some desire to make it into a Walker promo. I don’t believe that the finale was really bad on purpose in protest by Dabb for not getting to do an ending he truly wanted. I don’t believe that Dabb left us smart fans a bunch of secret messages in the finale to hint that he was on our side all along and that everything was fake.

I do, however, believe that all of these conspiracy theories have some elements in them that are plausible. At least, more plausible than the bullshit narrative mentioned above that some people are pushing in some desperate attempt to defend the Network (which imo is really strange behaviour anyway - why would anyone care about a TV network with a history of terrible behaviour?!?)

We have facts, based on information provided before the covid lockdown, which for some reason, people like Misha have since backpeddled on. So let me try to outline some of the information that makes no sense.

Below the cut I go on a deep dive into the conspiracies and statements I have heard about the SPN finale and try to make some sense of this whole fucked up situation. It gets long.

1. “Cas was never gonna be in the finale”.

False: We have many fan accounts of Misha confirming that he was filming the finale. We have video evidence of Misha confirming he was going back to film the finale after the lockdown. We have confirmation from fans in Misha M&Gs from March that he had about 5 days of filming left.

We also had fan accounts of discussions with Alex Calvert (I think) where he confirmed the final shot of the final episode was all four of them though I would LOVE if someone can find a source for this.

2. Okay, Misha was gonna be in the finale, but only as Jimmy Novak

False: I heavily side eyed Misha when he said this. But I think I can come up with a plausible explanation for it. Per above, Misha was supposed to film for 5 days. This does not align with the half a day he described of filming as Jimmy Novak. My own belief is that after Cas was cut from the finale (for whatever reason we don’t know) someone (probably Jensen Ackles) put up a fight and complained that Misha should be there for the final episode. The writers probably tried to come up with a way to bring Misha back without having to deal with Cas, and pitched the idea of Jimmy Novak being in Heaven. Misha, obviously annoyed about this, turned this stupid pitch down.

3. Destiel was never a thing, never planned, never part of Dabb’s ending. Bobo and Misha pushing the confession was the part of the season that was Wrong.

False: We have a SPN writer on record saying that Castiel’s confession was the first thing written for Season 15 when the writers returned to the writers room. If it wasn’t planned, why was it the first thing written, why does it align so well with the rest of season 15? Look I know some people either a. hate destiel and refuse to see it even if it slaps them in the face, or b. have major heteronormative goggles on, or c. are just homophobes in denial, but 15x18 fits in perfectly with the narrative of season 15. Everything Cas says, everything that happened in that scene was so in character it just works. It fit. If you just rewatch the season whilst applying some critical thinking skills and pay attention to the narrative and character arcs, trust me, the confession fits in with pretty much every other plot point, and character story in the season.

Also: We have known for a while that the network did market research into Destiel, wanting to know if it would go down well or not. They were well aware of its popularity and considering it. Where would this have come from if not pitched by the showrunner? Dabb must have at least been considering it. If you take all of Dabb era into consideration, starting with mid season 11, all the way through the season 12 build up, season 13 grief arc, and then Bobo’s Destiel break up arc in late season 14, early season 15, it is clear that there was some toing and froing on the issue of Destiel, but ultimately, I still believe that Dabb was on board. He wrote 13x01 for christs sake. No way he wasn’t taking it seriously.

 4. It’s always been about the brothers. The finale just stays true to what Supernatural is all about.

*rubs temples* Fundamentally FALSE: The show has time and again reasserted the message of “Family don’t end with blood”, as well as the messages of AKF and YANA. Sam and Dean may be at the heart of the show, but a heart can’t exist without a body to support it. Without bones, and lungs, and blood, and muscles, and a BRAIN. The finale abandons the shows core messages. It forces the characters back into their season 1 characterisations and the whole thing becomes hollow and souless. But I’m not here to complain, I’m here to lay down the facts. Dean’s heaven was supposed to be surrounded by loved ones right? We know OG Charlie Bradbury was gonna be in his Heaven, we also know CAS was gonna be in there. So this idea that the finale as it currently stands was how it was meant to be is wrong. Dean was supposed to die and reunite with his found family and loved ones. This alone would have been a far better ending than the one given. Do I think this was solely a covid issue? Fuck no.

The randoms that WERE in the finale are proof alone that they could have got people in and quarantined. We also have several actors on record saying that they WOULD have quarantined for the finale had they been asked to return but they WEREN’T.

Lies have been told. Samantha Ferris and Chad Limberg have confirmed that we have been lied to about the original plans for the finale.

This alone is proof enough that there is more plausibility in some of the conspiracy theories than any bullshit narrative some people are pushing in defence of the barbaric mess of a finale we were given.

So lets address some of the conspiracy theories now:

Conspiracy No.1: The CW Network reviewed Supernatural during the covid break, and due to homophobia, refused any Destiel arc that wasn’t already filmed, shut down any potential reciprocation from Dean, and forced Dabb to change his finale.

I don’t think this is entirely what happened. But I do think it is very strange how there is a such a huge disconnect particularly in Dean’s characterisations between what had come before the lockdown, and what came after. The one fact we have here, and please someone provide a source if you can find it because I know there is one, the finale script was still going through changes up to only 2 weeks before it was filmed. We know that there was some weird editing in 15x18 (which was still in post and uncompleted before lockdown) and we know from Jensen’s own mouth that there was more to the confession scene on Dean’s side that was cut. We also know that this isn’t the first time that Destiel heavy moments have been changed in post - the prayer scene is another big scene that went through a lot of changes and Bobo fought to have his script play out the way he wanted it.

There are certain things that in my own opinions, are basically true of SPN which I have put together from years of keeping one eye on the writers room, the network, and all the various comments made. My opinion is this:

The writers room has always been split on Destiel. Some writers heavily supported making it canon, others did not care, or were against it.

The Network considered it over the course of several years, did market research, green lit it, then changed their minds, possibly several times over the course of Dabb’s era. Destiel was pitched to the Network early in Dabb era.

The crew on set were also split. Some people heavily supported it, and worked to assist the reading, whereas others did not care/did not support it. The same can be said for the editing room.

Bob Singer supported the subtextual homoeroticism, but never supported bringing it into text (this is an opinion, but I think it aligns with everything we know about him.) IMO Bob Singer also supported subtextual homoeroticism between Sam and Dean - the guy is gross is what I’m saying. He isn’t exactly a progressive person.

Fun fact - a while back our old enemy Sera Gamble went on a Twitter rant about writers rooms and the ways a script goes through changes. I don’t think this was in relation to the SPN finale wank but she basically inadvertantly confirmed that the Network can step in and make sweeping changes to a script if they want to and if they decide they don’t like the direction of a story. Sera Gamble confirmed this as a fact.

Now. I’m not saying that this is what the CW did with Destiel. I just think its very strange how pre lockdown, the last thing filmed is a heartfelt homosexual declaration of love between Dean and Cas, and we have a finale script that Misha had not seen, but knew that he was meant to film as Castiel for 5 days (5 days on set is over half of an episode as far as I know). Then all of a sudden, Covid happens, and Cas is cut from the finale completely, a desperate attempt to bring Misha back only as Jimmy Novak takes place, which Misha rightly refuses, leading to a finale which makes zero sense narratively and appears in every way completely and utterly butchered.

The only explanation provided by anyone involved is that Covid meant changes had to happen - but that covid didn’t change the actual story at all.

But this makes no sense because we know that Cas was cut from the finale. This is FACT. Do not let anyone gaslight you into thinking otherwise. Misha was preparing to quaranting to return to set as Cas post Covid, so whatever happened to cut Cas from the finale, it wasn’t Covid.

I’m gonna have to Occum’s Razor this and say that the most logical explanation here is the one that is most likely true. Someone got cold feet with the Destiel story, and to prevent any possible interpretation that included Dean reciprocating, any hints of Destiel were removed from the finale script, including Castiel’s whole appearance.

Now, this isn’t me saying I think that Dabb’s original finale was full of Destiel love confessions and a homosexual kiss or whatever, but I am asking you all to really think about it and ask yourselves WHY Cas would have been totally cut from an episode he was supposed to be in at LEAST half of? 

We will probably never know the real reason Cas was cut, but he WAS cut. I’m not saying it was all homophobia, but some fuckery went down.

Conspiracy No. 2: The CW Network changed the finale to make it into a Walker promo because they only cared about raising up Jared and not Jensen and Misha as they were losing them anyway.

I don’t agree with this in terms of the finale being butchered solely to make it into a Walker promo. There are however moments in the finale that are clearly supposed to be Walker Easter Eggs and added to excite fans of Jared/Sam in particular such as Sam’s gratuitous and unnecessary topless scene, as well as the call on the “case in Austin”.

I will take this moment to say something pretty damn controversial though.

*Deep breath*

The fact is, Dean Winchester has been the “lead” character of Supernatural’s narrative for years now, with Sam often being sidelined and not given great storylines himself. Even in Season 15, right up until the finale, I myself felt bad for Sam sometimes because so much of this show has become all about Dean. Jensen Ackles is clearly the better actor when it comes to emotional story arcs, so the emotional heart of the story has most often leant on him.

So you can understand my confusion, when this is turned on its head in the final episode, to make Sam carry all the emotional weight, and have the most lines/screentime, and story resolution (even if his story resolution was just as crappy as Dean’s).

If we pretend that Destiel is not a thing, and ignore Cas’s confession, the story change in the finale from Dean focus to Sam focus is still rather suspicious. Again, I’m not saying I completely approve of or agree to the conspiracy theory that Walker influenced the butchering of the script, but I can believe that perhaps a note went down from the CW to someone like Bob Singer, to emphasise Sam/Jared more than they perhaps would normally, because the CW wanted to shine the spotlight on Jared to raise excitement for Walker.

I can also believe this note might have said something like “we wanna cater to fans of Sam/Jared the most - don’t do anything to piss them off.” but now I am getting into my own conspiracy theories so by all means dismiss this as me being bitter.

Conspiracy No.3: Dabb purposely made it bad, as a secret message to Destiel fans that he had been silenced, by layering meta clues into the episode that he knew fans would notice.

I doubt this one is true. Though some of the theories are quite compelling. The old vampire silent movie theory for instance starts off quite well, but loses me the moment it brings up Urban Dictionary slang.

Sometimes I have just had to accept that Supernatural is a bad show that is sometimes accidentally a masterpiece. However, some writers really did go That Deep with their stories - anything by Ben Edlund or Steve Yockey for instance, their episodes are meta masterpieces with a hundred different layers of beautiful subtextual storytelling and are a joy to analyse. Bobo Berens has certainly done some A+++ work especially now we KNOW that he was working hard all this time to bring Destiel to canon text (so any analysis of Destiel in the subtext in his episodes is very accurate). There have been many other key elements analysed over the years which have been confirmed true. Cas’s death in Season 12, Dean’s time as a demon in season 10, Season 11 ending in unity of dark and light, these were all plot points predicted by meta writers just by analysing the narrative. Sometimes the writers really have been very smart and they do add things to the show to aid us in our meta.

Richard Speight Jr for instance, confirmed that SPN has a visual library that the production team use to give clues and hints in the narrative. Pizza, for example, always means a lie has been told. Whenever Pizza is being eaten or even just mentioned on screen, there is dishonesty in that particular moment.

The beers also have a very specific message and the one thing I can’t let go about the finale, was that Dean was drinking El Sol beer. The beer his dad gave him, that was terrible.

El Sol has been used in the show to indicate something being wrong, a fake reality, or another lie, for the longest time. It is the beer of deception.

The fact that in the final episode of this entire show, Dean is in Heaven, supposedly at peace, and then he gets handed an El Sol beer to drink? Thats a HUGE red flag for any meta writer watching who can read SPNs visual library.

If they had given him the Margiekugel beer of family then it would make sense. Dean is in Heaven, with Bobby, his family, at peace. Margiekugel should have been the beer of choice. But nope. El Sol. Something is wrong.

I don’t know if it was Dabb, or Singer, or some disgruntled ADs and crew members who added these elements into the finale, but their very presence confirms some message of Wrongness.

I could go into a huge rant about Vampire Mimes not making sense and the very glaringly obvious symbolism of cutting out peoples tongues too, but that is high school level film analysis. It’s obvious. It means to silence someone. There is validity in interpreting this as Dabb saying he was silenced. I don’t know how true it is, but i can’t 100% dismiss it, because as I said, this is high school analysis levels of obvious subtextual storytelling.

So in summary, whilst I don’t think that Dabb intentionally went out of his way to sabotage his own script, and leave a breadtrail of secret messages for savvy fans to put together to confirm that he was silenced by an evil network into not getting what he wanted... I do think that there is validity in questioning these odd choices for the finale. Cutting out tongues? Vampire Mimes? El Sol beer?

The evidence is somewhat compelling is all I’m saying. I don’t believe the full conspiracy theories, but as I have said many times before, some fuckery went down.

So What Do I Believe?

That some fuckery went down and whatever company line they are pushing is bullshit.

I believe that the original script included Cas (since thats fact). I believe that the original script probably always had Dean dying on a vampire hunt (due to Jensen’s issues with it and in particular, his sarcastic comments about vampires in the past year or so which in hindsight are hilarious and prove he never really came to terms with Dean’s idiotic death). I believe Dabb’s original script was some less crappy version of what we got, which potentially included showing Jack rescuing Cas from the Empty and resolving the outstanding Empty plot points (potentially this was actually a 15x19 plot since Mark P commented that his final scenes were supposed to be with Jack and Cas), had Cas reunite with Dean in Heaven and had them have a discussion about Cas’s confession. I believe that there was probably a lot of back and forth over how to handle that with some people wanting Dean to obviously reciprocate and others believing they should keep it ambiguous. I believe that Dean and Cas would have reunited with Charlie Bradbury, and Bobby Singer, and possibly others (though if this was the case it must have been very early on since no one ever looped in Sam Ferris, Chad Linberg or any other Roadhouse people).

I believe that Sam’s ending probably didn’t change much, but I do feel that initially they were planning on him ending up with Eileen, because it is the only thing that narratively makes sense. Cutting Eileen and giving him a blurry wife is something I won’t ever understand and Jared’s bullshit explanations are quite clearly pulled out of his ass to appease bronly types. I believe the reunion on the bridge would have included Cas and Jack, with a final shot of all four of them together, at peace (as this aligns with Alex’s comments from around a year or so ago that the final shot was all four of them). (I also am not sure it was always supposed to be on a bridge since the foreshadowing in an earlier episode showed Dean, Cas and Sam all in the Roadhouse together).

I believe that script went through countless changes and redrafts, and not even production people or the types that some fandom people claim as their “sources” would even have seen those early scripts, since even Misha never saw it. I believe that these rumours of Dabb never having Cas in his finale and ignoring all Destiel elements likely come from people who only saw later versions, weren’t party to network discussions and felt bitter about the final scripts they did see (being the crappy butchered one that was ultimately filmed). Those “sources” are now spreading rumours to discredit Dabb.

I obviously believe Dabb is a weak ass pushover who either didn’t care enough to fight back, or gave up since he’s been stuck with fucking Bob Singer on his back for years, but I will NEVER believe he didn’t care about the DeanCas love story, because he has been one of the few writers who has championed for it for years. You can’t look back at Dabb’s episodes in earlier seasons and claim he didn’t care. Dabb was a writer whose creative ideas were beaten out of him by an unforgiving Network only concerned about where their future money was coming from. Do I think he gave up too easily? Yes. But I also have one other huge reason for not believing the bullshit about Dabb being this anti-Destiel villain.

Bobo. Because if Bobo truly believed Dabb was gonna fuck that up at the end, I don’t think he would have given us Cas’s love confession to begin with. If he had known it was gonna end like that, I think he would have reconsidered, because had Cas not confessed his love, I don’t think he would have been cut from the finale. Bobo - a gay man, would not have wanted such a horrible message for queer fans being put across in the show he worked so hard on. He started writing that confession scene the day they returned to the writers room. Dabb would have been there, would have seen what he was writing, probably discussed it with him, after all, other episodes were written with the confession in mind. No way was Dabb planning to fuck up the ending knowing what Bobo was giving us. Nope.

Something went very wrong over lockdown. Someone, somewhere up the chain of power caught wind of the confession scene in 15x18, realised that it demanded a resolution which would make Dean Winchester, their protagonist, queer, and pulled the plug. I believe this did not come from a place of homophobia, but of bad business sense.

The CW is constantly trying to win the approval and attention of the one demo group that they seem to fail at getting the most: young straight men. Supernatural was one of their only remaining shows that appeals to young straight men, and Dean Winchester is more often than not the fave character of those young straight men who project onto him. Making Dean Winchester, established Han Solo of Supernatural, queer and in love with his best friend in the finale would have come across as a betrayal to those young straight men. The CW probably feared they would lose that demo group for good, and with a show like Walker starting soon with Jared at the helm, they couldn’t take the risk.

Hence there was probably a whole bunch of back and forth script redrafts with the Network, with Dabb and Singer fighting to make a finale that would appeal to everyone. There was most likely no way that they could bring Cas back without addressing what had already been filmed, because any resolution of that plot would either a. make Dean queer, or b. address it awkwardly by having Dean reject Cas (this storyline would probably have been slammed by critics worse than the finale because it meant addressing it. It might have got the attention of LGBTQ activist groups and caused a bigger shitstorm than what we got). The best option was therefore C. Bury it and Cas, pretend it never happened. Never address it again and distract Dean with other things. Hope that Destiel fans will accept no answer from Dean as ambiguous enough to imagine a future reunion rather than shutting it down with a rejection, and still keep hold of the blissfully ignorant heteronormative straight boys so they can carry over to Walker when it starts.

I also believe (controversially probably) that there was concern that any resolution of Dean and Cas would have overshadowed network darling Jared Padalecki. If Dean and Cas had come together in the finale, with a very clearly textual homosexual reunion, then that would have been all anyone talked about. The reviewers, the critics, the audience, everyone. It would have been nothing but Dean and Cas (and look, if they did think this, they were right, Destiel trending over the US ELECTION.)

So what is the network to do, when they are losing the two stars who would get the most attention from this storyline? The one star they were holding on to and getting his own show, relegated to third place in the finale of the show where he was first on the call sheet? Nope. That’s pretty unacceptable. Even without Walker I can imagine people at all levels side eyeing the Destiel thing over the years. This IS a show about two brothers, and their relationship should be the core relationship, we can’t have one brother pushed aside in the finale to make way for a queer relationship that will get all the attention instead. It was never gonna get approved for this reason ALONE.

At the end of the day, if I look at it from a business perspective, it makes far more sense that the CW shut down Destiel, rather than “oh Dabb never cared and ruined it because he’s an idiot.” The writers cared, and had built on that story over years. But their mistake was leaving any Destiel resolution to the finale. If they had instead gone and got Dean and Cas together in early season 15, then they could have ended it in a way that satisfied everyone. Destiel wouldn’t have threatened pulling focus away from Sam and Dean, and the show could have gone out on a high.

When I lay out all the conspiracy theories, and line them up next to the cold hard facts, the conspiracy theories in some way or another, make more sense. To believe the company line, the narrative we have been fed, is to ignore your own eyes, ears, and memories pre March 2020.

All I’m asking people to do is take a look at the show, the narrative presented in the show, and the information presented above. I’m not telling you to believe what I’ve written here, half of which is just my own opinion. I’m asking you to ask yourselves if it makes sense to you. Because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied.

[sortasirius]

What the Fuck Happened to the SPN Finale?

Okay so here it is, my Charlie Kelly style manifesto.

Before I get into it, I recognize that I will look like this to many of you, and that’s okay, I understand:

Secondly, your personal Takes about the writers don’t interest me, I don’t need to hear them. This, as I’ll explain, is going to remain a writer positive blog, and that’s the end of it.

Third, and most importantly: some of what I’m going to talk about is fact, and some is highly educated speculation. I will notate what is speculation, just so there’s no confusion or hot takes in my inbox that I’m a conspiracy theorist or stirring shit up for no reason.

A list of what I’ll be discussing

The episode in regards to the rest of the season

The episode issues: length, editing

Scene placement and speculation of scenes cut

The scrubbing of Jack, Cas, Eileen

Network involvement and general timeline of when things were cut

Misha: theories on where he was, official company line, why we can’t expect to hear anything directly

The silence of the cast post episode (in Misha’s case, mid episode) and what this might mean

Jensen speaking with Kripke about the ending: why it doesn’t mean what you might think (also why kripke remained positive on the ending)

Walker, and why this episode had a major shift

Why the network would do this or get involved

Why the writers of the show simply aren’t the bad guys here, and what I “want” out of this post, since I know it’ll get asked

This is very long and under a cut, but I hope you’ll give it a read.

The Episode In Regards to the Rest of the Season

So, I’ve discussed this already here, but it’s the most obvious thing to me, and that’s the way this episode simply doesn’t fit with the rest of the season.

These people in this room have, truly, been nothing but consistent when it comes to their arcs, especially this season, and the marked dropoff in quality for the finale episode is just too sus to discount to me.  Dabb’s whole focus has been character-based.  In his seasons, we’ve moved far away from MOTW and bro-codependency, the found family taking it’s place.  Does it really sit right to anyone that that was all thrown away in literally the last episode of the entire show?

This is speculation on my part, but as a writer myself, there is no way I would be happy or willing to stamp my name on something that I didn’t think would, at the very least, wrap up the season+ character arcs that I and my team had been crafting.

And before anyone comes in here saying, “well GOT did that!”  Bruh.  The writing was on the wall for GOT long before the final episode.  You could tell that the showrunners just wanted to be done (not only from the plot, but from the fact that they lobbied for a shorter season).  Miss me with that, it doesn’t apply here.  Andrew has, besides Singer and J2, been with the show longer than anyone.  He cares, he is meticulous and detailed, and this ending feels worse than anything Bucklemming has ever written, let alone Dabb.

Additionally, I’ve seen a lot of people say that Dabb was never behind Destiel, that it was all Bobo and Meredith and no one else.  That is reductive to the point of insult of the work Dabb has done to get this greenlit.  This man did not write the s13 Dean grief arc to be slandered like this.  That being said, YES, Bobo and Meredith were the leads on the DeanCas arc this season, but ANDREW IS THE SHOWRUNNER, TO GET EVEN THE CONFESSION APPROVED BY THE NETWORK HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE THEIR BACKS.  AND HE DID.

Finale Issues

So, now that we’ve gotten the fact that this episode doesn’t hit on any of the major themes the show was barrelling towards all season, let’s discuss the fact that the episode is just...weird.

Not only is it shorter than any other episode (I think with the intro and the credits/crew thing at the end, it was around 38 mins), but it was also...idk, 90% filler?

One of the lovely humans in the POLOL server did the legwork here, and broke it down:

This is weird, y’all.  Most series finales are LONGER than normal (Lost, SOA, Longmire are the ones I can think of off the top of my head), and for the final episode to be this?  I saw more than one person point out that we only really needed 19 episodes, what was the point of 20?  AND THAT’S EXACTLY IT?  WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS FINAL EPISODE IF THIS WAS ALL WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET?

It simply doesn’t make any sense, the first half of the episode was rushed, a final monster hunt gone wrong, but in the second half?  Nothing really happened?  Sam lived his entire life and Dean just drove around.  It doesn’t make sense to have all the emotional arcs left unaddressed in an episode that definitely needed some kind of spark.

Here’s the speculation I have: the episode seemingly went through a lot of changes between the initial inception of the final season and when we actually got it, but I think it would have been passable (as in, we wouldn’t be sitting here asking each other why each arc feels incomplete) until the editing room got ahold of it.  The only think that makes this episode make sense is network fuckery.  Truly, that is the only thing.  It explains the weird, cuts, the rushed pacing of the first half followed by nothing in the second half, the double montages of “Wayward Son” back to back, and Dean just...driving around for the last half of the episode.

Scene Placement and Speculation of Scenes Cut

Before I get into this section, the info of the shots in the episode I have come from a source that @occamshipper​ got a week or so before the finale.  She’s talked about this here.

So here’s what Min was given:

1-5: 1 INT MEN OF LETTERS – DEAN’S ROOM Dean is greeted by Miracle

6-10: 6 INT MEN OF LETTERS – HALLWAY/SAM’S ROOM Sam has his routine

D1 1 11-15: 15 EXT FARM HOUSE Establishing

N1 1/8 16-20: 19 Dad’s journal, marker, drawing of masked man in journal.

21-25: 23 INT IMPALA – PMP Driver picks the music

N2 1 3/8 1,2 26-30: 28pt2 INT BARN: A face from the past

28pt3 Sam and Dean say goodbye

28pt4 Shot early for technical reasons, presumably the overhead shot

N2 31-45: 41 INT MEN OF LETTERS – SAM’S ROOM Sam’s alarm goes off D4 1/8 1 46-60: 56 INT N7glasses for Sam, laptop.

So...it all fits right?  It all tracks with the actual episode, where it lands, etc.  The issue is between shots 29-40 which were apparently “too big to spoil.”  Uh.  Where are they?  And where’s 28 pt4?

After Dean dies, the next scene is Sam burning him, then shot 31, the shot of his alarm going off.

So.  Where are those 11ish shots?

PLUS we have the boards, which are scenes we KNOW were actually shot:

As well as scenes for 20 that were shot in 19.

It’s just...weird, it’s weird and again hits on the fact that the episode is so short and like 80% montage.

The Scrubbing of Jack, Cas, and Eileen

So now we have to reckon with the fact that Eileen was last mentioned by Sam after she got snapped by Chuck, Jack’s last mention is that he’s off being God somewhere, and Cas’ last mention is a ~knowing look~ between Dean and Bobby.

I’m sorry, make it make sense:

????????  That’s the end if it?  They don’t need to be discussed after this???  It’s just simply not something a writer would do, they would not introduce these characters, these arcs, without thinking there’s going to be some kind of follow through here.

So not only were three major characters (including two leads and both of the original characters’ love interests) completely wiped from the finale episode, it was as though Sam and Dean never even needed them, which just...ain’t it.

So why Eileen and Jack too?  Why not just take Cas out of it if they were afraid of the gay?  Because, ultimately, the episode went back to Kripke’s original story: just the bros, they only need each other and no one else.  They don’t want anyone else, they don’t need anyone else.  Easier to go back to something they knew was successful than trust the writers and their audience and take a big leap.

Alex even said he shot for 20 with “some of the guys” here.  What happened to that footage?

The complete 180 of it all still shocks me, I still cannot believe that we were essentially at the finish line, and the network just stopped short, and decided to go run another race, at the expense of the arc of this fifteen year legacy show.

Network Involvement and When Things Were Cut

Okay, now into the juicy stuff.

So I’ve pretty well established that network fuckery is clear, but how much did they get involved, what was the original intent?

Well again, we may never actually know what Andrew’s original script was, but I think, at the least, it would involve Dean speaking his truth to Cas and Sam living a life with Eileen.

Now, it seems today, that Misha said that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale in one iteration of the script, and while initially my brain was like “that truly makes no sense and he’s either straight up lying or telling a half truth,” I think what may be happening is Misha talking about as much as he can right now.

So Jimmy right.  Weird as fuck.  Why would he been in the Roadhouse and not Cas?  My current thought (this is about as reachy as I’ll get) is that Jimmy had no lines, could he have been in the Roadhouse as a red herring, like it said “Jimmy” in the script but it was just Cas in human clothes, a way to get around the network saying Cas couldn’t be in the final scene.  Also, you’ll notice that Misha didn’t say that Cas wasn’t supposed to be in the ep at all, just Jimmy in the last scene.

All this to say, there have clearly been multiple versions of the script, getting lighter and lighter with Cas and Eileen as the network pulled further and further back.  Remember, Dabb has to get things approved before they get shot, and if the network kept asking and asking and asking to cut Cas and Eileen, he had to find a way to work around it.  Granted, I still think that if we had been able to get a Dabb script that wasn’t torn to shreds in editing, it wouldn’t be so bad.  It may not be what a lot of us wanted (Dean speaking his truth to Cas and a reciprocation), but doing everything he could to give it to us in subtext or visual clues.

Plus, in all honesty, my man can’t keep his story straight anyway.  He said twice in his panel that the Empty and offscreen Heaven ending weren’t his original ending either.

In addition, remember that Jensen did ADR post episode 18, AND said in a meet and greet last weekend that Dean’s reaction to Cas’ confession was “cut down.” (Source here).  Many of us clowns got excited when we first heard about ADR, because we thought it would be upping the ante on Dean’s reaction, but I remember being a little sus when it was just crying.  My speculation on that is that they cut out Dean actually SAYING something, @winchestersingerautorepair​ spoke about that here.

The biggest sins were, in my opinion, committed during editing, where the network got too gun shy and sliced the episode until it was nothing but a heartless bro-fest of a finale, not mentioning anything about the other major characters that we all love, and letting the boys just suffer in separation until Sam died and finally joined Dean in Heaven.  The editing came by cutting all the major emotional beats between anyone other than Dean and Sam, leaving the skeleton of the story intact, just shorter and less...poignant than it was ever supposed to be.

Misha

We know Misha was in Vancouver, we know he quarantined, but we also know he wasn’t in the final scene, when he spoke about being in the last moment of the show months ago.  We were not crazy, he was there, he quarantined, and, in all likelihood (speculation but fitting with the timeline), he actually may have shot something (not much, but something).

I have sources here, here, here, and here showing where Misha was at that time.

Remember, the man was completely open about coming back until they finished shooting (look at this thread).  The switch happened, just like everything else, halfway through them shooting.

Please also remember Jake Abel posting his “Where’s Misha” video here.  Jake isn’t malicious, he isn’t being nasty here.  Misha was there, and everyone that’s trying to convince people he’s wasn’t just...isn’t telling the truth about it.

This is one of the things that makes me really mad, because they’re literally attempting to gaslight people into thinking, “oh we were totally wrong he was never supposed to be there” WHEN HE WAS THERE, WE KNOW HE WAS THERE.

So we’ve already heard from several people (Meghan Fitzmartin, Jay, a PA on the set of 19 (WHO WAS NOT WORKING FOR 20), Misha himself) that this was all down to Covid restrictions.  Ultimately, as this post says, we’ve heard FIVE versions of where Misha was.  None of it makes sense, but the Covid protocol seems to be the company line that others are repeating.

You may ask: why?  Why lie to all of us when we have questions?  Why, in Jay’s case, say that we’re all spreading false lies to stir up trouble, when we just have questions and things that do not make sense.  Simply?  Warner Brothers is absolutely massive.  These people have their careers to protect and are likely all under NDAs.  They want to work for WB again and don’t want to burn bridges, including Misha.  It sucks, but that’s why it’s unlikely that we’ll hear someone come out and say, “yeah we’re lying to you.”

Silence of the Cast Post Episode

So this is...probably the worst part of all this, at least in my opinion.

The guys had all been pretty excited about the end of the show (especially Jared, but Jensen’s panel last week was Jensen as happy and jokey and positive as I’ve ever seen him.  He was so excited about episode 18, about what it meant for Dean and for Cas, and I just cannot buy that he would have been that excited unless he thought there was something more in the episode.

Misha live-tweeted the episode, and was watching it with his kids.  It’s well known that Misha and the kids don’t watch the show because it’s too scary, and let’s ask ourselves, why would he have them watch an episode that he’s barely even mentioned in?

He also stopped live-tweeting at a very specific point in the episode (Dean’s death) and has not mentioned Supernatural since then. 

None of them, not Jared, Jensen, Misha, or even Alex, said anything about the episode for nearly 36 hours, when Jensen posted a salty photo on instagram.  It’s just...not what you’d expect for the end of a 15 year show, when the cast and crew are so close to the fans, so close to each other. 

My theory?  They didn’t know.  They thought Misha was, at least, going to be in the episode in some way, and when he wasn’t, they decided not to say anything.

You really think that Jensen “Heller” Ackles would have been so excited about the end of the show last week if he thought Cas wasn’t going to be in it at all?  Nah son, doesn’t make any sense.

Even today, in Jared and Misha’s panels, they seemed sad and...more than a little careful, both saying that there were things they couldn’t say, both talking around things that we all have questions on.

Jensen Speaking with Kripke

So this is where a lot of people are getting fodder to take shots at the writers, saying that Jensen hated it from the beginning, but I don’t think so.  I actually think I know what Jensen went to him about, and it wasn’t the lack of Cas or the weird pacing or the montages (which I don’t think were there when Jensen got the script); I think it was the manner of Dean’s death.

I know a lot of people were upset about that, upset with how...normal it was, coming off an episode where they literally beat God.  I actually didn’t mind it, I thought it was an interesting thematic take to be like: you can be a hero all your life, but sometimes shit happens, and you just die.

But imagine how hard that was for Jensen to read.  He would run to Kripke for that, because for him, Dean dying by being impaled by a piece of rebar had to be tough to swallow.

So, why didn’t Kripke say that?  Why didn’t he say, “oh well he had a problem with Dean’s death, none of that other stuff was in the script.”

Guys.  Why would he get involved?  He’s not going to burn bridges any more than anyone else is.  He said the ending was good because it’s the easy thing to do, it’s simple, will cause him no problems in his career, and he can just ignore the people trying to engage with him on it.

Walker

Something else to talk about is the major shift this episode had from the rest of the season: the shift from Dean to Sam.  I am NOT saying that Sam isn’t important, he definitely, absolutely is, but it was DEAN who really needed to wrap up his arc, Sam just needed to move on, get married to Eileen, become the leader he was always meant to.  So what changed?  What was with the shirtless scene, the Austin number and random case there, most of the episode being heavily Sam focused, going through his entire life in a montage?

Anyone else notice the 375 Walker promos, or Jared’s little spiel about Walker and how he hoped SPN fans would “come along for the ride.”

It’s...kinda obvious?  CW wanted to appeal to who they think the key demographic of SPN and Walker is: rural areas in the South.  It would explain a lot, why so much editing, why so Sam focused, the Austin number, the number of Walker promos, all of it.

I’m not saying this is fact, I don’t know that it is, but it is a little suspicious that even in Jared’s panel today, he talked A LOT about Walker and how he hopes SPN fans will watch it.

Why Would the Network Get Involved?

Simply put: $$$

If they think Walker can be the new SPN, and that those crazy SPN fans liked it originally, it’s a lot safer to go with the “original intent” of the show than do something risky (like making one of your two original leads queer).

And?  They don’t care.  They don’t care that the episode didn’t make sense, they don’t care that all the emotional arcs were left hanging, they don’t care by (potentially) smashing together two of Dean’s monologues (one to Sam, one to Cas) that it came of as...gross. ( @curioussubjects​ wrote a beautiful post showing how part of that death speech was likely meant for Dean here).  They don’t care, they never have, they just want to make their money and move on from the too-loud fandom that fought for representation too hard for too long.

It can’t help but feel insidious, which, honestly, it might be, but it really all comes down to the next cash cow, which, they think, is Walker, even at the cost of the fifteen year legacy show.

The Writers and What I Want

So here it is, all this weird, sus shit laid out on the line.  And you know what?  To me, there is no way to blame the writers, because they didn’t want this.

I don’t think Dabb and Bobo would have gone ahead with the confession in 18 without thinking that there would be some closure to that arc, they wouldn’t have done that not only to the fans, but for the sake of their own story as well: no writer wants to start something that they can’t finish. (And this applies to both Cas and Eileen).

Here’s a basic rundown of what I think happened: they had a clear arc from 18-20, ending in reciprocation at some level from Dean, Sam marrying Eileen, Hunter Sam as the new Bobby, Dean in heaven with Cas and big roadhouse reunion at the end. Covid prevented a good amount of that. Network had to stare at big gay 18 for six months, got cold feet. Thought about Walker, target audience and alienation of the rural areas if it went full gay. Misha quarantined and likely shot something (not much), he was then cut by execs and went home. They likely added in lines referencing Eileen and Cas to make it clear but more subtextual. They wrap, editing gets it and hacks it to pieces, so we get a shorter episode that’s mostly montages and jarringly bro-centric with nothing else. Arcs are left hanging. Dabb gets episode but it’s too late, there’s nothing he can do. Actors aren’t told so they can continue to do positive PR for the ending, they all found out at the same time we did: hence almost complete silence about the finale.

And you know what?  They warned us.  I talked about it here, but they’ve been telling us all season that Chuck wasn’t the writer, he’s the network.  I don’t think, still, that they thought it would be cut up like this, into something so unsalvageable that it’s been panned by almost everyone, even people who didn’t care much about Dean and Cas.

Finally, a masterpiece can be ruined by editing, and while I’m not sure even the script they ended up shooting on was a masterpiece (due to the network meddling already), but to me it’s blatantly obvious that it’s no one but the network that caused this, that took away closure for Dean, Cas, and even Sam.

So what do I want?  Nothing really, there’s nothing we can do, but I wrote this mostly to show people that the writers are not your enemy.   In fact, to the people trashing them?  You’re doing exactly what the CW wants you to: blame the obvious targets, blame Misha, blame Jensen and Jared, blame Dabb.  Scream and yell at them on Twitter and about how the show is ruined because of them.  The network keeps their engagement levels high, they don’t get as targeted for their behavior, and just keep moving along.

Just, please, think about who did this,  Mourn the show, be angry, but not at the people who fought tooth and nail for this for literal years, not the people who wanted it more than we did, not the people who cannot say anything because of their careers and the NDAs they’re bound by.

Someone is going to spill eventually, but until then, we just have to wait, and continue to be loud.

[sinnabonka]

It’s spec time: Love always wins

(Okay, I promised it, I’m doing it, there’s no stopping me now.) 

For the last three days I’ve been all over the place emotionally, clinging to every post saying Cas is not dead dead, saying his story is not done, but then someone wrote the “but” post and, there I go again, down the bottomless pit of angst. 

I’ve been a Schrödinger believer for so long with this show, one can get used to it. 

I know I’m not the only one feeling this way, regarding whether Cas is coming back or not. We won’t know till we know ©

Ep 19 speculations here

But let's speculate!

Apparently, there's nothing better for me to do way past midnight on Saturday and on Sunday morning (when I’m writing this). 

What makes us think 15*18 might indeed be the end of Castiel’s story:

Everything the crew and Misha told us, officially, is pressing toward Cas dying permanently in this scene. “Proud ending”, indeed. 

Castiel’s story has the perfect symmetry this way, with the handprint, the “Hello, Dean” - “Goodbye, Dean”, and the whole “Dean Winchester is saved” theme.

He is smiling, while Empty takes him, he’s content with his sacrifice. 

Something about Castiel’s monologue didn’t sit right with me for some time. The whole point of happiness being not in having, but in being and saying, gave me an idea of it being the way writers say we can’t have Destiel, but we should be happy to know it’s real and to hear it said aloud after all those years. 

Supernatural had to be the story of two brothers and their journey, and Winchesters driving in the sunset is the most probable endgame we are gonna get. 

Even though all those points seem valid, we can’t trust any of it. 

Let me fix it for you:

It wouldn't be the first time the crew lied about someone being on set. 

The handprint was not scripted. I repeat, the handprint was not scripted.

Castiel’s monologue could be just about loving Dean, and it’s just my poor wounded heart looking too deep into it and seeing my angstloving reflection on the bottom of the well. 

And Supernatural might indeed be about family, but, as we know, family doesn’t end with blood, and doesn’t start with it either. Cas is family, after all. 

I’m glad be are clear on this one.

What tells us Cas is coming back and we are getting Destiel endgame:

(Brace yourself, it’s gonna be wordy)

1. The most obvious, without rewriting his memory or going OOC, there’s no happy ending for Dean (not the crappy bittersweet substitute) without Cas. 

Even without the love confession in place, we’ve seen what Cas’ death did to him before, it shuttered him to pieces. Imagine the damage it's gonna cause now! 

“I love you, I always did, bye bye now, have a long and happy life knowing my feelings for you have killed me dead.” Really? No win can make up for it.

2. My fave point, aka the natural dynamics of storytelling. The big loss predicts the big win. The deeper the wound, the brighter the prize. Following the roller coaster this season has been, we should be up for a pretty high damn up pretty soon. 

So, there’s The Big Loss (losing Eileen, all of their friends, all the people on Earth and Cas). 

Next - The Big Win (defeating God, getting their free will back, getting humanity back). 

Then, we should have The Big Regret and Reflect moment (Sam and Dean talking a lot at this point, realization of things which are important, what they want with Chuck gone). 

And at the end, there’s The Ultimate Happy ending waiting for us (see point 1 again in case you are not sure what that means).

3. You know what, forget it, this one is my favorite. The parallels. Throughout this season we’ve been spoon-fed with context (Geez, it feels nice to finally know we are not crazy, we are not seeing things, we got it all right!) and writers chose to do so via parallels, via reflections, subtle hints. 

It would be some lazy storytelling to shove everything to our faces, so, instead, we’ve got: Charlie and Stevie, Sam and Eileen, the world and humanity, Dean and Cas. 

Everyone separated. Forever? No, not really. And I don’t buy everyone getting their loved ones back, except Dean. C’mon.

4. Unresolved love confession. Yes, Cas might have died with a smile, meaning it’s enough for him to speak his truth and be gone. But Dean? Him sobbing in the dungeon, ignoring Sam’s calls (he literally never chose anything above Sam before), the “Don’t do this, Cas” part - it’s the lowest he’s ever been. 

To sum up, Dean didn’t get his closure. He might have needed five to six business days to process, but he still has his truth he has to find out and then give a voice to. 

And yeah, I know, he could confess via prayer or something, but we all know that’s something needed to be said face to face.  (Btw, he already confessed to Cas in purgatory via prayer once, you can try and prove me wrong, but good luck with that, sunshine.)

5. The perfect symmetry. If I were in SPN writers room, I would literally cry my eyes out of joy at the symbolism this ending gives. I would literally fight everyone against it. 

The broken man not deserving to be saved is dragged from Hell by the most loyal and righteous angel Heaven ever seen. 

VS

The fallen angel not deserving to be loved is dragged from Empty by the most loving and caring man the sun shone on.

I mean, c’mon, people. Poetry.

(We are nearing a very important thing here, fasten your seatbelts, please.)

6. The message the show wants to give the world has changed. From “it’s all about the journey, about saving people, killing things, no one ever gets what they deserve”, the philosophy has changed drastically toward the “good things do happen, you deserve to be saved, to be loved”. 

Come and see what lane we are walking right now: allowing yourself to love again, to experience things again / losing the love of your life a moment later / fighting for your love / winning your love back. 

I believe the final message is: love always wins. 

Love is not one’s weakness, love is power, love is strength, it’s a perfect fuel. 

Humans declare war in the name of love, kill and get killed in the name of love, but, most importantly, humans live and win those wars in the name of love, too. 

7. Go big or go home is on the table, and no one goes home this time. 

Supernatural was a bunch of broken glass for soooo long, I think this time writers are gonna give us something good, for a change. Not bittersweet good, but actually cotton-candy-almost-diabetes-sweet good.  

Why? 

Because *loud and clear* we deserve having good things happening to us! 

Also, it’s The End, the creators have nothing to lose, but, on the other hand, the ultimate happy ending would allow them to leave an enormous mark on the world and Supernatural to be known as the only show that actually could.

To sum up:  

Dean can’t be happy with Cas gone and, following the logic of prebuilt parallels, he won’t have to - everyone gets their loved ones back at the end, because love always wins. 

Cas might be at peace with speaking his truth, saving Dean and being gone, but it is not fair, Dean also deserves a chance to be heard. 

Few seasons ago I would laugh in my own face for these arguments, but the philosophy of the show has been transformed. During the last few years we were being prepared for this moment, slowly, gently being led toward this moment. 

Supernatural has to give us the Destiel endgame to prove their point.

click x click for more

[jockpoetry]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Instantly Feminine. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or they do it as a joke. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As a feminine character.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In conclusion....

[fucktheroyals]

You know after reading and reading and reading peoples theories and the meta from before the spn finale aired and the meta writers reactions to the finale I think I have a theory of my own. We don't have any answers tho, so this is pure speculation. If you wanna add something to support or discredit any of this that's cool but there's too many things floating around. Know I dont have proof for this conclusion at all. A lot of what I say is just guesses based on previous facts.

This all came together in my head when I realized how much this finale REEKS of the original producers and who the show was originally for. It REEKS of Robert Singer. Like if the execs started saying they didn't want it, Robert Singer was the one pushing that the story was about the brothers. That kinda thing.

Then, I was thinking of the problems in this episode and it struck me these are all of Supernatural biggest issues and to be honest all of it feels completely deliberate.

Take the sexism for example, Supernatural in it's later seasons largely out grew this, we have Jody, Rowena, Donna, Charlie, Mary, Claire (and even a wayward sisters pilot with MORE women/girls) all making regular appearances. They're mainly good characters and mostly aren't there to hurt our boys. Rowena, of course, is the one outlier being very about herself but it's clear she still cares for them, I mean its part of her development. But they're all real, with character flaws just like everyone else. (And we have Death too and she was POC 😭 THANK GOD)

Now look at the earlier half of Spn, we have Ellen and Jo, who's appearances were far in between. There's Bela in season 3, recurring for quite a bit (5 eps), but she is a character that is only there for herself, definitely not found family (unlike Ellen & Jo), and she's got more episodes in season 3 than Ellen and Jo in season 2 who aren't seen again til season 5. The "fans" send in hate mail after hate mail to try to get these characters off, and eventually they are. Then there's Ruby who's character stayed for a whole two seasons and was a largely recurring character. Why does she get to say so long? She's a plot device. She's supposed to be there to betray Sam. She has to stay (plus Jared obviously likes her). But she's not just a character the writers like writing about. Same with Lilith. Obviously not as recurring but still a plot device. Did they get hate mail tho? You can bet on it. Why? because tHeY'rE gOnNa PuSh ThE bOyS (Dean and Sam) aPaRt ThE sHoW iS aBoUt ThE bOyS oNlY. Without even thinking about the hate mail, just notice how large the difference is from how women are seen in the earlier seasons to the later seasons. Misha got tons of hate mail too for being a character that could split up the boys (probably only being allowed to say because he a man, thanks sexist producers and execs).

Only after Castiel was killed off and then Castiel fans successfully (thank you guys) got him back on the show did the hate mail largely simmer, which means female character's were allowed to stay! Which has lead us to a show with a good amount of female characters. But can you imagine having to kill characters off time and time again because people keep complaining that the show is "only about the boys." Fun times really.

So now we get to this final and we see sexism. But it wasn't just the plain old regular sexism you find in the earlier days of spn. Because now, there ARE women to talk about, talk to. But this episode was DESOLATE women wise, unless they were used for plot (which is also sexist!). Small scenes, they're barely there. Women gets her tongue cut out. Random women from s1 gets killed. Sam doesn't SPEAK of Eileen. Nothing. No mention of any female characters from the boys mouths unless they were from/in this episode itself. That's WIERD. I know we've all said it. But that goes beyond forgetting about characters. I mean its SAM'S GIRLFRIEND for Christ's sake. There is NO REASON they couldn't have said Eileen's name. Notice how Sam's wife is just... faceless. This is literally an age old sexist trope. Like... one of the things about bringing Mary back to life for s12+ is that it takes this trope... of basically a generic mother, and gives her life and feelings, whether you like them or not, they're real feelings. They said Mary isn't just a mom she's a person. Mary's existence in the later half of spn is to fix this kind of female tropes that fall upon her character, to not let these her stay a 2 dimensional character. They said we should know she's more than just the mom who tried to save her kid. Do that is the exact opposite of Sam getting a nameless, faceless wife. The sexism of the old spn wasn't just brought back, it was completely amplified. It wasn't just accidental or some exec "fixing" the story it was DELIBRATE. Whoever wrote that, didn't do ALL OF THAT by accident. Because an exec or a producer who doesn't see the flaws in old supernatural isn't going to write it that deliberately.

Let's bring it back to s10 when Charlie was killed (singer was mainly to blame). Dead in the bathtub, age old classic of burying ur gays. If you were here you know people never let Supernatural live that down. THEY KNOW what bury ur gays means. Hell, Robbie Thompson left because of Charlie's death and you think the writers don't know what it means? I mean both Bobo Berens (especially) and Steve Yockey's careers are centered around LGBT+ storytelling and you think they don't know? They know. They know.

And Dean wasn't just apart of the bury your gays trope, it is so far BEYOND that. Dean being killed on a rusty nail/screw, the tongues ripped out, things that seemed to be meant for other people. Jensen's acting in the last two episodes was giving us "DEAN RECIPROCATES" but no one ever actually saying it. I think it's clear that Dean was killed for being Bi. They didn't address it for a reason, they just silenced him. His narrative was supposed to be about letting him be HIM for the first time, to say what his feelings are instead of having them miscommunicated, and instead of doing that, they just silenced him. And the more we look at this scene the more horrific it gets. The more it's a complete slap in the face and it's supposed to be. Some guy who knows nothing about the LGBT can't write a scene this horrific.

Some guy who knows nothing about Dean couldn't write a scene that deconstructs all of Dean's character development and gives Dean his worst nightmare. I MEAN DEAN WANTED TO LIVE HIS LIFE! THEY DIDNT HIDE THAT JOB APPLICATION (or whatever job related thing that was) IN THERE FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SITUATION. Dean isn't Barney from HIMYM. If you watched HIMYM then you'll know Barney went from being a stereotypical ladies man and treating women terribly to being in love with a women and treating her right and working hard for it. The last episode of HIMYM (why its so bad) Barney's character development is thrown out and he's back to being a stereotypical ladies man. You don't need to know Barney's character very much to do that.

To kill Dean during a hunt his father never finished, to not have anyone at his funeral, to have Dean die young like his life didn't matter. Those are Dean's worst fears and you'd only truly know that if you watched the gin episode in s3, where they are basically laid out for you. You HAVE to know Dean's character to tear him apart like this.

This episode took all the core elements of the show and did a complete 180° the name of the episode itself is "Carry on" and Dean and Sam very much did not carry on. Sam grieving his entire life so that he good get to heaven and see Dean again. Dean being ready to live his life, despite the enormous pitfalls and learning to love himself only to be killed. "Family don't end with blood." Um.... it did in that episode either literally with Dean's death or you know BECAUSE NONE OF THEIR FOUND FAMILY WAS THERE. Not Jack, Not Cas, Not Eileen, Not Donna, Not Charlie, Not Jody, Not Claire... on and on we go. No one was there, nobody was even mentioned. Dean's funeral, no one even called that we know of. It was just Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean. And Bobby. Don't forget Bobby. But yeah Sam and Dean.

That's what the show is about right, the brothers.

Except it's not anymore. It hasn't been for years.

Cas not being there was deafening but it brought us to a major point. Becky. Becky's telling us about the terrible ending.

And many of us are wondering why would they literally tell us this is the worst ending and then... make it the ending.

Now before we move on, it very apparent many of you think Dabb doesn't ship Deancas. And Dabb doesn't care about the characters.

Say what you will about any plot holes in his writing, the point he is VERY GOOD at writing the characters, and giving us good ones.

Why do we know Dabb ships Deancas? (ill say when its cowrote, other wise its not) cowrote ep 8.02 - purgatory "I prayed to you, Cas, every night" "Cas, Buddy, I need you." "I have a price on my head, and I've been trying to stay one step ahead of them, to – to keep them away from you." 8.08 Hunteri Heroici - Cas helps them hunt! 😊❤ Dean & Cas have a serious convo about why Cas doesn't want to see/go to heaven. 8.22 Dean's mad at Cas. Sam's explanation of why Dean should be easy on Cas: "It's Cas." Dean then points out how he'd knife anybody else if they did what Cas did. 9.10 - Cas comforts Dean when Dean can't take seeing Sam (Gadreel) being tortured anymore. Also tons of Cas. 9.20 (bloodlines) - Canonical couple parallel "I was there, where were you" 9.22 The angels make Cas choose between them and killing Dean and he "gave up an entire army for one guy" 10.09 Claire's reintroduction. Cas heavy ep. DeanCas date. 10.22 THE PRISONER - u know the ep where Dean beats the shit out of Cas but loves him enough to not kill him.

We COULD keep going but I think I've made my point. If Robert Singer is the guy that is like "the show is about Sam and Dean only" Andrew Dabb is the DeanCas shipper. And you could even say a Cas stan.

Notice! How in s13 for SEVEN episodes we have a story that revolves around Dean's grief about losing Cas. Notice! How often the stories in all these seasons have a focus on their relationship. THAT is Andrew Dabb. If it weren't for him doing that, we wouldn't be able to easily say after Dean's lack of a response to Cas' confession, that Dean reciprocates.

To me, when I was (binge) watching s12 for the first time, I thought damn this is really got a lot of DeanCas. So I went to look at who was in charge, who was writing. I saw Andrew Dabb, associated him with Deancas episodes, saw all the new writers, Bobo, and then I saw that Yockey is known for same sex stories and it clicked. Dabb assembled a team to give us Destiel. THAT WAS IN SEASON 12!!!!!!!!

The amount of people saying he's homophobic flabbergast me. Open your eyes! That isn't what's going on.

Imagine making a show and trying to right all the wrongs of Supernatural. Imagine trying to write the greatest love story ever told and you have the entire season planned out for it to end off beautifully, it may possibly be your greatest achievement when it's done and then boom. someone comes in and tells you you aren't allowed to make Dean bi or make destiel endgame, after he was most probably already given the go ahead.

Sure. You could imply he's bi or into cas still in a way. Still make nice-ish ending. just give everyone what the kinda want.

Or you could scrap the last season, nothing close to a canonical bisexual Dean Winchester or Deancas endgame in site. People can be done with it be happy with the show, continue to live their lives in ignorance as to how close they were to Canon destiel.

OR you can lead everyone to the very closest you can get them to what you were aiming for and then show everyone the ugly truth and reality. Light it all on fire. Burn the show to the ground in your wake. Try your darnedest to making these people's (the people saying no) pockets suffer. Show us, the audience, what happened. Show us what this show really is.

I've seen people talk about the ending being changed during covid but I dont think that happened. I think what happened was Dabb already had this season planned out before it even started. Obviously the details were wobbly but it was all lead up to this ending. Destiel endgame, Canon Bisexual Dean, whatever it was. They were ready to write the greatest love story ever told and then someone shut it down.

Imagine the pain that must have caused them to be told no when they already said yes. They must have been so excited to give this to us.

I think someone (some producers) told him what this show is "really" about. The brothers. Can you imagine, after being told no, some kinda bullshit like this is said to you: "Why aren't you bringing it back to the brothers, Andrew? that's what the shows about. What with all this homosexual stuff, you know the audience won't like that. Not really." Imagine the original producers pushing this kind of view on you. "You know when we started it was Sam and Dean. It should end with Sam and Dean." That kinda sounds like someone huh? huh.

So why give us a nice acceptable finale, when you can take every problem Supernatural's had either up front or behind the scenes and create a finale so incredibly bad that people don't want to watch it anymore.

Someone made a good point about how Sam was originally supposed to be the main focus (this isn't to put any hate on Sam or Jared). Dean and Sam are the main characters but Sam was supposed to be the focus and for Dean to have become the focus, must have annoyed the producers because... well here we are. They wouldn't listen to Jensen. The producers liked this ending. Jensen's opinion didn't matter to them.

In some ways, if this is really what happened, it can be seen as childish from Dabb. To hurt all of us like that. Yes, he's hurting the producers, the execs, the cw. But to hurt us? Yeah it stings.

But in other ways, if this is really what happened, this is Dabb showing us the muck and gunk under the shiny surface. The hate for Misha. The hidden hate for Jensen. The underlying sexism. The underlying homophobia. The people REALLY in charge don't care about us, they just want our money. He needed to open our eyes and free us, at least free the people that he was writing for. The people he sees that care about this show.

This is the ending the powers that be wanted and its a big fuck you for a reason. I dont think this is Dabb spitting in our faces for loving this show, I think this is him trying to get revenge for us.

But from here, you can see it how u want it. If this is really what happened, I'm not in charge of your emotions, if you wanna be mad be mad if you wanna be grateful be grateful. And you don't have to believe me either I said this is speculation.

Also, as for all of the rumors like there being shots to the confession scene that we didn't see, which Jensen himself implied, I think that might have been a last ditch effort to canonized DeanCas but obviously it was cut. Like the name change was pretty clear. As for Misha possibly having shot some stuff for 20 I dont know what to tell you. If it's true I dont know where the blame would lie.

I do think however, that if all this was the case, the writers were prepared to become villians here. I mean they told us the writers were villians with Chuck right? So. Who knows what went down so they could give us such a vile ending. It could've been the producers or the writers, who truly knows. I do think tho that people we "trust" did some pretty shitty things to push the narrative in certain directions so now one would see this as the actual ending that was coming.

So again do with my SPECULATION what you will. This was in no way meant to put Dabb on a pedestal or anything. Just meant to give a bit of perspective.

(Also Jensen didn't unfollow Dabb recently he was already unfollowed for years)

[fanfic-corner]

Destiel

It’s my birthday tomorrow, and to celebrate, I’ve compiled a list of my favourite fics! I’ve read a lot of Destiel fics over the past year, but these are the ones that have stuck with me the most. I’ve not put as much detail in as I usually do because otherwise we would be here forever, but I am begging you to read these fics. They’re all amazing.

Kiss You When It’s Dangerous by zoemathemata (@zoemathemata) on AO3. (57,593 words).

It’s adorable. The plot is fabulous. It’s my all time favourite fic. Please, I am begging you, just read it.

Stand By Me by whelvenwings (@whelvenwings) on AO3. (31,252 words).

The first Destiel fic I ever read, and it’s managed to stay with me this whole time.

Angel’s Wild by LimonadeGaby and riseoftefallenone on AO3. (389,271 words).

The pining is unbearable but it’s all worth it in the end. The ultimate slow burn.

The Tea is Decaf by mnwood (@tomhardysteeth) on AO3. (3,673 words).

Cas is adorable. Eileen is adorable. Everyone is adorable.

a turn of the earth by microcomets on AO3. (95,274 words).

Of course I’ll rec the ultimate John Winchester bashing fic. The plot is so amazing and it is written excellently.

the inexhaustible silence of houses by Askance on AO3. (31,820 words).

This was beautifully written, made me cry, and the ending haunts me to this day.

Forget-Me-Not Blues by noangelsinthegarrison (@aaziraphales) on AO3. (68,689 words).

Jesus Christ, I have not read another fic where these two are such blatant idiots. That being said... I love it. Everything about it is amazing.

the cost of a thing by quiettewandering (@wanderingcas) on AO3. (74,198 words).

So cute! All the angst! My all time favourite trope and absolutely the best take on it!

In All Your Borrowed Finery by vanishingact (@vanishingactblog) on AO3. (67,950 words).

Okay this is adorable and you can’t convince me otherwise. Every time I read a fic with Gabriel in, I miss him just a bit more.

Down Like Water by museaway (@museaway) on AO3. (14,512 words).

I reread this occasionally just to feel something. I literally had to check if I misread the tags like 3 times and I cry every. single. time.

Partnered by K_K_TiBal (@thebloggerbloggerfun) on AO3. (28,112 words).

This is so fucking cute. The artwork is gorgeous. And, now I ship Jody and Donna. All round win.

Black Swans by omphalos and Wolfling on AO3. (66,455 words).

Okay so maybe this is more Sabriel than Destiel, but it was written amazingly and the plot was phenomenal!

this is a good thing, dean (prayer is a sign of faith) by cascountsdeansfreckles on AO3. (529 words).

The one time Cas can’t hear his prayers... I had to include a 15x18 fic in here somewhere, and this one set me off.

Purgatory, director’s cut by runsinthefamily on AO3. (23,722 words).

This was beautiful. It felt hypnotic, almost like poetry, and I absolutely cried at the end.

The House on the Ocean Road by coffeeandcas (@coffeeandcas) on AO3. (111,351 words).

This was gorgeous! Dean and Cas as parents was adorable, and Jimmy was such a fucking icon I don’t even know where to start. Also, not the weirdest past Cas ship I’ve ever seen (but it’s up there).

Broadway Musical by Griftings on AO3. (12,453 words).

The King and Queen of the crack fics. I adore the ‘did you fuck the Michael sword’ vibes and the formatting just makes everything so much funnier.

How Many Slams In An Old Screen Door [podfic] by Tenoko1 (@tenoko1) on AO3. (1hr 50mins).

Before we were shoved back into lockdown, I used to listen to podfics on the way to/from school, and this has to be my all time favourite so far. The asexual representation was fantastic, the plot was hilarious, and (as always) it was read beautifully.

When Charlie Met Cas by riseofthefallenone on AO3. (24,666 words).

This has to be thee funniest fic ever written. I don’t make the rules.

Boneless Wings by PallasPerilous (@pallasperilous) on AO3. (4,333 words).

The art is gorgeous (I’d literally just finished watching Pan’s Labyrinth which was terrifying) and it was such a brilliant parody of all the other wing fics out there (not that I don’t love them too!)

Grace by july_19th_club (@july-19th-club) on AO3. (5,164 words).

This was gorgeous and now I really want to see it filmed! It is so much better than the ending we got. I would say the author should work for them, but... frankly, they deserve better.

It Started With a Fanfic Competition by Tenoko1 (@tenoko1) on AO3. (124,487 words).

This was written beautifully. It was so wholesome, not afraid to call the characters out on their usual bullshit, and has genuinely more character development than the entire 15 year long show.

Serendipity by whelvenwings (@whelvenwings) on AO3. (23,891 words).

I absolutely adored every character in this (and thoroughly enjoyed guessing who was going to show up next!) and the plot was fabulous!

The Mute!Cas ‘verse by Princess_Aleera on AO3. (148,656 words).

Oh man. I wasn’t sure at first, but this is now maybe my favourite universe out there. The fluff was unbelievably fluffy, the angst was quality pain, and that’s without mentioning the fact the end had me ugly sobbing. On Christmas Eve.

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth by Mishafied on AO3. (68,926 words).

Oh my lord, what about this isn’t amazing? The casting was fabulous, the amount of research was obvious and really paid off, and I mean... Jurassic Park AU! It made me desperate to rewatch the films, too.

The Passion of the Christ (and his angelic ex-boyfriend) by Bzzee (@clarafordahwin) on AO3. (4,972 words).

I am going straight to Hell, and it is because of this fic right here. That being said, this is top quality crack and I’ve sent it to everyone I know just for the trip (two of them had never watched SPN. One asked me if Jesus was actually in it).

You Can Keep Holding On by NorthernSparrow on AO3. (352,388 words).

I won’t spoil it, but one of the best plot twists of all time! The exploration of Dean & Cas’ relationship, the detail put into the lore, the foreshadowing... amazing.

Apres by imogenbynight (@imogenbynight) on AO3. (24,045 words).

This was so adorable - Cas and Dean deserved a holiday in France!

I hope you enjoyed them! I’ve really been struck - especially over quarantine - with appreciation for all the writers out there who are giving us this professional quality content for free. I genuinely don’t know what I’d do without you, which is why I’ve done my best to hunt you down and tag you so you can take my love! There are a hundred other fics that I could have included on here as well, or ones that I’ve read since making this list. Thank you all so much for giving us these wonderful stories!

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

So I watched 10.09 recently, and it has that part where Dean tells a story about him basically being almost roofied as a teen, but somehow it ends up framed as the funny joke and yet another proof that John "did what he could", and I kind of hate this? And it's the same episode in which MoC!Dean killed guys that kidnapped and tried to rape Claire, and you'd think writers would've addressed the parallels and acknowledge that Dean could've been triggered by this situation. 1/2

2/2 But in the end, it's never addressed, and the whole situation is framed as the proof that Dean is evil now. And I'm not even sure what I am trying to say, but with that being the show's approach back in s10, I'm not surprised about the finale anymore. Guess we should've known?

That’s an excellent angle to look at the issue because the Mark of Cain arc is a clear example of how people with different experiences will see the same thing in wildly different ways. There’s this phase of season 10 where everyone is like “oh no Dean is Getting Worse” and when you look at what Dean is doing... you actually go “...good for him”.

Let’s give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It’s not “the writers” in this case, it’s Dabb. Plenty of other writers don’t fall into this John apologism thing. Just look at how the episode before Lebanon, written by Buckner and Ross Leming, says that sometimes John would temporarily kick Dean out because he was “pissed at him” despite Dean always taking his side to mantain the peace. It almost seems like a statement to sprinkle some salt given what Dabb does in Lebanon, you know? Maybe not, but there is a tension between “John was shitty” writers and “John did his best” writers.

In hindsight, we gave Dabb too much of the benefit of the doubt. We were like, weeell, that’s supposed to be way the characters perceive the truth, which is distorted by the trauma... But now it’s obvious that he truly believed in the John-did-his-best version. He brought him back and got Mary back with him. No matter what happened to the finale, the network didn’t print those pictures of John and Mary to hang on Sam’s wall. He never took Dean’s abuse seriously and it shows.

The “anedocte” of Dean getting drugged and “saved” by John from being raped is obviously there to parallel him with Claire. Which works! It’s so weird because it’s like. You are soooo close to getting the point. Younger Dean was assaulted just like this teenage girl is assaulted and Dean saves her... but apparently John yelling at those people is a good way of dealing with the issue, while murdering child traffickers is an overraction thus bad.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? That Dean’s murder spree is framed as an overreaction. Sam is like “tell me you had to do this! tell me it was you or them!” - the answer to which (by the narrative) is obviously no, it wasn’t self defense, he just killed them because he could. He just murdered those men for no reason except he felt like being murdery. And the audience is supposed to be like “oh no! Dean is murdery for no reason except for murderiness! That’s bad!”.

But it’s a power fantasy, isn’t it? Going on a murder spree on rapists and traffickers. I bet any people who’s been violated like that has fantasized of doing the exact thing Dean does here. Killing them all.

Dean had the physical strength and skill to kill them all, why shouldn’t he kill them? (I mean, in real life I’m against private justice because I’m a fan of the state of law, but the Supernatural universe obviously works on different principles than the state of law. Again, it’s a fictional narrative that plays out as a fantasy for the audience, so.)

So what was Dabb’s intention? I’m afraid it’s the worst one. “John Winchester’s not going to win any Number One Dad awards, you know? But, you know, damn if he wasn’t there when we needed him”. What the fuck, Dabb? It’s been established since season 1 that John WASN’T there when they needed him. Which... I’m afraid... leads us to the Cas-Claire plot in the episode. Cas has fucked off with Jimmy’s body leaving Claire on her own. Parallels how John wasn’t going to win wny Number One Dad awards. But! Cas is there when Claire Really Needs Him i.e. when she’s about to be raped by older men. Parallels how John was there when Dean Really Needed Him i.e. when he was about to be raped by older men.

I think the point is to say, Cas kinda sucked because he took Claire’s dad away but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Claire because he gets there in time to prevent her from being raped. Just like (ew) John kinda sucked as a father because hunting and stuff, but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Dean because he got there in time to prevent him from being raped.

It’s pretty yucky. Literally NOBODY wanted a parallel between Cas and John. But he made one. And he made one to absolve Cas from the guilt he carried for what he did to Claire (Claire’s mother is a mother so who fucking cares about her. She’s basically a Blurry Wife(TM), she’s only a tool for Claire’s arc, Cas apparently only cares about the harm he did the child, not the wife, for some reason.) and to absolve Cas from his guilt it absolves John too. Don’t worry, being a parent is hard. You often screw up. But you can *looks at smudged writing on hand* prevent the kid from being raped by predatory adults and everything’s fine now.

It’s not really important if the child suffered hunger or whatever, the only important thing is that they don’t get raped, because that’s bad, everything else is just a little detail.

All Dabb got with that scene was to paint Sam as extremely unsympathetic because he’s no longer a child, he’s a full adult now and still thinks of that episode at the CBGB as a funny story. That’s not a good look. It almost makes you think that the writer himself saw it as a funny story. Lol teenage boy biting more than he can chew. But then why the Claire parallel? The Claire scene onviously is not supposed to be anything but horrific. I'll give Dabb the benefit of the doubt on this specific thing.

It’s weird, yes, because Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon where he establishes that John was a bad husband/father even before tragedy hit the family. But apparently that’s the “not going to win any Number One Dad awards” part, I suppose? I guess he intended to write John as this flawed, ~complex~ figure who was imperfect but still brave and whatever blah blah did his best blah blah. I’m all for flawed complicated characters but a horrible father is a horrible father. A rose by any other name... parental abuse is still parental abuse even if the poor guy was complicated and traumatized and did what he thought he had to do to prepare his sons for a violent world.

Also, the story frames Dean’s escapade as a teenager being stupid. “You know what he got for that? Me whining about how much he embarrassed me. Me telling him that I hated him. But then he stopped and turned around looked at me and said, Son, you don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked.” “It’s my job to raise you right.” This seems straight from a novel about teenagers doing something stupid that they’re too young to realize that their parents are right to be against them doing. But this isn’t just... a parent walking into a bar to stop their child to drink alcohol. Dean literally describes feeling sick from something that was inside the alcohol.

Sure, it makes sense that he’d lash out to John because of the shame and shock. But the scene is... off. Are we supposed to see this as a typical teenage mistake? Are we supposed to read it as something as horrific as what happened to Claire, literally sold into rape? Or, worse, are we supposed to see what happened to Claire as a teenage mistake, ah silly teenager, blindly trusting shady people, no wonder you end up in a situation where you’d get raped if a father figure didn’t sweep in and save you. I hope that wasn’t the intent.

To get back to Dean’s Mark-of-Cain violence, the writers clearly didn’t intend it to come from the Darkness up to a certain point. It was supposed to an arc about your own inner darkness (consider the Charlie episode, a couple episodes later). Then they came up with the idea of The(TM) Darkness, the suppressed cosmic feminine. While it caused a bit of dissonance in the subtext, it doesn’t really change Dean’s narrative, because his inner darkness is the trauma, and his trauma is inherebtly tied to the “feminine” i.e. the parts of him that don’t fit seamlessly into the scheme of toxic masculinity values. That the violence that comes from the Mark of Cain comes from Dean himself and that’s it, or is connected to the Darkness, it doesn’t change what it means for Dean. Dean and Amara have parallel histories, the feminine principle locked away, the trauma the anger stems from.

In 10x09 we’re still in the Before The (TM) Darkness era, before the suppressed cosmic feminine. The Mark of Cain arc is still about... well, Cain. But the shift is the signal that someone looked at Dean’s arc and said... you know what? “Lucifer gave me this curse so now I’m demonic and murdery” is meh. “Toxic masculinity suppresses the feminine and it creates trauma which rage and violence comes from” is more interesting. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good idea, and surely the idea came from seeing how Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding.

Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding in a certain way, in fact, because of a pretty simple reason. There’s a fundamental tension in Dean’s MoC arc. We want him to go murdery, but it’s also our main character, so we don’t want him to do really horrible things because he still needs to be relatable. The audience cannot hate him, so he must NOT do something entirely unforgivable. He still needs to be somewhat relatable, even when demonic or demonic-adjacent.

So he goes on a murder spree... but it’s rapists and child traffickers. He’s demon, but he kills a misogynistic dude that wanted his wife dead for cheating on him. He’s a demon, but beats up dudes that harass women. He does a slaughter, but they’re nazi. He’s off the deep end, but works a case of kidnapped and abused young women...

Speaking of which. 10x23, written by Jeremy Carver. Dean works a case where a girl was killed while dressed scantily and Dean makes some slut-shaming remarks, and we’re supposed to think “whoa Dean, that’s bad”. But later he confronts the girl’s father and what does he say?

I’m just doing my job, Mr. McKinley.

By suggesting my daughter was a slut?

I’ll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home.

You shut your face right now.

And you know what? I don’t blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

Back then the episode was super controversial and everyone hated the case because of the apparent slut-shaming but I loved it! Because it’s not about the girl. It’s about Dean. Dean doesn’t think that a girl gets killed because she dresses in a miniskirt so it’s her fault. Dean is projecting on himself and he’s not actually victim blaming the girl, he’s victim blaming himself. And when he absolves the girl by putting the blame on the father... well, subtextually he’s absolving himself by putting the blame on his father. On the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervaded his own home. He’s textually not ready to absolve himself, of course, he summons Death to ask him to kill him later, but subtextually he’s on the right path.

Rose McKinley basically did the same mistake Dean did at the CBGB when he trusted some older people who offered him drinks and the same mistake Claire did when she trusted a man who sold her for money because he offered him a place and stability. She trusted the wrong people (in this case, vampires, which adds the whole subtext of vampires and sexuality) who took advantage of her. Except Rose had no one to save her. (Her friend, Crystal, gets rescued by Dean, even if he causes the other hunter Rudy to die in the process.)

Carver’s writing is pretty brutal. The girl made that mistake because was abused at home, so she was desperate for validation and that desperation drove her into the wrong hands. (Rose even has a brother who blames himself for bringing her sister to her future murderers, destructive sibling relationship check.) It doesn’t actually even matter if Dean guessed right about Rose’s family situation, because what matters is what it tells us about Dean. He basically relates to a dead abused girl. Actually all through the season Dean is paralleled to “skanks” “sluts” and sex workers. Obviously this happens kinda all through the show, the whole “the business is based on absent fathers” thing happened much earlier in the story, so it’s not new. But s10 draws a picture of female suffering - abuse, manipulation and death. Season 10 was difficult to go through. In hindsight, it was probably on purpose because it was supposed to be darkest hour of the feminine. Summed with some good old fashioned misogyny, but hey.

The Carver era was wonky but Carver wanted to free the feminine. (I believe that Mary’s comeback, while written by Dabb because of the showrunner shift, was planned before the showrunner shift.) We thought the Dabb era wanted the same, with Mary choosing life and Amara being independent and so on, but it evidently wasn’t the case. Not a single woman arrives at end of the story. It’s hardly ~Bucklemming or ~the network or ~covid because it starts before the very end.

I’m not saying that dead sluts are more feminist than living women, but if the women die or disappear anyway (and they did) I’d rather have an exploration of trauma than nothing. And I definitely prefer a dead slut narrative that calls out parental abuse than a narrative where women live but abuse gets the you-did-your-best treatment.

Whoops! I digressed! But feel free to ask for any clarification or send me any observation or thought.

[percywinchester27]

La Petite Mort

Word count: 2.1K

Pairing: Dean X Reader AU

Warnings: None, just fluff, humour and implied sex ;)

Series Summary: The reader has just shifted to a new flat and boy, someone on the floor has a really banging sex life! The passionate moans have been keeping her up for several nights in row and enough is enough! Reader has her suspicions, but is it really the green-eyed hottie from room no. 307?  

A/N: It’s a neighbours!AU. I’m finally writing one. So excited to share it with you guys. Hope y’all like it! <3

Beta: The best babe, @deanssweetheart23​​​​​

Everything was fine till the banging started. Pun very much intended.

The shift had been smooth, the job was going great and life was finally on track. You had slid under the covers with the most satisfied smile in years only to be woken up to a lady very, very, very happy with her life.

Oh yeah… oh yeah… ahhh right there… oh fuck yeah…

You sat up right in your bed, eyes wide, face hot.

Third night in a row. Third fucking night. Literally.

What in the good heavens? The landlady might have mentioned this while renting out the flat!

Shoving the pillow over your ears, you fell back onto the mattress, closing your eyes shut very tightly. Eventually sleep overtook you and you lapsed into lousy dreams of trying to catch the taxi which kept evading you. Not a metaphor for your sex life at all. Nope.

The disturbed sleep didn’t help your mood the following day. Everyone at the office thought of you as a happy-go lucky person. Lately, they were seeing this whole new dark side of you. Sleep was essential to your functioning. 

In the evening, on your way back, you stopped by the coffee shop downstairs to pick up a brownie. It was a little place; busy yet quaint. The barista, Charlie, made two hearts in your coffee instead of one. That put the biggest smile on your face. 

At least, the day was ending on a high note.

Your newly rented flat was on the third floor of a very complicated building. One staircase did not directly lead into another. An entire hallway had to be crossed to get to it. The design probably broke a hundred different by laws and someone was definitely paid off in the city civil office to get a construction permit. You did not want to imagine how the people would fare in case of a fire emergency. Learning the escape plan was like memorising the map of a treasure hunt. You escape, you win. You lose… whoops! Better luck in next life. But the rent was cheap and you were already living all the clichés of a struggling writer- one incomplete book, a job at a publishing house and addiction to coffee. So, yes, you would brave fire when it came to being able to afford a living.

Struggling with the brownie package and the coffee in your hand you jammed the key into the door. It didn’t go in. 

What the hell?

You tried again, and once more the key got jammed. On a closer look, you realised that the lock didn’t resemble yours at all. Stepping back, you peered at the door. 307. Not 306- which was yours.

The floor design was insane and instead of the flats being lined up next to each other, they were all fronting one another in a haphazard fashion. Shaking your head, you took a step back and jammed the key into the lock of your own flat.

Jesus! You’re losing it, Y/N.

Shirking off the mild irritation, you cooked yourself a hot cup of instant noodles, put on your favourite TV show and slinked into your couch. Tonight’s episode was going to reveal who the murderer was and you had been dying for the suspense to finally end. 

Just when the protagonist was about to point a gun at the killer in the shadows…

Oh my God... you’re incredible… aahhhh… ahhhh… ahhh…

You completely abandoned the TV and jumped up from the sofa. The fire hazard might still be worth it, but the thin walls so weren’t.

On tiptoes, you made your way to the east side wall, putting your ear against it. The noise wasn’t coming from upstairs. That was the only sure thing. But it was impossible to pinpoint the direction. The moans were reverberating through the walls. So loudly that there was no escaping it. Not in the bedroom, the kitchen or the living room sofa. 

Of all of them, the east wall seemed like the culprit. 

Right there… yeah…

307. Whoever it was in that room needed to calm the FUCK down. You grabbed your blanket and dragged it to the end of the living room, fuming. What ticked you off was how much this was ticking you off.

It’s sleep you told yourself. The lack of sleep was the only thing making you mad. The sex noises couldn’t be it. Because there were other noises- a dog barked somewhere occasionally, one of the rooms had a very loud stereo and someone was too much into baking- the beater was ceaseless. No, it had to be the timing and your wrecked sleep schedule.

Just like the nights before, you covered your ears and started reciting the story of the manuscript you had been reading at work. Eventually, sleep overtook you again.

The next morning you woke up in a crappier mood. If that was even possible.

Breathing down on anything and everything, you locked the door on your way out for work. Turning into the corridor, you ran into a wall of solid flesh. 

In your groggy, sleep deprived state, the first thing you noticed was the way he smelled- leather and whiskey and something headier than that. It was divine. Next, you looked up into those eyes- stunning green, like sparkling water running over jade.

“Easy there, sweetheart!” The guy smirked. 

You straightened yourself and took a step back. In front of you stood the most handsome guy you had ever seen. He was tall, with dirty blond hair, almost brown, and those stunning eyes. 

“I’m so sorry,” you muttered, trying to collect your scattered thoughts. You had one of those dumb faces that gave away every damn thought crossing through your brain, so obviously you tried your best not to meet his gaze. Which was a shame really. That face demanded to be ogled at. Let alone the body that followed.

“No, no… I didn’t mind at all.” 

You saw him reach out to the door of 307.

“You’re the one who lives there?” You asked through gritted teeth. 

He raised an eyebrow. “Sure. You want a tour?”

Uhgg the best looking guy and he has to be such a douche!

Slipping past him, you stomped off towards the stairs. This too-good-looking-for-the-world asshat had been ruining your nights and in turn your life. 

You knew it was wrong to be mad at him without, at least, talking about the issue first. A polite conversation explaining your situation wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world now, would it? But how does one start a conversation pertaining to that? After all, he wasn’t exactly the one making the noise. What would you say?

So, hey would you mind pleasuring your girlfriend a little less? 

Or better. Ever heard of a ball gag?

Mere thought of it made you shudder.

The work day was spent trying to shove your neighbour's stupidly handsome face out of your mind. It didn’t help that your mother kept calling, repeatedly. You knew what she had to say. How you should have taken that bigger job at Royal’s publishing. How the writing career might never take off. How you really should get a boyfriend now, or you’ll be the only unmarried cousin in the family.

Usually you could entertain your mother with well-timed hmms and ahhs. Today wasn’t that day.

Bone-tired and absentminded, you jammed the key in the keyhole in the evening, only for it to get stuck again. You looked up at the door. 307.

Well, shit!

Putting both your hands into it, you yanked the key with all your might, just as the door opened. There he stood, with his crooked smirk, dimples digging in, wearing nothing but a thin cotton t-shirt and sweatpants that hung all too low on those hips.

“You don’t need to break into my house. I already offered a tour.” Of course, god gave him an irresistible voice. Cause at this point, why not?

“Sorry,” you muttered, looking anywhere but at him. “I keep getting the wrong door. This one’s mine.”

“Oh, so you’re the one in 306!” You could feel his smirk more than see it. “Looks like you’re having a good ol’ time in there.”

“Excuse me?”

The guy raised scratched the back of his neck, face apologetic. “You might… ya know… just keep the voice down in there?”

The audacity of this guy!

“Rich of you to ask anyone to keep it down!” You hissed. “Why don’t you tell your girlfriend to keep it low?” 

With that, you shut your door in his surprised face. The worst part was, after bumping into him in the morning, your mind was producing distinct images of him in the bed, doing things to a woman. You had tried your best not to let them make a home in your head. But like a stickly tenant, they refused to evacuate. No wonder it was hard to look him in those brilliant, brilliant green eyes. The guy was hot! There was no denying that. You weren’t even willing to accept to yourself just how much time you had put into imagining him naked.

If anything, the denial mixed with your pre-existing irritation and sleep deprivation had you ready tonight. 

So the moment the enamoured voice started begging, you hopped out of your chair. You had every intention of yelling yourself hoarse at the delectable resident next door, but the moment you stepped into the corridor, you came face to face with the very man. 

He was- thankfully, completely clothed- looking a bit harassed, himself.

aahhhh… ahhhh… ahhh… right there...

Your head whipped up to the suspected direction of the voice, and back at him. “Wait, you aren’t… it’s not...?”

His face mirrored your expression of surprise and then he burst out laughing. “Looks like we’ve both been played.”

“Not intentionally,” you said, peering at the adjacent doors, mostly to not look at him. “Where do you think it’s coming from?”

He shot a glance at the door opposite to his. “If it’s not you, my best guess is that guy over there. I mean, if you ask me, Nick over there doesn’t look the type to make a woman that happy… but what do I know?”

“You shouldn’t make assumptions about people,” you said, taking a tentative step towards the said door.

Mr. hot guy smartpants laughed. “Oh, trust me. He’s the douchiest douche you’ll ever meet. Guy like that? Definitely selfish in bed.”

You frowned at him.

“He asks women in the street to smile more,” hot guy explained.

“Uhhgg… yeah you’re right. It’s definitely not him.”

Hot guy pointed his fingers at the rest of the doors. “That one’s rented by three guys. I don’t think it’s them. Mrs. Hendrickson over there works night shifts. I have no clue who lives in there,” he pointed to the last door, directly in front of you.

Goodness you’re amazing...

“Yes, lady, we already know!” He called out.

You couldn’t help the giggle that burst through your lips.

His eyes softened. “Dean Winchester,” he said, offering his hand.

“Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N,” you said, taking his. He had a firm grip. A very funny sensation gripped your stomach. Like a flutter. Nervousness? 

“It’s great to meet you, Y/N.” He smirked. “I sure wish the circumstances were better.”

You bit your lip. “Listen, I’m sorry for the comment about your girlfriend. I was just mad about, you know... “

“Don’t worry about it. My non-existent girlfriend is very cool. She took no offense.”

You snorted.

“I was dead serious about the house tour,” He winked. “I can promise great coffee.”

“Sure, sometime soon.”

He shot a look at the door with the unknown occupants again. “I hate to leave this here, but I think we should get whatever kind of shuteye we can while they’re quiet over there, huh?”

“Oh, yeah!” You hurried back to your flat. “Night, Dean.”

He gave you his crooked grin again, just a hint of mischief. “Night, Y/N.”

You knew it wasn’t him now, and he was right about making the most of the quiet and fucking off to sleep, and yet, each time you closed your eyes, your mind decided to replay your imaginations for you. With a start, you sat up in your bed, a thought occurring to you like a hit on the head- If you had been thinking about him that way? Had he been imagining you as well?

Blood rushed to your face at the very idea. Though a tiny part of you begged for the answer- would it be such a bad thing if he had?

*********************

A/N 2: So? So? SO??? What do you think?

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[whatareyousearchingfordean]

Come As You Are

Summary: Dean takes Y/n dress shopping for a hunt, both of them blissfully unaware of where it will lead. 

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Plus Size Reader

Word Count: 3.9K+

Warnings: Language, self-esteem and body image struggles, public intercourse, unprotected intercourse (wrap it before you tap it)

Author’s Note: This was written for an anonymous request, 

“Hey babe I don’t know if your taking requests but I had a groovy idea dean x shy plus reader where they have to get the reader nice sexy clothes but she feels really uncomfortable in them and refuses to leave the dressing room and dean confess how he feels and they have sex in the dressing room ? Fluff and smut” 

I truly enjoyed writing it so I hope it lives up to your expectations anon. Remember, feedback is like crack to writers, and we always love to hear what you thought xoxo Alex

Consider checking out a book from Alexandra’s Library!

A frown etched itself on her face as she ran her hand over the fabrics hanging from the racks. All of it felt foreign underneath her fingertips. Satin, chiffon, and everything else that was far more expensive than she was used to. Y/n’s wardrobe mostly consisted of denim and polyester blends that tended to fray after two washes. It was all that a hunter could afford, after all. 

“How in the hell are we gonna afford any of this crap?” She whispered to Dean, who was eyeing the rack behind her, the gowns in front of him all a deep shade of red. 

“Charlie’s miracle card, remember? There is no limit,” Dean raised his brow at her, a grin etched across his perfect face. 

“Fine,” she groaned. “I still don’t see why I even need to go dress shopping, I’m sure I could find something in my closet.” 

“I’ve seen your closet, and none of it is right for this case. You’ve got to distract the coroner for the night and you can’t do that in baggy jeans and flannel.” Dean huffed as he picked a dress off the rack. Y/n’s eyes went wide as she took it in, the hem was short for anyone’s standards, then add in the plunging neckline and this dress left nothing to the imagination. 

“That is so not happening,” Y/n pointed at the offensive garment, her stomach fluttering at the simple idea of even trying to slip into it. Every spot on her body that she hated would be on full display in that thing. Her thick thighs, the roll that sat on her bra just under her arms, and don’t get her started on her abdomen. 

“Come on, just try it. You never know ‘till you try it on.” 

“Ugh,” Y/n snatched the dress from his hand before stalking off to look at more dresses. There were a couple more options that she grabbed to try on that were closer to her comfortability level. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be caught dead in any of the items in her arms. But Dean had this way about him, always able to convince her to do anything without question. Maybe it was the way his skin crinkled around his eyes or the brightness that always seemed to live behind those deliciously green eyes? Who was she kidding, it was all of that and then some. The huntress had fallen hard for him from that first meeting. Sometimes she wondered why she chose to torture herself. 

Dean Winchester was the cream of the crop when it came to hunters, as was his baby brother, Sam. The whole world knew who they were, including heaven and hell, so how could she be expected to resist him when he smiled at her the way he does. Or even when he made her coffee in the mornings just how she liked it and picked up chocolate and pain killers for her when he knew it was that time of the month. He was exceedingly attentive to her, something that she was sure he only directed at Sam. It was just another thing that surprised her about the legend of a man. 

Yeah, like an idiot she fell for the eldest Winchester. There was no stopping it even though she was certain that her feelings would never be reciprocated. Y/n wasn’t like the other woman that Dean went for when he was on the prowl at bars. It’s not that she was ugly, it was that she was plain at best. People didn’t turn their heads when she walked in the room, men’s gazes didn’t linger on her from across the bar, no, Y/n was merely average. That’s how she knew that Dean would never see her as more than a friend because he had never looked at her in any form of want. 

“Are you ready to try those on?” A sales woman’s voice broke her out of her unrelenting train of thought. Dean answered for her before she could process the woman’s words. 

“Yes, please.” He smiled brightly and Y/n watched as the woman’s face flushed under his gaze. Y/n almost felt bad for the woman who was now just another victim to his charm. The saleswoman at least would be able to relish in his attention, wondering about what could have been had Y/n not been there with him. Y/n on the other hand already knew her fate. But mostly, if she was being honest, she was jealous. 

Dean put his hands on her shoulders and guided her along behind the boutique worker who took them into the back of the store where the dressing rooms were located. The area was mostly quiet, just the music from the speakers could be heard in the space. Three large mirrors sat in front of a stage on the far wall, the rooms spaning out on either side of it. In the center of the room were three plush chairs for those waiting for others to sit in. 

The worker unlocked a door for her as Dean plopped down in one of the chairs. Y/n slipped behind the door, letting out a deep breath as it closed behind her. If there was one thing she hated it was trying on clothes. Nothing ever seemed to fit her right or look anything like what it did on the hanger. It made the task a constant battle with her self-consciousness. 

Y/n had always carried extra weight on her body. It wasn’t that she didn’t live an active lifestyle, she was a hunter, after all, it was the diet that hunters were accustomed to. It was fast food and dives in every small town in America. Not many mom and pop places tended to offer an egg white omelet, and it wasn’t her inclination to eat them either. So, she had always been bigger than most, and if she was being honest she had grown used to that. Maybe she used it as a shield to protect herself. Making connections with people as a hunter only tended to end in heartbreak, so this was easier. 

The hunter hid the scary red thing Dean had selected behind all the rest of her haul, hoping she would find something before she ever even got to the thing. Y/n stripped from her flannel and jeans tossing them on the bench in the corner. She also added her bra to the pile, knowing all of these garments necessitated that she did not wear one. That left her in her favorite pair of panties. They weren’t anything special, but they made her butt looked its best.

The first dress in the line up was a straight black dress that hit just above her knee. The neckline wasn’t anything too crazy but the sleeves rolled off the shoulders a strip of fabric wrapping around her bust. Y/n was able to slip it on and tug up the zipper on the side. With a slide of her hands against the fabric, she frowned at her reflection. Not that it would flatter any figure, in her opinion. 

“What’s taking so long in there?” Dean called out from his spot in front of the mirrors.

“I’m not coming out in this thing,” she called back as she began to take the dress back off. 

“Oh, come on sweetheart,” 

“Nope, next,” Y/n heard him huff even through the door and she imagined he rolled his eyes as well. 

The next dress was a deep blue color. It had a wrap and pencil skirt, with an asymmetrical shape between the hem and the neckline. She supposed it was pretty but it also kind of looked like she had wrapped herself in a towel. Mostly, she felt like the point in the neckline was going to stab her in the throat, and she was not sure how to be sexy when she was trying not to die. It was another pass for her. 

There was only one dress left, and at that moment she was wishing to whoever was listening that she had picked out a few more choices. Dean was whistling now, some Zeppelin tune she couldn’t exactly identify and she knew he was getting impatient. Y/n swapped the fabrics on her body, pulling the thin straps of the red satin piece up onto her shoulders. The dress clung to her skin, the fabric lightweight. 

“Y/n/n,” Dean’s voice was just outside the door, the new proximity of it startling her. “Come on, you have to show me at least one. I know you and you’ll just try vetoing them all.” Y/n swore under her breath because he was right and it pissed her off that he knew her that well. The zipper was out of her reach on her back and she supposed she wouldn’t be able to truly see what it looked like on her unless she zipped it up. 

“Fine, I need help with this zipper anyway,” she sighed and held the fabric against her naked chest while opening the door with her other. Dean was beaming when he came into view on the other side of the door. He snuck inside faster than a flea, the slamming of the door startling her again. 

Get it together woman, you kill monsters for a living, Y/n cursed herself. 

“Turn,” Dean instructed her with his fingers, and the woman obliged as she faced the mirror. Dean brushed her hair off her shoulder with his fingertips, the action barely distinguishable but it sent the hairs on the back of her neck standing to attention. With one hand holding the bottom stop, he used the other to tug on the pull tab, sliding together the teeth in one fluid motion. 

“Thanks,” Y/n’s words were soft as she made eye contact with the green-eyed hunter in the mirror. He ran his tongue of his bottom lip, pulling the plump flesh between his teeth as his eyes wandered over her exposed skin. 

Y/n visibly cringed as she looked at herself. Unfortunately, this was her favorite out of the three, but that didn’t mean she felt like she could venture anywhere in public in the thing. “Sweetheart, if that coroner hadn’t already been eyeing you up today, he would not know where to start when he sees you in this.” 

“Shut up,” Y/n scrunched her nose as she spun around to whack Dean’s shoulder. “You are so full of it.”

“Am not,” Dean scoffed, his eye softening before he continued. “Y/n, why don’t you see how beautiful you are?”

Y/n whipped around to stare at him, her arms crossing over her chest, not believing that those words come out of his mouth. Surely, he was playing with her…

“Have you looked at me, Dean?” Y/n slapped her hands against her thighs, emphasizing their jiggle upon impact. “I’m nothing special.” 

“I have looked at you,” His gaze traveled down her body again, his breath hitching slightly as he did so. “I’ve been looking at you for a while now.” The drop in Dean’s voice sent heat rushing through her body, the gravel undertone making her shiver. 

“Dean--” words escaped her as the hunter stepped into her personal space, pushing her back against the mirror. Dean’s left hand came to rest against the reflective surface just beside her head as he chewed on his lip. 

“I don’t think you know how hard it is for me to keep my eyes off of you,” he leaned into her, his nose brushing alongside hers. “And now, seeing you in this dress, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off you.” 

A rush of confidence coursed through her blood as his hot breath fanned over her face and Y/n slipped her hands behind his neck, pulling his lips down to meet hers. The movement was anything but smooth, though the action sent both of the hunters into action. Dean growled as he nipped her lower lip and she opened up to him, allowing his tongue to invade her mouth. 

A moan involuntarily came from her as his hands moved to her hips, the heat of his skin seeping through the thin material where his finger pressed into her flesh. He stepped back, pulling her after him as he backed up and dropped to sit on the plush bench. Dean bunched up the material to her hips as he urged her to straddle his lap. Y/n used her hands on his shoulders to steady herself, the new bulge in his pants a surprise to her as she settled in his lap. 

“Yeah, and you thought I was kidding,” Dean took in the slight rise in her brow, leaning forward to run his lips across her jaw, taking note of the places that made her shiver. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she allowed Dean to explore her body and let herself just feel him. Dean raked his teeth along with the shell of her ear, causing her to buck her hips and both of them to groan.  

“Fuck,” her words were a breath on her lips as she repeated the action, the roughness of his jeans just enough friction on her aching sex. 

“That’s it, beautiful, take what you need,” Dean sat back and used his hands to keep her body moving against his own, watching the way her brows scrunched together in the center of her forehead. With a shift of his hips, he had her pushed back and straddling his left thigh, his hands still in their place on her hips. “Can you come like this, sweetheart?”

“I don’t--” a jolt of electricity had her halting her denial, instead she chose to just nod and place her hands against his chest to balance her movement. She could feel Dean’s heart hammering in his chest under her palm and the quick rise and fall of his breath. Even at this moment, she was disbelieving that he was that turned on watching her get herself off on his thigh, but she had the proof hammering under her fingertips. Y/n was biting her lip to keep quiet in the small room. “Dean, I’m so close.” 

“I’ve got you, come for me, Y/n,” he husked as his grip tightened, though she wasn’t sure how that was even possible, seeing as there was already gonna be bruises there later, that she was sure of. The sound of his voice reverberating in her head had the coil snapping inside of her, heat flooding her body as every nerve sparked and faded out. A rush of air left her lungs, her body slumping as her muscles relaxed post-orgasm. 

“Oh my god.” As her arousal ebbed from her body and the reality of what just happened came to her sense, Y/n clammed up and she tried to climb from his lap. Blood rushed to her face and her hands flew to her cheeks to hide the heat settling there.

“Woah, where are you going?” Dean stopped her from making a hasty exit, his eyes searching hers in question. 

“Dean, what the hell just happened?” 

A smirk replaced the confusion on his face as he leaned forward and nuzzled his face in her neck, tracing his tongue up her pulse. “You just got yourself off on my thigh while I tried not to cream my jeans,” he breathed in her ear. It was like he already knew every button to push on her body, his dirty talk doing everything she needed it to for her body to already be aching for him again. 

“I--”

“Shh, sweetheart. That was hot as fuck, and all I want now is to be buried deep inside that pretty pussy of yours.” 

“Jesus,” her eyes shifted to his, taking in the mischievous glint shining behind his iris. “You aren’t kidding.”

“Nope,” he popped the ‘p’ at the end of his word and Y/n nodded as she climbed off him. She turned her back to him so he could undo the zipper, and it took a second for Dean to catch on to her silent action. He jumped to the edge of the bench and tugged down the zipper before sliding the material down her shoulders. Dean hooked his fingers into the edge of her panties, placing a kiss on the dip in her lower back before pulling the soaked material to pool at her feet along with the dress. He stood then as she turned back to him and pushed his jacket and flannel down his arms, adding it to the pile of discarded clothes in the room. 

“Come, on we don’t have a lot of time before someone gets suspicious.” There was a quiver in her voice as she lifted the hem of his tee and tugged open his belt. It was taking everything in her to quell the shaking in her hands. Dean’s fingers came down to wrap around her wrists, halting her movement and she looked up at him. 

“Y/n we don’t have to,” he was trying to read her mind as he examined her face. The trepidation was seeping through her pores, but not because she didn’t want this. Hell, the painful ache between her legs told her how much she wanted this, but her brain couldn’t help to race through the million thoughts about what it all meant. 

“No, I-- God do I want this,” Y/n began chewing on the inside of her cheek as she tried to come up with the words to explain to him what she was thinking. But the longer the time passed the more nervous she grew, standing there stark naked and he’s still basically fully dressed. “I think I’ve wanted this for a long time now, but I’m just scared.”

“Of?” He urged her to continue.

“That this doesn’t mean the same thing to you,” Y/n cast her glance down, her eyes fixated on the way the fluorescent light glinted in the metal of his belt. 

“You think that this is about getting my dick wet for me.” It wasn’t a question, because she had all but spelled it out for him. “Y/n,” He put his fingers under her chin and turned her head back up to his, brushing his lips against hers, the action soft and unhurried. “I told you, I’ve been watching you for a while now, trying to learn everything I could about you. I would have done this the first night I met you if I hadn’t thought about what it would do to you. But I’m done being scared because I think I fell for you a long time ago and no amount of whiskey or other women could make me forget that. So I’m done fighting it.” 

“Yeah?” Her eyes were swimming with unshed tears now, and Dean answered her with another kiss, pulling her body flush against his own as he invaded her mouth. The pair only pulled apart when they could no longer fight the need for air. “Dean--”

“Yeah,” he breathed, dropping his grip on her to finish what she started with his belt. Y/n watched his movements, her breath getting caught in her throat as she watched him pull his length from its cotton confines. Dean signaled for her to turn with one hand as he stroked himself with the other. She obliged, of course, and Dean pushed her gently between her shoulder blades until her hands were pressed against the mirror. He nudged her legs to open a tad wider, meeting her gaze in the mirror. 

“Do we--” 

“I’m good if you’re good,” she told him, knowing where he was going with his question. He nodded to her before lining himself up with her entrance. Dean held her gaze as he entered her from behind, both of them sighing together as he became fully seated. Y/n closed her eyes as she tried to compose herself, her head falling between her arms. 

“Fuck, open your eyes, look at yourself,” Dean was biting his tongue as he swatted her ass to get her to lift her head again. She indulged him, looking at herself in the mirror before turning her eyes back to his in the mirror. “There you go,” he praised her, the words like music to her ears as he pulled back out and slammed into her hips. 

Dean set up a steady rhythm, careful to not shake the walls of the dressing too much with his movement. The couple kept their eyes on each other in the mirror, the moment the most erotic thing she could ever remember doing, but for the life of her, she couldn’t be bothered by it. Even from her vantage point, she could see how blown his pupils were, the black of his iris’ all but drowning out the green that she loved so much. To be honest, she wasn’t sure which she liked more now. All she did know was the feeling of him moving inside her and the way her muscles were shaking. 

A small knock had Dean stilling his movements, and Y/n stood up, pressing her back against his chest. He slipped an arm around her chest as she signaled for him to be silent. “You doing alright in there?” 

Y/n swallowed the lump in her throat and let out a breath, “Yeah,” she called back, afraid her voice would be too wrecked if she said anything else. 

“Is there anything else I can get you? Maybe some different sizes?” The saleswoman tried again. 

“Nope, I’m all set, thank you.” 

“Okay, just let me know.” The sound of her footsteps could be heard retreating from the dressing room, and Dean pressed his face into her neck, the pair of them chuckling. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” he adjusted their position, resuming the movement of his hips as he snaked his free hand down to rub against her clit. Y/n jolted in his arms at the contact, this time closing her eyes as he built her back up. “I’m right behind you. Can you come for me again?” Y/n nodded against him, her hands flying to his forearm as she felt herself jumping over the cliff, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her knees buckled and Dean had to adjust himself to keep her from falling, still fucking her from behind as her fluttering walls milked him to his own orgasm. He bit into her shoulder to keep himself from groaning out loud. 

“Sweet Jesus,” her body went limp in his arms as the pair of them caught their breath in the now muggy space. 

“Yeah, you are so not going out with that coroner tonight. We will find a different way.” Dean admitted as he pulled his now softening cock from her. Y/n flinched at the feeling and the subsequent rush of his release inside her. 

“What?” She turned to him as he began righting himself, not understanding why he didn’t want her to do her job.

“‘Cause you are all mine now,” Dean tugged her into his chest, his fingers around one of her biceps. “And I want to spend all night making sure you can’t walk tomorrow.” 

“Oh,” Dean laughed as she blinked at him, clearly lost for any sort of coherent answer to what he just told her. 

“Get dressed so we can get out of here and kick Sammy out of our motel room.” Dean tapped her ass again and she pushed him away from her, a stupid grin on both of their faces.

Forevers: @22sarah08​ @akshi8278​ @anathewierdo​ @atc74​ @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​​ @callmekda​ @dawnie1988​ @deanwanddamons​ @ellewritesfix05​ @emoryhemsworth​ @flamencodiva​​ @foxyjwls007​ @hobby27​ @janicho88​ @jensengirl83​ @katehuntington​ @lyarr24​ @malfoysqueen14​ @mrsjenniferwinchester​ @msmarvelouswinchester​ @polina-93​​ @sleepylunarwolf​ @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan​ @smol-and-grumpy​ @superfanficnatural​ @supraveng​ @talesmaniac89​ @tranquility-or-chaos​​ @waywardbeanie​ @winchest09​

[rewrite-this-story]

So I was thinking about the Gadreel possession storyline and the mark of Cain storyline and, as many people have pointed out, there are some obvious similarities which show an obvious double standard. I do find it relatively interesting that the mark of Cain came immediately after the Gadreel possession and yet the writers somehow either didn't see the double standard or didn't care.

Anyways, as most fans know, both storylines involve one of the brothers doing something against the other's will that backfires in some way and causes someone they care about to get hurt. However, both instances are at least mostly blamed on Sam and Dean never really apologizes for his part in either of them. When Dean tricks Sam into saying yes to Gadreel, it's Sam's fault because he was about to give up and leave Dean. When the whole thing backfires and people get hurt, it's not Dean's fault because he was just trying to save Sam. How was he supposed to know this random angel couldn't be trusted? Everything is justified. When Dean says he doesn't want to keep trying to get the mark off his arm and Sam continues to try without telling him, it's Sam's fault because he's lying to Dean. When Charlie dies because of it, it's Sam's fault even though everything she did was of her own free will. Basically, Sam can do no right and Dean can do no wrong.

I'd like to take a moment to look at the situations and think about how they're different for a moment. First of all, the stakes are different. If Sam had died, no one would be hurt except him, Dean, and Cas. If Dean had continued to carry the arm of Cain, he would've slowly turned into an indestructible monster, killing millions of innocent people, Crowley, Cas, and eventually Sam. After killing Sam, the curse would've been broken and he would've been left with all this death on his hands. In the case of the Gadreel possession, Dean's choice to trick Sam into saying yes was made for selfish reasons and only helped himself. In the case of the mark of Cain, Sam's choice to continue searching for a cure may have been selfish, but it was also an attempt to stop something unbelievably tragic from happening.

Also, Dean's choice to trick Sam into saying yes would've hurt Sam in ways I'm sure Dean wasn't unaware of. He knew abut Sam's trauma surrounding possession, but he did it anyways. Then he made Sam think he was going crazy in order to cover up the possession. He knew that Sam had gone through a period where he was constantly hallucinating and couldn't trust his own sanity. He also never told Kevin the truth which put Kevin in danger. If you honestly think this is ok or justifiable, please rethink your perspective. Plus, Dean never apologized and instead flipped the blame on Sam and became angry when Sam told him he wouldn't have done the same. Sam's choice to lie to Dean didn't involve tricking anyone into doing anything and then convincing them they're crazy when they start questioning him. He made a deal with Rowena, who was fully aware what she was getting herself into. He briefly tried to trick Charlie and Castiel, but quickly corrected his mistake and told them the truth. He didn't lie to either of them about the situation. They knew exactly what they were getting into and chose to do it anyways. Yes, Sam made mistakes. No, Sam was not 100% innocent, but he never claimed he was. Plus, Dean placed all the blame on Sam even though he had done worse. When Sam tried to apologize, Dean cut him off and told him he had no right to apologize.

Basically, the storyline are both similar and very different. Sam doesn't deserve the amount of hate he gets for either situation and Dean doesn't deserve to have every awful thing he does justified.

@sastielsfandom

[buddielove]

Hi! I'm a gay fan of 911 and I have a question about the whole Buddie fandom. As much as I like Buck and Eddie, it's frustrating that a HUGE part of the fandom is pushing for these two characters to get together instead of putting energy into supporting Hen & Carla and Michael & Dave. Not to mention Carlos and TK in Lone Star. Can you explain to me the appeal of wanting these two men together? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see two heterosexual males just be able to bond in a non-toxic fashion? That's something we don't get to see often on television.

Hey! This is MAD long lmao I am so sorry! You caught me on a day I felt like talking! Also this took like a year to answer you lolololol. This does have a few ʻhot takesʻ so please be warned! So like in this essay....

So first I am also apart of the LGBTQIA+ community, so I do understand how it could come across as a fetish or being non supportive of the current canonically LGBTQIA+ characters, however I think a lot of the interest around Buddie and the want for them to be confirmed as a couple is how they are being written. Me personally I knew since s2 e1 Buck and Eddie were written not as rivals but as two people who would eventually become friends, but it wasn’t until the Christmas episode with the elf assuming Buck was Chris’s dad and Eddie’s partner that I was like ‘hold on!’ because I was really hoping Abbey would return and I didn’t see Eddie as a possible Buck live interest because of that. The elf’s comment wasn’t played off like most other shows would (think Dean and Sam arriving anywhere in Supernatural) it made me go back and look at the other episodes to see exactly how Buck and Eddie were being framed/written. And as we have moved into further seasons I think there has been a shift in how Buddie is being written, in s3 it was very much like two people progressing into a deeper friendship then the blood clot/lawsuit gets in the way and they both have to deal with emotions surrounding that, then Buck’s response to Eddie being trapped (we see how is he when Boddy is trapped in a fire WITH A GUNMAN, it’s emotional but not to the point is is with Eddie), even the love interests feel very pushed on us and there’s so little banter between Buddie about their gfs and how they feel about these new beginnings. It feels off, not like a friendship in the slightest, more like two people trying to force something and not wanting to deal with any other feelings. Then when Eddie gets shot and reveals Buck is Chris’s legal Guardian in the event Eddie dies, that’s huge, and he did this after only a year of knowing Buck (I have friends with kids. I’ve known one of them for FIVE years, I’m at their house every week, the kid calls me family. I’m person #10 on the list of ‘who gets my kid if I die’, not #1 lol) It just feels like it’s all building up to something, and people are getting tired of waiting for that something! We’re all emotionally tired from the past two years, and probably from many shows queerbaiting us and this is something that could happen, seems to be something the actors are ok with and the fans want. So why do they keep drawing it out. This isn’t about us demanding they ignore the chance to write a healthy platonic male friendship, or forcing two characters to be gay, it’s about holding the writers to what they’ve implied and seeing what could come of it.

Also think of it like this; If Buddie is confirmed it will still be a good example of a healthy friendship which then developed into something else, like Booth/Bones! Showing the natural progression of friendship to relationship that happens a lot in real life. It’s two men who previously (on screen at least) have only been with woman, but now they have an emotionally connection with someone which they then develop and explore. This could be 911’s first nontoxic depiction of two gay characters coming together, because sorry not sorry the canon couples aren’t perfect (which does humanize them) but they also reenforce harmful troupes that plaque the LGBTQIA+ community, which I’m sure you understand: TK was a drug addict, who only got with Carlos at first cause he was hot and sex was TK’s new addition (all gay men are sex addicts who do drugs and sleep with anything that moves). Carlos was ashamed and wanted to keep TK on the downlow (poc gay men want to pretend to be straight but have free access to gay sex). Hen cheated on Karen seemingly the first chance she got (lesbians can’t handle monogamy when pushed, and cheat on their long term partners). All known and documented troupes that happen far too often.

I’m not saying Buddie is some gay jesus ship that’s gonna save the entertainment industry but if done right it could prove to be one of the few healthy depictions of two men getting into a gay relationship we have. If they plan it out correctly, show us the relationship development, like they did with Maddie/Chim for example, Buddie could be used as a positive example of a gay fictional relationship (I really could go into depth about this. I probably should tbh).

As for not supporting Hen and KAREN, or Michael and DAVID, I think fans do support them! The writers don’t. If you read fanfics Henren and Michael/David are featured heavily in many fics, and ik some people might say ‘well they’re only there so Buddie can talk about their gay side!!’ but both these couples have their own fans and fanfic tags! They aren’t just plot devices in Buddie stories. There is a huge side of the fandom that supports Henren and wants to see more of them and their family. Same with Michael and David, during the episode where Michael and Bobby team up to find that plastic surgeon who was working illegally many people where ecstatic that we were getting more Michael/David content and that David was getting more than a couple lines. But sadly it seems like the writers only want to delve into these story lines when they need filler, they even miss opportunities to include these other LGBTQIA+ characters when it makes sense;

(Someone came for me about this but I am going to bring it up again)

When Chris is sad and wants more human connection, instead of bring Harry + Michael/David and Denny+Nia+Henren back into the picture (and yes I understood at the time the pandemic was bad (lmao still is!!), but all the actors at some point would have/had crossed over into each other’s ‘bubbles’, so ALL the actors would have been exposed to each other so getting the children together with adults they had ALREADY been with during shooting wouldn’t have been a super spreader event) but instead they brought in Ana after only two on screen dates and pretended like it was a logical thing for someone who’s up to that point been extremely careful with their child.

They really could have pushed the ‘118 is a family!’ message here and included the canonically gay supporting characters, and the lesbian main character(s) but they did not and instead chose to push the Ana/Eddie coupling even though they hadn’t properly developed it yet. The writers themselves don’t seem to care about developing their canonically gay characters and including them more than they have to but fans are continuously developing Henren and Michael/David with hc and fics.

I’d like to use your logic against you for a second, in s1 we have a very healthy, platonic friendship between Chim/Bobby but that got written out to the point they are more like boss/employee unless the scene calls for them to seem closer, we now have Bobby and Michael friendship but again we hardly see Michael. On Lone Star we have Owen and Judd as a really, really good example of a healthy male friendship but we see Judd more often with Tommy now then we do with Owen, and in s2 it’s overshadowed by Owen trusting Charlie from Twilight and constantly getting fucked over! Why can’t the writter just be happy with these happy, healthy, emotionally well male-male friendship they’ve already included and expand upon them. There’s enough drama because the show literally involves burning buildings and people’s lives being at risk from some natural/man made disaster ever 12 seconds. Does it need to have so much interpersonal conflict and male peacocking??

[sortasirius]

“Despair” and Dean and Cas

Well well well, winning is my favorite thing.

As usual, this is going to be as long as hell. And fair warning, it’s extremely emotional.

So here it is, the thing that we have been barrelling towards for years, literally years.

Just want to point out this.  Also, I will NEVER allow someone to speak negatively about this writing group, EVER.

Team Free Dads starting off the episode is so sweet, so scary.  Cas’ calming, Dean’s fear, Sam’s desperation, really just hammering home how much they love Jack, how his pain is pain for them, how losing him is unbearable.

“I can’t stop this.  I’m coming apart.  I don’t want to hurt you.  Don’t let me hurt you.”

Oof.  If you’ve ever question whether Jack is a Winchester, this line should shut that shit down for you.

When I tell you I was PISSED when Billie sent Jack to the Empty to EXPLODE?????  PAIN.

“Yeah the Empty can’t come to earth, not without being summoned.”

Hello Bobo, clue number 1.

The fact that they only had Jack in limbo for like five seconds was great for my heart health, thank u very much Bobo.

Also Dean wielding Death’s scythe?????? KING?????

Man, Sam and Dean’s growth.  The way that they’re able to, idk, actually speak on how they feel without death looming or fear or pain.  It’s just a conversation, just an honest conversation of Dean admitting his mistakes, admitting how he felt.  Admitting that he fucked up, and Sam forgiving him for it.

CHARLIE AND HER GF CHARLIE AND HER GF CHARLIE AND HER GF

Also...hunters and their “dates.”  Two hunters who are happily together, who are happily fighting monsters.  Hm.  Sounds like a Saileen/Destiel parallel to me boys.

You ever wish Cas would look and the mirror and take the great advice he gives others?  Because I do.  He’s always tried to be “useful” for Sam and Dean, for Jack, always tried to make sure that he’s useful enough that they keep him around.  But what he doesn’t understand, what he’s never understood, is that they need him because of who he is, not because of what he contributes.

Remind y’all of anything?

And here we have Clue Number 2

And then, Sam’s realization.  Eileen.

Did I begin full tilt screaming no in my apartment when he said her name?  Who’s to say?

How can a lock screen cause me this much pain????

Okay but: Charlie loses Stevie, Sam loses Eileen.  Clue Number 3.

I feel like I don’t talk enough about how much Sam loves Eileen.  About how obvious it is that they are endgame, about how happy he is when he talks about her.  This just feels like a blow to the stomach, but we’ve barely even started.

Sam immediately shifting into protective leader mode?  He is the love of my life.

Dean’s simple nod, like it’s a given?  Enough to do me in right there.

This is another episode where it’s just so clear that Sam is the leader of the North American hunters.  Everyone knows him, everyone is willing to follow him.  He’s knowledgeable and kind and fair and just and an incredibly capable fighter.  Once again, I don’t believe his work on earth is done.

Can we also please talk about how FRIGHTENING IT WAS for Jack to kill that plant???  I don’t really have much of a comment on it because I was literally just like ?????

With Billie saying that it’s Chuck, the way that people were dusted, very similar to Becky and Amara, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised, especially with Donna getting taken off the board.  It’s like I said last week, I don’t buy that he’s taken himself off the board, he’s too invested in the unraveling of this story to take a step back.  He’s gotta break them before he can defeat them, that’s the only way.

And here we go, into one of the most painful and surreal things I will ever write about.

Dean’s speech.  His guilt, his regret.  The shame of not only trapping himself, but the pain, the horror of trapping Cas.

“I just lead us into another trap.  All because I, I couldn’t hurt Chuck.  Because I was angry and because I just needed something to kill, and because that’s all I know how to do.”

“Dean-”

“It was Chuck all along.  We never should have left Sam and Jack, we should be there with them now.  Everybody’s gonna die, Cas.  Everybody.  I can’t stop it.”

His narrative arc.  Tied up in a bow.

“She’s gonna get through that door.”

“I know.”

“And she’s gonna kill you and then she’s gonna kill me.  I’m sorry.”

Cas smiles.

Cas knows.  He knows what’ll get them out of this, and he knows that he would do anything in this Universe for Dean Winchester. The human man he fell for.

“When Jack was dying, I made a deal to save him.”

“You what?”

“The price was my life.  When I experienced a moment of true happiness, the Empty would be summoned and it would take me forever.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I’ve wondered what it could be, what my true happiness could even look like.  I never found an answer, because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have. 

“But I think I know, I think I know now...happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being.  It’s in just saying it.”

“What are you talking about, man?”

The most selfless thing Cas does in this, and he does a lot of selfless things, is to tell Dean Winchester how impossibly good he is.  To tell him that he is worthy, to tell him that he is adored.

“I know, I know how you see yourself, Dean.  You see yourself the same way our enemies see you.  You’re destructive and you’re angry and you’re broken and you’re daddy’s blunt instrument.  And you think that hate and anger, that’s what drives you, that’s who you are.  It’s not.  And everyone who knows you sees it, and everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.  You raise your little brother for love, you fought for this whole world for love.  That is who you are.

“You’re the most caring man on earth.  You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.  You know, ever since we met, ever since I pulled you outta Hell...knowing you has changed me.

“Because you cared, I cared.  I cared about you, I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack, I cared about the whole world because of you. 

“You changed me, Dean.”

“Why does this sound like a goodbye?”

Dean’s greatest fear. His fear of those loving him leaving him. The terror of being alone.

“Because it is.

The head shake.  Don’t love me.  Don’t love me if it means you’ll leave me, don’t love me, everyone I love leaves me.  Don’t leave me.  Don’t love me.  Don’t leave me.

“Don’t do this, Cas.”

Just like I always thought.  One last look at Dean before the Empty takes him.

“Cas-”

“Goodbye Dean.”

And Dean is left, broken on the floor, unable to answer Sam’s calls, unable to do anything.  It doesn’t matter to him that Chuck has wiped everyone out, it doesn’t matter to him that Sam and Jack might need him.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter, because the thing that mattered still hangs on his lips, still waiting to be said, and now he won’t get another chance to say it.

The fact that I am writing this, even with all my spec, with all my analysis of the writers’ room, of their text, of the way Dabb and co had approached this story, nothing could have ever prepared me for this.  Nothing could have prepared me for a three and a half minute, uninterrupted scene where Cas confesses not only that he loves Dean, but that he has always loved him.

I talk a lot about how these writers don’t get the credit they deserve.  Unfortunately, from most of this fandom, they never will.  We will likely never know the fights with the network they had, the steps backward they had to take, the way they had to beg and fight and claw to get this on the screen.  But they did it.  They did it for these characters, they did it for this dinosaur of a show, and yeah, they did it for us.

It was not easy, I can promise you, to get this greenlit.  They had to fight for this, they likely had to call in favors and make threats and quite literally put their careers on the line (you may scoff at that, but WB is a BIG company, especially in the TV/movie world) for this story.  This story of Dean and Cas, the man dragged out of Hell and the angel who fell for him.

I have tons more to say, and will likely have several more posts about this, but I want to leave all my babes who are worried that that was the end for Dean and Cas with some takeaways.

Sam is missing Eileen.  Dean is missing Cas.  That is no longer a fun subtextual parallel, that is it for them.  Their respective endgames are missing, and they will not know their peace until they get them back.  Chuck will not win.  That’s not the story being told, and right now?  He’s winning.  He’s broken them, left them with nothing, left them with an empty world and a hole in each of their hearts where their person (or angel) used to be.

Our show is going to end with “contentment.”  “Contentment” isn’t from Sam and Dean being filled with grief and hitting the open road.  It isn’t Sam getting Eileen back and leaving Dean with no one.  “Contentment” is Sam and Eileen, Dean and Cas.  Together.

[verobatto]

Destiel Chronicles

Vol. CXXVIII

It was a love story from the very beginning

I Love You and Goodbye

(15x18)

Hi my friends! We are finally in episode 15x18 "Despair" or "The Truth". The episode in which Destiel went canon.

So, let's grab our napkins and let's start with this.

Remember this meta is a summary from my metas from season 15 with some new additions now that the show ended.

You can find my metas from 15x18 following these links: X, X and X.

The last Destiel mirrors

I want to start this meta summary with the last two destiel mirrors from episode 15x18. Both of them were foreshadowing the big lover separation at the end.

Charlie always mirrored Dean, so it's very interesting to hear her talking about how her relationship with Stevie started.

She mentioned she didn't want to try that love thing again, it's a parallel of Dean's past with Cassie earlier in the show. It started as a game could be also related to Dean first attempts of flirting with Castiel in season 4 and 5.

I'll go with you...

One of the most iconic Destiel quotes has to be recalled in this episode too. Loyalty, love and abnegation from Castiel to Dean.

Because I Love You (Romantically)

This whole description from the scene it had been taken from my meta, I want to transcript the whole analysis here just because the moment I wrote this I was still hoping Dea would rescue Castieo, and I was crying and laughing hysterically, so... I wanna share that to all of you:

This love confession was beautiful, and Castiel made it clear he was talking about ROMANTIC LOVE, because the whole prelude in his wordings were perfectly clear. There's not doubt he was confessing his romantic love for Dean. He even mention THE ONLY THING I CAN'T HAVE is the thing that will make him happy.

It's canon he was asking himself what happiness could be!!! It means CAS THOUGHT ABOUT HOW COULD IT BE TO HAVE DEAN NOT JUST AS A FRIEND!!!!

He says too FROM THE MOMENT HE TOOK THAT BURDEN! FROM THE MOMENT HE RESCUED DEAN FROM HELL!!!!!! 'It has always been you', Dean!'

I'm gonna stop here just a little to point out why the quote "IT HAS ALWAYS BENN YOU" said by Billie takes a huge significance in here. Because Dean is not just the centric problem of a Cosmic entity, like Death, but the centric topic in Castiel's confession.

The love confession from 15x18 was a recalling of the first Destiel scene in the barn. In which Castiel saw a broken soul, a man that thought he didn't deserved to be saved, and immediately he took that challenge in his arms. The challenge was to make Dean BELIEVE HE WAS WORTHY. That he deserved to be saved AND LOVED. That's why from this moment on, Dean will change the way he sees himself.

When Castiel says he understood HAPPINESS IS NOT ABOUT TO HAVE IT, BUT IT'S ABOUT TO SAY IT (FEEL IT) immediately after saying he couldn't have that thing (Dean) is marking to all the audience that knowing HE CAN'T HAVE DEAN, HE IS HAPPY JUST FEELING THAT LOVE FOR HIM. LOVONG HIM AS HE DOES IS WHAT MAKES CAS HAPPY, AND CONFESSING THAT LOVE TO DEAN, RELEASE HIM.

Because Death gave a speech that became a summary of all the villains through this show, Castiel is the one purifying each mean word by transforming them into Dean's virtues.

While naming Dean's sacrifices and protective behavior, and showing him HE DID IT FOR LOVE, Castiel is trying to make Dean to see himself as CAS sees him.

Love yourself, because you are precious, because I LOVE YOU. You are not a monster, you are all this good things I see on you.

Gif set credit @mugiwara-lucy

Castiel crying, loving Dean with all of his self, and Dean in shock (or silenced by the network and the writers).

All the foreshadows of Dean gagging, vomiting, swallowing, eating... all of that was for this moment here. Dean's silence. Dean eating his words, Dean being silenced.

We could try to find other explanation, or live forever inside Jackie's magnificent acting options (giving us that swallow and mouth shut, as if he was trying to speak... as if he was trying to reply to his angel...) but truth is... C*W and the writers silenced him.

And then Castiel was swallowed by black goo, again. And that was Misha's last apparition. The ultimate sacrifice for love. Again.

Castiel Love's confession word by word

I'm gonna talk about specifically of the Destiel scene. Word by word, as I wrote in the third meta on the top of this volumen, with some new additions.

“I always wondered, ever since I took that that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be, what...what my true happiness could even look like. I never found an answer. Because the one thing I want...it's something I know I can't have."

It's canon now that Castiel was wondering what would it be to have Dean not just as a friend, but as a lover, and I'm.... Okay. (Internally screaming).

Pointed by @weird-dorky-little-d, the parallel here with Pamela (Dean's fem mirror in Rocky's Bar) in which she said DEAN ALWAYS WANTED WHAT HE COULDN'T HAVE. It means, both dumbasses in love thought their love were unrequited (in the worst scenario) but maybe to Castiel was the Sacred Oath? Perhaps...

"But I think i know...I think I know now. Happiness isn't in the having. It's in just being. It's in just saying it.”

This is such a deep thought and it talks about Castiel's maturity of character. He understood once for all, that loving Dean Winchester, feeling what he feels for him, and expressing that to Dean, is his true happiness. Because...

METATRON: "(...) You draped yourself in the flag of Heaven, but ultimately, it was all about saving one human. Right?"

Dean: "What are you talking about, man?

This question coming from Dean shows the audience Dean didn't know what Castiel was trying to say. So this could be a clue about Dean thinking his love is unrequited.

Cas: “I know. I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You're destructive and you're angry and you're broken. You're...you're 'Daddy's Blunt Instrument.' And you think hate and anger, that's...that's what drives you. That's who you are. It's not. And everyone who knows you sees it.

Cas: You know, ever since I met you, ever since I pulled you out from Hell...

I was hoping Dean to give us our angel back, but well. It was Jack. Hehehee.

Gif set credit @spnsmile

I recommend to go to the third link on the top of this meta and read @mrsaquaman187 amazing body language reading of this scene!

But now, about what Castiel is saying...

If you are still alive, i just want to point how romantic is this, because he is saying that Dean changed him for good. And he is naming all their family, Sam, Jack, and humanity, the world. Dean. So practically, Cas is saying, Dean showed Cas how to take care of others. Damn...

This is a call back to Castiel's talk with Ishim in 12x10:

ISHIM: The way you let those simians talk to you... Castiel, when did you get so gooey? You know why we're meant to stay away from them humans? Hmm? It's not because we're a danger to them. They're a danger to us. Case in point.

CAS: Well, my friendship with Sam and Dean has made me stronger.

Castiel rewording again, because he knows what Dean did on him, Dean changed him for good.

DEAN (quiet, resigned) Why does this sound like a goodbye?

CASTIEL: Because it is. I love you. (he smiles)

DEAN: Don't do this, Cas.

Dean's last words to Castiel... don't do this, don't confess your love for me and then die again.

It's painfully beautiful. Castiel was the light that touched Dean's life changing him for ever. He was loved and cared by this angel, and at the same time, Dean learned how to love Castiel in silence.

To Conclude:

The most beautiful love story ever told could've ended differently, happily, the way Dean and Cas deserved. But it ended up as a tragedy.

And we are here to fix it.

Destiel is canon and Destiel is forever.

Hope you like this meta. See you in the next one that will be the last one!

Tagging @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weirddorkylittlediana @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @authorsararayne @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh @destiel-shipper-11 @larrem88 @charmedbycastiel @ran-savant @little-crazy-misha-minion @samoosetheshipper

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @nerditoutwithbooks @mikennacac73 @justmeand-myinsight @idontwantpeopletoknowmyname @teddybeardoctor @pepevons @helevetica @dizzypinwheel @horsez2 @qanelyytha

@destielle @spnsmile @shippsblog @robot-feels @superlock-in-the-tardis @superduckbatrebel @belacoded @madronasky @anon-non2 @cea1996 @lisafu02 @asphodelesauvage @deancasgirl777

If you want to be added or removed from this list, just let me know.

If you wanna read the previous metas from this season, here you have the links:

Volume CXXI, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXIV, CXXV, CXXVI, CXXVII.

Buenos Aires, August 28 th 2021 9:03 PM

[mishacollinsthighsss]

Here I am again, crying over the finale like a baby because of what Kim said.

I thought I was over it but it hits me every time again and I feel like the grief just keeps getting worse and worse.

Here are some things that hurt like hell, so if you don't wanna read them please scroll.

.

.

.

To Dean:

Dean had to grow up so fast, he never had a real childhood. He had to be there for Sam, had to fight monsters because his father told him to... and in the end? He didn't even get to live a normal adult life. He died, never having lived for himself. He was always there for everyone else, but he never got a life for himself.

Dean had many mental health issues, and he couldn't work through them. Cas told him how he sees Dean, but I doubt that Dean was able to really process it before he died. He seemed better in the finale, but you can't just push mental health issues away like that. There's no miracle, no cure, you have to face them, have to work through them, which can take YEARS. Dean died, never getting the chance to do so.

Even the heaven storyline was sad. Dean just drove around the whole time, waiting for Sam. Sure, they're brothers, they love each other, but in the end, Dean was reduced to being Sam's happy end. They erased every single character trade of him.

To Cas:

Cas never got the chance to live his happiness. He died immediately after expressing his love. He never even got the chance to hear what Dean had to say. I don't care if it would've been reciprocation or rejection, but Cas never had the chance to hear Dean's feelings about all of this.

If we take Bobby's "Cas helped" as in 'Cas is out of the empty and back in heaven' its just as bad as him still being in the empty. Cas rebelled against heaven, he tried to escape so hard, but in the end, he ended up there again. It doesn't matter that it's a different place now that Jack is god, (which, by the way, NO. He's 3 YEARS OLD.) because he ended up just as he started, as a soldier for heaven.

These are only the main points I could think of right now, there's much more that bothers me, like Sam living a life full of grief, side characters like Jody, Eileen, Donna, Claire, Kaia, Charlie, etc. all being erased, all of the main character's storylines were basically thrown out the window, that Dean seemed to be grieving in 19 but then was totally fine in 20, the stupidest death on earth, the bad storytelling and so on.

My question is: why?

Even after 7 months I can't figure out why they threw a 15 year show away like that. If it was homophobia, fine, the writing was still crap. If it was advertisement for Jared's new show? Great, no need to treat other characters like shit. If it was because of censorship, also great, but the writers always found ways to sneak in little pieces.

For me, it seemed like they just gave up. They wanted to be done with the show, that's it. And no, I don't take Covid as an excuse. You know why? Easy. Pictures exists. Voiceovers are possible. The main characters that are still there talking about the side characters isn't hard.

There were so many things they could've done, but they just... didn't. Jensen was right all along, and you know what? When he got told "take it or leave it" in his position, I would've left.

Even worse is that nobody seems to talk about it. The actors should be fucking proud of what they did, but instead, there's radio silence, which, if they truly didn't like the ending, is fine. But us fans, at least some of us, need closure. I'm one of them. I don't know how I'm supposed to get over it if I can't stop thinking about it. If just hearing anything about the finale makes me cry.

Honestly, it's not fair. We fans are the people who kept the show going that long, so it's not fair to leave us hanging like that (I'm not talking about Jared, Jensen and Misha, I'm talking about the writers, the producers, the network, literally everyone who was involved in hurting us).

At this point I don't even care about Destiel anymore, just give these characters a happy end. I need them to be happy.

I'm so sorry for the rant, but sometimes I just need to let it out. It's not fair that we are hurting, and I just hope something happens in the future that dulls the pain and puts everything into some sort of clear light.

Also, if you liked the finale and don't agree with me, that's fine. I'm happy for you. But just because someone has a different opinion, you don't need to start a fight, alright? If you liked it, then please enjoy it instead of fighting people like me.