#askboxery

[eisforeidolon]

I don’t think if I should, but I felt offended when Misha tried to pass Jared's favourite quote 'pain is inevitable ,suffering is optional'. Not that anyone has a copyright on that quote, but I believe he did it purposefully. Thanks to Jensen for standing up.

Yeah, a big part of the reason I transcribed that one is because it felt really suspect to me. Not just picking the quote Jared has been saying over and over when asked that kind of question, out of all the myriad possibilities? But then proceeding to shit on it and say it's wrong and make a joke of it and the question.

Like, I'm not saying anyone has to like that quote or find it inspiring. But after reframing the mutual set pranking to make himself a victim of Jared, after just recently rewriting two plane stories together to paint Jared as a maliciously careless asshole, on top of all the other weird bitter shit he's said?

It did feel pointed, and I don't give Misha the benefit of the doubt anymore.

[unrealthings]

1988?

a difficult one! Lots of "please watch this" but the question is top... So I'm going to go with in no order, Willow, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (except not really that last one because Sarah Polley's memoir kinda knocked the love out of me, but it's a big influence on How I Tell and Understand Stories, the agonies).

Now, if you were to suddenly appear on my couch and I had to throw an impromptu movie night of Things I Think Are Neat, UHHHHHH Earth Girls Are Easy, and Evil Dead Trap or Black Roses or Robowar.

I brought this on myself but I am so indecisive and yet this exercise did not help with that

[eisforeidolon]

Just ... I love that they're posting that video thinking they're providing proof of literally anything but Rich and Rob being entitled twats desperately trying to grift off the SPN audience because they're bitter they didn't get a bigger share of the original pie for visiting the kitchen a handful of times while it was baking.

HOW DARE people only want to show up for the actual stars of the show?!?! I was in a at least one scene of 3.7% of episodes, SHOW UP AND PAY UP TO PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEE! Again, the kind of "jokes" that you can't tell really aren't so much. Be fucking for real.

But then, bitter jealous weirdos with insanely outsized entitlement complexes are exactly hellers' type of people. ¯\(ツ)/¯

https://x.com/dxccanon/status/1889341699157041510

“Rich and rob are not going to be bothered by j2 fans and wincesties. They have seen how disrespectful they are. Rich went on a full rant about how hateful "Sunday people" are which is basically those fans who go to cons only for J2 and insult every other cast of spn.”

Jesus Christ, Rich doesn’t even say anyone was mean to them! Here’s the video she provided as “proof”

https://youtu.be/agNAwImhnSQ?si=3lHdLb6assvq1ZEQ

All Rich says is that he’s bitter at people who only show up on Sundays for J2, that’s it! But I’m sure if you tired to tell her this she’d go: “it’s IMPLIED people were mean to them!” Maybe if you’re a moron with bad hearing/comprehension skills

Yeah, all he was saying was how bitter he was at the "Sunday people" who only show up for J2. But if you wanna put words in his mouth so he seems like even more of an asshole, be my guest. Love how that moron thinks real fans are "disrespectful" when there has never been one incident from them?? Meanwhile we have plenty of cases of hellers being disrespectful during panels and ops.

[eisforeidolon]

Lest we forget, "Fan Fiction" was the first and only ep that Jensen flew down to LA to speak with Carver/Thompson about, because of the Destiel shit in it. Even Thompson said he was a bit worried he was getting fired, because again, while Jared and Jensen have met with the writers before, it was usually before the start of the seasons, and never in the middle of one after reading a script.

Yeah, not only has Jensen repeatedly said he never played Dean that way? When they decided to do an episode which only just mentioned the ship as part of the whole fanfiction thing? He went directly to ask what the hell they were doing in a way he hadn't ever done before [X]. Because he cared about his character and the story and wanted to know what the message was supposed to be, to make sure it wasn't something that didn't fit.

This is not somebody who has just never ~*considered the possibility*~. This is somebody who put a lot of thought and effort into crafting a character across fifteen seasons of a show. For a fair span of which, he did so while having to try and be patient dealing with "fans" at conventions who repeatedly made it clear they were too busy fantasizing about him having gay sex to pay attention to literally anything else. They've been shoving NSFW fanart in his face, demanding he read deluded essays about Dean's sexuality, trying to box him in with leading questions to make him admit Dean's bi and lurves Castiel romantically, labeling him a homophobe if he doesn't agree with them, and just generally telling him in a million ways they don't care about him as an actor or even about any version of Dean that isn't half their ship for a long-ass time.

Given those givens? If you think he hasn't been very aware of anything that would even hint at an other-than-brotherly relationship with Castiel in a legitimate way (i.e. not lighting or bacon or other shipper hallucinations of significance)? C'mon. So, no, rewatching the show isn't going to magically change his mind by showing him something he ~*never noticed*~ before. One, because there literally is no there there without shipper goggles welded to your face. Two, because we know of times where he took deliberate steps to make sure there continued to be no there there. Because that wasn't canon Dean's story.

[eisforeidolon]

Also, that’s kinda Jared and Misha’s relationship — horrible pranks and shit-talking (really everyone’s relationship with Misha revolves are talking shit about him).

I mean, I'm not sure I'd really characterize most of the pranks we've heard about as terrible? Other than that, yeah, I agree, part of the reason they got along so well was that kind of mutual relationship of goofing off, shit talk, and pranking. Which, yeah, sometimes were clearly not well thought out, but seriously.

Except as time went on, Misha realized his fans wanted to see him as a victim of evil meanie Jared's pranks rather than a mutual participant in goofy onset camaraderie. So he started leaning into that, making "jokes" about how him being pranked was like animals being mauled in a wildlife documentary and kept going until he got to the point of blatantly lying about the airplane story to vilify Jared (blatantly because he manufactured new details, it literally makes no sense Jared even could do that, and he already told the two stories he conflated).

Misha is not only not remotely a victim? He's a backstabbing liar who doesn't care how his pandering affects his supposed friends since his fans will eat it right up and keep paying to hear more.

[eisforeidolon]

The way Misha blows smoke up Jensen’s ass while taking every opportunity to make a dig at Jared. Such a bitter and jealous washed up old man. I hope he chokes on Jared’s success.

He really should be insanely grateful to both of them, but he's a lazy, self-centered grifter who wants all the acclaim and perks of being a lead while doing far less than half the work.

There was no show without both Js while everyone else was expendable, so if either one of them wanted him gone? He would have been. Yet somewhere along the line, he just stopped even trying to pretend that he was ~*just joking*~ when he went behind their backs to cater to the heller and minion delusions in hopes of getting a bigger slice of the pie for himself.

I really wonder sometimes at how good of an act Misha must put on of being a friend IRL that neither J has kicked him to the curb. Even considering how much the GA wants to see the actors as besties.

Except if Misha was sincere and an actual friend, he'd not only be able to muster up sincere complements to Jensen that weren't cribbed, he wouldn't constantly talk about him like a sex pervert. He'd not only stop talking shit about the actual story of the show that centered Sam (and Dean), he wouldn't try to paint Jared as some terrible bully picking on his innocent self with blatant lies (twisting that plane story was so beyond the pale).

But that's what the hellers and minions want to hear and they'll give him money to keep hearing it. Sure he has to keep saying more and more extreme divorced-from-reality bullshit to keep them coming back, but it's not like he's seen any real consequences. And hey, he doesn't even have to come up with his own ideas most of the time, just parrot back shit they tell him! So really, how could you expect him to act like a halfway decent person?!? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[eisforeidolon]

Man I was so happy with jared being a part of the boys. why misha had to come and spoil the mood😭

Yeah, I'm right there with you.

I'm thinking of it this way. Misha is either going to have to put 5000% more effort into actually acting than he has in YEARS? Gurning and quote unquote accents aren't going to cut it at The Boys - who aren't the half-asleep-at-the-wheel production late seasons SPN was. Or he's going to make an utter fool of himself by not doing the work and make Kripke look bad for letting him eat up precious final season screentime, which will make him even less appealing to other productions when he's already pretty undesirable? Or his appearance is going to be so small it literally won't matter whether or not he can still act if he actually tries.

Like, across various interviews Kripke's publicly been all, 'I need to collect Jared to get all the important SPN pokemon, OMG I got Jared!!!' And then we got a video promo that was like Jensen, Jared ... oh and we're bringing the perpetual third wheel, too.

At some point maybe they'll figure out that for most fans who actually liked SPN the show, Misha is less a bonus and more 'ugh, that guy' for people whose reaction isn't 'uh, who?'. Or they'll clue into how much of a backstabbing little weasel he is. But for now, they're still treating him like a friend who deserves to get opportunities in the kinda shitty business they're mutually in.

[eisforeidolon]

What the 'Two Rs' have said re. Destiel is disrespectful towards SPN as a show and its writing team. It's fine for them to say that they can see how Destiel as a concept got going and for them to give it some validation as one interpretation among others. (Canonically, there's clearly nothing romantic between Dean and Castiel, but if some people look at their friendship in that way, then that's cool - unless they're insisting their take is the official correct version.) But the Rs went beyond that and pretty much stated that the writers intentionally wrote Destiel into the show, that they were *intended* to be seen as a couple. No. That's crossing a line into overwriting the actual story/plot of SPN and twisting it into something it wasn't.

Right. Like, I would have as little interest in personally following/supporting their podcast if they were only talking up the supposed D/C moments as an interpretation they liked.

However, I could respect it as a fandom thing.

What they're actually doing is both dishonest and embarrassingly, cynically exploitative of the hellers desperate willingness to give anyone who says their ship was totes canon $$$. On top of being disrespectful to the show and the leads of the show that are the only reason they even have anyone to give a shit about their yammering on in the first place.

And that's why these grifters target the hellers rather than the GA/bibro/wincest portions of the fandom. We don't need them. We have what happened in the actual show and J2. Hellers need someone to rewrite that reality for them, to tell them the alternate SPN they tried to meta into existence totes happened despite, y'know, the actual show. They have shown over and over they will blindly believe anyone who makes noises in that direction. But like the fictional someone's cousin's history teacher's son's best friend's stepsister who drove by the set once? R2 don't speak for the show or the writers. And like Misha? They don't actually give a shit about SPN or the fandom, they just see a bunch of easily fleeced sheep who will bite someone else in the ass for their lies.

[eisforeidolon]

https://x.com/krishay89/status/1888278016314212490?s=46 would live you smart thoughts on this

At this point, Rob and Rich are catering to the only audience still engaging with them - mostly desperate hellers who will take validation from anywhere they can get it. You know, the people who, if someone walked up to them on the street and said their boyfriend's sister's cousin's dogwalker's aunt's son's preschool teacher's ex-boss took a trip to the SPN set once and saw super secret scripts where D/C was made canon in a porta potty? They'd believe it. So two people who were each actually on the show for more episodes than you can count on one hand? Total experts bravely telling The Real Truth about the show with their deep understanding that obvs trumps that of the leads!!!

In reality, Rob and Rich are forgettably minor character actors desperately trying to milk every single possible drop out of their connection to SPN and its very active (and spend-happy) fandom to supplement their income. Except from everything I've heard, in a painfully lazy way - because they made it clear from the start of the podcast they didn't actually think much of SPN as a show and weren't really paying attention in their 'watch' while trying to be funny. So they lost most of their potential audience right out of the gate and don't really have anything insightful to say about a story they can barely bother to pay attention to.

In short, they want attention, but don't have the relevance or want to do the work to earn it. But hey, what gets you more quick, cheap attention than pandering? Especially to a group who loudly make it clear over and over they're desperate enough to pay to hear their ship is totes for real a thing and will go on for days on end about your podcast if you cater to them? Not only that, but it probably takes a five second search on tumblr for each episode to find some bad fanon to parrot out! So much easier than actually watching the stupid show these gullible idiots will pay to hear them to talk about, lol.

[eisforeidolon]

During her appearance as a guest on the spnthenandnow podcast, Cindy claimed the Dean was Ben's father, even though Jensen and Eric refuted this.

Yeah, some over invested Dean/Lisa shipper wrote up a whole ridiculous article about it [X] a while back.

Like, especially with the show going on fifteen seasons, often revisiting things, and having such an active fandom? I get how fans came to fixate on random characters or storylines they personally liked or wanted to see more of. Even (or especially) when those things were a very minor part of canon - or actually just their own fanfic and not canon at all. Including things TPTB explicitly shot down, because the show was on long enough to change who TPTB were multiple times. Meanwhile, fans feeling entitled to have media they like catered to their personal wants or they'll throw massive tantrums is an unfortunate overall trend in recent years across fandom, not just an issue with SPN. Not likeable, but I see how it happens.

What I haven't really seen outside of SPN, though? Is such a slew of entitled minor supporting actors trying to claim greater importance to a canon they were barely a part of for their own aggrandizement and hopes of being brought back. Like, the boon of ongoing cons isn't enough for them, they see all that SPN $$$ and want more of it directed their way.

You have Kim declaring she would just refuse to appear if they killed off Jody. You have Kim and Brianna bragging about deserving a spin-off where they'd show the boys how it's really done -and then throwing embarrassing public tantrums on SM when the network gave it the pass it deserved. You have Rob and Rich doing a podcast where it's not only obvious they don't actually like or respect the show? But they can't even be bothered to pay attention as they 'watch' it to milk the fandom through promises of insider info. Which aside from their own barely-there and therefore hardly expert insider status? Includes such, uh, gems as Cindy randomly claiming years after the fact Ben was actually Dean's kid and she totes played it that way - despite the canon and despite Kripke's explicit denial back when it was remotely relevant (as well as Jensen's).

All of this from people where not a one of them was involved in more than around 20ish of 327 episodes. But saying things certain over-invested fans want to hear gets them attention, $$$, and just might make them seem like 'fan favorites' that should be brought back! Yeah.

[eisforeidolon]

Social media intern had to write an essay in response to a comment that she’s just a fan trying to create fun and people shouldn’t take anything seriously. Then don’t do it!

See, they always want to have it both ways.

They want to make posts on the YouTube or deface the Wikipedia page or whatever it is to try to steal authority to imply the ship is a thing in canon. They absolutely mean for it to be taken seriously by other fans or prospective fans, but as soon as you call them out on lying and misrepresenting the show? Oh, I was just having fun, don't take it so seriously, lol!

Take it seriously when it comes to believing it, but don't take it seriously when it comes to holding anyone doing it accountable!

No. You do not get to scream about how wrong you been done by the show quote unquote queerbaiting you out of one side of your mouth while actually attempting to yourself queerbait fans out of the other side.

[eisforeidolon]

Almost forgot about this, but another supporting point in favour of Sam having an empty life without Dean is the script of the finale. When Sam is shown to be standing behind Dean, the script says: "Like he's been waiting for Dean for years. And in a lot of ways, he has." So it's explicitly said that much of Sam's life was just him waiting until he could join Dean. Not much of a life, when you're basically just going through the motions until you're back with your brother again. SPN showed over and over again that Sam and Dean couldn't bear to live without each other. When the other brother expressly asked them to, they both managed to stay alive - but in terms of really LIVING? Ultimately, I'd say Sam and Dean (when forced) could EXIST without one another, but they couldn't LIVE without one another.

Yeah.

I sort of get wishing your favorite characters could have a normal life when the life they had is so full of regrets and blood and death, at least in an abstract sense. It's thinking it would be reasonable - or actually already happened in the canon - that I have issues with.

When they were apart at Stanford, that was a million and one traumas ago, they're hardly those kids anymore. Dean with Lisa and Sam in the finale were living on the way their brother asked them to but the montages we saw didn't exactly add up to happy. Obviously that doesn't mean they didn't care at all about the other people in their lives during those times, any more than they didn't care about other people when they were together. It just wasn't the same and the show demonstrated that over and over and over again through what they said and what they did.

[eisforeidolon]

Mike Rohl or one of the other frequent directors mentioned once about Destiel shippers how they were mad about a plotline that was never apart of the show, remaining not part of the show (or something like that). Bob Singer said that the writers were aware of Destiel. But it wasn’t something that was actually talked about or used in the show. Edlund said it was something he thought about before, but ultimately was never written into any scripts because he didn’t see it (or something like that). Also, there was that time a heller came up to Davy Perez gushing about how “Tombstone” was a Destiel episode. He looked confused, laughed in their face and it was “buddy / best friends” episode.

Rich directed a handful of episodes, none of which had anything “Destiel” outside the “Despair” BS, though hellers pull any bullshit out their ass and call it queerbaiting like Cass saying he loves everyone when he’s dying in “Stuck in the Middle.” Which in the script after Cass says, “I love you. All of you” the stage direction just says “On SAM, DEAN and MARY as that lands.” Which reminds me now, how the death speech in “Stuck in the Middle” and the one in “Despair” are practically the same.

Yeah, I remember Guy Norman Bee tweeting something along the lines of, 'Why do people get upset a story line that doesn't exist continues to not exist?'

It's not that TPTB had some vendetta against D/C or were unaware of it. They just treated it as what it actually was - a fandom thing only tangentially related to the show. They were no more serious when they added ship teases for Dean and Cass than they were when they ship teased Dean and Sam, or Bobby and Crowley. As hellers got louder and louder insisting their ship was different and teases for it was queerbaiting? The writers put less and less teases in.

Of course at that point, the D/C bubble was a self-perpetuating delusion machine that took literally everything and nothing at all as secret clues as to Dean's REAL sexuality and D/C being totes canon SOON. So they do actually see those death speeches as the same thing, too - but in the sense of them already mentally subtracting out all the other characters to pretend it was twue lurve when the first one happened.

[eisforeidolon]

Came across this and, um, it certainly is a take….

https://www.tumblr.com/spn-season-16-chronicles/637202072161468416/the-great-chronicles-of-season-16

Yeah, one of the things they really like to do is put their shipper nonsense in big lists as if that will make their various conspiracies and lies valid.

Like, if you actually look at that list ... twitter trends and other flash in the pan internet irrelevancies, Misha queerbaiting and playing the victim and attention-seeking, bad meta and projection stated as canon, fans winding themselves up and throwing tantrums making petitions and email campaigns because they're butthurt, things that did actually happen but are presented with conspiracy language implicating that they were changed/forced/have secret meaning, whining about the finale not validating their bad fanfic, lying about Jensen being silent when he was actively doing interviews praising the finale, conspiracy obsession and outright lies about dubs and dubbers, praising Misha for being a spineless twat, creepy RPF nonsense, pretending to care about RePrEseNTAsHuN rather than just their ship, presenting their bubble as 'the internet community' or 'people' or 'fandom' to pretend their fringe opinions are default, transparent insistence anyone who doesn't see their OOC fanon ship as the center of SPN has 'bad takes' and is just bad (especially Jared), etc.

All this actually does is show their entire lack of perspective and continuing obsession with trying to force a television show - and reality itself - to validate their fanfic. If they just say it was/is/should be canon often enough, that will magically make it true! Four years later ... still no.

[eisforeidolon]

The writers were aware of fandom wank, which is why a lot of the “Dean/Cass” stuff ends up on the cutting room floor. It’s like they’d write something that seemed fine on paper, the. they realize people will read too much into it when performed and cut it out.

That was some of it. Like the infamous fake heaven scene they thought would be so hilarious to fill with pictures of Dean - where Jared had to point out some fans would take it seriously as a hint to where the story was going. So they removed it because that wasn't the intent. Like the crypt scene were Jensen pointed out Dean would not say I love you there. So Robbie changed it to what he more explicitly meant in terms of it being familial affection by his own direct admission.

Hellers want to insist all those little cut moments are PROOF of a conspiracy to ~*cheat them*~ out of an intended D/C story the writers were trying to give them, damn the meddling network and producers! However, what all the details we've actually heard about show? Is the ship being a thing in canon was so far outside of the genuine agreed intent multiple writers not only didn't think about the implications and not only used it as a punchline? But usually immediately removed those supposed hints when anyone pointed out the prospect of it being taken seriously by fans. Of course, when you have fans so desperately searching for clues they can turn literally breathing in the same room into ~*epic romance*~ it's hard to remove everything unless the characters literally never interact (and then you end up with "negative space" meta, so there's no winning).

Sure, there's a deeper question there as to whether they thought that specific pairing was ridiculous in the context of the canon (absolutely) or they generally thought m/m pairings were only fodder for jokes (not cool). Except that's a whole different discussion, because either way? What is clear is there was never some intentional secret storyline in easily cut throwaway moments leading up to making D/C canon the REAL story of the show. And not just because the idea anyone would tell a story on tv that way is fucking bonkers.

The writers definitely became more aware as time went on about fandom wank in regards to the subject? Though I think it was complicated a bit by them also having some quote unquote writers join the team towards the very end who were desperate for attention and actively wanted to bait those unhinged fans, like Bobo the Assclown and whatsherface the minion underling.

[eisforeidolon]

She posted saying “this was my plan all along. I’m giving them a reason to make it canon”

She says no one oversees her posts

I mean, that's basically just, "I'm an idiot who has no idea how anything works." Which, you know, par for the course.

Again, there is a huge chunk of the SPN audience TPTB would need to draw back in to a revival that isn't even paying attention to media-related SM accounts. Who would be absolutely fucking baffled and turned off by D/C suddenly being a thing because of everything that the canon relationship between Dean and Castiel actually is. Which doesn't even get into how creators are not obligated to cater to their fans (quote unquote fans in this case).

But no, a bunch of shippers with too much time on their hands relentlessly viewing videos of Dean and Castiel talking to each other is going to magically change things. Because it's on an official channel, I guess? Like how is this different from them uploading an avalanche of fanfics to Ao3, a blizzard of bad meta posts to tumblr, or a monsoon of shippy fanvids on personal channels on YouTube/TikTok? Well, it's not.