#especially if they're extremely fucking probing questions

[udurghsigil]

can't stress enough that you guys don't have to answer every single ask you get. in fact you can just delete them. especially if they are causing you psychic damage.

[sleepymccoy]

Brain is turning this one around in my head again

@fasterthantheelevator suggested a neutral zone shenanigans kind of plot, which I think rules.

Putting a readmore in cos I miiiight write this which would make this post spoilers. But also, I dont believe spoilers should make something not worth reading. So imma post regardless

So I'm thinking, aliens unknown to the federation pop up in the neutral zone and Kirk's like shit guys I know we have Vulcans on board but we need to deal W this big time. Okay, they can't speak any known languages. Spock and Uhura, this is your job now.

So Spock is like. Busy. But also, the Vulcans from chapter one are still being dicks at dinner and why was McCoy and one of the Vulcans not at dinner??

And then they have some trouble with the work and Uhura is asking probing questions about the Vulcans and Spock's like can we just work please actually? But then McCoy wanders past giving the Vulcan who wasn't at dinner a private tour and Spock breaks a telescope. And the Vulcan is very rude about it. Bad day for Spock

Next day is better! They get some language. Now they need to involve Scotty and go over to fix the engine there. They call back at some point to check in and McCoy's on the bridge standing with that Vulcan 😡 but Spock's okay he's working he's fine

Everyone's at dinner and it's one of the worst times Spock's ever had. That night he loses it a bit w Kirk and actually argues about something, which isn't like him. Especially as they just saved these aliens

There's some battle w Klingons and McCoy has to patch Spock up and he's being weird and Spock doesn't know why the fuck. He's so complimentary of this Vulcan who's just being a total bitch to Spock. And then, omg, he's checking his understanding of Vulcan courting is correct and Spock decides to jump into the warp engine

He does actually go down for a chat w Scotty cos at least Scotty won't ask difficult questions. They talk about the engine and Spock can't get his mind off mccoy

They finally drop the Vulcans off and they're all awful to Spock, which is fine. McCoy is normal, which is currently not fine, because his normal is a bit acerbic and Spock isn't up to it. Then McCoy follows him to apologise and that's extremely not fine and Spock cracks it a bit

Then McCoy is strange strange. Like, considerate and bringing him interesting papers and debating complex topics and eventually Jim comments on it and Spock asks McCoy to go back to normal please he knows it's been strange since the Vulcan broke his heart but it doesn't need to stay between them

And McCoy mutters something to Jim and Jim just fucking leaves the room and then McCoy asks Spock out on a date and Spock considers the warp core again. But he thinks again and snaps at McCoy for two minutes before kissing him

Now I'm about a fic where Spock and McCoy are both useless but self aware mutual pining and they're each kind of flirting but only in very specific cultural ways in the hope that the other won't notice.

Then some Vulcans get on the ship and they bully Spock in the way we expect, so he's kind of off his game. But one of them takes a right shining to McCoy and gets her flirt on a bit. But she's much less subtle that spock ever is.

I think this is the most fun in Spock's pov. Cos he's distracted and jealous and stressed and it's all kind of too much. McCoy starts spending time alone with this woman and she's clearly clocked that Spock is jealous so she's being sinde about it and McCoy is clearly into her so he's not anti Vulcan he's just anti Spock, apparently, and that's quite a kick in the guts. And maybe Spock fucks up something work related just to make him feel like shit

Anyway his observation skills go way downhill, but the audience can tell that McCoy's sweet on Spock. Especially cos McCoy's using human flirt customs when he's hitting on Spock, so it'd translate well. And they know McCoy's not into this woman. But Spock has absolutely no idea.

I figure, eventually, and off screen, this woman will cross the cultural boundary and tell McCoy she's keen on him and he learns that when Vulcans have meaningless debates in private it's a very intimate thing and he's just like. But Spock and I do that all the time isn't it just professional? Whatever, its off screen, it means that McCoy discovers that Spock has been flirting

With that he also suddenly realises that Spock has been jealous. I think he spends a day or two being kind to Spock until the Vulcans leave, then he gets a bit nasty. He plays into it, talks shit to get Spock jealous. And he knows how to flirt Vulcan style and he brings his A game. Like, full courting behaviour while still carrying on to make Spock jealous

And eventually Spock snaps and does something so explicitly possessive that he can't walk it back. And McCoy calls him on it. And then they fight about it. And then they fuck about it.

The biggest issue I have with the fic is I think you'd need quite a few scenes to really land the Spock is jealous and it escalates out of control story line, but it can't all be McCoy scenes cos a feature is that McCoy's off on secret dates. So I'd need to think of, basically, a star trek episode plot that's interesting enough to write about and explore without becoming too distracting

And I don't have an idea for that

[elizabethrobertajones]

Since Cas is supposed to be spending a lot of time with Jack next season and teaching him about life and stuff, and probably being really sad about Dean while he does it, do you think Jack might notice and bring up Cas and Dean's relationship? He certainly would have no reason to avoid the topic like Sam or anyone else would. If they're really serious about focusing more on interpersonal relationships then I really don't see how they can avoid talking about Dean and Cas.

The tone of your question is making me weirdly feel like we’re verging somewhere between reality show and scripted drama, where the characters are almost out of control of the writers and all the drama is bubbling under the surface, ready to spill out at any moment :P 

Like, from a writing perspective, I feel that they just do not approach it as if Dean and Cas are literally real and in love in the same way that to fans who only get the finished content, it can come across… There’s a much more mechanical approach to actually writing scenes than feeling like there is any inevitability. It depends entirely on what Dabb and/or the writer of the scene/episode wants to convey on a wider thematic level and on the closer personal level. If they wanted to emphasise that both Cas and Jack are missing Dean and Jack asks Cas about Dean, then it’s 100% in their control to script Jack’s innocence and Cas’s care with responding, based on circumstances, location, current mood, other things that happen this episode, and wider season-long factors, to be as cagey as he likes. 

If Cas and Jack were having that throwing the ball back and forth moment I was dreaming of this morning, it could be cute and wholesome, and Cas regretfully says that they’re doing this because it’s the kind of human thing Dean would suggest, and Jack makes a sad inquiry about how Dean helped Cas become more human and learn to do human things, and Cas, aware that Jack is struggling to be human, answers from the POV of his own slide towards humanity that Dean’s caused, and talks about how Dean has lead him down that path with fondness and pain, and ends with assuring Jack he’s doing really well compared to Cas’s own attempt, and we just charged through a ton of serious Destiel territory without touching the sides. 

Maybe Jack gets hurt on a fight that they get into in the sharp end of the dramatic search for Dean, and Cas has to heal him and laments his dumb humans always getting hurt and now Jack is one of them, but then prompted or not, starts talking about how strong Dean is regardless, and it lapses into a quiet moment of them agreeing they’ll save Dean and he’ll be okay, and again, Cas says some deep shit about Dean but it’s not romantic in the surface text, it’s prompted by his sense of protectiveness of Dean and Jack, and that linking factor is just the conversation starter. 

Or Jack does some gross thing and then blames Dean, like spitting food like Dean did in front of him in 13x04 and Cas tells him off and Jack says Dean does it, defensively, and Cas gets all roll-eyes-fond-smile, and says that Dean is the best and worst teacher of humanity, and they get into the subject that way… You know, that would be a comic beats, quick answer, joke about Dean to break the tension moment and wouldn’t really get deep at all except for the implied massive fondness they both have for Dean. 

Or Jack and Cas are having a quiet moment maybe driving somewhere or stopped at the side of the road and Jack asks Cas to tell him more about Dean because he seems to know him so well but they would be fully in the right to make the question innocent and to have Cas respond carefully like for a kid who doesn’t need to know all his angst, and Jack might see how Cas is handling it all but he will remember Sam and Dean acting so differently about losing Cas when he was newborn that he can only really at the most probing to maintain his innocence ask Cas about how he is feeling about Dean compared to how Sam and Mary are handling it. And as messed up as Cas might be he’s not under an obligation to tell Jack that he’s pining for Dean romantically, and their shared connection to Dean is a family one, not the extra romantic stuff that only Cas has, so talking about that is what can result in any probing directly from Jack in a calm moment if they don’t want to force a confession, which would be the writers’ hand, not Jack or Cas making it happen.

You know, those ideas just as an example of many ways of how to think about the themes and character stuff going on about how a scene is structured and why you would write it. As Jack spent so much more time with Dean than he did with Cas, and ditto Cas has of course more knowledge of Dean, AND that freakin attention hog drama llama is off being possessed by Michael and the main mytharc for them as a result, there’s so many reasons for Jack and Cas to discuss Dean or find him the common thread in a scene that will help them connect. 

But there’s no actual imperative on the writing or with the characters that will FORCE them to talk about Cas’s feelings because as much as they’re so strongly implied the text is sagging and tearing and creaking around the weight of it all, the writers are using romance TROPES but they are NOT writing a romance NARRATIVE. Like, romantic things happen all the time between Dean and Cas, but of course the actual story is action/horror/drama and all of those tropes have the bigger storytelling weight. The overlap is enough you can see the ups and downs of the story as basically any narrative - it’s like horoscopes in that sense - and you need to take common sense clues on the writing to know what is actually being told. 

The jokes we make that the writers keep Dean n Cas separate or whatever because they’ll just start making out are funny and true in some ways for us as the audience, our expectations and desires if we had full control of the story, especially when reading the emotional weight of their personal narrative. Like, we can identify SO MANY “just kiss him you fool!” moments in the story, obviously none of which were actually kisses despite being the opportune moment.

In the wider picture, the story is never constructed around telling itself just about Dean n Cas and making the beats of their relationship the MAIN reason anything is happening, as in, this story is first and foremost about the hunter pining for the angel and everything has been constructed to be about that from the start. It can inform major events and stuff, but it still isn’t WHY they are writing the story. I know it’s common discourse to be like NOTHING MAKES SENSE WITHOUT DESTIEL but in truth you can ALWAYS see the real line the writers mean to take and while I don’t think the Destiel is accidental, I also don’t think it’s a primary motivator to the plot or characterisation.

This is also NOT a wild hot take for a Destiel shipper or meta writer, it’s being clear about what the show’s intent actually is, and trying to understand where the Destiel reading comes from. Like, in no ways am I saying Destiel isn’t real, a solid part of the narrative and acting, and knowingly written into scenes and story arcs and that there’s always a romantic flavour to Dean n Cas stuff that lacks elsewhere. Of course there’s all this subtext to float a massive ship on. But the luxury of this sort of subtextual romantic story is that the main arc between the characters can have plausible deniability and that in no way for where the writers are working from, does that force them to make choices which they aren’t extremely knowingly doing when it comes to the give and take of making scenes read one way or another. 

Like, the entire point is, no previous season has been written as if the actual pitch was canon Destiel at the highest level, because if it had been, we’d have canon Destiel right now, I can say from the luxury of a hiatus where all previous seasons are laid out before us very firmly not having canon Destiel. 13x01-6 was written to be about Dean and Cas in a way that has not ever really been so overt that the emotional arc Dean feels about Cas is the controlling interest but at the end of the day it did not go canon in that time and we moved onto the next story arc. Which is nice we GOT a story arc so much about how they feel but it was still just teasing and subtext and all.

And I am seriously, seriously, not saying this from a place of negativity, bitterness, or whatever else. It’s not a criticism!!! it’s just stating how the fact of the story is. The narrative about Destiel has got so wildly derailed by attention grabbing hype I’ve been clutching my face and wailing at recently about how the end of last season was their big moment to make it canon or they’d have irredeemably fucked up, and blah blah everything seemed to be going that way... No! It wasn’t! The story is not beholden to Destiel! It’s CLEARLY not except for 13x01-6 and that was a contained arc and honestly I still haven’t processed what it means in a bigger picture except that I have no bitterness and all the chill for now.

But the writers’ room is just plodding along through seasons and plotlines and all the different character arcs, and all their MotW and episode pitches and ridiculous ideas and they’re using Destiel as a known emotional tool we respond to and they also clearly like, while at the same time all their focus on plot stuff can very clearly be nothing to do with Destiel and in no particular hurry to do anything about it. 

I need this to be really really clear because I spent last season yelling into the void it felt like, repeatedly warning about fandom hype, expectations, and so on, and a bunch of people still got all revved up then really confused and disappointed and upset that the whole thing hadn’t been a massive Destiel whatever, and that instead the episode had been about *gasp* Sam and Jack and Lucifer??? (And also Michael!Dean with no build up and out of the blue because we hadn’t been warned since 12x12 it was happening, because the only thing that happened in 12x12 was Destiel flirting and confessions and sometimes if you were looking closely Mary being an evil hag :P) 

So this year I’m going full grump about fandom narratives, expectations, predictions, told-you-sos and so on. At least on my blog, if you come chat to me sounding like the narrative is locked in stone and Dean n Cas are so real they’re breaking the bounds of reality to force the writers to write them being gay together, I’ve just been in fandom too long at this point not to feel like I’ve seen it all before and the only predictions I make are about the fandom meltdowns and what do you know, of THAT I have 100% clarity >.> 

PLEASE be critical of what you read; things that might be jokes are hyperbole and things that might be are serious are usually filled with disclaimers and attention to how the reader might react, such as reminders of anyone’s ability to predict canon, and so on. If I’m going around making unfounded statements about Sam ripping the sleeves off his shirts, I’ve seen a BTS pic with a sensible explanation for why we’re not seeing this on screen but it’s a hilarious detail to know when he wears a jacket indoors... But I’m going to PRETEND Sam has flipped and torn the sleeves off all his shirts until canon proves me wrong, because I know it will so I can dick around making jokes about it because no one gets hurt when it doesn’t happen. When someone is making gargantuan claims about canon, Destiel, intent etc, even if you think they’re so much smarter than you (we’re all just faking it, truly. You’re good :P) don’t take anyone’s word as gospel. Understand that meta has no secret access or understanding, there’s no certainty in what we say or do. 

i mean I am flat out being hesitant to talk about things which others think are firm spoilers because I just do not think they’re at the point where we know anything about them to say anything. What is the tone, the context, the, you know, full episode surrounding it? I don’t really care about spoilers because they never mean anything, it’s just a weird collecting hobby we do on the internet, and belatedly offer interesting context but before we see the episode are just infuriating and misleading and can only ever be. Full spoiler CLIPS of episodes can be infuriating and misleading, if it’s of an early scene that is pretending to be something else before we get to the real tone/plot/reason for the episode. There’s no validation or proof from spoilers, only glimpses and PR and no storytelling context to explain why it looks the way it does. 

The spoilers from SDCC were all utterly banal, empty, predictable answers that tell us nothing of any use or relevance because they’re not going to tell us anything actually interesting or useful because if they were, Dabb would start narrating his full meaning of a chunk of episode. At best we can use the common themes of the answers they gave as our starting points for interrogating the text, like I did above with my hypothesis for Cas and Jack conversations, about Jack feeling human without his powers, and we know they’re spending more time together and they’re looking for Dean. So we can construct ideas but they can go anywhere the imagination takes us... Which is, of course, not where the season is going unless we happen to roll some really lucky speculation dice. Which means, again, the spoilers are only actually relevant/matter WHEN WE HAVE THE ACTUAL EPISODES.

Speculation is ridiculous and I am more and more annoyed by it the longer I’m in fandom, because it ends up with everyone seeming to want to  know the story in advance. There’s a media industry in guessing, selectively spoiling, and basically just over-analysing things only to try and work out what happens next. People on the internet being able to guess all the plot twists and secrets because tropes work in certain ways and there are inevitable conclusions sometimes, or legit detectiveing the resolution to a final book or episode or whatever, are missing the entire point, in their need to KNOW what happens next, that it’s only watching it which is actually fun. And if people struggle watching something without knowing what happens, then wait a day and spoil yourself on the real facts and then watch... Blargh. 

Wanting to know the raw beats of the story and all the things that happen, usually just to look smart and like you beat the system of the mystery of storytelling, is not what we should be doing as a fandom. We should be ENJOYING ourselves in the fictional space, not stressing over what will or won’t happen. Or feeling like the story now HAS to happen one way or another.

No. It doesn’t. It never does. It can act like it does right up until the last minute and we can hope that it goes where it seems to be indicating and talk about storytelling integrity ahead of any rug pull or whatever, but the writers themselves, the people crafting the story, are under NO pressure from the characters, story, plot... not to do whatever they want with it.

Like... idk, I just feel like fandom has got so full of hyperbole that we’ve got to the point where people aren’t reading it as hyperbole any more and are legit operating on a level where demands and interpretation are on this completely wild place where everything’s just Destiel holding the writers hostage and screaming and there’s full agendas and No Homo Interns galore and I really can not tell at this point, if I whipped up the No Homo Intern from scratch now instead of 3 years ago, if people would BELIEVE it because things got so wild at the end of last season, when it came to how people were treating the text as a living, almost violent thing. 

Destiel is ever-present in our lives, yes. It is NOT the writers’ top priority in a scene and they’re under no obligation to make it so despite what would be in the best interests of the show and story, and scenes written without it overtly present are not going to be bad, negligent, stupid, poorly-written, confused, forced at gunpoint by the No Homo Intern, or all written by Buckleming. It is very very possible that the show continues to be written entirely as it has been almost the entire time - which is to say, with Destiel subtextual, and not on the top priority of the agenda in every writers’ mind in every scene, up to and including when Dean and Cas interact or one of them talks about the other. 

It’s just one of those things like the social contract which I tend to assume we’re all operating on until things have gone way too far and I realise I am the only one who read the terms and conditions and also someone just got stabbed??