#i love fanon dean though

[mellohiizz]

love how before that episode we were like “is wifies gonna get kidnapped?? is dean gonna get kidnapped??” and then it was SO MUCH WORSE THAN THAT

i mean i was actually anticipating some kind of argument, but that was actually so much worse. because i was expecting parrot to go off and do something very rushed and drastic, and wifies to call him out on it. and parrot still did something stupid, but instead, the stupid thing was parrot ignoring wifies and his attempts to keep him safe. even after dean revealed that he's been leaking their locations and even after wifies flat out told him everything.

[colepitz]

I think the reason I prefer wincest spaces over destiel spaces even though I do enjoy both ships boils down to an average difference in approach when it comes to canon v fanon. Cesties tend to operate in a realm of suspended disbelief. Most just do not care if it’s a canon thing, if it’s widely accepted to be true, or even if it’s liked by the majority of fans. They just enjoy the ship for the expansion that it is and what text is given in show. Ofc they do care about canon wincest, but it’s just not the Focus because we know the brothers and their relationship (romantic or not) will always be the core of spn. Hellers on the other hand have this incessant need to Prove that their ship is real—that Dean and cas are canonically in a reciprocal, non-platonic love, and that it’s an undeniable Fact Of Canon. It’s unfathomable how anyone could watch the show and not see what they see. It’s less fun in my opinion

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

Anti-destiel Wank (sorry but I have to)

If you hardcore ship Destiel, please just scroll on by. Please.

Ok, I'm gonna get myself in trouble, I'm sure, but I gotta get this off my chest...

Destiel may be a perfectly fine ship,

but,

IT'S JUST A SHIP.

In the actual context of the show there IS NO ROMANTIC OR SEXUAL TENSION/RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEAN AND CAS.*

Full fucking stop.

Subtext can be interpreted in ANY WAY YOU WANT. It is subjective. You will find whatever you look for in it. Please stop waving subtext interpretations around as if they were objective facts, they aren't. Subtext, by its very definition, relies on implied meaning and understanding, this means it is a subjective interpretation of the media that varies from viewer to viewer. The inherent variations are what make it fanon/headcanon instead of canon.

If you see tension of that sort there and it makes you happy to postulate the what if, then go ahead, that is what fanon and head canon and fan fiction is all about. But if the fact that the tension you think you see isn't being addressed in actual canon makes you grumpy, maybe you need to take some of the fanatic out of your fanning. If you are beginning to think the show creators are actively trying to repress Dean's "true sexuality and feelings" because they are evil, you might need to consider that you've dug in too deep.

Because, like I ship wincest. Yeah, I said it. But I am aware that canon doesn't actually include any level of sexual or romantic (in the modern sense) relationship between Sam and Dean. Wincest is not canon.

Now, are Sam and Dean the real "love" story of the show? Yes, yes they are. That has always been 100% the entire point of Supernatural, the great love story of two brothers struggling to save the world together. It's about family and everything that means, but at its heart, it is about Sam and Dean WInchester. Not all kisses and cuddles and sex kind of love, but love nonetheless. Full stop.

Now, the fact that Destiel is such a popular ship is not surprising to me in the least. Jensen and Misha are two gorgeous guys who share a lot of chemistry on screen and off. And, it is canon that Cas loves Dean. That has been evident since Lazarus Rising (4x01) when Cas was introduced. Castiel's love of Dean Winchester has been his character's main motivation all along and culminated with Cas sacrificing himself to save Dean, after telling him that he loved him in Despair (15x18)

But Dean's main motivation has always been to watch out for his brother. And though Castiel became Dean's best friend, he still comes second to Sam. Nothing against Cas, he just isn't Sam.

So why are so many people so absolutely convinced that Destiel is so real within the context of the story?

Well, I'm pretty sure that it is the same reason that they are so opposed to the idea of wincest.

As we all know, incest is bad, mmmkay? Incest is probably one of the biggest, strongest, cultural taboos we have. So it makes perfect sense that the idea of two blood-related brothers having sexual or romantic feelings for each other is considered icky. It's so off putting that it is a complete no go for even fantasizing about for most people. And that's probably a good thing, tbh, incest should be taboo. But where does that taboo spring from? Why is it so deeply off limits? There are several reasons, but the two main ones are:

That incest can lead to inbreeding.

That incest too often involves molestation or rape of children.

Both of these are seriously bad enough that we all pretty much collectively agree to avoid incestuous relationships. But, do either of these two reasons really apply in the case of Sam and Dean?

The short answer is no. Primarily this is because they are fictional characters that are being played by unrelated actors. But to humor the objectors we'll look at it closer.

We can take the first one right off the table. As two cis men, neither of them is capable of becoming pregnant, so outside of the mpreg (male pregnancy) or gender bending subsets of fanfic tropes, this is not applicable.

The second reason only becomes an issue when talking about the characters earlier in their lives, pre-show or flashbacks. Weecest or teencest, or whatever, are things, but these typically have separate ship names for a reason, because even when dealing with fictional characters this squicks a lot of folks who are otherwise down with the wincest ship. So most content is tagged or labeled as its specific flavor, so anyone can find it or avoid it. But wincest that involves adult Sam and Dean (the specific pairing I'm referring to in this post) doesn't apply to the second reason listed above.

So there really is nothing morally wrong with Sam and Dean having sex with each other. I know that statement is going to bother a whole lot of people, but it is true. Just because something is taboo does not automatically make it morally wrong. Being gay used to be taboo in our culture, and is still taboo for way too many people, even though there is nothing morally wrong with homosexuality.

Now, I wasn't in the fandom back at the beginning of the show, but I've heard tell that the very first Sam/Dean fic was posted just a few hours after the pilot episode aired. A few hours, that's all it took for some highly motivated fan to type out a story where they were more than just brothers. The story is called Reunion. If you watch the pilot, even with your anti-incest goggles on, the chemistry between Jared and Jensen is palpable throughout. There is a reason the show lasted for 15 years, and that reason is that Sam and Dean just work on screen so well together. So if it only took one episode for that ship to be born, what did all the future destiel shippers do? Well I imagine they felt somewhat uncomfortable for the first 60 episodes.

Flash forward to season four and the introduction of Castiel. Finally there was another male character for fans squicked by the notion of sweet, sweet brother loving to focus on! Cas was clearly fixated on Dean more than Sam, which followed the plot since Cas had been instructed to rescue Dean from Hell. As it would turn out, the brothers were destined to be the meatsuits that Michael and Lucifer wore to the big prize fight to determine the fate of the world. Prepping Sam for Lucifer involved him consuming demon blood, which made most of the angelic host view him as an abomination, a factor that Cas had to learn to get past in his relationship with the younger brother. But Dean was ready to go right out of the box, no assembly required for Michael. Castiel, and many of his angelic brethren, as well as a lot of Demons, seem to be drawn to Dean in a way that they just aren't drawn to Sam. Is this fair? Hell no. But I mean, look at him! Jensen has sexual tension with literally everything he comes in contact with, people, food, his car, the man oozes sexual attraction. Don't get me wrong, Jared is a sexy fucking ball of sunshine, and our Sammy is a damned attractive man, but he tends to be more repressed and less openly sexual than his brother, so it is what it is.

Where was I going with this? That's a good question. I got a bit distracted, sorry. Oh right...

At its root, destiel is a reactive projection. There is undeniable tension between characters in the show. Since all of the main cast are male, that tension is highly homoerotic. The two main characters, who are undeniably emotionally enmeshed and co-dependent with each other (a very well established canon fact btw), happen to be blood-related brothers. Oh no! Where is all that tension coming from since we cannot admit or accept that it's coming from them? Ah ha! Here is a new male character that we like, yes, it is obviously coming from his interactions with one of the brothers, even though he wasn't in the first 60 episodes. Yes, it all makes perfect sense now, all that tension was merely foreshadowing.

I've read through all the destiel subtext posts. I've gone back and watched all the scenes they reference multiple times with the express purpose of finding destiel. I'm telling you it is just a fanon ship. Which is 100% fine and good, ship that ship, just stop declaring it more canon than canon, because it's not.

And if you don't like fictional incest, cool, cool, you don't have to. But the underlying sexual tension existed in the first 60 episodes prior to Misha being cast on the show, so it was coming from somewhere. And it'd be cooler if you learned how to scroll past people shipping wincest, like I'm sure you do for all the other weirdass, squicky shit that people post all over the internet. But if it makes your heart beat a little faster to imagine that Dean and Cas have eyesex but that Dean and Sam don't, that's fine. I think it's delusional because neither ship is actually canon and both are 100% A-Ok in fanon, and honestly Jensen doesn't seem to be able to control his eyes, which is not something anyone should feel bad about (it's fucking marvelous) but you do you.

*Castiel does love Dean. He confessed as much, but Dean did not reciprocate. What I am referencing is a mutual romance or attraction, which does not exist.

[aingeal98]

Hi, so I was reading some of your Stephanie Brown meta & kudos, serious props yours is excellent. I also noticed you seem to be among those who picked up on the worrying undercurrent of Stephanie's relationships with older men. So double kudos for that.

Especially as its one of those things that tends to get glossed over in fandom & I am unsure at times if some writers even grasped what they were doing. Though that may say more about how girls tend to be treated/viewed as adults rather than children, teenagers or victims, save when its convenient to judge them as such.

Sorry not sure where I am going with this, but I think your stance it from that "Five ships that won't happen" section of the Steph ask as well thought out and covered a lot, so third kudos just for tackling that heavy topic so deftly and efficiently.

Ah thank you! Stephanie's relationship with men is so fascinating to me because she's been hurt so many times and the dissonance between her canon and fanon versions are pretty grim yet interesting. Like in early canon she was the Faith to Ariana's Buffy, the Veronica to the Bettys that were Tim's other love interests at the time. And various writers had various ideas about why she was the way she was, a common theme being that she had difficult relationships with the men in her life and had been hurt in the past. Be it a villain, a friend of her fathers, Cluemaster himself, or a shitty clearly too old guy named Dean. I don't think it was meant to be a pattern, more likely just individual ideas about trauma Steph suffered in her past that ended up turning into a consistent trait.

So you've got an abusive father, at least two cases of SA that I can remember (her babysitter and Black Mask), a pregnancy with clear subtext that the father was older than her, and the general way Batman treats her.

Not to mention she was a minor when all this happened. Like Steph has so many issues that she deserves the chance to unpack but instead they've just kind of... softened her down. Like her Batgirl run was the first chance she'd gotten to be the actual hero instead of The Girl in a story written by sexists, and she deserved every second of that. There had been too much injustice done to her character and her Batgirl run did a good job at setting the baseline for giving her a decent narrative. But afterwards, the New 52 could have delved more into her psyche instead of leaning into her waffles and sparkles fanon characterization. But because the New 52 is the worst, it didn't. And now here we are.

It's one of the reasons I'd really love to write a story about Steph realising she's bisexual, because I think in some ways her view of men are due to feeling trapped by heterosexuality and the patriarchal society. It's hard to explain fully without going into a whole other meta but the way she reacts to Tim showing her bare minimum decency is heartbreaking. Like yes men are awful and have been awful to her but she still likes them, she's going to settle down and marry one eventually right? She just has to find the right one, and Tim didn't treat her like complete garbage so he might be it for her!

And then for her to realise that no, she doesn't. She can marry a man if she wants to but if she wants romance there's also women... I really think bi Steph could be so much more than a simple "Oh hey I like girls now cool lol." Like it would shake a significant amount of the misogyny she's internalised and directed towards herself, it could alter the view she's taken of the world, and it would allow her to see her past trauma through a different lens, maybe with less subconscious self hatred.

Sorry this turned into a giant ramble haha, but thank you for the ask!

[eisforeidolon]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Supernatural/s/NwUjmZnu8u

Hellers on reddit

"

I never thought I had to write this but I feel this topic hasn't been properly discussed. Every time I watch supernatural, especially these last seasons, I get so frustrated by this issue and I don't know how people feel about this. Because, how I see it, there is a Cas that's trying to do anything in his hand to protect the Winchesters, making mistakes or not, but I don't feel that it's reciprocated by them, at least not always. And especially Dean.

Dean's behaviour towards Cas is an issue itself. He has a very complicated and deep relationship with Cas, or at least he is supposed to have. I feel like Dean can sometimes be such a jerk towards the angel for no reason, even though what he might have done is not a big deal. The problem is, every time Cas dies, Dean is absolutely devastated and feels like he has lost the love of his life (which is more than reasonable), but when he somehow comes back to life, Dean goes back to "normal" and his tough guy attitude towards Cas resumes. Look, I really like Dean, and I get that he has been through a lot throughout his life, but Sam has also been through hell (lol) and he happens to be much nicer and empathetic. What I'm trying to say is that Dean cannot be a jerk to Cas and then cry over his dead body, because, honestly, that's just toxic.

Take the example of Mary's death. Dean blamed Cas for that even though the three of them knew how dangerous Jack could become. And then basically he became passive aggressive with him because he couldn't forgive him for something he didn't do (why is Dean so grumpy in the last seasons tho?). Cas is one of my favourite characters, and I love his innocence and his unconditional love for Dean (and Sam), but I also love an angel who knows their worth and who can smite the hell out of everything. Badass Cas is amazing but I feel we gradually started losing that aspect as the seasons went by. And that's why I loved 15x03 because Cas finally confronted Dean and decided to "move on". And even though I liked what they did in 15x09, I sometimes felt that Dean didn't deserve Cas. He was always there for the brothers but it looks like they took him for granted, or that he was just being used, and it's really frustrating to watch.

This is one of the reasons why I believe there should be a reboot. There has to be an actual conclusion to these characters' relationship, be it platonic or romantic. I need Cas to be properly loved, not some bullshit subtle "we care about you, pal" kind of thing.

Yeesh. That's A Lot.

Like, Sam and Dean also have fans who are convinced their poor helpless blorbo has never done anything wrong ever and is just So Wronged by everyone and the narrative at every single turn? But I swear it's harder to find Castiel fans that aren't like that. Then again, it's hard to find Castiel fans anymore that aren't hellers, which I think is definitely linked.

We could talk yet again about what a load of utter fanon horseshit it is to describe Dean's affect when Castiel dies as "absolutely devastated like he lost the love of his life". For the pure absurd exaggeration of how they take one single canon shot of Dean looking sad and then write thousands upon thousands of words "interpreting" it and thereafter consider their fanfic of Dean sobbing in devastation for hours over Jimmy's empty corpse actual canon. For how sometimes it's just plain obviously not true (pie festival lol). For the fact when he is genuinely upset there's ALWAYS other more devastating shit going on they pretend to be blind to so they can pretend it's ALL about Cass (the Leviathan/Bobby's death, Mary being sucked into Apocaworld/dealing with Jack, Chuck going full evil, etc.). But instead, this time, let's stick with the theme of poor wronged Castiel, Dean is so MEEN *sob*.

It's not just that the angel is "making mistakes or not" it's that he is consistently time after time after time? Making the exact same fundamental mistake: going behind the Winchesters' backs to "protect them" by keeping vital information from them or outright fucking things up worse by trying to handle shit on his own. After which he generally either tries to run away or share out the responsibility of fixing it to them. Gee, I wonder why they aren't oozing with gratitude?

Let's take the example of Mary's death, to start with. Yeah, they all know that Jack's gradually becoming dangerous. But only one of them knows that he is already at the point of killing a pet dangerous. It's stupid to pretend that's not an obvious, major escalation. But Castiel decides not to tell anybody it. That's a choice he makes, something he very much DID do. You know, kinda like how he wasn't really honest about how bad things were all through season 6 and his plans with Crowley. Kinda like how he decided instead of trying to go back and fix the mess he'd made of heaven, he decided to stay behind in Purgatory but lie to Dean about it. Nothing at all terrible came of those stupid-ass "protective" decisions, nope! No reason at all to be pissed off at his terminal inability to learn from his mistakes!

Which doesn't even get into how he was the one that let Sam out of the panic room, but berated the Winchesters for their part in setting Lucifer free without ever mentioning his own. Or how his first impulse after getting his memories back wasn't actually to heal Sam, whose wall/sanity he intentionally tore down in the first place as a distraction, but to run away. (There's a reason Cass stans/hellers frequently seem to be entirely amnesiac about just how Sam's wall broke.) Then there's how he decided he couldn't trust the Winchesters with the angel tablet. Don't forget that he could hear Claire constantly praying for help for years and did nothing. Or my personal favorite, how he went behind the Winchesters' backs to let Lucifer possess him and escape the Cage after all they went through to put the archangel there without a fucking single word of warning to his supposed friends that he's sooooo concerned with protecting! Then there's stealing the Colt and leaving them unprotected and unconscious outside the portal to Heaven. I'm not even going to touch all the whining he did in the final seasons about wanting to be a hero. I know there's more, but the point is, gee, what a faultless, helpful guy!

My overall point is not even that Castiel is The Worst. He's not the only character who makes stupid-ass decisions. I think there are, in some cases, understandable mitigating factors (YMMV)! However, given the amount of times he ran off on some whim of his own and went totally incommunicado or the Winchesters had to clean up a mess he made (or just made worse)? Framing his role in the show as if he was "always there for the brothers" (remember how when he said that the point was he was lying?) and was soooo uniquely underappreciated? Frankly, they showed plenty of appreciation for him by continuing to count him as family/a friend and ultimately forgiving him over and over. Rather than, you know, stabbing him through the neck like they would have literally anyone else who fucked them over so routinely as he did while supposedly trying to "help" and "protect" them.

[scoobydoodean]

do you believe dean has character development

All of the characters have character development, Dean very very much included. I do think that people sometimes don't know what "character development" means though. Character development is literally how developed your character is, as in—do they feel like a real actual human being, or do they feel like a plot device?

Dean Winchester is actually the most real feeling character I have ever encountered in fiction. He has an extensive backstory that richly explains how he thinks, what motivates him, what his flaws are, and how he relates to others, and we continue to see things happen to him that also shape who he is and how he thinks going forward. He has a long list of mannerisms, likes and dislikes, and interests. He has a well-fleshed out moral framework (contrary to popular fanon). We see his choices and his actions and his beliefs shaped by the experiences of his life and the challenges he faces and his circumstances and it makes him change or rethink things in some aspects while other ideals he cleaves even more strongly to in response. He is adaptable in some aspects but also retains a sense of self, which is how real people are and how characters should be. His emotions ebb and flow in interesting and relatable and understandable ways. He experiences joy and pain and grief and love and every other emotion under the sun and he wrestles with all of them, and he adapts and overcomes and loves and perseveres as real people have to and do, and that is what I would call excellent character development.

[spngirlpolls]

Would you consider Bobby a bad father? (I mean for the record imo even tho he's textual understood to be a father Figure I never get the sense that the boys are his responsibility even in the time when he would want that do he's like. An uncle at best. But yeah I'm rlly curious how u think Bobby fits into that bad dad paradigm

good question, long post sorry.

yeah the show loved to retcon how involved bobby was in the winchester childhood. s1 they're like "he's the only hunter we know and he babysat sometimes" and by his death in s7 bobby's like "i raised them!" i think he acts as a father figure/mentor in their adult lives but questionably so in their actual childhoods, i think we conflate fanon/canon there a lot.

regardless, i think the show's overall argument for bobby is he is a rare "good" father exception because he has broken the cycle of abuse. his father was abusive, bobby actively chose not to have kids as to avoid perpetuating the cycle.

bobby acts as an anti-john, someone who lived through a similar tragedy and chose a different path. john pushes people away, acts alone, which ultimately puts people in danger (harvelles, his own kids, etc) while bobby uses what he's learn to build a community: he's running the phone scams, he's operating a backwoods occult library, he's checking in on people.

(there's other misc messy character things like ghost bobby, bobby being in hell?? etc but overall the idea is that he's the glue of the community)

so yes, the show posits he is supposed to be a good father. i think there's some wonky advice/character stuff but within the supernatural mythos bobby is what passes for a good father, perchance the best example of "fatherhood". or maybe more accurately, bobby is the only character that is even capable of potentially being a good father bc he has broken the cycle of abuse, regardless of how good is parenting actually is. john (and sam and dean and all the other bad fathers) are incapable of being good fathers (in the rules of the supernatural writer's room) because they literally never break the holding pattern of abuse in their tragic fucked up lives. that's the crux of the supernatural story IMO, whether that's morally right/wrong or even interesting, that's the question the story is structured around for all 15 seasons: am i my father am i my father am i my father.

(as an aside) notably, when bobby dies, the winchesters don't take up the mantle of being pillars of the community. they don't run the phones or make sure ppl come back from hunts. they totally abandon that part of bobby's legacy, the most important part of his character, his literal life's work. garth is the one that carries that torch. salmondean never really make themselves part of the community, even though it would make sense for sam to be doing that while dean is in purgatory. they live in monster hunters HQ and they don't share those books or tools or anything with ANYONE. at no point does any grief or trauma sam and dean endure prompt them to cultivate community, which is very john, which is repeating the cycle.

[quickreaver]

Emptying my brain...

Recently, there was quite a kerfuffle in the SPN fandom, over the realization that several self-proclaimed “BNFs” had been Mean Girling fellow fans into hating on certain other fans and certain other members of the cast of SPN. Thoughts have been percolating around in my head about this for a bit. Here goes... There has already been some discussions of warning about how cult-like these tactics seem: the initial lovebombing, indoctrination, evolving into intimidation and threats if people don't fall in line. The hunger to belong and smug feeling of group-think is a helluva drug. The fear of losing favor and being ousted from the silo is also a helluva withdrawal. I wonder if there's a reason all these manipulative personalities, every one of them, have been from the Destiel quarter of the SPN family. Is it sheer numbers? Or does it begin with the selling of the ship as this monumental slow-burn greatest love story ever told (even though the show's actual canon does very little to support this fable)? The relationship between Dean and Cas has been romanticized to a legendary degree, and the fanon has become the preferred telling of the tale, replete with lengthy subtextual navel-gazing over lamps and fictional beer brands and artfully staged gif sets on tumblr. Every whiff of the show has been recontextualized to point to Destiel. A stroll through any given list of Destiel All-Time Fave Fics is chock full of AUs and characters that feel more like Any Two White Guys than the actual characters from SPN.

Maybe this primes D/C shippers to be more susceptible to grift, to believe anyone with charisma and confidence and leadership aspirations, who promises the fruition of some manner of Destiel endgame. Which, okay. I totally get how deeply we often feel about our fandoms and the dynamics, how we project onto the characters and idealize the ships as more than the show intended.

It'd be fine... if fans then didn't feel the need to evangelize for the ship and punish those who got in the way. Some groups have been actively attacking the cast and parts of our fandom for years, as well as making actual bank off it all. Under the guise of inclusion and camaraderie, they dangle paying admission into their sacred inner circles like worms on hooks. They took, and are continuing to take, money to offer glimpses behind the doors of their Patreons or special levels of their Discords, where those lucky customers would theoretically be honored with friendship (parasocial, much?), and gifted with the potential of supposed insider info, and/or proximity to the cast and crew at conventions. In return, that same congregation would be used as a tool to attack and discredit the parts of the SPN milieu that the grand poobahs dislike. They would be asked to buy their merch, to keep their secrets, to send hate mail to each other in order to place the blame on “the other side”, try to get competing fans (or even TV shows) canceled, carry the torches of hate, and the list goes on. I don't know where this is going exactly, but there's a difference between bickering over which ship has the best blorbos or whose fave is the most girlboss, and actively trying to generate a lemming-like mass of obedience, enough to impact the IRL health and well-being of other people. Fandom can rally to accomplish such good feats (and lord knows the companies and studios that own our favorite franchises have figured this out), but every coin has two sides. Just, be aware of which one you're on, I guess.

[angiefsutton]

Quantum Leap (1989) Re-watch

Season 1, episode 4: "The Right Hand of God"

woo-hoo: mandatory boxing episode (and the 'inspiration' for "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by me and JD Rush)

also: 'homage' to Rocky movies (even the training music is a knockoff of the Rocky theme)

forgot they got Guy Stockwell for this (Dean: "hey, bro: wanna be in my new show?")

still no opening 'oh, boy' - don't think there was one at all

ah - Bashful!Beckett has arrived (and Al's right: Sam IS adorable when he blushes)

… Sister ANGELA (please oh please let Dean say 'Angela'. He says it so sexy in Married to the Mob) (after watching: Damn. Guess I'm gonna have to go re-watch Married to the Mob. Poor me.)

dear lord - that orange outfit for Al. One of his more … interesting ones. Dean barely pulls it off. (… I can pull it off, if Al lets me!)

Apparently, Al's issues with the church haven't 'happened' in this timeline ;-) (canon? what canon?)

reminds Al of raising funds for the Imaging Chamber together (ah, many a fic of the two of them planning PQL)

"he's got more holes in his muffler than you do in your memory" - great line!

"He's a big guy - tells me to blow it out my tailpipe." … well, now.

(Also - realized yesterday that this goes to show how excellent of an actor Dean is. In a lesser actor's hands, many of his lines could've come across right down icky - even in '89. But like Al's clothes, Dean makes it work.)

Sam doing a mobster/Godfather imitation - hilariously horrible

Oh - DIX! I think many of fanon Tina's characterizations come from Dix. IMHO.

"My favorite? Oh, thanks - I really like my favorite. It's one of my favorites." - LOVE THIS LINE

DONUT shop. Everyone has a dream, I guess. ;-)

and we get everyone calling Sam 'Kid' in this

"Hon, you know the quick way never works." am IMAGINING what Al would've said had he been there.

"You'd rather go live with the nuns than with me?" Poor Sam - you can see a part of him is tempted.

"Amazing Grace" as Dix bares all! totally intentional

oh, god - Scott singing "Amazing Grace", though. Dear lord, I love his voice.

And then Al's snoring. ("Denise: Denise - Get in the closet!")

Ah - the first "She's got the most incredible pair of …" - this time "matching boxing gloves."

of COURSE Al goes to Ziggy for help in dealing with the muffler neighbor

"Well, If we knew the unknown, then the unknown wouldn't be unknown." - they're prescient! (see this)

I love you, Dean Stockwell/Al, but the idea of you actually KNOWING how to box - especially in THAT outfit - is HILARIOUS

"Hey - who taught you everything you know?" (pause) said sadly and alone, "I was good, too" - again, the 'inspiration' for "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by me and JD Rush

and Sam's not much of a drinker already - at least more than a beer

man - still some horrible ADR - must be how they did it in the 80s/90s

her story of the fire - I had two fires around 3 years of each other. Still want to try and write something about it

Dean Stockwell in that white suit - there IS a God

Scott Bakula working out is INCREDIBLY hot

{sigh} I could watch Dean and Scott shadowboxing for hours, I think

Al being jealous of Gomez - so sweet

when the mobster taunts in the bar: Sam has a hair trigger on his anger at this point, doesn't he

STREAKING. Would've been a perfect time for Sam to 'remember' why he streaked in college ;-) (Missing episode fic?)

and Sam invokes the Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit trope

and I forget he CHEATS by having Dixie streak. Again, obviously before they made Sam the goodie goodie he becomes. I forgot that it's SAM'S idea, not Al's

"Maybe that's all that winning is: having the right person believe in you." good moral, and perfect for Sam (and Al, for that matter)

{sigh} that red gangster hat and SUSPENDERS. I'm in love.

I would've loved to see a behind-the-scenes video of them filming this fight. The way Dean's able to stay out of everyone's way (and not touching ANYONE). I know blocking exists, but I also know that this is a bit different than your 'average' scene\

daw - an imaginary hug with Al when Sam wins!

overall thoughts: I mean, it's a knockoff of "Rocky". What else can I say? It's not a great episode, but not a bad episode either.

Thankfully, both Dixie and Sister Angela makes the episode work. Definitely a 'season 1' episode, if that makes sense. Still somewhat settling characters (especially Sam's) and the 'rules' of his leaping.

This is an episode I would've loved to see a 'on the other side of the IC' scene of Tina (and the others, for that matter) dealing with Boxing!Al (and his reaction to the neighbor).

(I want to say I read a fic where Al was ACTUALLY working overtime on the retrieval progam but didn't want to put any hope into Sam, so 'made up' the neighbor).

End thought? I may have to re-read "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" this weekend. ;-)

[420technoblazeit]

Abt the jealousy of Cas, I don't think Cas is jealous of Crowley for who he is . because I do think he thinks he's better than him, but in a relationship yea I can see jealousy and possessiveness I mean he did sear deans skin and carved into his ribcage. If they did get together literally all of body will be marked.

So either it's one month with Crowley then the other month with him

But also I just can see Cas just waiting. Until he becomes the priority. And until then let's dean do his own thing and Cas does his.

i mean i agree that cas isnt jealous of crowley for who he is and you can have your own headcanons. cas is certainly a character who has a lot of pride especially in the earlier seasons but i think a lot of that is gone by the time the later seasons come around. i'd argue even after season 6 he has significantly less pride, though i guess you could argue season 8 cas still has a bit of it. i just dont think that there's canon basis for him being a very jealous person when we've already seen a situation where dean chose crowley over cas (the demon dean summer) and cas didn't seem to hold any grudge with crowley over it

remember that we do see a conversation between sam and cas in 10x01 about dean running away, and while sam seems to think that there's a demon running around in dean's body cas understands that dean himself made the choice to run away. sam seems to think that crowley might have forced dean to leave but cas dismisses that almost immediately and instead brings up whether or not dean's too far gone as a demon. there's a focus here on dean leaving being dean's choice

also here's a scene from 10x03 from when crowley first meets up with cas again and discusses curing dean. if cas, like sam, didn't understand just how much dean meant to crowley he would've left it at that thinking that crowley was just using dean as a guard dog. but he makes sure to point out here that dean might be too far gone because he knows that for crowley to have stuck with dean for that entire summer he must care about what happens to him

even much later in the season cas again asks crowley for help in curing dean, even after sam has tried to kill him, and i think it's because cas is maybe the only person who actually gets it. who understands what it's like to be an immortal being in love with a human as reckless and self-destructive as dean. and to sacrifice so much for him and not ask for anything in return. he knew that even with nothing in return crowley would help in getting rid of the mark because he knows how much it's hurting dean

and about the carved ribcage and handprint thing if we're being honest the whole possessive branding thing is like. entirely fanon. to my knowledge the show never explicitly mentions that as being a possessive thing, the fandom just thought it'd be cute to make it into that. we know that the warding's main function is to hide sam and dean from angels and that the handprint is a byproduct of cas dragging dean out of hell. it is by no means proof that cas is actually possessive of dean or would be upset about him being with someone else

idk i just think pretending that cas and crowley's relationship could ever boil down to just ohhhhh cas is jealous of crowley's thing with dean significantly flattens their relationship and gets rid of the most interesting thing about it, which is that basically the only thing they can ever agree on is loving dean. that's unironically their common ground in a significant number of issues. theyre an angel and a demon to begin with so theyre already about as different as you can get but when you really look at the core of who they are, theyre both beings who are too emotional and human for their own good and you can always see that best in how they interact with dean

[angelsdean]

ok i'm on 1x07 on my rewatch and first scene after the cold opening, sam is obsessively calling around to hospitals looking for john, running his plates, etc etc. meanwhile, dean is totally chill. not worried at all. not interested in searching for john. and he says, "Sam, I’m tellin’ ya, I don’t think Dad wants to be found."

just more fuel to add to the "dean killed john and made up the 'search' bc he doesn't want to be alone anymore and he's gonna drag on the charade for as long as he can" theory. dean literally does not give af abt finding john. another "fanon dean" thing i would love to refute and have not be the main interpretation. like, dean's just the one that shows up and makes sam aware of their missing father. he's not the one obsessed with finding him though. i think the situation is pretty ideal for dean actually. john's finally out of his hair, he's no longer obligated to be john's weapon and perfect soldier, he's got his brother back so he's not all alone, and they're busy finding cases and saving people (thee whole point of the job for dean) instead of just chasing leads on a futile 20 yr long revenge quest. john can stay gone (or dead) for all dean cares.

[soleminisanction]

Hi :D i loved your sticks and stones work! Amazing! Anyways id been going back through the robin 1993 and other era-related comics and realized what was bugging me about some fanon characterization of steph being the 'popular social one'. They get her's and tim's social life completely swapped. Steph isn't a team player and the one willing to work with everyone. Could just be because Steph's a supporting member but I realized she focused mostly on crime fighting and was much more of a loner. She didn't do team ups pretty much till she was Batgirl. Tim, however, had an active civilian social life and constantly teamed with other vigilantes. Idk if thats just my interpretation though. Anyways :)))

God yes! You are so right! That has frustrated me for years, especially in the recent canon when they've been having every teenager with a cape suddenly go "OMG haiiiii Stephanie :) :)" for no fucking reason when it makes ZERO sense! She's a weird loner who does not know any of these people!!

And that's doubly true when it comes to her civilian friends. Steph's civilian life as a whole is weirdly under-developed given how much attention she's gotten over the years, especially since she, y'know, had her own series. Yet they still couldn't be bothered to give her much of anything to work with. It's so frustrating.

Seriously, here is, I'm pretty sure, a full list of the friends Steph was shown having pre-Flashpoint who aren't members of the Bat-clan:

These two Black girls from Robin #61 who only exist so Stephanie can yell at them about how stupid their friend is for keeping her baby and how stupid they are for thinking it's cute of her to do that, and then later she talks about how dumb and immature they are compared to her, and they're never seen again.

Her baby-daddy Dean, who's only shown once outside of Robin during the Cataclysm event, and then only shows up again 2 years after her pregnancy has been resolved so Stephanie can beat him up for no reason. (Seriously, this is the only page he's on before she kicks him in the nuts and knocks him around, he doesn't say or do anything else to her, she just wails on him for no reason)

Two randos from the Robin/Spoiler Special who exist to make a plot happen by inviting her to a warehouse party that she drags Tim to and are never seen again. Their existence also makes no sense in Steph's personal timeline because she's been "dead" for a year and will be in college in like two months so why the hell would she enroll in high school again??

Effa, the little African girl also from the Robin/Spoiler Special, who only exists to make Stephanie look good by sucking up to her.

Jordanna Spence and Francisco Garcia from her Batgirl run, supposedly. In practice they're actually just two people that Stephanie doesn't like and whom she calls "friends" in quotation marks and has no idea why she keeps hanging around them, and yet she keeps bothering them because the plot said she's gotta.

Supergirl, as forced and one-sided as that relationship was.

Wendy Harris, even though "Proxy" only really lasted for a grand total of 5 issues.

A nameless rando she's shown playing ping-pong with, once.

...and that's it! That's all the friends Stephanie has ever had who weren't members of the same extended anti-crime family, and two of them are people she only met because of those connections.

Compare that to Tim, who has dozens of civilian friends and at least twice as many caped ones, and yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous that people pretend Stephanie is the """social""" one.

But y'know, she's the perky-happy blonde girl, so people just assume she must be popular. Because she's written almost entirely in stereotypes and cliches since 2008.

[fandom-hoarder]

Just wondering if you can please explain to me how it's okay to describe the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale as a "love story" even though those details are never explicitly stated or seen and are therefore subtext... but you can't accept that there is subtextual evidence in Dean's character development that implied his attraction to both genders as the story continued to develop. Yes, there are canonical instances where Dean stated he "doesn't swing that way", but they also occurred in the early seasons... before Purgatory, before his summer of love and group sex with Crowley. I'm okay with believing people when they state their sexuality... but are you okay with them changing their minds?

Is this actually about canon vs fanon? Or is it just twisting a narrative to suit how much you hate a certain ship?

I could be wrong, but I don't think *I've* described Aziraphale and Crowley as a canon love story? I've reblogged NEIL GAIMAN describing it as such. Furthermore, he never said that love was sexual, and neither have I. I enjoy Aziraphale and Crowley as a representation of queerplatonic love.

But that has nothing to do with what you're actually here to complain about.

Yes, it is actually about canon versus fanon.

In fact, destiel used to be my OTP until hellers became SO GODDAMN INSUFFERABLE in insisting their fanon is canon and attacking people over it. It's not the ship I hate, it's hellers who ruined it for me. Between the way so much destiel fiction is AU and completely changes character dynamics I like; and how hellers call other actual real life queer people homophobic, whilst wielding their own implicit biases to insist certain things MUST BE interpreted as queer NO MATTER WHAT THE CHARACTER AND THE ACTOR AND THE PEOPLE THAT WROTE DEAN SAY.

It's one thing to appreciate things you think are implied subtextual clues or things you personally vibe with and have a HEADCANON about it, but it's another thing to see Dean say on screen that he doesn't swing that way and INSIST he really does! Canon is what happens on screen. You can feel that there's implications all over the place, but that isn't the text. It's not canon.

Even his "summer of love" with Crowley does not make Dean canonically gay or bi. Lmao. First of all, that phrase shouldn't be taken seriously in the context of the show, wherein Sam is still hurt/jealous and jibing Dean about his time as a demon. We also can't take Crowley's comment about them sharing triplets, when Dean is a demon, to mean anything happened between them. He said they did "extraordinary things to triplets." That does not a homosexual encounter make.

Do you also take all the suggestive phrases about Sam and Dean to mean they're canonically incestuous? Cuz I don't, and I ship them!!

Dean is straight. He's said so in his own words many times. He's only been shown and spoken about sleeping with women.

And I'm too tired to search for late seasons dialogue now, but here's the fucking screenshot from 10.07:

[ID: screenshot of Sam holding Dean's phone, displaying Dean's dating app profile. Under "seeking", Dean has listed "women." /End ID]

Now, while anyone can stomp around insisting that a person COULD do all these things and still be gay, or bi, or queer in some way, THE CANON TEXT TELLS US DEAN IS STRAIGHT.

Y'all take all the joy out of having a bi!Dean headcanon because you have to be assholes and refuse to accept (or fucking watch) canon.

Thank you, and goodnight.

[vivi-scera]

ohhhh i have so many questions to ask now that i apologize beforehand for throwing you questions instead of actually giving a response-reply to your ask 😭

1) “i like thinking about jason-robin's relationship with bruce the most but i like tim as robin best” plss if u could pls elaborate on this? this is so interesting bcs for a second i thought it would be jason robin or even dick robin since hes the first one!

2) ”i think i was mostly thinking bruce/jason since i was talking about johndean” this is interesting too bcs i was hyperfocused on comparing dean’s devotion to dick’s, hence my ask & why i bring dick robin specifically, and now im curious abt your comparison :D

3) “i'm going to be actively problematic and say that bruce sees dick as something less than his partner and something more than his son” is it like what i think it is is it more in line with smth smth owning smth smth *eyes emoji*

4) your tags!! thats interesting too that you prefer jaytim as batcest, instead of like timdick whos more like brothers or jaydick with jason’s “envy” (to simplify it) at dick’s golden boy ness (also to simplify it) which could be a source of conflict between jason & bruce

haha no worries, i did totally set you up.

1.yeah so tim is my favorite robin <3 relatively unpopular opinion to have in my immediate circle apparently. though probably not as unpopular as saying damian is your favorite. but like, tim's the underdog! the odd one out!! he understands the meta-narrative role that robin plays in batman's life and tries to fulfill it. he's such a deeply interesting character not only in how he views himself as the weakest robin/the robin batman didn't choose, but also in how the other robins, canonically, view tim as the best out of them (because he's the most like daddy). i don't mind as much when fanon obfuscates his characterization because he really can be such a blank slate, more or less. as in, meta-narratively, tim decides to be whatever/whoever is best for batman, erasing the part of himself that is tim drake in favor of coalescing with "robin". he's the only robin who really is robin. which is really very tragic if you think about it. but also makes for fantastic bruce/tim fodder :) i would expand more on my love for tim but this ask would get WAY too long. read Liminal Space by Calamityjim on ao3 if you've watched young justice and have read the red robin 2009 run (an EXCELLENT read btw) if you want the gist of the angst.

as for the others, i think jason has had the best character evolution —not just in the batman storyline but as a comic character in general. i really think his death, and to a much lesser extent his rebirth, is the best/most impactful development in all of superhero comic history. superheroes as we know them today would largely not exist without his character. dick is fine, i like him third best. just because he was the first doesn't make him special to me lmao. the fact that others came after him is what makes him interesting to me, in addition to his relationship with batman— which is currently the most interesting batman-robin romantic relationship to me rn. i've seen some insane meta about him around but mostly based on somewhat outdated runs, which really doesn't mean anything when it comes to comics i guess. i don't think he's been in anything interesting/good in over a decade. i also wish i could mail tom taylor anthrax <3 damian is... my least favorite (skipping steph, sorryy i do love her but there's not enough canon for me to have an actual opinion). i think damian's interesting but only as a source of conflict (and ofc his dynamic with dick-batman). he doesn't really stand on his own and he's annoying.

2. i don't necessarily think that bruce/jason is closer to johndean than bruce/dick is (i actually think bruce/tim is closer relatively, but there's not a comparable pairing imo. i also just don't think dick is necessarily "devoted" to batman as much as tim is. his goals, like mentioned, align more with being able to call himself bruce's equal, which could be conflated with desire i.e. in bruce/dick). but there are a lot of functional aspects of the jason-robin & batman dynamic that is parallel to the relationship between dean and john as hunters imo— mostly having to do with consensual practices. is dean/jason-robin in control of his narrative purpose as a hunter/sidekick or are they doing what is necessary to survive? what does it mean for either of them when duty and pleasure are conflated? etc. i really love the headcanon that jason was a child-prostitute, which would be a functional role that carried over in being robin for another older man, so that was mostly where i was coming from. child soldiers... can't get enough of em.

3. haha i don't really know what the "something" is that i was referring to, just some vague middle ground that's gonna go undefined because where's the fun in defining the relationship that a man shares with the preteen ward in his possession who he may or may not want to be his son but who he treats like a spouse because mentally & emotionally he hasn't moved on from the day he was 9 years old and his parents died. maybe dick grows up but bruce never will :'). well, maybe he grows up a little when each robin leaves him

4. and yaaaa jaytim, favorite pairing of all time. they can be enemies to lovers. the ghost and the haunted. rebecca and the narrator. brother-rivals trying to become their father but who are held back by the lack of a quality that the other possesses (see nearmello death note). i'm gonna go the fanon route and say jason was tim's robin (even though, timeline wise, it could totally have been dick). so there is that adoration-envy (that tim would have for jason) that jason would have for dick in jaydick (which is a pairing i also like, don't get me wrong! i just maybe like it as a one-sided thing. or we could have the worst love triangle in the world with damian->tim->jason->dick->bruce all unrequited lmao). but in jaytim there's the addition of the danger element— jason at one point or another did want to kill tim. and not only was jason tim's robin, he was also his ghost story! an example of what would happen to tim if something went wrong. so adoration-envy-fear which transmutes to sexual interest. very sadomasochistic route we could take there. and for jason, tim is the kid who replaced him! who's evidently better at being daddy's favorite! he can die psychosexually mad about it. neither timdick or jaydick have that enemies/lovers edge that i really like (see kurokura hunter x hunter). they also just have some interesting canon history that writers never get into— like batman-jason trying to conscript tim as his robin during battle for the cowl. i am TRYING to write a jaytim fic but i keep getting distracted by other pairings. i thought i was gonna get to it after finishing the one i'm working on but i might just do brudick next so we'll see. send more questions/responses if you have them <3

[sergeantpixie]

I seriously need to know why you're so obsessed with deanlena tho

Because I have taste!!!

Assuming you are asking because of the ask game (and if you're not, oh well lmao)

Whether I ship it or not: Duh, obviously, it's like 95% of my personality (yes the other 5% is being obsessed with my cat)

Why I ship it or not: When it gets down to it, it's just everything I could want in a ship. For Elena, Dean is someone who would respect her choices and would also be a human who shares some of her very complicated life experiences. For Dean, Elena would be someone who would not judge him for the things he judges himself for and she'd be too fucking stubborn to let him walk away from her for her own good. I could quite literally go on but I'll stop.

My opinion on their canon potential (chemistry, canon interactions, etc): I mean... they're from different shows. Also I think their canon age gap is like 13 years? Which ya know, Elena's canon husband is literally nearly 2 centuries older than her so it's not that big of a deal but considering Dean is a full grown adult man at the start of his series and Elena is a teenager at the start of hers it's not ideal. Still mad that Julie Plec vetoed a crossover when approached by the spn team though

My opinion on fanon interpretations/fandom around it (Favorite widespread hcs, pet-peeves, etc): I honestly do not read a lot of other fics (partially because I have literally written half of the published fics for them on AO3) so I can only draw from a limited experience but I do think most people take them less seriously as a ship than I do which is a shame because they have amazing endgame potential. I do really hate when people call them a crack ship though, they're really not. I don't think Dean could ever view Elena as just another girl but I'm aware that's largely because my headcanons for them are very specific and it would literally be impossible for Dean to just get over her (and vice versa but I don't see that interpretation as often). I am also kind of disappointed in people's fascination with Addendum which is ridiculous because it's my fic but man the verses I could be writing if it wasn't taking up all my time!!! Seriously I am glad people love it but it does not need sequels, I have so many better ideas.

Send me a ship!

@randomestfandoms

[scoobydoodean]

I love your different spn analyses and I think a lot of them are so interesting and accurate... unfortunately they have given me anger issues now that ignite whenever I try to read fanfics with bad characterization.

I actually read tons of spn fic BEFORE I ever watched the show so l have the unique perspective of watching the show and finding out the ways fanon is laughably off base.

Most egregious examples (in my opinion) are

"Dean never talks about his feelings, and Sam is the emotionally intelligent one" and "Dean always defends John because he can’t comprehend that John's treatment of him as a kid was bad, and Sam is the objective one who always criticizes him and has to be the one to help poor clueless Dean recognize his trauma."

The second one is baffling because it's literally within in the first and second seasons that Sam and Dean both switch their roles somewhat; Dean starts to unpack how John treated him and tries to discuss his shortcomings with Sam, but Sam starts defending John to Dean.

To me, this is one of the moments where the show actually has something really interesting to say and fanon is the one cheapening it and flattening out the characters, even though that's the opposite of how most people perceive the show and fandom.

Anyways, this turned into a bunch of rambling, but the point is that I'll continue to love reading your thoughts on the characters as you write them!

♥️ To be quite honest, I think while pretending they’re doing the opposite, fandom is often the force flattening out the characters and show into boring caricatures. The show is SO long it’s easy to blend the large cache of fic we have with what we saw in the show and get mixed up. Also people respond to things stated with confidence without really considering the support. And look—people can write whatever they want and choose to rewrite the show to be whatever they want even if it’s boring and reductive—but it’s annoying when those people pretend they actually remember the show and get condescending about it while actually spouting a fanfic they read or simple “popularly accepted fanon”.