#i loved the whole show but kripke era will always hit different

[hurricanejane]

I have 2 episodes of spn left that I've never seen. So naturally I'm rewatching episodes of season 2..

[quwarichi]

fave spn episodes from each showrunner era (and why - if you feel like it!)

OH I LOVE THIS ASK!

It's nearly impossible because like my dad says when I ask for his favorite rock song "there's no such thing as the best because they're all unique" but I am nothing if not a people pleaser so let's see.

Kripke Era: That's a toughie. Uh... I think it's a threeway tie between Faith/On The Head Of A Pin/The Rapture. Faith is just the first episode I watched and went "oh, this is a Dean ep. I kinda like it a lot. The themes of his character are. Wow." and also the whole conversation on who gets to decide who dies and who doesn't... chef's kiss. On The Head Of A Pin is the episode where I think they officially swapped out Anna for Cas, and while I love Anna, Cas is my obsession and I just can't help but worship the episode for what they did for the beginning of his character arc. The Rapture because again, Cas, but it's because he's so absent from the episode yet you can feel his presence and influence and how the message is that actions have consequences in a war, affecting those you didn't even think about. Oh, and it has Claire.

Gamble Era: Hands down, The Man Who Would Be King. The Gamble era has a lot of hit or misses, but damn if that episode has roped me in to stay for another 25 episodes despite the mediocraty of the writing in the show at the time. The episode itself, just portraying how Cas was struggling with his hubris, falling from grace, trying to search for the reason he's alive - taking his first baby steps into humanity and falling in love. For love.

Carver Era: Another tough one... I think I'm gonna have to go with the double Things We Left Behind/Hunter Games. Claire and Cas, Cas having a midlife crisis, the parallels between Dean and Claire. Dean and Cas.

Dabb Era: Definitely the hardest one since I just love so much. I could make different posts for each season detailing how much I love each and why. Uh, I think I'll go with a tie between Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets and Gimme Shelter. Are you noticing a theme yet? Cas is just such an interesting character to me and I want to know so much about him. Lily Sunder was just a glimpse into the life he lived before Dean and Sam and a show of how much he's grown and progressed since then in the short time he'd known them. Gimme Shelter gives such a stark example of the difference between Cas and Jack's roles-to-be and supernatural being status to the way they view humans and humans view them. There's so much hinting at Cas' future part that we didn't get to see later on it blows my mind. Also Dr. Sexy the priest that tells Cas it's okay to be gay is something I always like to tell people outloud because of how ridiculous that sounds.

This is definitely not a proofed list, because I just have so many episodes I love for different reasons, but I can confidentally tell you that if I needed to point out the reasons I stick around this fandom these are some of the best examples I'll point out to you out of the 327 options avaliable to me.

I hope this answers your question!

[dotthings]

My history with Sam & Dean’s close emotional sibling bond is a little complicated, but it is important to me. It isn’t my fandom focus for a lot of reasons, and probably would never be my sole/primary focus but that’s not a reflection of how much it means to me emotionally. That was kind of part of the problem, in fact...it matters a lot and canon finally hurt in the wrong way one too many times.

I’m encouraged by the slow repair SPN has been doing to it for me, slow steps, starting S11, and S14 is doing some very very interesting things I’ve been waiting on for years.

So here’s a bit of a review on my ups and downs with it.

In the S1-5 era I was heart-first absorbed in the Sam & Dean bond. It was my anchor, even if I never, ever was a “brosonly” or watching “only for Sam & Dean”--other characters always intrigued me. But Sam & Dean was my “Brotp.” When Cas arrived and I started to ship Destiel, that continued, this is why Team Free Will was necessary--I had to put all those feelings somewhere. While platonic duos and romantic ships don’t elicit the identical type of emotions, both can be potent with the screaming/crying/squeeing/flailing. I just added Destiel onto that. That’s a lot of feels to cope with all at once.

S6-9 I was still into the bro bond and getting more and more into Destiel. But as SPN canon continued to make certain story decisions with the Sam & Dean bond, the harder I found it to relate to it. It became less of a comfort space and more alienating, while Dean and Cas has steadily made sense to me. I know it hasn’t for everyone, but this is a personal, subjective thing, buttons pushed or not pushed, nerves hit or hit the wrong or right way and Dean and Cas became more consistently my anchor in the SPN storm. This isn’t an either/or thing to me, I felt the loss of my connection to the bro bond, and I’d just go back to multi-squeeing if SPN continues to go in the direction I hope.

S9 was a bit of a struggle but I still believed in the strength of the bro bond. My feelings were starting to burn out on it but I was still there.

S10 slammed the door shut on it for me. With a big resounding clang. It was cumulative, it was too much at last. I still loved Sam and Dean, although Dean has been my more consistent touchstone character than Sam, I’ve always loved them both. I cycle in out of feeling connected to Sam, to Sam making sense, but I love them both, always--and Castiel. SPN at times in latter-era engaged me on each of the brothers, while the bond itself got elusive. 

Team Free Will became my anchor platonic bond and brotp, a new comfort zone. Who knows why, maybe something about the alchemy of Sam, Dean, & Cas together, these three battered soldiers who start to become each other’s home, with Cas being the wanderer that Sam & Dean finally give a home to, but the interactions of all the relationships therein, Sam & Cas, Sam & Dean, Dean & Cas are important to me. Team Free Will enfolds multiple relationships and accommodates fans who tend to multi-love and consider multiple character pov’s. 

Some people think just because somebody intensely ships Destiel that platonic bonds can’t or won’t matter to them; that’s not how this works at all.

When I say I was into the Sam & Dean bond in early SPN--I mean it. I was into it, emotionally. Never shipped it, never will, never did I think “this is the only thing on the entire show that matters” and I never will. But it bone-deep matters to me, as these characters do. During the past few seasons I’ve been warming back up to the Sam & Dean bond again. It’s never going to be what it was in S1-3 but that’s not a bad thing to me. Because one of my problems during Carver era was the refusal to let them grow enough.

So it means a great deal to me what Dabb era is doing, to advance things, to be more emotionally honest, to finally move beyond some of the things in the Carver era that were holdovers from the Kripke-Gamble era that and that I got desensitized on and burned out and hurt by it to the point where I had to step back from investment in it. I’m not saying Dabb era is perfect or Dabb era has never angered me. But this is how my tracking of the bro bond maps.

S11-13 have been very much transitional stages for the bro bond and maybe at some point I’ll try to go into more detail as to how/why, but I felt S11-12 canon presented them a bit distantly to each other, but growing more functional, and S13 was a lot warmer between them, and for me, and S14 so far...I am shook. There are things happening I have waited a long time to see. Now I’m holding my breath, not wanting to spook it off. 

Charting my engagement with the bro bond would look like a wavy line: a sharp upward climb, then a drop in the middle, then a slow climb back upwards. It never stopped mattering to me, but I did dis-engage from it for several seasons for a time, for canon story and emotional reasons. And I find it weird, given my long history in the fandom, and with the bro bond, and my positivity for both characters, even if I had to step back from the bond itself at times, the false narrative that gets around about “bro bond hater.”

To take a brief side-bar into fandom wank for a moment--because it’s relevant, I wish it weren’t, but it’s just so pervasive in SPN fandom and it does affect people emotionally--the following things will get you labeled a “bro bond hater” even if you’ve never bashed Sam, Dean, or their bond in your life:

-rooting for character development -recognition of Sam and Dean as autonomous individual people along with the bond being important -criticism of codependency -criticism of ruthless isolation -not shipping incest -shipping Destiel (automatic “you hate Sam”) -identifying strongly with the Team Free Will relationship instead of exclusively Sam & Dean

Feeling protective of them and wanting them to end some of the recursive, harmful cycles they seem to get caught in, and wanting their bond to flourish and grow stronger instead of being worn down by lying and codependency and inability to community...all that gets painted, by a certain sub-group, to be hostile to the bro bond. I know, it’s wild. 

The fact is, just as there are all kinds of Sam, Dean, or Cas fans, who ship any number of things, got into the show differently, watch differently, have different priorities, different favorites, different personal histories, nerves, buttons to be pressed right or wrong, so there are all kinds of Sam & Dean bro bond fans, from the most hard core ride-or-die ONLY Sam & Dean, to TFW fans who love the bro bond dearly but it’s not some exclusive thing, to fans somewhere in between, to fans who have Sam, Dean, or Cas as a favorite, who ship Destiel, who don’t ship Destiel, who ship S/D or don’t ship S/D, or somewhere in between, and who connect to different aspects of the relationship the most, different seasons, different storylines, and have different ids and wants.

I feel like “Sam & Dean fandom” should be a welcoming place, just as Sam and Dean take others into their family circle and offer people literal shelter at the bunker and who care so much it hurts, not just for each other, but those they love. That...hasn’t really worked out, in terms of the very specific aisles of fandom that are about “Sam & Dean” specifically. But the bro bond is widely loved by a lot of different types of fans and different shippers. Personally I find the TFW aisle the friendliest space for me to jump in and go HULLO HAVE YOU SEEN MY SAM & DEAN FEELINGS LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FEELINGS but everyone finds their own way. There’s been way too much virulent gatekeeping from the exclusive “onlies” and I think that’s hurt a lot of bro bond fans. It’s even hurt some fans who are narrowly Sam & Dean focused because not everyone wants to be surrounded by intense gatekeeping and hostility to everything else on the show, they just want their Sam & Dean feels and go in peace. “Bros fandom” therefore is pretty big, and crosses fandom lines.

SPN is in its 14th season and these two characters have grown so much and their relationship has changed so much. While SPN is an inconsistent canon, and my positivity can fluctuate, and canon changes, I feel this bond has consistently all along remained the main fulcrum of the show, and the bond itself has endured in canon, and I want to know now what’s next for them and I hope it’s in my favor because I really do miss that sibling bond and what it meant to me and I’m appreciating this uptick in my wanting to engage with it a whole lot.