#including the writers and Jensen and Dean and cas and Misha before season 15 I guess

[musclesandhammering]

Like I get why people would be obsessive about their fav ship, but it drives me crazy that destiel folks genuinely can’t see the reality of the situation: there was absolutely no intention to imply cas was gay or had romantic feelings for Dean- by Misha or the writers- prior to his death scene. It just wasn’t a thing. At all. In fact, they actively contradicted it often.

And then in his last scene they decided to do a lame purposefully ambiguous ‘I love you’ speech that could both pander to the rabid fans and satisfy the writers’ original platonic intentions at the same time. That’s it. It wasn’t confirmed, it wasn’t canonised- and that was on purpose. They wanted it to be vague and up for interpretation so they could get brownie points from both sides. That’s a fact.

So it’s cool to argue that destiel is a legitimate interpretation of canon, but to argue that it’s the one and only true interpretation of canon is just flat out wrong. It’s so frustrating.

i am under the very firm belief that destiel was NEVER supposed to happen. everything that ever pandered to destiel was just because of the fans. it was to make the shippers happy, not because of what the characters were supposed to be. (and NO, cas telling dean he loves him doesnt make it canon. one sided i can agree, but its not canon. “dean wanted to say it back!” NO HE DIDNT?) but samdean was always ALWAYS supposed to be endgame. platonically or otherwise, this is THEIR show. (i dont really like people calling cas the third main character too. he wasnt created with the intention of being important. BUT i do like him as a character. i AM glad he stuck around, but people really over-inflate it all. thats all a conversation for a different day though). since the very beginning, sam and dean have been insane for each other. and that never changed. theyre SOULMATES for fucks sake. there is infinitely more evidence for wincest than any other ship in the show could ever conceive. people calling sam a third wheel to destiel is so fucking delusional imo. salmondean is always the duo and everyone else is secondary to them. they always leave anyone they do get involved with for each other. ship destiel if you want, its cute, but understand it is NOT real. your perceptions of characters do not affect the show.

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

[sortasirius]

What the Fuck Happened to the SPN Finale?

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

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

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

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

A list of what I’ll be discussing

The episode in regards to the rest of the season

The episode issues: length, editing

Scene placement and speculation of scenes cut

The scrubbing of Jack, Cas, Eileen

Network involvement and general timeline of when things were cut

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

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

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

Walker, and why this episode had a major shift

Why the network would do this or get involved

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

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

The Episode In Regards to the Rest of the Season

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

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

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

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

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

Finale Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scene Placement and Speculation of Scenes Cut

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

So here’s what Min was given:

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

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

D1 1 11-15: 15 EXT FARM HOUSE Establishing

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

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

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

28pt3 Sam and Dean say goodbye

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

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

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

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

So.  Where are those 11ish shots?

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

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

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

The Scrubbing of Jack, Cas, and Eileen

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

I’m sorry, make it make sense:

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

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

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

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

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

Network Involvement and When Things Were Cut

Okay, now into the juicy stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misha

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence of the Cast Post Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jensen Speaking with Kripke

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

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

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

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

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

Walker

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

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

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

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

Why Would the Network Get Involved?

Simply put: $$$

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

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

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

The Writers and What I Want

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[meatmandean]

It only makes sense if Cas comes back but there’s so much hinting he won’t come back but there’s so much hinting he will come back and there’s so many contradictions in the stories the cast have been saying but also were they lying before or are they lying now whose to say and why haven’t they said anything about his goodbye being final but also they did release that CW PR video maybe they thought it was enough but also why wouldn’t Misha say whether he’s in the finale or not but also all the leaks are saying he’s not but also we can’t trust leaks but also Misha said his last scene is a good bookend which the confession scene WAS but also he could just be a voice over in the finale to fill his 15 credits but also why did it seem like he quarantined why were they being so sketchy about his whereabouts but also why do they say that’s the last scene he filmed but not his last scene in general but also why didn’t it seem like he shaved why wasn’t he there the last day why did they change the story about him filming why did he say he was on a 2 week camping trip during filming why would they bury a gay knowing that’s bad and would piss fans off why have they set up Saileen and Destiel this season why would they have a huge confession like that without addressing Dean’s response why would Dean’s happy ending not include Cas when these are the same writers who did the widower arc why would Jack not bring back his dad why would Dabb end it with brothers only if he’s made it clear he doesn’t like that ending and knows the importance of found family why would I trust them to make the ending in the logical and sensible way when it’s Supernatural and they love to disappoint why was episode 19 THAT bad why would Jensen actually concede that Dean’s feelings might’ve been gay when he had an easy out unless they show more in the finale is this Jackles longcon why Becky why pizza man montage why LAMP

[forest-of-thought]

Jensen said that his reactions to Cas's speech/confession were edited. I think Sam Highfill (from Entertainment Weekly) brought the subject up when she spoke with him. It seemed like he only saw the final edit after it aired. (Mark Sheppard has talked about/complained about this before. The editors have A LOT of power to change a scene in post production. They can (and have) completely cut important scenes, shots and lines. Some have ended up changing the entire tone of episodes and characters.)

Exactly!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Misha express that he wasn’t expecting certain things to happen in the final episode when he watched it with his kids?

Tell me this:

Why would Misha and Jensen encourage us with all this shipper fuel for an entire year (when they had an idea of how Season 15 was gonna go) if they ultimately knew it wasn’t going to be fully reciprocated or concluded in a satisfying way? say what you want about what Misha said on Twitter today, but him and Jensen do give a shit about us - in fact, they’re arguably the only ones who have ever completely taken us seriously when everyone else treated us like crazies. 

Both Misha and Jensen have spent YEARS going to cons and doing panels where they’ve spoken to hundreds of LGBT fans and have shown nothing but compassion and empathy towards us. There’s no way in hell that those 2 would do all of that stuff to us if they knew how the last few episodes were going to be aired. They wouldn’t intentionally bait us like that unless they really are just that oblivious (which surely they aren’t given, as I said, all of their interactions with us). 

Maybe Misha DOES believe Castiel’s final scene wasn’t “bury your gays” (even though he stated before an implication that he does) and perhaps he DIDN’T expect people to see any issues with it. BUT he 100% would have expected total backlash with how Destiel was handled - He had to.

You can not spend an entire decade of your life interacting with THOUSANDS of fans, not including other LGBT people outside of the fandom (his charity work) and still remain tone deaf when it comes to issues like these. You just can’t. It’s fucking impossible. Hell, his own wife that he has known for most of his life is LGBT herself.

Misha knew fans wouldn’t be happy with the ending of the show. He knew that we would be upset by how Dean and Castiel’s stories ended. He knew we would be upset that this naturally and beautifully developed love story wouldn’t be fully canon.

So why would he keep egging us on as fans of the pairing all this time if he knew this is where the story would ultimately lead? 

Because he didn’t. 

At the very least, he didn’t expect it to be half reciprocated. Remember when he was worried about what Jensen would think regarding ep18 and how the writers needed Jensen’s approval to go through with it?  

Approval for what? Castiel saying he loves him? that makes no sense.

No, it only makes sense if Dean was meant to reciprocate (and since Dean is an important character to Jensen, they needed to make sure he was willing to take the character this direction). And Jensen would have 100% been okay with this.

There is no “rogue translator”, people. But Misha can’t tell you all that because if he did then the CW would be trying to lawsuit his ass and the outrage would be confirmed justified from an actual legit source and how would that look to CW??

DON’T BELIEVE WHAT YOU ARE TOLD.

THE CW WANTS TO SILENCE US.

IT WANTS TO FEED INTO THAT “CRAZY SHIPPER” NARRATIVE BECAUSE FROM HISTORY IT’S EASY FOR THE CASUAL VIEWER TO BUY INTO AND DISREGARD OUR CONCERNS.

They are literally trying to fuel hatred towards us so they can claim victim and put our concerns as thirsty angry “shipper” insanity when it reality the issue go beyond that. This isn’t just about our ship “not being canon”.

It’s about censorship. It’s about lies and secrecy. It’s about using the LGBT community as a piggy bank and manipulating us for their own gain when it works for them - because they know we crave representation - but then pack peddling because they don’t want to piss off the prejudiced side of their audience. Meanwhile claiming themselves as allies who want us to speak our truth when they have a firm history of killing off their LGBT characters in horrific manners or in Dean’s case, silencing them. 

That when a character does show signs of being LGBT (things that would be 100% romantic if it were heterosexual) we get told “It’s up to interpretation” (when it’s not) and then get told to write our own stories in fanart or fanfiction as if they’re being supportive when in reality they’re just feeding the homophobes and aggression towards us.

It’s about the mistreatment of actors and a corrupt network that pretends to care about you when in reality all it’s ever cared about is your money. But instead of admitting that, they’ll string you along and sing you praises until you go against them then suddenly they’ll bring in actors and people you care about and use them against you.

To silence you.

Don’t Let Them.

#TheySilencedThem #TheySilencedUs

[shatteredatthealtarofwinchester]

It really stings that Jensen literally had no one to back him up in the writer's room. He knew how harmful the ending they were pitched would be & he tried so hard to fight & he did fight so hard but when your co-lead of 15 years is against you with the writers, he could do literally nothing but take it or leave it. I feel like Dean was always more than a job to jensen but at some point sam became just a paycheck to his actor. & Sam got screwed over just as badly by the finale on so many levels too (I maintain he should've become the next gen of hunter's Bobby and Eileen should've become a lawyer and they should've run the bunker while raising kids).

But what really gets me is that during that same discussion with the writers, jensen still fought for Kaia, like we can imagine her & claire being together, being happy and it be canon compliant because of him. He couldn't save Dean then, but he was the reason Kaia was ultimately saved. (As far as we know, I sadly was not in the room where it happened but my god do I wish I was. Oh to have been a fly on the wall there or to have been there & invisible, able to get away with anything...) him & Robert Berens were the only people who went oh yes we have this indigenous female characters, made a pretty significant threat last season but we didn't address it again so let's address it this season (& bring back her original self who is also canonically wlw & allude to her & claire getting together). Because of him we can at least interpret that two canonically lgbtq characters got a happy ending in life and didn't get buried & forgotten like cas, charlie, max, charlie, apocalypse charlie, stevie, rowena (scene that confirmed she was bi got censored screw you see double ewe), Crowley, off the top of my head.

I really do feel for jensen. Like given past incidents, we should have known misha would be screwed over (it is sooo f-ed up is that misha getting screwed over by writers & the network is basically expected) but we never even imagined that they'd even try to screw jensen over as badly and as hard as they did screw him over. The show never deserved either of them & the show wouldn't have gotten as big as it did without them. No one could ever replicate what they brought.

At least Brianna who seems like good friends with jensen, responded with no comment when asked about her thoughts on the finale (which you wouldn't do if you had nothing but compliments on the ep), so he has at least one person in the cast on his side.

So much talking today, me likey! 🥰

Yes. I can fully support you in your thought that Jensen felt closer to Dean than Jared felt to Sam and this was totally clear. Jensen said so much stuff about how much he loves Dean, that Dean is his best friend, that he will always carry him with himself, that he will always be very protective about Dean and so on. Also the Spotlight just moved from Dean and Sam to Dean and Cas over the years, people pointed out that Jareds acting was average, later regressive... Maybe he really didn't cared anymore when it came to an end since Walker is his "passion project that has his entire heart."

You are also right that it just hurts fucking much to see that Jared didn't backed him up. Who else would be in the room? Dabb of course, since he wrote 15x20. Singer also. And Dabb openly said that he thinks he made very clear that he dislikes Jensen. Jensen had disagreements with Singer before also. To me it feels like it was SPN vs Walker, and while Jensen chose SPN, Jared chose Walker. Jared even said "You can't make everyone happy" while knowing that this ending will only please W*ncesties and B*bros, and exactly those ran from SPN to Walker.

You're right, actually it's kinda ridiculous that Jared called the ending magical and beautiful fullcircle storytelling while his own character got screwed as well. It shows that he didn't even understood the development of his own character.

Yeah, Bobo spoke openly about how Jensen fought for Kaia. He wanted the story to be continued, he wanted her back.

Yeah, the whole thing about Misha and how he was treated from the network... I'll try not to use abusive language here. Truth is, Misha saved and carried Supernatural. When he entered the stage, he won our hearts and the spotlight moved from Dean and Sam to Dean and Cas. When Cas was killed, ratings dropped. I did an analysis some days ago about the ratings of every single episode that include Misha vs episodes without Misha. Result: Misha made every single season better. He even was in every single seasons finale (except season 15, they didn't needed him anymore then and just threw him away.) Before they couldn't afford to kill him without bringing him back, they couldn't afford not having him in the main story. Weird for a side char, huh? Yeah, the fandom just loves him, you dumb assholes. And actually it made sense when Chuck said that Cas was the only one who grew outside of gods control. The network couldn't control him.

You are right, I never thought that the network would screw Jensen that bad. Never ever. But the show was over, what do they have to loose? They have a new series to promote now, and Jensen isn't in it, so... There you have the decision. Sad to see that they go with the average actor who didn't cared about his own character or the show he's been on for 15 years anymore. He didn't even cared about the fandom. All about money, huh?

[cooloddball]

i think it's very interesting that we know misha knew about the confession scene before 15 started but there is absolutely no difference to his acting, there's no sudden shifts to how he talks or acts with him, it's just cas and dean they way they always were. ( i mean even when he joked about it for years im very sure he knew cas was in love with dean way before season 15 .) like cas acts the same with dean as he always has, so i wonder how long misha was playing it that way on purpose without being given actual "go ahead" to do it canonically. (not just chemistry or subconsciously or editing, ect, but deliberate acting choices he made to do so with that intention.)

Listen.

I think everyone including the writers is to blame for this because as much as Cas was in love with Dean, I see more of it from Dean's side than from Cas.

So I will venture to say that it all culminated from the intense chemistry between Jensen and Misha and also the writing and the directing.

I mean what was Misha supposed to do when Jeremy Carver told him to play like a jilted lover in 9x03? Why would the showrunner give such a direction to Misha? It doesn't make sense unless that was what he was going for, for us to perceive them as lovers or at least a little more than just friends.

About season 15, Jensen may not have known about the confession but the way he was playing Dean for years and more so since s11, Dean was in love with Cas and he [Jensen] knew it. That's why the confession got to him the way it did.

Also as for Misha's acting not changing in spite , I believe it's because he's an amazing actor and the fact he just got express confirmation of something he had known since day 1, Dean and Cas were in love and they were endgame.

[remythologise]

Hello! I found your blog via you amazingly summarizing all that's going on with the spn drama. Due to my schedules, rl stuff, some of the arcs that didn't vibe with me, my availability to find a place to watch...the rollercoaster I was used to with this fandom was more me binging it in a weekend to going months to over a year without watching it. I still haven't watched the last season(but with a fandom this big it's pretty impossible not be spoiled so I more or less know what happened) BUT oh great one I ask of thee for more information if you have it...other than being busy and whatnot, I'm not really one to keep up with the actors as well. So could you also maybe do a summary of all the stans? I'im seeing terms I haven't seen before. Who is Kelios(sp?)? Hellions?? probably messed it up but like...I guess what are the name of each legion? Who do they have alliance towards? What was their desires? Que paso?!?!?!?

Hi there! 'Some of the arcs that didn't vibe with me' me emotionally quitting Supernatural in Season 7 after they killed Castiel 😂 Anyway I totally get it, I went through the same culture shock mid-last year when I got back into SPN and tried to find where fandom was at! There's really a LOT of lore and content after 15 years though so I'll just do the broad brushstrokes based on my impressions and personal stereotypes PLEASE remember this is oversimplifying groups and individuals to tendencies and I'm very biased! Also important that there are sub-factions within sub-factions - again, I'm simplifying here!

I've also linked to the 'Super-wiki' in terms of some definitions because the Super-wiki has pages for them where the Fandom-wiki does not. Great introduction actually - only in the Supernatural fandom. There are two Supernatural wikis. One, through curation and twitter activity, supports BiBro/Wincest factions and does not support Destiel users. One is more neutral or Destiel-friendly (I don't know that the Fandom wiki has a personality/social media presence per se). You cannot make this up. There is a factional war... within use of fandom wikis.

Destiel faction

People who primarily ship Dean/Cas, love Castiel and (often, although not always) Jack, and the 'found family' of Supernatural as well as the brothers, and like the post s3 seasons too. Hated 15.19 and 15.20 for killing Dean and ignoring the other characters/narrative arc of the show. Nicknamed 'Destihellers' by the Wincest faction as a derogatory term, 'reclaimed' and shortened as 'Hellers', a nickname they use affectionately to describe each other. See more info on nicknames here.

Sometimes also ship ‘Cockles’ (the ship between Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles) although generally speaking they're more respectful of the wives of the actors than J2 shippers, who are notoriously responsible for... a vast series of insane-fan misdemeanours. Historically most were also good at keeping RPF to themselves and not harassing celebrities with it directly, although recently, particularly with younger twitter fans, that has not been the case.

Sub-factions:

The ‘Desticule’ or ‘Destiel tumblr’ - general grouping of Destiel-shipping tumblr users around 20-30 years old, usually LGBT+, most who came back to the show post-15.18 after leaving it for various reasons including getting sick of the queerbaiting. Funniest bitches alive etc. and responsible for the best text posts you’ve ever seen. Can also start stupid discourse and in-group drama when they’re bored.

'POLOL' - People of Lots of Letters, a discord group (of tumblr and twitter users) that ran on the assumption Andrew Dabb was playing a hugely intricate game of 3D chess to do with gnostic symbolism among other things, and would make Destiel canon. Have since had their own factional sub-wars and fallen apart a bit. Some of their meta was and is good and interesting! Some of it was wildly off the mark. Now generally insist that Dabb/the writers were all pushing for Destiel canon and the network is entirely to blame.

Twitter fans (TikTok edition) - younger fans around 18 and younger who (FOR REASONS BEYOND ME) started watching the show around 2018-2020. Definition of 'stans'. Tend to be very loud and aggressive on twitter when Events Happen, which like. I do get, because they've grown up in a completely different media environment and this kind of Dinosaur Politicking around LGBT+ issues is beyond them. Fancam central. Anyway stream #CASTIEL for clear skin!

Twitter fans (AO3 edition) - older fans around 30+ who kept going with the show but either don't have a large tumblr presence or just prefer twitter. A lot of fic writers, GISH-ers, and BNFs in this group. Some of them are very cool and reasonable in their opinions, some of them act like the younger stans. Some of them too accepting of what happened wrt 15.19-20 in my opinion, because, in contrast to the younger twitter stans, they grew up expecting Destiel to NEVER be canon or respected. 'Can't believe we got this far' etc.

Multiship faction

Multishippers or shippers of things not as large as the two main behemoths . Sub-factions based on shipping, e.g. Megstiel and Sastiel. I don't think these groups are very large though, and seem to have very little influence in the Discourse.

Wincest faction

LARGE overlap with the 'BiBro' faction and their opinions, which I'll get to. Ship Sam and Dean romantically. Often pretend to be BiBros on places like twitter and reddit in order for outside groups to take their opinions more seriously. 'Wincesties' etc. are derogatory nicknames given by the Destiel faction.

Sub-factions:

Multiship fans - ship Sam and Dean but respect Castiel/the 'found family'. Politically overlap with the faction of multishippers, I think. I don't have a lot of insight on this group of people honestly, but I know they exist.

Bronlies - the typical BiBro and 'Wincest' shippers most people think of, twitter user 'Kelios' is one of the would-be ringleaders of this faction - typically tend to be older white midwestern women. Historically have been pretty nasty on twitter (leading to Robert Berens, writer who made Destiel canon, occasionally subtweeting Kelios). Also tend to ship 'J2' - and take it very seriously as a legitimate thing that is really real. This is called 'tinhatting'.

BiBro faction

People who think the show should JUST be about the brothers, love Supernatural s1-3 and everything after it should have been just like Supernatural s1-3. Hate Castiel, Jack, and the 'found family'. Largely loved 15.20. Go to literally any comments section on any Supernatural article and You Will Find Them complaining about how the show should just be about the Brothers. Tend to be older, straighter, and more conservative/Republican (and male) fans. (I am aware that the definition of 'BiBro' used to refer to people who just liked the brothers but there's no definitional difference now in the discourse.) The Wincest and BiBro faction are generally much more wealthy than the Destiel faction (they being younger and more diverse/queer/left-leaning in general) and would be the biggest revenue generators at conventions etc.

Sub-factions:

Reddit bros - literally anyone who visits r/supernatural. Well, that's not fair - there are people who post reasonable opinions on there, but it's pretty rare and they get downvoted a lot. Like to talk about 'toxic Destiel fans' 'ruining the show' and how Dean is a straight man who is straight and could never possibly be gay. Might even think the confession was platonic despite all evidence to the contrary. I'm Not Homophobic I Have Gay Friends, But No Gays on MY Show!

Old Guard - group of older fans who overlap strongly with the Wincest faction, but might not necessarily ship Wincest.

GA faction

'General Audience' - These are the group of audience members that aren't 'online' so to speak; most watch the show on TV as a Casual Viewing Experience (are therefore also sometimes referred to as 'casuals'. Mostly their opinions tend towards BiBros, but they have a vast range of baffling views thanks to being Not Online and usually Not caring about Supernatural that much or thinking that deeply about it.

Sub-factions:

People who simply watch Supernatural on TV and then don't think about it very much after that.

I said they weren't 'online' but that's not entirely true; I'd probably classify people on Supernatural Facebook Groups as GA, along with friends of friends who post statuses about how 15.20 was a neat finale that wrapped up the series.

Conclusion

Supernatural is famously the show that appeals to both Republicans and Democrats, literally All Orientations, so there's a WIDE range of factions. However, most warring online boils down to Destiel vs. Wincest/BiBro - the war that started in Season 4 and has simply never ended. In terms of the 'actors' and their stans, in general, Wincest/BiBro fans love Jared, like Jensen, and dislike Misha. Destiel fans love Misha, like Jensen, and dislike Jared. Of course as with everything, there are variations and this is just a generalisation. But that's the summary of it, from my perspective!

This didn't even get into Sam girls, Dean girls and Cas girls. God. Anyway.

Hope that answered your question, anon!

[zandracourt]

I’ve been reflecting a lot on Cas’ recent confession of love and the responses I’ve been seeing across tumblr and Twitter. As a Destiel fic writer, I am thrilled to see this become canon and as a queer woman, also really touched to see how much Misha has embraced this as a really significant thing. I already ordered my Only Love merch. So I’m content with it all as much as it is. SPN has never made queer representation its issue. SPN *has* responded to its fanbase, who have both pushed the importance of representation and also brought the actors into a realm of growth over queer issues that they may never have come to without this show and this fandom. For that reason, I don’t think it’s helpful to be mad at Jensen or the Showrunners for Destiel not being perfect. You don’t have to celebrate them as allies, but the anger and vitriol just doesn’t help, in my opinion.

BUT...where my thoughts have been going is around what it means to be an actor in a ‘ship and what the impact of the story has on the actors, the fandom, and the constant dance of who controls the story because I think this has been something that even with straight characters has had serious impacts on how fans feel about an ending.

My first fandom, Starsky & Hutch, was mostly written by a gay man who wrote “straight” characters because that was what they had to be in 1974. The characters and show plots were such that the actors felt the love underneath the words and acted accordingly. Back then, it wasn’t so much queer baiting as queer coding. I find it amazing that my parents never thought for a minute Starsky and Hutch were gay, but even as a 7 year old, I knew they were in love and saw them that way. And anyone who watches the show now, it’s so clear that it’s almost laughable. When their show won the Peopel’s Choice award in 1977, David Soul said in his acceptance speech that the best part of being on this show was that people saw two men who “could be anything”. He knew that queer folk read their characters as gay and that straight folks saw them as straight and he was happy for both to be true. While the show never had an explicitly romantic declaration, the characters held hands, hugged, and in the final episode, their final scene is Hutch crawling into Starsky’s hospital bed with him, something done with amusement, but was completely coded to mean something else. It was never “canon”, but the ‘ship has lasted 46 years with new fic being written even now.

In the new SW films, actor Oscar Isaac was not at all quiet about his feelings that his character, Poe Dameron, was in love with Finn. He stated he played him that way (and was not directed otherwise) and he even explicitly asked for that ship to be made canon. He was told no and that is not how the story ended. The romance plot was instead focused on two other characters. Some fans liked that. Many didn’t. In general, though, the story is open-ended enough that shippers could have Stormpilot be their ship and there is nothing that really contradicts that. In that scenario, Oscar had his sense of who this character was and felt strongly about that, but in the end, it wasn’t his story, so the ending was what it was.

Hawai’i Five-0 ended its 10 year run last spring. Actor Scott Caan said in an interview during the show’s 5-year mark that he wanted to see his charcter have a romantic story line with his other lead, Steve McGarrett. And while Scott did not go so far as Oscar Isaac did to say he made his acting choices based on that, watching him and Alex play their characters, there was definitely some intention to show their characters as loving one another. Actor Alex O’Loughlin voiced a few times over the years that he felt his character would not get back together with Catherine, a woman his character was on-again, off-again with, because he felt Steve had reached his limit with what Catherine had done to him. The series made a decision to end with Steve leaving Hawai’i behind and flying away with Catherine. Neither actor has commented much about the show’s ending, but clearly it went against what both actors had publicly expressed in the past. Again, they don’t control the story, but they do understand their characters after playing them for so many years and they are invested in that. In that sense, the actor’s subsequent silence about how the show ended says quite a bit. And McDanno fans were very unsatisfied with the show’s ending, myself included.

So we come to Destiel. Over the years, this ship has been very controversial in part because one actor (Misha) has clearly been OK with his character being perceived as being in love with Dean, while the other actor (Jensen) has not. At times he has been very negative about it, and that has been taken by some fans to imply how Jensen feels about homosexuality in general. I’m not convinced it does, but I understand why people feel that way. Over the 12 years since Cas’ introduction on the show, there clearly has been a shift from the writers and showrunners avoiding the topic entirely, to talking about it, and now to having Cas confess his feelings of love to Dean in canon. In the days since, Misha has been unequivocal in saying Cas is romantically in love with Dean and that he has played him that way, at least for this season and likely longer. Misha is proud that he was able to advocate for Cas to be gay and he clearly understands why it is important for the show to have made this choice. For Jensen’s part, however, he has stated he has not played Dean that way and from video clips of him talking about the show’s ending, it appears that he needed some convincing to accept this as the story. To his credit though, once he was convinced that this was something show creator (Eric Kripke) could envision as part of Dean’s character arc, he was on-board with this ending and feels statisfied with it. And I think some of the frustration folks feel stems from both in how the actors portrayed their characters and in which takes were chosen to be in the final cuts of episodes. In that way, the show has fed this ship, whether the actors realized it or not, and that is why Destiel has felt particularly painful at times. The fanbase has been gaslighted for seeing it at all (from actors and showrunners) while the directors have seemed to go out of their way to choose shots where the actor’s choices were more tender and affectionate and write lines where characters make explicit statements about Dean and Cas as romantic. I can’t help but wonder if Jensen really didn’t see Dean as being in love with Cas, but that we saw Jensen’s own affinity for Misha bleed through in their incredible chemsitry together or if Jensen has just been in denial of this ‘ship having teeth for his own personal reasons. I don’t know and so far, he hasn’t been willing to talk about that. Maybe he will once it’s over. Maybe he won’t and I’m not going to be angry with him for it. He’s an incredible actor and he’s lived this character for 15 years, so he has a right to who he believed Dean is and isn’t.

The issues of representation continue to be pressing and what I see happening with Destiel and these other ‘ships is exciting because it shows growth on all sides. We have audiences able to voice not only how they perceive characters without shame but can express a desire for characters to be together. None of that is new for straight characters, but it is for queer characters. We have actors who not only can see these same things, but feel enough ownership of their characters to expresss what they believe their characters would do or feel. And we have showrunners who are going to make their story, sometimes in response to feedback from their fans and actors, and sometimes in spite of it.

What Destiel becoming canon gives me hope for is that as new shows come into being, characters that take off, actors who have unexpected chemistry, and ‘ships that gain a life of their own, will lead to shows that are less inclined to care if those ships are queer or not and just go with what fans respond to. That it will normalize that people can (and do) come out an all different times of life, even after being het-married, having kids, or presenting as straight to everyone else for 40 years. That it will reflect that sometimes, it’s not about having been queer or straight from the beginning, but be about that ONE relationship that just is different, special, or grows into a deep love regardless of the genders of the people. I hope we can get to a place where deep intimacy between same-gender characters doesn’t have to be a war over romance vs. platonic and the story can just develop without the pressure of representation because queer characters will be so prevalent that we don’t have to feel like we must cling so tightly to every one we get. I hope we can come to a place where sometimes relationships don’t go romantic because one person (regardless of gender) just doesn’t feel that way, because that is very fucking true in real life. I want to watch shows where the sexual identity of any character doesn’t have to be etched in stone from the word go, never to change ever because that’s boring and limiting, and honestly, not real life.

I am deeply grateful for actors like Isaac, Caan, and Collins who are willing to see characters outside the heteronormative lens and to advocate for queer romantic arcs. I’m thankful to showrunners who are making shows with greater queer representation than ever before. And I’m grateful to actors like Ackles, who while it wasn’t who he thought his character was, was able to expand his view enough to go where the story was going to go. The arc of the universe does bend towards justice, and we will get there. Until then, there’s fic. And thank God for that.

[nancylou444]

I forgot if i sent it to u or someone else so i'm sending it again anyway

Please Read this to the end and then judge me.

I do not understand at all why you and all other anti destiels dont ship destiel and think that dean is straight and i hate you for that from the bottom of my heart. i mean cant you see how dean truely loves cas and gives no shit about Sam, his brother?and also jensen and writers ship it.

You are so stupid and do not deserve to live in this world period

Read this list below.it may help you take off your anti destiel colored glasses and Accept the truth:which in fact is that Destiel Will become canon.

Reasons Why Destiel Will Definitely Become Canon Before The Show Ends 101:

1.Jensen Ackles: Destiel Doesn't Exist.

2.Jensen Ackles: Because Dean is a lover of the LADIES.

3.Dean will always choose SAM over anyone else.

4.SAM and Dean are soulmates.

5.Castiel: you chose EACHOTHER.

6.Jensen Ackles' Unscripted Frustrated look into the camera in "Fan Fiction" episode.wink wink

7.Jensen Ackles: there wasn't a whole lot of dean and cas storylines in season 9.personally,i kind of enjoyed that.

8.Jensen Ackles: i think the whole dean and cas thing has gotten a little out of proportion.

9.Jensen Ackles: "destiel is real" is it?? Where?? Where is it real??

10.Jensen Ackles: What? What castiel? Nah just me and my pies!

11.Jensen Ackles: We sit down with the writers in a couple weeks. It boils down to these two brothers, that’s the core and the heart of the show, their journey, their fight for each other.

12. “You are homophobic if you don’t ship destiel!"

13.Dean Winchester is fuckin Straight.

14.Eric Kripke : I'm just really interested in guys, STRAIGHT guys who have a tight friendship,they are really fun to write...

15.Dean Winchester: I'm Dean winchester.i enjoy sunsets,long walks on the bitch and frisky WOMEN.

16.Dean Winchester : I dont swing that way.sorry.

17.Dean winchester : yeah sorry again pal i dont play for your team.

18.Dean sold his soul for SAM.

19.Dean died so that he could meet with Death and get SAM’s soul back which of course Castiel left in hell.

20.Dean gave away the Impala and was willing to die with a Croatoan infected SAM.

21.Dean breathed in the poisonous smoke, so that he would die with SAM.

22.Dean wanted out of an AU with Mary and Jessica alive, because AU!SAM didn’t like Dean that much.

23.SAM and Dean made promise to each other, made vows to each other really, in a church.

24.SAM and Dean choose each other over the world, anything, and everything, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

25. Dean refers to SAM as though HE is his spouse (”does he want a divorce?”, “Lucy”...)

26.Dean would rather live in a world WITH demons than live in a world WITHOUT SAM.

27.When Dean forgot everything else, including his own name, he still remembered SAM.

28.Dean : I can’t do it without my brother, I don’t want to 

29.Dean to Sam :You’re the ONLY one who could’ve talked me out of it 

30.Dean to Sam :There ain’t no me if there ain’t no YOU.

31.Dean to Sam :“Because whatever we have between us, love, family, whatever this is, they’re always going to us it against us.”

32.Dean to Sam: “You’re my weak spot SAMMY, and I’m yours”

33.Dean or Sam i dont remember: “All that matters now, all that’s ever mattered, is that we’re together.“

34. Dean to Sam :“Don’t you dare think that there is anything, past or present, that I would put in front of you!“

35.Dean to Sam : “I made you a promise in that church, you and me, come whatever!”

36.The canon friendship between Dean and Castiel is toxic and borderline-abusive, full of lies, threats, insults, abandonment, beatings, and betrayals.

37. Sam, possessed by the devil himself, took control of his own body and beat Lucifer because Dean was there, because Dean didn’t give up even though he was hurt and covered in blood, because seeing Dean bombarded Sam with the memories of their life together.

38. Dean didn’t leave SAM’s bedside , didn’t bury him, didn’t burn his body, didn’t want to say goodbye, and how later he didn’t hesitate to sell his soul.

39.Dean decided not to go into a box, because SAM asked him not to.

40.SAM and Dean were the ones whom were mistaken with gay couple by several people if that matters.

41.SAM to Dean :“you always put me first. Your whole life”,

42.Dean to SAM: “I know where I am at my best, and that is right here, driving down crazy street next to you”,

43.Sam or Dean i dont remember:“you know what brought me back? You did”.

44.Dean’s siren-as admitted by the siren herself-was a copy of SAM.

45.Dean told a male cop "you're awsome".OMG!! He is bi!!!

46.Dean fanboyed over a male tv character.Holy Chuck!! He is bi!!

47.Jensen or Jared:“At its core, it’s the story of two brothers.”

48.Jensen or Jared:“At the end of the day, this starts and stops with the brothers.”

49.Jensen or Jared:“When it comes down to it, it’s about these two brothers.”

50.Dean told Castiel to get the hell outta bunker for SAM while he knew he didnt have his angel powers.Damn! Dean truely loves Cas!

51.Dean figured Castiel was too far gone to be convinced back into their group and bound Death to do their bidding. Dean’s order to Death was to kill Castiel where he stood.#couplegoals

52.Castiel blackmailed Dean by torturing SAM.oh dear god!!! What a True Lover!!

53.Castiel Betrayed sam amd DEAN with crowley.but that's what all lovers do Right???

54.This isnt some romantic show.

55. Castiel is a genderless celestial wavelength of light wearing a male vessel.

56.Dean's chemistry with Baby the Impala is far more noticable than the one with Castiel.

57.Sam even once asked Dean and Baby the impala to get a room.

58.The possibility of Dean and Baby the impala to get sexually involved and the two of them having sex in the finale full frontal is far more than the possibility of non existant Destiel to become canon.

59.Destiel shippers are only a tiny minority of the SPN fandom.

60.Jensen Ackles is fucking done with this shit.

61.Dean left Ben and Lisa for SAM.

62.Misha Collins is the only one who queerbaits.

63.Dean in "red meat" described SAM as the man he loved.

64.Dean sang in a colorful background.OMFG!! he is bi!!

65.Jesen ackles : because being with his BROTHER and doing that is the happiest he is.

66.Dean to SAM: "because i couldnt live with you dead"

67.What show you've been watching???

68.Jared : because that would have RUINED the show to make it about something it wasnt about.

69.Dean has kissed and had sex with an angel.her name was Anna

70.Sera Gamble said “supernatural is the epic love story of SAM and dean”

71.Cw_supernatural IG: it has always been two brothers and the open road.

.

.

.

*Manic laughter*

*Aggressively drop the mic*

*The door is over there*

*Boom! Suck it*

*It sucks to be destieheller*

You are very welcome

Btw I'm a Proud anti destiew and a logical SPN fan.

If You think I'm right,then Chuck bless your logical souls and if not,let me find some fucks to give....sorry,none was found.

The begining part was an example of a savage destieheller.it wasn't me😊ignore it.

Yours truly,anon.

=============================

Holy crap, that is one longass ask. An ask I was thisclose to deleting until I skipped to the bottom. 

💖💖💖💖💖

[dearboopl]

An essay on why I feel like spn hasn't ended yet and what's the problem with that.

These last few days, after the he who must be not named happend, I have been feeling weird, like spn is still going to air. And no, it is not because I don't want to accept the fact, but because it is one sided goodbye.

I'm just not sure from which side the goodbye was said.

Let's start from me saying that I was okay with it ending. I actually wanted it to wrap up, close all the loose ends and answer the BIG questions.

What we got... well I don't have to remind. It is not only that the ending doesn't make sense and just cancels all the progress, character development, but like many people said it feels out of the blue.

Watching the vampire scene, for a moment I thought, maybe this is not the memory from first seasons, maybe all that was builded leading up to the finale was just a dream. It is wrong. Something is not right.

Even with that, the weirdest thing is the lack of goodbye from everyone. I would guess after 15 years building this show, we would get every member, writer talking on social media how it changed their lives, how sad it was to end. Hell, I waited for videos of them all finishing last scenes and just seeing their adrenaline rush off to realization that it is the end.

What we got? Apart few before the episode aired tweets, Jensens video about last but maybe not the last goodbye, and Misha's sad reaction to the end, nada. Everyone is quiet (afc there were some tweets from other actors, but from mains???) . Only Jensen put a snarky photo with the nail to absolutely let us know that we are not the only ones who feels that it was stupid. So stupid.

What happend?

Well shit will we ever know? I doubt it. But as I feel, as out of character as it was, something big happend.

One of the things that does not sit well with me, (is the absolute humiliation of Dean character) is the after scene where Sam is showed getting old, alone, we never see his wife, we get a hilarious wig scene where Sam looks like his kid asked him to cosplay an old dude, but they didn't have time to prepare, loots of Sam being sad because Dean is dead and he can not live without him. I could go on, but the messages from is that this seems a last minute script change. It wasn't planned, but something happend in the office.

I don't know the mechanics of creating an episode, and doubt if you can change production last minute (few scenes yes), but this just feels like the end wasn't going to be like this.

Few thing why:

1. I mentioned the after scene was hilarious and looked like a parody.

2. We did not see Sam's wife - that just doesn't make sense as we know Seileen is cannon, and they are not gay, so why shy away from showing them together. Maybe because this wasn't planned and they couldn't get the actress on set???

3. Dean's death is also a parody. They dealth with a fucking God, his son is the new God and they want us to believe that a nail is enough to kill Dean Winchester?

4. There is absolutely no happines for Dean in that heaven. His baby? A car? That what it takes? Come back to earth you fucker and drive her like you have been driving for the last 15 years.

5. Dean's feelings. As we saw from the last episode, he doesn't have any feelings. He was happy to die, all his wishes for a trip and vacation to the beach, settling to a steady place were suddenly changed after a cold, CW production and homophobia nail pearced through his insides. Oh Cas said something to him? Opened up? Naaah man, look A fucking CAR.

6. Almost zero mention of Cas.

7. Cas in the onion field was cut???

8. Dean in heaven fucked nothin for 50 years and waited happily for Sam to die? Lol? You could have everything that you want and you won't get Cas. Buddy thay scene in purgatory screamed I love you Cas and not in the brotherly way.

9. They want us to believe that the pies cream was the only white thing on Dean's face that he ever got?

9. For the last point I left Jack the new God. You saying that he, the almighty, didn't want to help Dean, after all they did for Jack. Buddy if not the Winchester and Cas you would be dead. That is what makes me furious, IT DOESN'T MAKES SENSE.

So overall, before this post turned to absolute shit post (because the last episode was). I want to say sorry for everyone who had hopes, myself included.

For myself, I'm not taking this last episode as the end, and surely I'm going to delete it from my mind. We will create our own end. One that will make sense.

This doesn't feel like the end and I cannot wait to learn what the hell happend. This is one sided goodbye from the old writers.

[representativecharacters]

Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester

From: Supernatural

Representation: mlm (*see “issues” section), abuse survivor (Dean) 

Their Importance: Dean and Cas are two characters that many in fandom viewed as LGBTQIA+, with the common belief being that Dean Winchester is bisexual. 

There’s a lot about Supernatural and Destiel, and Dean in general, which I’ll go over in the “issues” section, but I think many people in fandom didn’t expect for the show to actually go anywhere with them - until 15x18, when Cas confesses his love to Dean. It’s riddled with issues, yes, but just speaking as a bi girl who’s been watching Supernatural for a decade now, watching Cas confess his love for Dean was just so incredibly validating. It validated that I - and other fans - weren’t delusional when looking for representation from Cas (and Dean). Cas is a wonderful character and gave a new life to the show, and has been a fixture of the show for 10 years. While like with every character he has his ups and downs, he is a kind, loving character, and the only main character who actually survives the show. Despite the issues on the show, knowing that Cas is canonically LGBT+ is something that’s comforting and validating to me, and continues to be so even as Supernatural kind of trainwrecks around everything else. 

For myself, watching the show, I saw a lot of myself and my journey in Dean. Watching him grow and develop as a character, and try to experience happiness and find comfort in his found family was wonderful for me to see. I started this show when I was a young closeted kid, and I clung to Dean in a way that I didn’t fully understand until years later. I didn’t actually expect him to be explicitly mlm in the show, and for the most part, that didn’t happen - until the Spanish dub. There, we see the romantic reciprocation to Cas, and that’s something that is real and cannot be taken away. In fact, although it was said that it was a “rogue” translator, the episode will not be redubbed, so it is canon in a version of the show. Despite the fact that he didn’t get canonized in a way I expected or would have ever hoped, it still does give me some joy to know that he is canonically LGBT+ (and in my opinion, bi, although there is no actual label given to Dean). Even if it’s not in the version of the show I watched, I can go back and watch the Spanish dub of the episode and see that representation happen onscreen, and that means something to me. 

Issues: The issues list for this show is a mile long, so I’ve split it up into sections and put most of it under a read more:

Dean + Canon Rep: Trying to wade through if Dean is actually canonically LGBTQ+ was....a struggle, to say the least, and I almost didn’t put him into this submission. If you watch the show in English, Dean never once actually reciprocates feelings for Cas, states that he’s into men, or is even confirmed to be in a relationship with other men. Although for many, it is implied, the average audience member may not see Dean as canonically LGBTQ+. However, in the Spanish dub of the show, when Castiel confesses his love to Dean (which is an explicit romantic “I love you”), Dean says “y yo a ti”, which is a reciprocation of Cas’s romantic confession. This post is very long as it is, so I want to link to @destielintheimpala’s timeline of events that occurred for Supernatural and I think it best lays out all the issues about 15x18-20, why it’s been so difficult trying to figure out Dean’s sexuality in canon, why fandom is upset, and can clear up any misinformation. This situation also goes into queerbaiting quite a bit (something Supernatural is infamously known for), which you can read in this article from @thecoolestfreakyouknow. 

Reading Dean as a queer character as well - having a character who is queer (or queercoded) and an abuse survivor and then immediately killing him off is also a huge problem. As mentioned in the link above, Jensen Ackles himself felt uneasy about Dean’s ending, and many Dean fans felt the same way. To have a character suffer through abuse and traumas for 15 seasons, imply or straight out have him be LGBT+ (depending on the canon), and then immediately killing him off in the finale is needless to say, an odd choice. 

Also, with Dean being an abuse survivor - his father, John Winchester, is commonly shown to be neglectful throughout the show, and Dean has to raise his younger brother Sam by himself most times. He expresses trauma from the experiences he’s had growing up with their father and being forced to hunt at a young age. However, the show weirdly seems to flip flop on their portrayal of John, despite also specifically stating that what he put his children through was child abuse. They have Sam telling John that he did the best he could, they have characters excusing away John’s actions, etc. - it was like the writers themselves couldn’t figure out if they wanted John to have been an abusive parent or not. The show ends with John in Heaven with Mary - thus absolving John of his actions and putting him in the same Heaven with the children he abused. 

Castiel: Cas confesses his love for Dean in 15x18, but gets dragged away to a void called “The Empty” immediately afterwards, where he’s meant to be suffering for all of eternity. Cas does get out of The Empty, and even helps to rebuild Heaven - he’s actually one of the few characters to survive the finale - but he never appears onscreen again after 15x18, so fans’ last image of him is getting dragged away to The Empty. Dean never has a follow-up conversation, and there was only one line referencing Cas’s fate, so many fans believed he was still in The Empty suffering.

As the timeline linked above shows, the situation around Destiel is an odd one - the Spanish dub, cast’s overall silence, the lack of Misha Collins in the finale all led fans to believe that something was switched around last minute in terms of Dean’s sexuality and Destiel as a general ship. Obviously, this is speculation unless someone from the show explicitly comes out and says that fans are correct, but it’s included in the issues section because - regardless of it it turns out to be true or not - it’s such a big part of the issues currently surrounding Supernatural and canon representation. In any case, however, Castiel’s confession in 15x18 gave fans hope where they may not have had hope before, and then it was unceremoniously dropped with no real follow up - from a writing standpoint, it isn’t good writing to confirm a major character as queer via a love confession and then never go back to that plot point. While I’m happy that Cas is canonically queer and I’m not trying to say that I would rather not have more representation, I do look back on the show and wonder, with the story that made it to screen, what the actual point of writing that in was. 

As mentioned before, Castiel was a main character on the show for 10 years - while I’m glad that his character survives the series, to not have him show up in the final two episodes (particularly the finale, and especially after canonically making him LGBTQ+) felt like a slap in the face to both the character and the audience who loved him. 

Miscellaneous treatment of characters: In general, Supernatural has many problems in its treatment of female, characters of color, and LGBTQ+ characters. Alongside being incredibly underrepresented in the show, if they do show up, they are commonly tortured, treated poorly, and/or killed off (if not all of the above). Even thinking about their recurring characters who are also representative - Kevin, their only recurring Asian character, is killed off and appears as a ghost multiple times, Charlie, who is a lesbian, gets killed off and replaced in the show with an Alternate Universe version of herself, Eileen, a Deaf woman, gets killed off and then is brought back and is implied to survive the show, but like Cas, never actually shows up in the final two episodes even though she’s Sam’s girlfriend. I can think of very few minority characters in the show in general, much less those who got any type of happy ending. 

[orionsangel86]

Hello! I have watched the show for 15 years since the very first episode aired on WB and I was hooked. I was always a Dean Girl until Cas' entrance, and he has meant so much to me over the years because I see a lot of myself in Cas (strict religious upbringing, ace/demisexual, had to learn how to let myself express emotions). I have lurked near-daily for a while and I want to thank you for your lovely blog! It has helped me through some tough times to have posts to look forward to. (1/4)

I am still in shock because I have always seen how much Cas cared for Dean and hoped upon hopes that this would happen. I am VERY excited for the final episodes, and optimistic. :) I am writing my first tumblr asks now because I love your blog and am interested in your insight! I don't see people talking about this, but I had a couple thoughts last night. (2/4)

(1) I can't find it but when the crew (?) said "To his face. Twice!" on Twitter, where do you think the second "I love you." was? I thought this might refer to them watching two takes, but surely they did more than that. I’m not versed in television production so maybe it was just two takes, but I have a feeling they edited out a second “I love you.” You? (2)When Misha said that they told Jensen a couple months before filming, do you think it was before or after his hip surgery in December?(3/4)

(3) When Misha was talking in front of the Bean before his surgery, he said he had Tylenol PM and was thinking of his ideal version for Castiel’s final moments on the show and crying. He kept saying he “thinks” he knows where the story is going and that it's sad. That could have been the amazing love confession, but I think there will be a happy ending that is also a tear-jerker. (3) I hope for Human!Cas in the end and remember what a cute, flirty drunk he is in 9x09. :3 Thanks for a great blog!

Hello! thank you so much for the message! I’m so glad my blog has brought you joy! <3

So to your questions, I actually think I am going to be rubbish at answering them because I am not quite sure of all the details here. But I’ll try :)

1. I don’t know what this is referencing? Is it the SPN Cast panel? I wouldn’t put too much thought into jokes made my SPN cast and crew on Twitter. I don’t think there was a second “I love you” as it would reduce the significance of the big “I love you” ya know? Though I have no idea how many takes they had to do of that scene because the amount of takes depends entirely on many different factors including how many different camera angels you want, as well as if you wanna try different styles in direction.

2. Again not sure. Though Misha said that he had known for about a year and Jensen knew about 3 months before filming that scene. Misha knew pretty much all through season 15 filming so long before his surgery, I think Jensen might have found out just before the surgery since the scene was filmed in February I believe?

3. Misha knew in December that Cas was confessing his love for Dean and then dying. I think he also knew how the show actually ends at the time. I have decided to dismiss absolutely everything Misha Collins has ever said on the matter though because he was able to keep Destiel completely secret for a year even though the guy has been shipping it right along with us for years and must have been bursting at the seams. Whatever the actual ending is, he’s been keeping that a secret too. Everything he has said about Cas’s ending being sad has been him focusing on THIS moment so not to spoil the actual ending. This is what I choose to believe and I won’t accept any alternative now.

I too think the ending will have some sort of tearjerker moment to it. I think we may get a long epilogue. A scene set in the future. What I would LOVE is to get a montage of the guys all getting to live out peaceful happy lives until they eventually die of old age at which point they reunite with Jack in heaven (because I am still pretty convinced Jack is gonna be like God 2.0 or something - not that I’ve seen the show since episode 11) Buuuuut I dunno. We shall see. I choose to be hopeful and positive from now on because after given us Destiel, I just don’t think the writers have any intention not to make the ending wonderful.

[impala-in-gotham]

SPN Finale Theory: Part Two

Finale realizations continued--taking off of Part One

Chuck’s Swan Song Finale 2.0 and Cas Omitted

Throughout the show Chuck is still trying to get the brother vs brother end using His own "blunt instruments" by bringing back Lucifer(s7-15) multiple times, giving Dean the MOC(s10), bringing in AW Michael(s13) and possessing Dean(s14). It never works because free will, love and family always wins.

So... all of s15, minus the last 2 episodes, were filled with all the character development we saw develop and arcs that were the product of "running their own race". THEN Cas dies.

Everything Cas represents fades away in ep 19. The last time we hear his voice is corrupted by Lucifer. (But it also canonically confirms Dean loves Cas.) How he changed Dean’s self-worth, renewed Sam’s hope, and Jack himself is all that’s left of Cas to help change the narrative and defeat Chuck once and for all. He died believing this would come to pass because he saved Dean.

You feel the disconnect happen in between Lucifer and Michael’s deaths and Jack becoming the new God. But even with Chuck the writers no longer in power, its reverted back to before Cas ever interfered. Family is back to only the brothers and the plot is back to hunting monsters. The ending for each brother mirrors the finales of the season before Cas meant something to them. Dean got a season 3 finale since Cas meant something to Dean first and Sam got a season 5 finale since Cas didn’t mean as much to him until s6.

Carry On:

Dean’s character has dwindled back down to his car, pie, rock music, and beer of s3. He even loves dogs again as if he’s pre-hellhound death trauma. Sam’s character has dwindled back down to the baby brother that no longer wants to hunt but there for emotional support of pre-s5. Even the damn journal's back and Jenny for some reason.

Dean’s s3 "at least then my life can mean something" mindset AKA before found family-Bobby reminds him it always did and Cas saves him returns. He dies by getting stabbed in the back mirroring how Sam died in s2 which led to Cas & the apocalypse to begin with. Dean desperately tries to accept it and begs to be told its ok for him to die. It’s as if s15 Dean that doesn’t want to die is battling with s3 Dean who always feared but expected he’d die on a hunt. Cas doesn't save him this time. Since Sam went on to apparently live a very hollow, apple pie life where he was mourning his brother the whole time it mirrors s5 Dean’s life with Lisa. Sam builds a family but his wife is just a stand-in, his son is a Dean jr, and all his memories surround the parents and brother he lost. Cas still doesn’t interfere. Sam also needs assurance to let go.

Even heaven isn't post-s5 accurate despite the claim that Jack and Cas built this to be the heaven Dean dreamed of and deserved. Sure, Jan. Cas is supposedly alive and well but it’s not known or is [Omitted]; however, what Cas represents is not in heaven either.

Everything about Dean’s heaven is pre-Cas or pre-apocalypse canon:

Pre-s4 cast of Bobby, parents, and Rufus are the only ones “known” to be in heaven. Leaving out post5 family like Charlie, Kevin, even Adam. Cas witnessed the grief and guilt their loss had on Dean, plus all 3 were already included in s15 (AW Charlie but still Charlie callback). Cas would have had them there, on or off-screen.

Despite Bobby being there as supposed found family, he’s also dwindled down to the Bobby of s3. He doesn’t even get up and hug Dean who he hasn’t seen since s8 which canonically doesn’t make sense for post s3 reunions for Bobby or Dean. You get reunited from death, you hug each other; its the Supernatural law of the land.

Harvelle's is thee bar and only actual setting in heaven instead of Dean's dream of Rocky's Bar circa s14. Which Cas not only knows is Dean’s dream, he stood in it. Cas never went to Harvelle's and the only time it was heaven-related was s5 as a part of Ash's heaven only. Dean never mentions it after.

The heaven beer is El Sol. The same in Dean's djinn dream(s3) AND in the Beautiful Room(s4). Not the beer that they've been drinking in the bunker for years OR the ones in Rocky's that are real-life Jensen's. And not because it's his favorite like in s3/4 BUT because it was his first/with his Dad....that's what we're going with? That's what Dean dreams about? No.

Despite heaven being new & improved, it's actually similar to s5 Dark Side of the Moon heaven. Baby just appears and Dean has to follow the road which can only lead to Sam. Which Cas does witness but...interesting.

In conclusion, episode 20 was unbelievable because it's an illusion of what Sam and Dean's life/fate/heaven would be without Cas changing the story and without Chuck being in charge of it. It's not real. It's a figment of what could have been post-Swan Song. This is exactly why you can watch up to season 5 then skip 10 entire years and still follow the finale. If anything its part 2 of Swan Song that Kripke wanted but didn't get. Jensen knew it. It deleted 10 yrs because it deleted Cas and everything that resulted because of Cas. I have no idea what all was Omitted but I have a feeling the finale was still this s5 nightmare, I’m just thinking maybe it was on purpose.

Cas/Misha persevered despite the 3-6 ep arc role he was supposed to have and continued challenging God's narrative for 12 years. This is why ALL of us that are screaming into the void, can't move on, and hated the finale just so happen to ALSO be Castiel fans or Cas/Dean Girls or Hellers or any fan that saw how Cas's entire arc was the driving force from s6-15. We know #CastielMatters/Energies because without him the show would have died with him as false-god Godstiel. We recognized the profound effect he had on Dean and Sam throughout their character development.

I didn't make any of this up THEY wrote this into being. They wrote the show. They wrote the characters. They wrote the parallels and the very specifically done set design/lighting. We just saw it through a lens that maybe you can't see without being more like Cas. An outsider, self-loathing, trying our best in a world where it’s easy to do our worst, have more faith in love than God, and maybe even be a little queer too. Yes, it was a story that started out as two brothers hunting monsters but they grew up. The whole show grew up and this is NOT how it ends.

[overhighways]

final spn thoughts

the memes have me rolling with laughter, because after a finale that bad all you can do is laugh but, i also can't stop thinking about the fact that they said the perfect ending for dean, the depressed character who finally became stable and built a found family, was to die without any family or friends around besides his brother that really... was yikes...

so i initially quit the show on the episode that kevin died. i had stuck it out thru so many sexist and/or racist deaths and acts of violence on the show but that was kinda my breaking point. additionally, looking back over my old liveblogs and op eds on tumblr, i was getting really tired of the fact that for the 8 or so years of the shows run the brother's had never grown emotionally, and continued a constant cycle of being dangerously codependent but also continuously lying to each other and hiding things from each other which always resulted in some catastrophe, causing them to come into conflict. it was bad writing and a bummer for someone who liked the universe and the characters but wanted a satisfying change in their state of being from the beginning to the end of the narrative.

for a hot second in college i dropped out, because one semester cos i was just so depressed, and in between bringe drinking and smoking i thought i should watch supernatural but i literally only made it like half a season further then my initaly quitting point before being like "wow this is shit and i feel bad maybe i should stop and get help". so i really hadn't thought of the show except for when i saw a funny meme clowning superwholock for about five years now but then all the posts about 5.18 tricked my gay clown ass into sitting down and marathoning all of the episodes i had missed so i could watch the finale live.

and what i have to say is i know they experienced a couple shifts in show runners and head writers over the past five years so it was still inconsistent in quality (its a CW show so like, who is surprised?), but they actually really broadly improved the show i think. i remember that the first 5 seasons or so were more carefully planned and ben edlund provided so much good writing, that i think when edlund and kripke left the show lost its way for a while, and there were moments that were decent, but when they finally brought cas into the bunker and jack was brought in as a main character it felt like they got back on track. they were able to refocus the show on family while also allowing the dean and sam to grow as people and build a much healthier found family. the three of the boys bring in claire novak as their charge, jodi and her hunter family become regulars; the show kind of felt like it was closer to reaching its potential, like back when we all thought bobby and ellen were gonna be forever main characters, and dean and sam would have a family and semi normal hunter lives. so i kind of felt like sam's arc was mostly complete seasons ago, he was a pretty normal dude who was gonna end up with eileen and that was cute and lovely. but for dean i really think it was more complex and the whole final season being about killing god and truly giving everyone full free will to create any possible future they wanted, was gonna tie in more to dean's struggle to define himself outside of the role of his father's blunt instrument and his brother's protector. but instead they establish this amazing free will for everyone, cas literally dies to give dean the chance to finally be free, and then they wrote a finale that essentially says "free will doesn't exist and you will always be bound to certain expectations". like dean dying on a hunt is fine and arguably in character, but to not include any of the family that he painstakingly learned he could have? bullshit. they just completely disregarded all of the character growth they spent the last five to ten seasons giving us. also i find it nearly impossible to believe that sam would not specifically be searching for eileen after literally killing an entire coven of witches to get a spell to bring her back from the dead, so his weird faceless implied wife was confusingly bad writing as well. and dean not trying to get cas back? the dean winchester who had a complete emotional break down every time he thought he had abandoned cas or failed him or let him die? bullshit. jack not immediately bringing cas back to them? bullshit!!

and it felt like a really odd ending for cas, whose entire character arc has also been about learning how to act of his own free will and not be a mindless soldier of god, to just disappear and be implied to have suddenly returned to being... a mindless soldier of god. like i know its a new and better god who is also his son but like... you are telling me cas was really okay with abandoning his friends on earth and just sitting in heaven doing boring celestial paperwork for eternity? the writers threw away the potential narrative symmetry of having dean pull cas from the empty the way cas pulled him from hell, they threw away the potential symmetry of implying that jack brought cas back and having cas appear in the barn and save dean to mirror his first appearance in the barn where dean summoned him... and okay say misha didn't wanna risk covid and flying back to canada, they threw away the ability to literally just have a prerecorded line where cas found dean in heaven and said his iconic "hello dean" line. idk very bad writing. like obviously i had always assumed that at the very best the sbow would end with sam having the most normal life, and dean kinda fucked up but finding peace and dying on a hunting trip, but the execution sucked.

my final addition is that i have read quite a bit about all the drama behind the scenes but i genuinely cannot forgive the show's head writers and producers for queer baiting their audience like that. it would have been one thing for dean and cas to remain implied, but to confirm offscreen that they were in love and never acted on it, mention it only briefly onscreen before killing off their only on screen confirmed queer leading man, and then never resolve dean's sexuality was... quite hateful. and to know that you won't resolve it, but dangle the possibility of a resolution in the hopes of getting better numbers on your finale is... incredibly hateful. my heart goes out to misha, jensen, and berens who apparently worked very hard to get the little representation viewers were granted, and who subsequently were treated very poorly by the show's main writers and the network.

its been a hell of a 15 years...

[safetypinsymphony]

“Is it a plot twist, or is it just lying?” and brief thoughts on the SPN road so far

To paraphrase an exchange from Bob's Burgers: Is it a plot twist, or is it just lying?

This seems to be an evolving theme of Supernatural's Season 15. I haven't been keeping up on my reviews here, dern it, but after some mild kerfuffles I've experienced between various fans (including myself), I'm re-inspired. Or perhaps incensed.

“Writers lie.”

When we first learned that God is a right asshole and as such, opened a rift in Hell before checking out to leave our intrepid heroes to deal with the undead invasion spilling forth—and then decided to check back in just to start fucking with the Winchesters again—I wasn't overly bothered, but nor was I particularly thrilled by the implications. I was begrudgingly interested to see what was evolving.

Well.

Kinda like watching a slo-mo train wreck, as it turns out. We're witnessing how this canon ret-conning is already starting to fray. How playing fast and loose with what the show has established as the rules of its universe is creating this “It was all just a dream” Dallas-esque meta embarrassment.

Seasons back, when the show first shattered the Fourth Wall by introducing the SPN books and conventions into its own mythos, that self-awareness was a really risky move. To this day, you either love it or hate it, but it managed to hold together because of the infrequency with which it was explored, and the skills of the writers at the time. (Even then, we got Season Seven, Time for a Wedding, arguably one of the more tasteless episodes of the whole series.)

As Dabb and company are choosing to further explore Chuck-as-God-and-puppetmaster, one of the show's important thematic cornerstones, that of the value of <i>freewill</i>, is taking a big hit. And the show knows it. They've had Dean come right out and air his disgruntlement with it several times already. So we get it, yeah, it's a thing. It's what Dabb is using to propel this last season (along with rampant fanservice and as many returning characters—dead or alive—that he can shoehorn into 43 minutes).

Now, I do loves me some fanservice on occasion, and there are certainly quite a few characters who died in rather inglorious ways and probably deserved better send-offs than they got, but I'm not sure 'hanging a flag on it' does enough to compensate for what this means in regards to the past 14 years of the show. In asserting that all of the past canon has been little more than Chuck's manipulations, it also means that the viewers' investment into the whole of the SPN universe has been hung on a lie within its own framework. “Ret-conning” doesn't even come close to describing this level of narrative dishonesty. (Wow, that sounded dramatic, but it's kind of true, you know?) By undermining the canon of the past 14 years, the current show creators have made Gamble, Carver and yes, even Kripke unwittingly complicit in this snake oil operation.

If SPN were just a movie, two hours designed from the jump to play out this way, I might think it was a little cheesy but oh well. I'm not that invested. (See 'Cabin in the Woods', which was a helluva fun neo-horror romp, in a similar vein.) But this is FOURTEEN YEARS we're talking here. That's a loooong time to be invested in a narrative, just to have the latest showrunner unseat all the canon that came before him. The only thing that matters one iota now? Season 15. It, apparently, is the only “true” canon. The only canon where “Chuck” is revealing his hand and operating with any in-world narrative legitimacy.

Thanks, I hate it.

I'm not going to pretend I like what Dabb is proposing. The segment of fandom hungry to bust Sam and Dean's so-called co-dependency is pretty stoked about it, naturally; they see classic SPN as toxic and unhealthy (and let's be real, in the way of a certain ship).

But here's the thing that gives me The Feels™, and it's not turning the Winchesters (or Cas, for that matter) into domesticated, well-adjusted Hallmark Channel leading men. (That's what, you know, The Hallmark Channel is for.) And it's sure as hell not invalidating the canon of the show I fell in love with.

It's urban legends, black humor, the endless highways and guttering neon. It's two brothers raised on the fringes of society, their unbreakable fidelity, finding comfort wherever they can since tomorrow, they may meet the business end of a rugaru. It's the colorful characters they meet along their travels. It's Led Zeppelin, greasy spoons and ancient tomes. It's faith and heart and sacrifice.

Unless Dabb dismantles these things too. At which point, a pox upon him and his house. Writers may lie, but this would be universe assassination.

●●●

Oh! I was going to mention some episodes too, lol. Here are a few quick take-aways, since I've already blabbed on enough.

Episode 3: RIP, Rowena. I looooooved the line, “But I believe in prophecy. I believe in magic.” That was SO her. Of course an ancient witch, the most powerful in the game, would live (and die) on those words. And kudos to the show for remembering it put that Sam gun on the mantel in Season 13, iirc. Pretty sure we'll see Rowena again before the grand finale, though.

Big happy for the suggestion that Sam is a witch-in-the-making. Also glad Cas finally got his brain wrapped around the fact that Dean was pissed at him but he didn't need to take it anymore. Dean has some valid reasons to need space from Cas, and it's a handy way to get Cas off doing his own thing (as Misha is not contracted for every episode).

Berens did a solid job writing this episode, but I'm glad we've wrapped the customary 3-episode season premier. I had high hopes for myriad crusty, decaying dead shambling around a grim world, but instead we got a handful of ghosts, literally running around in broad daylight. The first two episodes were … clumsy.

Episode 4: 'Atomic Monsters', was written by my favorite current SPN writer, Davy Perez, and he did not disappoint! Something about the way he writes dialogue sounds so naturalistic to me, and he manages to tap into authentic feelings in the characters without feeling rushed or contrived. I believe his stories. I never get thrown out of his episodes.

The episode was lovingly directed by Jensen Ackles. The guy flat out knows what to give us. That whole beginning red scene, with Dean and his John Wick bad-assery and then … then we get a Sam who has never eschewed his demon blood addiction. It was chilling and gorgeously actualized and I might have watched that bit more than is healthy.

And we got to revisit Becky Rosen, who is now a fangirl—like many of us—but she's grown up and assimilated fandom enjoyment into her daily life. Perez did a great job in saving Becky, as a character. She isn't the butt of anyone's joke anymore. She isn't a dangerously unbalanced fan. She's just … one of us. Thank you, sir.

Episode 5: Fun stuff in this one! Brotherly banter, Sam and Dean dressed as sort-of Fish and Game employees, a brilliant turn by actress Anna Grace Barlow reprising Lilith (no one saw this coming!), werewolf brothers as yet another example of monsters that aren't as cut-and-dried as hunters might like, and more 'visions' from Sam wherein Sam is Lucifer again, and Dean still has the Mark of Cain. YUM.

But there were also a couple some not-so-fun things. The girls glamping in the beginning was just plain silly, the fight scenes had too many jump cuts (imho), but mostly, why on earth would they leave the God gun in the glove compartment of the Impala?? I noted that back when Dean put it in there, Episode 2 I think it was, but I seriously doubt they wouldn't have locked it up safely after that. Please, foo. Don't make our characters stupid.

By episode's end, Dean is clearly frustrated and demoralized by their predicament. It's clear Sam and Dean will be taking turns buoying each other's flagging spirits this season. As co-dependent as ever. I am here for this.

●●●

This post has gone on long enough, so I think I'll hold Episode 6 ruminations for a separate entry, and maybe dish about where we think the series is heading, for a finale. Anyone reading this probably has a numb butt by now. Anywho, thanks for hanging in with me, gang! Talk at you later...