#on season 4 I can’t believe there was a time before cas
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I stopped watching supernatural before the last few seasons and now I’m going through it watching basically just the “fillers” and funny episodes and it’s great. “you gotta go be gay for that poor dead intern” is still an all-time line.
#no plot just vibes#watching the recaps each time and averaging like 5 episodes per season so far#on season 4 I can’t believe there was a time before cas#supernatural#castiel#sam winchester#dean winchester
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Some time ago you asked me about my angel Gabriel and I am here to return the favor, PLEASE tell me about your gabriel when you have a moment 👀
- @starshine-selfships
Can’t believe I am just getting to this, I am the worst.
YES LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY AWFUL BEAUTIFUL BOY!!
This is my Gabe and he makes me feral and insane. ❤️❤️❤️
How do I begin to describe Gabriel. He’s crazy smart and just plain crazy and a tiny short king who is also terrifyingly strong and powerful. He has no off switch, never shuts up, runs off of sugar and spite, has the world’s cutest dimples and the most beautiful golden eyes and is just annoying and hot and wonderful.
This sexy bastard is one of the most powerful and ancient archangels and was one of the first fallen angels, he left/was kicked out because he refused to join the infighting and corruption in his family. He was tired of watching his siblings tear each other apart so he ran off to take the place of one of the pagan gods (Loki, if you can believe it) and ended up with his powers—sort of a pseudo angel/Trickster God hybrid. He’s a chaotic neutral silly boi who likes to wreak havoc by killing nasty people in creative ways and looks really hot doing it.
In my canon, he’s also my guardian angel and not super happy about it at first but he catches feelings and it’s all very bittersweet bc he knows I love his brother and he wants me and Cas to be happy so he’s willing to step back and let us be together, even though it tears him apart inside. Instead he just follows me around acting vaguely annoying.
In my happy little headspace though we’re madly in love and all over each other constantly and it’s very gross. We are the OG chaos couple, we enable each other’s insanity and annoy everyone but it’s okay bc we love each other so so much ❤️
What’s funny and stupid is that he was a platonic f/o for a long ass time but I was not platonic about him at all and just didn’t realise it and it was cringe and pathetic. We actually meet him before we meet Cas, and from the moment he showed up I was like “that guy.” Don’t learn his name until like season 4 but every time he showed up I’m like “oh my god it’s my fave it’s the trickster he’s back I hope he’s in every episode ever he’s great omg” and then I learned he was an angel and not only that he’s this universe’s Loki and I lost my shit and made him a platonic right then and there but also couldn’t shut up about how cool he was (srsly look at my Gabe tag, it’s pathetic 💔) and eventually had to face facts and felt stupid. Now we kiss a lot.
Anyway he’s hot and stupid and perfect and he can be so charismatic and flirty or so gentle and sweet and he is everything and I love him and I want to cry.
Also here’s a fic about our first meeting if anyone is interested 👉🏻👈🏻
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Can you imagine if Syrus' friends are just as confused as the audience regarding the fact that Syrus never snapped or became evil?
Imagine them being like, "Are you sure you don't want to go apeshit now?" quite a lot of times and Syrus always shrugging like, "Nah, not right now."
Even Zane would be a bit on the edge by the time Syrus is in charge of his recovery.
Honestly Syrus had every right to snap at some point over Zane's treatment of him. Zane treated him so bad for so long that he suffers debilitating anxiety and extremely low self-esteem and self worth. But he never held a single thing against Zane. Honestly no one did for more than a single episode for the purpose of the episodic narrative.
Syrus looks up to Zane so much that he believes everything Zane says about him is right and that he has every right to treat him as poorly as he does. He adores his brother, he loves him and idolizes him and tries so hard to make him proud and after meeting Jaden and start to gain a little more confidence and learn to believe in himself, try to prove Zane wrong.
But no matter what people still see him as being in Zane's shadow. They tackle that in episode 4 season 2: "Sad But Truesdale" one of my favorite episodes btw lol which is really the only time we see him even remotely snap or get confrontational and stand up for himself, or at least it's the first time we see that.
But the thing is, at that point he and Zane have.... sort of made amends, namely Zane telling Sy he proved him wrong about saying Sy didn't belong at Duel Academy and saying he loves him before sacrificing himself to protect him from Camula back in episode 32, but being in season 2, Zane is about to go dark himself. which therein lies the reignited of the big issue.
Because after all of that progress they made, when Zane goes dark he reverts back to not caring about Syrus but even worse than before. Even back in season 1 they try to give you hints that he might actually care about Syrus a little bit not that I believe it for a second, but now he truly doesn't care at all. Not just not caring about Syrus but not caring about anyone. But it really comes to a head in episode 95, when Syrus duels Zane to try and remind him of who he used to be, but also to prove to Zane that he's strong enough to face him and strong enough to be a true duelist. Which only serves to land him in the hospital with Zane just writing him off as weak and just as worthless and weak as he had always said he was before. Just pure emotional whiplash for Sy to deal with after the progress they started making in season 1. I literally wrote an entire one shot about it that episode fucks me up so much and makes me so mad and upset But then there's even more whiplash in season 3 because Zane comes back and protects him in Dark World and helps him work through his conflicting feelings about Jaden, and then after basically bestowing Sy unto Jay:
"You can’t leave Syrus! 😢 He needs a big brother! 😭"
"He's got one. 😌"
LITERALLY SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP EVERYWHERE STOP I CAN'T
and telling Syrus he's proud of him he says literally nothing to Sy in the sub and I hate that just dies right in front of him.
Boom. More trauma.
And then they back pedal on his death and he's alive again in season 4 and Sy dedicates so much time and effort and attention and love hinto being his caretaker. When he has every right not to. Syrus is too good to be Zane's brother. Zane doesn't deserve him.
I know I've been blabbing on here and, but listen Sy's my favorite ever I have a lot to say akaksk 😂 Syrus had every right to snap at some point, that's my whole point, and the whole point of this whole ask I'm sorry for the whole dissertation happening here akksksk
Syrus needed to have his
Moment at some point. He deserved to get frustrated with Zane, to hold him accountable for everything he said and did to him. I hate that no one ever held anything against Zane and just gave him a pass for his abusive behavior. Syrus can if he wants to, that's his right and his choice but the others shouldn't have allowed it to continue happening and not call him out on it more than the one time Jay did in episode 8 and then just dropped it.
I know if I were his friend I would be very surprised he hadn't snapped ever. I think they all should be surprised, but also at the same time it's just not the type of person Sy is. He gets into arguments and is confrontational with people sometimes it's Hassleberry 9 times out of 10 lol but generally speaking he's very timid and is just content with his situation because Zane has beaten him down so much over the years. If anything they would be more surprised if he did snap or go dark, but I think if he did it would open their eyes to how they contributed to the problem by not actually holding Zane accountable for his actions.
But for the sake of this scenario, I think they might even encourage him to just let loose because holding all that stuff in isn't healthy, but he'd say no even though he definitely would want to deep down.
A real:
Kind of moment if you will. That's what they'd be trying to get him to do, but Syrus not allowing himself to let those feelings out and just having them pile up and fester while putting on the facade that he's okay and isn't angry about everything Zane put him through... yeah I think everyone should be worried and surprised that he hasn't snapped at that point and Zane should be very nervous about Sy taking the role as his caretaker. Because when he finally does snap? All I can say is yikes and good luck because when he finally does allow himself to snap in this scenario I think he would reach a really low spot because he's already there. He would just sink even lower.
They're gonna need all hands on deck to bring him back from that eruption of emotion and pain. Because letting the floodgates open to release that much hurt, I can tell you, not for the same reasons but from being hurt by people before, it's extremely difficult to close those gates again.
And one last point to that end, you know who I think would be integral to saving Sy from that? Chazz. Because he also has horrible and intense older sibling trauma and pain that he's trying to heal from himself, and it's not even all that different from his in some ways. He can understand Syrus's feelings better than anyone, and really sympathize with him and having someone who can even remotely understand his hurt would help Sy so much when he finally does snap. It would be double special too because they never really mixed all that well, but as shitty of a thing to relate to is, this they have in common. And I'd love to see them not like... trauma bond, but trauma bond if you know what I mean aksksk like kinda actually be friends. Because Jaden loves his bestie, but he and the others could only help so much because they know what he's been through, but don't really understand.
Chazz does.
Me currently typing this out:
#again I am SO sorry for the fucking novel you just recieved my anon friend 😭#I just wrote a whole doctoral dissertation akskskksks#but in all seriousness I wish they let Sy actually deal with all of this#someone get that poor baby a therapist 😭#yugioh gx#ygo gx#syrus truesdale#sho marufuji#zane truesdale#ryo marufuji#jaden yuki#judai yuki#chazz princeton#jun manjoume#abby's in her unhinged era#aberooski asks#answered
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So as everyone knows Elta weasled her way into the Wales comic con. That has me questioning what was the con promoter/booker thinking?! I think Misha was originally supposed to go but backed out. So they got Elta to fill that spot. Which out of the 2 I would have preferred Misha. Cause we all know Elta is going to go for the cringe PDA kiss like she did at the con she went with him to last year. She has no reason to actually be there her character was useless. It brought nothing to the plot taking her character out changes nothing. She has nothing to contribute since she was in only 5 episodes. Also despite what she says when she claimed she knew all of Cas’s lines we all know that is a lie. Why is it a lie? Cause Jensen exposed her saying she basically only watched 5 episodes which knowing her it was the episodes she was in. Elta was in Supernatural for 2 reasons first reason she didn’t want to be a liar. Fans had asked her when was she showing up in Supernatural. She replied on Twitter if Supernatural made it to season 13 she would appear. Her character shows up Sesason 13 episode 13. Also her saying if it made it shows she had no faith in the show or her husband. The main reason she was on there is cause Gen was on there in season 4 and people talk about how she fell in love with Jared. We all know Elta tries to one up Gen every time. So she begged Jensen to get her on there. I still think someone hated her cause her character Anael take out the e it’s Anal which she can be at times. I just know Jensen’s joy will not be there. We won’t see that eye crinkling beautiful true smile of his we will see the fake one he gives when he is not feeling it.
I know I am rambling I am sorry just miffed she weasel her way into a con. But what I find hilarious is the pics they used to advertise her looks like two different people. One is her as Anael the main pic is from her early days before all the fillers and Botox. I believe it’s from her OTH days. But it looks like 2 different people there. Her “fans” want to say oh she is just getting older she didn’t have work done. Uh yeah she did have work done. If you get a picture of Danneel from OTH to now you can literally see she has work done cause she looks unrecognizable. If Jensen wasn’t with her people wouldn’t know who she is. Can’t wait to see what new face, horrible clothing choice and messy hair style she has then.
Hi anon!
Also another apology to be issued for the lateness. Life, y'know? But thanks for the message!
Now to respond/address what you've said.
I don't know if Misha was supposed to go, as I had never seen anything about him going to Wales. But it's possible. Or Elta insisted on having her own little European vacation after seeing Jared and Genevieve having fun.
That's the hard choice--which one do we want, Misha or Elta? Can neither be the answer??
God, that PDA kiss at last year was AWFUL. Cold fish kiss. Zero love, passion or chemistry.
Yeah. Anael/Sister Jo had zero reason to be in the plot. And the writers had to have known what they were doing by making Anael a materialistic bitch.
Yeah. Elta basically forced Jensen to get her added to Supernatural because she wanted to be involved, and used the Destiel fandom to harass and abuse her husband as well. She wanted the attention and loved how uncomfortable it was making Jensen. It's also why she kissed Misha's ass and gave him a lap dance.
Yes… Jensen will be miserable in Wales. I'm not looking forward to his sad smiles.
It's okay to ramble! I do it all the time! That's why my blog is titled "Ramblings of a Writer". I ramble!
Yes! No recent photos of her for them to use? Really? So they use unrecognizable ones? Haha!
Yep. She absolutely had work done, numerous times. Her hairline moving north means numerous facelifts. Her smile--called the Joker smile for a reason--shows other work having been done as she looks horrific.
She needs to lay off black. Black emphasizes nothing good on her. She needs color. She needs an actual stylist because if Marcus is responsible for past choices, he's an awful one. Get a vocal coach because her voice is just AWFUL.
And then, y'know, therapy to fix her narcissistic soul. If that even works.
I feel you, anon. I'm not looking forward to her being there at all.
I only hope Jensen will be okay.
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Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 318
Lebanon
“Lebanon”
Plot Description: the Winchesters make a magical wish that grants them a family reunion and alters time in the process
Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: I now know that if I had a sword, I’d just get to slicing. Actually, an Indiana Jones movie taught me that. This just reinforced it
They’re going by Campbell here?
You never do get to hear what local teens think of them, til now. But apparently Cas is their weird sidekick and Jack always had a Bambi look on hus face…they’re not wrong
Can’t believe they were stupid enough to let a teen girl steal Baby
Hah! Sam can’t scam the location of this girl out of the mail carrier but Dean can get her to tell him where the girl’s mom can be found. And by scam I mean charm
Oh good. It’s not ALL clowns…
Dean will not let go of Sam’s love of serial killers and hatred of clowns
This show is so messy to bring JOHN WINCHESTER back while Mary is hooking up with au Bobby
Why does John think it’s 2003 when this show didn’t even start til 2005?
SO. MESSY. To bring her back to the bunker NOW. I’m obsessed wtf
I’m so sad though at the same time. The thing they made the wish on was supposed to give you your heart’s deepest want, and after all this time, after everything he put Dean through, the one thing Dean wanted was to see his dad??? 😭😭😭 (Eldest sons with crippling and insurmountable daddy issues are such a weakness for me)
Goddddd, these hyper complicated family dynamics are fuckin getting to me
I’m terrified to see what’s gonna change. It’s starting small, like a few people around town not recognizing them…but what else? Hello?? Look, I know Dean’s been on the fbi most wanted list before but…I’m hoping these beheadings this “time has changed” Dean did were still monsters???
Omg It’s that motherfucker Zachariah. Is it bad I’m almost excited to see him? I HATED him, but this could be fun. What won’t be fun is seeing Cas be his little lackey
Castiel doesn’t get pop culture references again. I should be sadder about this
It’s gotta be weird to be playing what would be pre-season 4 Cas
Aww, Zach’s gone again so soon ☹️
Can they get that one family dinner before John goes away??
John telling Dean what he wishes for him and then asking him what’s next…I’m…I’m not okay
They also did that episode a long time ago of who they’d be if none of this would have happened. Can’t remember if Dean’s memory of that got wiped
I still don’t know why it had to fuck with time and not do something along the lines of what Amara did. Almost, just almost seems like a waste of an episode except to tug at heartstrings
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These are the stories of black folks who are also serial killers some you are aware of some you are not. Oh and it goes without saying but trigger warning is advised because it’s gonna be disturbing
Yes, Black Serial Killers Exist: Here's 20 of Them
It's Spooky season but real crime is scarier than fiction. We've had our fair share of Jeffrey Dahmer's and Ted Bundy's. Don't believe us, just take a look.
By
Kalyn Womack
UpdatedYesterday
We love to treat heinous criminals and serial murderers like it’s a white folks thing but I’m here to inform you, that is simply not true. Despite what the Netflix documentaries and spooky movies perpetuate, Black serial killers exist. They may not be as “popular” or widely known as your typical Jeffrey Dahmer and Jack The Ripper, but their crimes are just as sinister.
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Interestingly enough, because the media always gave press to the white serial killers, Black ones were nearly able to fly under the radar. Who would expect a sweet-presenting Black woman to kill her entire family? Who would have thought a couple would spend their dates on a killing spree?
I bet you can’t think of any Black serial killers off the top of your head. But if you read on, you’ll leave familiar with at least 20 of them.
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Maury Travis
The infamous “Videotape Killer” was linked to the murders of 12 sex workers in St. Louis by investigators, per Fox 2 Now. He would lure women to his home with money or drugs, then tie them up and kill them. After committing each murder, Travis would discard the bodies along the road and carried on this heinous act for three years.
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Police identified Travis after tracing his steps through a series of interactive maps and found his home. Bloodstains covered every part of his house and various women’s items were recovered in the basement along with several videotapes of him torturing, abusing and raping his victims. Travis committed suicide in his jail cell before he could be convicted.
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Elton Manning Jackson
Jackson wreaked havoc on the LGBT community for 10 years. His first victim was a gay man in 1997 and he was suspected of killing another 11 queer men. Authorities declined to name Jackson as the suspect in the other killings due to a lack of evidence, but found his method of madness was identical in each case: sexually motivated strangulation.
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He ended up being convicted in only one murder and was sentenced to life in prison though he denied his involvement.
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Eddie Lee Mosley
Dubbed as the “Rape Man,” Mosley was accused of terrorizing the women of South Florida in the 70s. DNA linked him to dozens of murders and rapes in the Fort Lauderdale area. He was charged three times for rape and was found not guilty in two cases and entered a plea deal in the third, per Sun Sentinel. Two innocent men were even convicted for Mosley’s crimes, one of them being the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl.
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Once the police got to him in the late 1980s, he was declared unfit to stand trial and was secluded to mental hospitals until he died in 2020.
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John Floyd Thomas
The insurance claim adjuster turn serial killer was named the Westside Rapist for the terror he brought on women from Inglewood to Claremont, Ca. His targets were older women between the ages of 50 and 90. He would break into their homes, rape them and choke them to death. Thomas was finally sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for seven murders but remains a suspect in another 15 unsolved killings, per LA Times.
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Jake Bird
“The Tacoma Ax-Killer” had a lengthy record of burglaries and murders. However, he was caught after police responded to reports of screams inside a house. When they arrived, Bird ran out the backdoor barefoot but was caught and arrested by the police. He was convicted of the first-degree murder of two Tacoma women and given the death penalty in 1947.
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While on Death Row, he confessed to over 40 more murders across the country that flew under the radar. He was hung at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1949.
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Harrison Graham
One summer in 1987, Graham’s neighbor complained to their landlord about a stench coming from Harrison’s apartment. He was ordered to vacate the premises but refused and boarded up his doors and windows. He then fled from the fire escape and the landlord called the police to break into the apartment. What they found were two dead Black women, blood splatters and a slew of skeletal remains. Bones and body parts of other victims were found in bags.
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For the following week, Harrison ditched the police until his mother convinced him to turn himself in. When he was arrested, he confessed to the killings of seven women and was convicted in each case. He received the death penalty but was ordered to serve life in prison first, meaning he wouldn’t actually be executed.
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Roberta Elder
The wife of Reverend William M. Elder was not only responsible for his death but also the death of two of his children whom she poisoned with her cooking. She was charged for their murders but during her trial, it was found that her killings didn’t stop at her household. She was accused of killing up to 13 people including two ex-husbands, three of her own children, a grandson, a cousin and her own mother. She was sentenced to life in prison.
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Debra Brown
Brown and Alton Coleman began their killing spree when they lured two young girls into the woods in 1984. One of the girls was raped and the other was suffocated and stomped. For the next 50 days, the two killed eight more people, raped seven and kidnapped three. The couple was sentenced to death and Coleman was executed in 2002. However, Brown’s death sentence was overturned after the attorney general attributed her actions to a mental disability, per Indy Star.
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Samuel Little
Little is known as the most prolific serial killer not just because of his crimes but because he confessed to a large number of unsolved murders just two years before he died. Little had been killing since the 50s but was sentenced for good in 2014 for killing three women in the 80s. His DNA was then connected to another string of strangulations. In an interview with a Texas Ranger, he confessed to unsolved killings in over a dozen states bringing the total up to 93 people dead.
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Henry Louis Wallace
Wallace, also known as the “Taco Bell Strangler,” raped and murdered 11 Black women in the span of four years in the 90s. Most of the victims were women he knew such as friends and co-workers at the Taco Bell he managed in Charlotte, NC. Ol boy even attended some of their funerals. It wasn’t until Wallace killed two women back-to-back in the same building that the police were onto him. He was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to death.
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Chester Turner
Over a span of 11 years, Turner killed 10 women in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to 10 counts of second-degree murder and the superior court judge said the evidence showed Turner would strangle each woman to death for his own sexual pleasure, a nature of cruelty rarely seen in murder trials. By 2014, he was sentenced to death after being found guilty in the killings of an additional four women, per Los Angeles Daily News.
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Paul Durousseau
Durousseau was a cab driver in Jacksonville when he raped and killed a 26-year-old woman. Following her death, Durousseau took the lives of six other women all under the age of 25. He was finally arrested in 2003 on five counts of murder but DNA linked him to his first killing, upgrading his punishment to the death sentence. In 2021, he had his death penalty conviction overthrown to serve life in prison instead, per News4Jax.
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Craig Price
Price grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood during the heat of the civil rights movement. Despite having a relatively happy childhood, Craig started experiencing dark thoughts about murder and by the time he turned 13, he had a hefty criminal record including robbery, stalking and assault. Soon, he killed a white woman from his neighborhood. The case went cold until police found he later killed another white woman and her two daughters. He willingly confessed to the murders and was convicted as a minor. His sentence was supposed to have ended in 2017 but his repeated crimes inside prison extended his stay, per WJAR. He goes down in US history as once of the youngest serial killers.
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Zebra Killers
In the 70s, a group of young Black men embarked on a killing spree, taking the lives of up to 15 people. Their crimes led to a stop-and-search program to be issued in San Francisco which was widely criticized by Black civil rights leaders as another ploy to harass innocent Black people. However, by 1974, seven Black men were arrested. Three of them got off on bail but the remaining four were convicted on a slew of charges including murder and kidnapping, and sentenced to life in prison.
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Carl Eugene Watts
Dubbed by the press as the “Sunday Morning Slasher,” Watts was assumed to be experiencing delusion after being diagnosed with Meningitis. When he was younger, he used to hunt rabbits and stalk his female classmates, then he committed his first murder at 15 years old. According to AP, he killed for a span of eight years claiming the lives of 14 to 100 women. He was hard to catch because police couldn’t find a pattern in how he killed. Then, in 1981, one of his victims faked being unconscious and escaped from him, alerting the police. In Texas, he was charged as a non-violent felon after pleading guilty to burglary with intention to kill. However, a witness from Michigan came forward with a testimony sending him to life in prison.
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Wayne Williams
In 1981, Williams was arrested for the murders of two adult men. However, during his trial, prosecutors suggested he was also behind a string of 22 murders of children in Atlanta. Though he maintained his innocence, forensic evidence from his home and vehicle connected him to several victims. He was sentenced to life in prison, though many people still believe he is innocent.
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Lonnie Franklin Jr.
The “Grim Sleeper” was known to target young Black women who struggled with drug addiction. Franklin was found guilty of killing nine women and one teenager in 2016 and sentenced to death. His killing spree lasted from 1984, all the way to 2007 ; he kept souvenirs from his victims including their jewelry or pictures of them. He was finally arrested in 2010; prosecutors speculated he may have been behind even more murders. Before his execution date, he died in 2020 in his prison cell, per People.
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Derrick Todd Lee
Though he was only convicted in the murder of two women, Lee was tied to at least six other murders in Louisiana between 1998 and 2003. Prosecutors say he murdered to satisfy a sexual gratification he craved. In 2003, he was sentenced to life in prison for one murder but in 2004, his sentenced was enhanced to the death penalty after being found guilty in another murder.
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Mark Goudeau
The “Baseline Killer” killing spree began in August of 2005, per ABC News. Within one year, he was believed to kill nine people as well as commit a string of rapes and assaults. The women of Phoenix were running to self-defense classes and buying firearms for protection. By September of 2006, he was arrested and charges with 94 crimes, including but not excluded to the murders. He had two trials as the public debated on whether he was the killer in question. Right now, he sits on death row.
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The entire time, his wife, Carr, stood by him and proclaimed his innocence. “The police have manipulated the media. They’ve said horrible things about Mark. People want to believe that they have the right guy,” Carr said to GMA.
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Anthony Sowell
Sowell served 15 years in prison in a rape and was released in the early 2000s. However, in 2009, investigators who suspected him of another rape found the decomposing bodies of two women on the third floor of his house and a grave dug in the basement. Sowell had a total of 10 dead bodies rotting in his home, all of which were vulnerable young women who struggled with drug addiction. Victims who escaped tried to tell the police but some didn’t believe their reports.
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Sowell was sentenced to death in 2011 but died in 2021 of an unspecified illness, per Cleveland.com.
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List 🛝
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@lonelygodscompanion said:
I'm really curious as to how dean fits into Gatekeep according to you! is it because he's gatekeeping monsters from life? because he gatekeeps hunting? (also I do think they can all be a little bit Manipulate and Gaslight<3 but not like. all of the time of course)
Yeah they definitely have all been guilty of gaslighting and manipulation at times! I do have a problem though with people who want to make that a core personality trait for any of them. Because there is a difference between someone whose core identity is not to gaslight or manipulate others being guilty of doing that before at points (especially imo on the monster show with world ending stakes), versus your personality being a manipulator or a gaslighter as in like someone who quite generally and broadly is dangerous to others because they manipulate and gaslight their friends all of the time and can’t seem to help themselves thus are a poison in all of their relationships and need to be cut out of ones life. Sam, Dean, and Cas have all been guilty of gaslighting and manipulating each other, so if we view this as core traits… they are all terrible for each other—which is how some people like to view SPN, but I don’t! I think when Sam gaslit and attempted to manipulate Dean in season 4 and 5, that was a thing he did but not “who he is”—and etc for Dean and Cas and their gaslighting and manipulating moments. I also think this is rarely premeditated and intentional but often comes from their own trauma and is based on genuine beliefs they hold because they are gaslighting themselves into believing what they are saying is true/fully believe they are unloved and unwanted or they deserve trust, which to me (though it certainly doesn’t excuse it!) makes it much more understandable and interesting than intentionally lying to someone about what has happened in your relationship in a premeditated bid to get something or assert power and control.
Dean is gatekeep because he is too superior about music and Sam’s haircuts though. ;)
Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss and Manipulate Mansplain Malewife simply cannot encapsulate any one of the core three. Dean is Gatekeep and Malewife. Sam is Mansplain. Castiel, obviously, is Girlboss.
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OBSESSED with the fact that Dean hasn’t had a love interest (if you even classify Amara as a love interest - which I don’t) since season 11. 4 seasons ago. they completely gave up on trying to pair Dean off with a woman the way they even stopped bothering to keep up the womanizing playboy persona.
when was the last time time Dean canonically slept with a woman that we were made aware of. season 13? in a way that’s insubstantial at best, given he was passed out fully clothed on the ground with a bra pointedly around his neck and no one else in sight, in the same room as Sam? after Sam confronts him that he’s not coping while grieving Cas and Dean insists he’ll be fine? the same episode where we learn that he wants to die? knowing what we do about Dean, how much of his existence is performance and how much he has in the past tried to maintain that persona of a man for Sam to the point that Sam’s been genuinely surprised when the facades cracked? almost like Dean put on a very over the top pointed performance to make Sam believe he was “back to normal”?
arguably he flirted with Mandy the waitress in season 12, though of course, he was trying to win her for Cas in another one of his intricate rituals as a way to have a tangential connection to Cas’ relationship with sex, to be involved somehow. and he told her that Cas is “devastatingly handsome.”
just absolutely fascinated with how in one of the season 15 interviews, Jensen in his response to the question if there would be new romantic relationships for Sam and Dean, that for Dean the exploration was going to be on the relationships he’s already forged, characters you already know. and that he wished they had more time to explore those avenues with Dean but that Sam was going to be “handling the reins in that department.”
utterly intrigued that Misha interrupted the interview segment to bring Jensen a beer in an odd little bit that seemed to have no real purpose right after Jensen mentioned that Dean’s relationships would be centered around characters we knew that would be coming back and his name was brought up specifically.
captivated by Mark Sheppard saying we (being those who worked on the show) all knew that Cas was in love with Dean.
intrigued by Emily Swallow making a video in character as Amara addressing Cas and their shared “feelings” for Dean before 15x18 even dropped.
riveted by former writer Eric Charmelo liking destiel kissing art on twitter with the hashtag “they silenced them”
transfixed by Misha liking “you’re not crazy” a tweet from two thousand and fucking thirteen the night 15x18 dropped and revealing he’s been playing Cas as in love with Dean deliberately for years and can’t remember when he begun, and that he’d hoped it would be addressed in the show one day.
mesmerized by the love confession being one of the first scenes written at the beginning of writing season 15, written by one Bobo Berens.
enthralled by DJ Qualls saying that there’s subtext between Dean and another character (that’s not Garth) but that he wasn’t gonna get into that!!
almost like there’s another character who’s been Dean’s true love interest throughout the show. for years.
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Here’s why the Supernatural Series Finale Sucked
(AND IT REALLY ISN’T JUST BECAUSE CAS/MISHA WASN’T IN IT)
First of all, I’d like to state, that this perspective is coming from someone who has watched, invested in, and dissected this show for 15 years. I’ve tried to rationalize and justify every single decision each of the main characters made throughout the years, and I’ve always tried to make sense of each of their story arcs from a “bigger picture” standpoint as each season progressed.
Anyway, before I can properly explain why the finale sucked, let me quickly take you through 15 seasons by segregating them into 3 eras, because you can’t really comprehend what Supernatural is about and what it’s become without going through how it tried to expand its universe.
SEASONS 1-5: THE KRIPKE ERA
Now, we all know that Kripke was always set in wrapping up Sam and Dean’s story in 5 seasons, and he did just that.
So, in this era, Supernatural is about two brothers who set out on a journey to fulfill “the family business”. They hunt mythical monsters that terrorize the world, while battling the monsters within themselves. Their ultimate “big bad” is an apocalypse.
Towards the end of this era, we find out that Sam and Dean are actually a parallel to Biblical characters who are brothers turned rivals. And that Sam and Dean’s destiny is to go up against each other.
However, as a dynamic, they have always been about making their own choices, choosing free will, and having a brotherly bond that can power through against any obstacle at any given day.
So, this era is neatly wrapped up with its finale. The characters grow, and get justified endings.
Dean, a man who thinks of himself as two things: 1. Sam’s older brother and protector; and 2. Daddy’s blunt little instrument.
He’s spent his whole life believing that that was his only purpose, and he knew that the only ending he’ll get would either be a bloody death fulfilling his duty to the family business; or laying his life on the line to save his brother.
Dean gets the ending he thought was never possible for him, something he thought he could never deserve. After years of living and dying for his family, he gets a shot at having an apple pie life--to settle down with a nice girl, raise a kid in a house with a white picket fence. With Sam gone, Dean’s responsibility now is to himself.
Sam, on the other hand, never wanted any part of it, because he wasn’t groomed the way Dean was, and because thanks to Dean, Sam wasn’t traumatized or forced into growing up too quickly the way Dean was.
So Sam aspires for a normal life, and works the cases with Dean so he can maybe get some semblance of it, when everything they set out to kill are laid to rest.
Ultimately, Sam performs a selfless act for his brother, who has given up everything for him, and for their cause--to save the world.
The journey is this: Dean sacrifices everything to save Sam, and Sam sacrifices himself so Dean could live.
Apart from being Dean’s “savior” and guardian angel, Castiel’s role in this era is to serve as a mirror to Dean’s journey. Castiel goes from being heaven’s foot soldier, following “God’s orders”; to an angel who learns to choose and feel for the first time in his existence.
After they realize that they’re both daddy’s blunt instruments, Dean starts choosing his own path for himself, and convinces Castiel to join him. Castiel stops following heaven, and starts following Dean.
In the end, with his newfound understanding of the world thanks to Dean, Castiel goes back to heaven to reform it.
We’ve resolved the biblical arc, and the character journeys.
SEASONS 6-10: THE SPIN-OFF ERA
So this is where the show realizes how vast its universe can be, so it tries to expand it by tapping into uncharted lands and experimenting with it.
They take on heaven, reform hell, explore purgatory, have the angels fall, turn Dean into a demon, and kill Death.
Dean and Sam recognize their codependency, and try to rise above it.
They go back and forth between which brother will risk it all for the greater good every other season.
Dean and Cas strengthen their relationship by recognizing the impact they have on each other’s lives.
Cas structures his life and decisions around Dean (Seasons 6-7), and Dean learns to trust and fight for Cas (Seasons 8-9).
Sam and Cas bond (mostly over Dean) because of their shared rationales in decision-making.
Dean, Sam, and even Cas also forge relationships with the people they work with. The concept of “found family” is introduced here.
This era was heavy on the plot while establishing, reinforcing, and solidifying relationships and dynamics.
At this point, it wasn’t just about the brothers anymore.
If Supernatural had ended in Season 10, the logical finale would’ve been Team Free Will, along with the family that they’ve found, going up against the latest big bad (Death or whoever). Maybe they lose them along the way, maybe they all make it out alive, or maybe they go down swinging, but at least the show recognizes and supports the message they keep saying, “Family don’t end with blood”
SEASONS 11-15: THE REWRITE ERA
This is where the show runs out of ideas and decides to invalidate the seasons that came before it.
From bringing Mary back (basically rendering their whole journey pointless because they’ve literally started hunting because of her death), to changing the stipulations in being Michael and Lucifer’s vessels (another character struggle rendered useless), to God himself breaking the fourth wall by saying that the Winchesters get away with everything because “they’re the main characters in his story and everything they’ve been through was just part of a badly written narrative”.
But what we’re getting from this era is that Sam and Dean, along with Cas (who has also deviated from the story) ARE trying to escape a badly written narrative.
That’s the “big bad” in this era. The writer.
At this point, the characters have picked up so many strays (including those from alternate universes), and have settled into their roles in their “found family”. Dean, Sam, and Cas all become surrogate dads and uncles.
They’ve also graduated from the whole “we’re on different sides” and “going behind each other’s backs” drama. And they just want the whole family together.
They’ve all resigned themselves to the cause, but they’re also tired. Dean allows himself to contemplate about wanting more out of life or at least getting a vacation. Sam, on the other hand, realizes his capabilities as an effective leader. Castiel learns to love another being that isn’t Dean (spoiler: it’s Jack).
However, they also realize that they’ve just been puppets on a string all this time.
So what they want now, is to write their own story, and make their own choices knowing that God/the writer isn’t the one fueling their narrative.
So here’s why the finale sucks:
Andrew Dabb, the current showrunner, said that there would be two finales.
15x19 - The finale to wrap up Season 15, and 15x20 - The finale to wrap up the series by “resolving the characters’ journey”
In 15x19 the boys find a way to de-power God/the writer. For the first time in their whole lives, they are free from the story. Their lives are completely theirs now. They can make their own decisions. There are no more “big bads” to fight
And here’s what happens in 15x20:
Immediately after being freed from their story arc, Dean and Sam go back to hunting the monster of the week.
Dean eats pie, gets nailed (literally), makes a 10-minute speech to Sam because he knows he’s dying, then he goes to heaven.
Dean is greeted by Bobby, his surrogate Dad who he hasn’t seen (fully alive) since Season 7. Bobby’s expository dialogue comprises of him explaining that he got out of heaven’s jail, that John and Mary are next door, and that Jack and Cas fixed the dynamics of heaven off-screen.
The first thing Dean decides to do is go for a long drive in his Impala (as if he hasn’t done enough of that already).
Meanwhile, Sam decides to stop hunting after Dean dies, he gets the apple pie life he hadn’t wanted since Season 8 (while Dean was in Purgatory), and names his kid “Dean” for effect. He grows old and dies.
Dean drove around in heaven for so long that Sam catches up to him.
They hug. The end.
Great, right?
After 15 years of struggling to battle their own respective destinies, going up against big bads and even bigger bads, then finally being able to take charge of their own stories, Dean and Sam regress to hunting the monster of the week, and get killed off by a nail and old age. Okay.
Sam gets to retire and have a family, sure, but they still focus on him and the kid he named after his dead brother. Still just “Sam and Dean” through and through. Nothing to do with found family. Just lineage. Just blood. And it ends there.
See, the problem here is that this ending would’ve been passable in The Kripke Era. But we’re 10 years down the road since, and while Sam and Dean are the original main characters, the show isn’t just about them and their codependent relationship anymore.
So you see, even if you take out the whole “Castiel deserves to be in the finale because he’s also a main character with an unfinished story arc” argument, the finale still does no justice to the series it tried to “wrap up”.
But anyway, now I’ll make the case for the problem with Castiel not being in the finale:
In 15x18, we get a 5-minute rushed confession from Castiel to Dean. The context of which are as follows:
1. Earlier in the episode, Dean had wounded Death with her scythe. We later find out that this wound is fatal.
2. Their friends start to “blip out” in a Thanos-like snap, and Dean thinks that Death is causing it, so Dean seeks her out, and Cas goes with him.
3. Dean and Cas anger Death, apparently for no reason because she didn’t even do the thing they thought she did. She chases them to try to kill them
4. Dean and Cas lock themselves in a room. Dean starts a pity party.
5. As Dean goes through hating himself out loud, Cas decides to inform Dean of the deal he made with The Empty. He then proceeds to explain the stipulation of the deal (that he would get taken once he experiences a moment of true happiness), then discusses his newfound happiness philosophy. Dean is getting whiplash.
6. Cas goes on to imply that the one thing that he wanted that he knew he couldn’t have is Dean Winchester reciprocating his romantic feelings for him. (Don’t even try to fight me on this because Cas already has Dean’s platonic love, and he knows that Dean thinks of him as a brother, so if he really meant this in a “familial” way, then why would he think that he couldn’t have the thing that would make him happy?) So Cas’ realization is that telling Dean about his feelings is enough to make him happy.
7. Cas tells Dean all the reasons why he loves him (thereby combating Dean’s self-deprecation tirade), and all the reasons why he’s worthy of his love. Meanwhile, Dean is still winded from the fact that Cas is about to sacrifice himself for him again.
8. Dean never gets to process anything, because Cas is shoving him out of the way, as he and Death (who busts through the door) get taken by The Empty.
After this episode, Dean never speaks of it. Misha Collins supposes that Dean doesn’t reciprocate. Jensen Ackles says that Dean didn’t really get to process it because it was too much, too fast, and that Dean, still dense as ever, thinks that Cas, a celestial being, doesn’t interpret human feelings the same way.
So what was the point of this confession?
Politics and sensitivities of a 2005 network television aside, what does this do for the story?
Cas proclaims his romantic feelings to Dean, but Dean never acknowledges it, doesn’t even give it a passing thought afterwards. So Cas’ big declaration goes unheard.
Cas cashes in on his Empty deal to kill Death (who was dying anyway), in order to save Dean who dies two episodes after.
Dean makes no effort to save Cas (despite being really broken up about his previous deaths, or even spending a whole year in Purgatory looking for him), even after they’ve beaten God, not even asking Jack (who has all the power in the universe) to bring him back (when Jack has already done it before, with less mojo).
Dean moves on to fight the monster of the week. Somewhere off-screen, Jack rescues Cas from The Empty, but Cas uncharacteristically doesn’t even bother to go to Dean? (Every single time he comes back, Dean’s always the first person he goes to)
And Cas, who apparently helped craft and reform the new heaven, isn’t the one who welcomes Dean and explains the new dynamics of it?
Sure, Jan.
Supernatural, you’ve created a finale that only your casual viewers and people who dipped out after Season 5 can appreciate.
Just goes to show how much you actually valued the people who actually invested in your story and characters, and consistently helped keep your show on the air.
[RT this on Twitter]
#SUPERNATURAL#DESTIEL#15X20#I KNOW I SAID THAT MY LAST LONG POST WAS MY LAST ON EVER BUT I REALLY DIDN'T THINK THE FINALE WOULD BE WORSE THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE#INSIGHTFUL INSIGHTS#UNTAGGED#PERSONAL
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Jensen actually managed to make destiel x76 times more tragic when he said that Dean didn't believe Cas could feel romantic love because angels aren't wired that way.
I mean.
Can you imagine season 4/5 Dean realizing he's attracted to a "monster"? That not only is Castiel not human, but also a man. How much John would have hated that and how many sleepless nights have Dean spent thinking about it?
Then he starts caring more and more about Cas,m until one day Dean realizes that it isn't just attraction or friendship that he's feeling. But how could it be anything else but unrequited? Angel don't feel that way, can't feel that way.
And Cas keeps dying and every time it feels like a part of Dean dies too, except it never comes back, even when Cas does.
Dean spends years burying his feelings, believing that it could never be shared or acted on, that Cas will never be able to love him back in the same way. Yet unable to seek a relationship with anyone else because he doesn't want anyone else. If all Cas can give him is friendship and devotion, Dean will take it. He'll take anything as long as Cas stays by his side (except he never really does, does he?)
Then Cas confesses and Dean is shocked, left gaping and unable to find words because he never believed he would get to talk about this. He has so many things to say and all those words are stuck in his throat. There are just so many of them that he's chocking on it all, unable to get anything out except Cas' name. And then he realizes it's his last chance to say them. That even if Cas loves him back, Dean will never get another chance to say it, to live it.
Cas throws him to the side and that's it, it's over, Cas is disappearing before his very eyes and he still doesn't know that he's loved, that he was always loved. Dean's mouth is opened all along around the words he can't bring himself to say, that he's hidden for so long that he can't find them fast enough.
Cas is gone and Dean's words turn into sobs.
#destiel#deancas#dean/cas#dean/castiel#dean x castiel#hellers#spn#sorry this is kinda heavy for 9.33 in the morning
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SPN Conspiracies - Applying Logic to Chaos
Its been over 2 months now since the Supernatural finale aired. I am still so angry, hurt, and confused by it and I don’t think I will ever get closure unless someone like Andrew Dabb, or Jensen Ackles, actually opens up and gives us an explanation that makes sense.
What annoys me most right now is people trying to gaslight fans into believing that we should accept the narrative we have been given at face value: That the finale was always planned to be that way, that Destiel was never on the cards, that there was no Network interference, that the only changes made were due to covid and were minor at best.
This harmful gaslighting is FALSE.
NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAPPENED.
Look, I don’t agree with some of the crazier conspiracy theories. I don’t believe that there was some huge campaign among the CW Network execs to remove anything remotely gay out of homophobia. I don’t believe that the finale was changed because of some desire to make it into a Walker promo. I don’t believe that the finale was really bad on purpose in protest by Dabb for not getting to do an ending he truly wanted. I don’t believe that Dabb left us smart fans a bunch of secret messages in the finale to hint that he was on our side all along and that everything was fake.
I do, however, believe that all of these conspiracy theories have some elements in them that are plausible. At least, more plausible than the bullshit narrative mentioned above that some people are pushing in some desperate attempt to defend the Network (which imo is really strange behaviour anyway - why would anyone care about a TV network with a history of terrible behaviour?!?)
We have facts, based on information provided before the covid lockdown, which for some reason, people like Misha have since backpeddled on. So let me try to outline some of the information that makes no sense.
Below the cut I go on a deep dive into the conspiracies and statements I have heard about the SPN finale and try to make some sense of this whole fucked up situation. It gets long.
1. “Cas was never gonna be in the finale”.
False: We have many fan accounts of Misha confirming that he was filming the finale. We have video evidence of Misha confirming he was going back to film the finale after the lockdown. We have confirmation from fans in Misha M&Gs from March that he had about 5 days of filming left.
We also had fan accounts of discussions with Alex Calvert (I think) where he confirmed the final shot of the final episode was all four of them though I would LOVE if someone can find a source for this.
2. Okay, Misha was gonna be in the finale, but only as Jimmy Novak
False: I heavily side eyed Misha when he said this. But I think I can come up with a plausible explanation for it. Per above, Misha was supposed to film for 5 days. This does not align with the half a day he described of filming as Jimmy Novak. My own belief is that after Cas was cut from the finale (for whatever reason we don’t know) someone (probably Jensen Ackles) put up a fight and complained that Misha should be there for the final episode. The writers probably tried to come up with a way to bring Misha back without having to deal with Cas, and pitched the idea of Jimmy Novak being in Heaven. Misha, obviously annoyed about this, turned this stupid pitch down.
3. Destiel was never a thing, never planned, never part of Dabb’s ending. Bobo and Misha pushing the confession was the part of the season that was Wrong.
False: We have a SPN writer on record saying that Castiel’s confession was the first thing written for Season 15 when the writers returned to the writers room. If it wasn’t planned, why was it the first thing written, why does it align so well with the rest of season 15? Look I know some people either a. hate destiel and refuse to see it even if it slaps them in the face, or b. have major heteronormative goggles on, or c. are just homophobes in denial, but 15x18 fits in perfectly with the narrative of season 15. Everything Cas says, everything that happened in that scene was so in character it just works. It fit. If you just rewatch the season whilst applying some critical thinking skills and pay attention to the narrative and character arcs, trust me, the confession fits in with pretty much every other plot point, and character story in the season.
Also: We have known for a while that the network did market research into Destiel, wanting to know if it would go down well or not. They were well aware of its popularity and considering it. Where would this have come from if not pitched by the showrunner? Dabb must have at least been considering it. If you take all of Dabb era into consideration, starting with mid season 11, all the way through the season 12 build up, season 13 grief arc, and then Bobo’s Destiel break up arc in late season 14, early season 15, it is clear that there was some toing and froing on the issue of Destiel, but ultimately, I still believe that Dabb was on board. He wrote 13x01 for christs sake. No way he wasn’t taking it seriously.
4. It’s always been about the brothers. The finale just stays true to what Supernatural is all about.
*rubs temples* Fundamentally FALSE: The show has time and again reasserted the message of “Family don’t end with blood”, as well as the messages of AKF and YANA. Sam and Dean may be at the heart of the show, but a heart can’t exist without a body to support it. Without bones, and lungs, and blood, and muscles, and a BRAIN. The finale abandons the shows core messages. It forces the characters back into their season 1 characterisations and the whole thing becomes hollow and souless. But I’m not here to complain, I’m here to lay down the facts. Dean’s heaven was supposed to be surrounded by loved ones right? We know OG Charlie Bradbury was gonna be in his Heaven, we also know CAS was gonna be in there. So this idea that the finale as it currently stands was how it was meant to be is wrong. Dean was supposed to die and reunite with his found family and loved ones. This alone would have been a far better ending than the one given. Do I think this was solely a covid issue? Fuck no.
The randoms that WERE in the finale are proof alone that they could have got people in and quarantined. We also have several actors on record saying that they WOULD have quarantined for the finale had they been asked to return but they WEREN’T.
Lies have been told. Samantha Ferris and Chad Limberg have confirmed that we have been lied to about the original plans for the finale.
This alone is proof enough that there is more plausibility in some of the conspiracy theories than any bullshit narrative some people are pushing in defence of the barbaric mess of a finale we were given.
So lets address some of the conspiracy theories now:
Conspiracy No.1: The CW Network reviewed Supernatural during the covid break, and due to homophobia, refused any Destiel arc that wasn’t already filmed, shut down any potential reciprocation from Dean, and forced Dabb to change his finale.
I don’t think this is entirely what happened. But I do think it is very strange how there is a such a huge disconnect particularly in Dean’s characterisations between what had come before the lockdown, and what came after. The one fact we have here, and please someone provide a source if you can find it because I know there is one, the finale script was still going through changes up to only 2 weeks before it was filmed. We know that there was some weird editing in 15x18 (which was still in post and uncompleted before lockdown) and we know from Jensen’s own mouth that there was more to the confession scene on Dean’s side that was cut. We also know that this isn’t the first time that Destiel heavy moments have been changed in post - the prayer scene is another big scene that went through a lot of changes and Bobo fought to have his script play out the way he wanted it.
There are certain things that in my own opinions, are basically true of SPN which I have put together from years of keeping one eye on the writers room, the network, and all the various comments made. My opinion is this:
The writers room has always been split on Destiel. Some writers heavily supported making it canon, others did not care, or were against it.
The Network considered it over the course of several years, did market research, green lit it, then changed their minds, possibly several times over the course of Dabb’s era. Destiel was pitched to the Network early in Dabb era.
The crew on set were also split. Some people heavily supported it, and worked to assist the reading, whereas others did not care/did not support it. The same can be said for the editing room.
Bob Singer supported the subtextual homoeroticism, but never supported bringing it into text (this is an opinion, but I think it aligns with everything we know about him.) IMO Bob Singer also supported subtextual homoeroticism between Sam and Dean - the guy is gross is what I’m saying. He isn’t exactly a progressive person.
Fun fact - a while back our old enemy Sera Gamble went on a Twitter rant about writers rooms and the ways a script goes through changes. I don’t think this was in relation to the SPN finale wank but she basically inadvertantly confirmed that the Network can step in and make sweeping changes to a script if they want to and if they decide they don’t like the direction of a story. Sera Gamble confirmed this as a fact.
Now. I’m not saying that this is what the CW did with Destiel. I just think its very strange how pre lockdown, the last thing filmed is a heartfelt homosexual declaration of love between Dean and Cas, and we have a finale script that Misha had not seen, but knew that he was meant to film as Castiel for 5 days (5 days on set is over half of an episode as far as I know). Then all of a sudden, Covid happens, and Cas is cut from the finale completely, a desperate attempt to bring Misha back only as Jimmy Novak takes place, which Misha rightly refuses, leading to a finale which makes zero sense narratively and appears in every way completely and utterly butchered.
The only explanation provided by anyone involved is that Covid meant changes had to happen - but that covid didn’t change the actual story at all.
But this makes no sense because we know that Cas was cut from the finale. This is FACT. Do not let anyone gaslight you into thinking otherwise. Misha was preparing to quaranting to return to set as Cas post Covid, so whatever happened to cut Cas from the finale, it wasn’t Covid.
I’m gonna have to Occum’s Razor this and say that the most logical explanation here is the one that is most likely true. Someone got cold feet with the Destiel story, and to prevent any possible interpretation that included Dean reciprocating, any hints of Destiel were removed from the finale script, including Castiel’s whole appearance.
Now, this isn’t me saying I think that Dabb’s original finale was full of Destiel love confessions and a homosexual kiss or whatever, but I am asking you all to really think about it and ask yourselves WHY Cas would have been totally cut from an episode he was supposed to be in at LEAST half of?
We will probably never know the real reason Cas was cut, but he WAS cut. I’m not saying it was all homophobia, but some fuckery went down.
Conspiracy No. 2: The CW Network changed the finale to make it into a Walker promo because they only cared about raising up Jared and not Jensen and Misha as they were losing them anyway.
I don’t agree with this in terms of the finale being butchered solely to make it into a Walker promo. There are however moments in the finale that are clearly supposed to be Walker Easter Eggs and added to excite fans of Jared/Sam in particular such as Sam’s gratuitous and unnecessary topless scene, as well as the call on the “case in Austin”.
I will take this moment to say something pretty damn controversial though.
*Deep breath*
The fact is, Dean Winchester has been the “lead” character of Supernatural’s narrative for years now, with Sam often being sidelined and not given great storylines himself. Even in Season 15, right up until the finale, I myself felt bad for Sam sometimes because so much of this show has become all about Dean. Jensen Ackles is clearly the better actor when it comes to emotional story arcs, so the emotional heart of the story has most often leant on him.
So you can understand my confusion, when this is turned on its head in the final episode, to make Sam carry all the emotional weight, and have the most lines/screentime, and story resolution (even if his story resolution was just as crappy as Dean’s).
If we pretend that Destiel is not a thing, and ignore Cas’s confession, the story change in the finale from Dean focus to Sam focus is still rather suspicious. Again, I’m not saying I completely approve of or agree to the conspiracy theory that Walker influenced the butchering of the script, but I can believe that perhaps a note went down from the CW to someone like Bob Singer, to emphasise Sam/Jared more than they perhaps would normally, because the CW wanted to shine the spotlight on Jared to raise excitement for Walker.
I can also believe this note might have said something like “we wanna cater to fans of Sam/Jared the most - don’t do anything to piss them off.” but now I am getting into my own conspiracy theories so by all means dismiss this as me being bitter.
Conspiracy No.3: Dabb purposely made it bad, as a secret message to Destiel fans that he had been silenced, by layering meta clues into the episode that he knew fans would notice.
I doubt this one is true. Though some of the theories are quite compelling. The old vampire silent movie theory for instance starts off quite well, but loses me the moment it brings up Urban Dictionary slang.
Sometimes I have just had to accept that Supernatural is a bad show that is sometimes accidentally a masterpiece. However, some writers really did go That Deep with their stories - anything by Ben Edlund or Steve Yockey for instance, their episodes are meta masterpieces with a hundred different layers of beautiful subtextual storytelling and are a joy to analyse. Bobo Berens has certainly done some A+++ work especially now we KNOW that he was working hard all this time to bring Destiel to canon text (so any analysis of Destiel in the subtext in his episodes is very accurate). There have been many other key elements analysed over the years which have been confirmed true. Cas’s death in Season 12, Dean’s time as a demon in season 10, Season 11 ending in unity of dark and light, these were all plot points predicted by meta writers just by analysing the narrative. Sometimes the writers really have been very smart and they do add things to the show to aid us in our meta.
Richard Speight Jr for instance, confirmed that SPN has a visual library that the production team use to give clues and hints in the narrative. Pizza, for example, always means a lie has been told. Whenever Pizza is being eaten or even just mentioned on screen, there is dishonesty in that particular moment.
The beers also have a very specific message and the one thing I can’t let go about the finale, was that Dean was drinking El Sol beer. The beer his dad gave him, that was terrible.
El Sol has been used in the show to indicate something being wrong, a fake reality, or another lie, for the longest time. It is the beer of deception.
The fact that in the final episode of this entire show, Dean is in Heaven, supposedly at peace, and then he gets handed an El Sol beer to drink? Thats a HUGE red flag for any meta writer watching who can read SPNs visual library.
If they had given him the Margiekugel beer of family then it would make sense. Dean is in Heaven, with Bobby, his family, at peace. Margiekugel should have been the beer of choice. But nope. El Sol. Something is wrong.
I don’t know if it was Dabb, or Singer, or some disgruntled ADs and crew members who added these elements into the finale, but their very presence confirms some message of Wrongness.
I could go into a huge rant about Vampire Mimes not making sense and the very glaringly obvious symbolism of cutting out peoples tongues too, but that is high school level film analysis. It’s obvious. It means to silence someone. There is validity in interpreting this as Dabb saying he was silenced. I don’t know how true it is, but i can’t 100% dismiss it, because as I said, this is high school analysis levels of obvious subtextual storytelling.
So in summary, whilst I don’t think that Dabb intentionally went out of his way to sabotage his own script, and leave a breadtrail of secret messages for savvy fans to put together to confirm that he was silenced by an evil network into not getting what he wanted... I do think that there is validity in questioning these odd choices for the finale. Cutting out tongues? Vampire Mimes? El Sol beer?
The evidence is somewhat compelling is all I’m saying. I don’t believe the full conspiracy theories, but as I have said many times before, some fuckery went down.
So What Do I Believe?
That some fuckery went down and whatever company line they are pushing is bullshit.
I believe that the original script included Cas (since thats fact). I believe that the original script probably always had Dean dying on a vampire hunt (due to Jensen’s issues with it and in particular, his sarcastic comments about vampires in the past year or so which in hindsight are hilarious and prove he never really came to terms with Dean’s idiotic death). I believe Dabb’s original script was some less crappy version of what we got, which potentially included showing Jack rescuing Cas from the Empty and resolving the outstanding Empty plot points (potentially this was actually a 15x19 plot since Mark P commented that his final scenes were supposed to be with Jack and Cas), had Cas reunite with Dean in Heaven and had them have a discussion about Cas’s confession. I believe that there was probably a lot of back and forth over how to handle that with some people wanting Dean to obviously reciprocate and others believing they should keep it ambiguous. I believe that Dean and Cas would have reunited with Charlie Bradbury, and Bobby Singer, and possibly others (though if this was the case it must have been very early on since no one ever looped in Sam Ferris, Chad Linberg or any other Roadhouse people).
I believe that Sam’s ending probably didn’t change much, but I do feel that initially they were planning on him ending up with Eileen, because it is the only thing that narratively makes sense. Cutting Eileen and giving him a blurry wife is something I won’t ever understand and Jared’s bullshit explanations are quite clearly pulled out of his ass to appease bronly types. I believe the reunion on the bridge would have included Cas and Jack, with a final shot of all four of them together, at peace (as this aligns with Alex’s comments from around a year or so ago that the final shot was all four of them). (I also am not sure it was always supposed to be on a bridge since the foreshadowing in an earlier episode showed Dean, Cas and Sam all in the Roadhouse together).
I believe that script went through countless changes and redrafts, and not even production people or the types that some fandom people claim as their “sources” would even have seen those early scripts, since even Misha never saw it. I believe that these rumours of Dabb never having Cas in his finale and ignoring all Destiel elements likely come from people who only saw later versions, weren’t party to network discussions and felt bitter about the final scripts they did see (being the crappy butchered one that was ultimately filmed). Those “sources” are now spreading rumours to discredit Dabb.
I obviously believe Dabb is a weak ass pushover who either didn’t care enough to fight back, or gave up since he’s been stuck with fucking Bob Singer on his back for years, but I will NEVER believe he didn’t care about the DeanCas love story, because he has been one of the few writers who has championed for it for years. You can’t look back at Dabb’s episodes in earlier seasons and claim he didn’t care. Dabb was a writer whose creative ideas were beaten out of him by an unforgiving Network only concerned about where their future money was coming from. Do I think he gave up too easily? Yes. But I also have one other huge reason for not believing the bullshit about Dabb being this anti-Destiel villain.
Bobo. Because if Bobo truly believed Dabb was gonna fuck that up at the end, I don’t think he would have given us Cas’s love confession to begin with. If he had known it was gonna end like that, I think he would have reconsidered, because had Cas not confessed his love, I don’t think he would have been cut from the finale. Bobo - a gay man, would not have wanted such a horrible message for queer fans being put across in the show he worked so hard on. He started writing that confession scene the day they returned to the writers room. Dabb would have been there, would have seen what he was writing, probably discussed it with him, after all, other episodes were written with the confession in mind. No way was Dabb planning to fuck up the ending knowing what Bobo was giving us. Nope.
Something went very wrong over lockdown. Someone, somewhere up the chain of power caught wind of the confession scene in 15x18, realised that it demanded a resolution which would make Dean Winchester, their protagonist, queer, and pulled the plug. I believe this did not come from a place of homophobia, but of bad business sense.
The CW is constantly trying to win the approval and attention of the one demo group that they seem to fail at getting the most: young straight men. Supernatural was one of their only remaining shows that appeals to young straight men, and Dean Winchester is more often than not the fave character of those young straight men who project onto him. Making Dean Winchester, established Han Solo of Supernatural, queer and in love with his best friend in the finale would have come across as a betrayal to those young straight men. The CW probably feared they would lose that demo group for good, and with a show like Walker starting soon with Jared at the helm, they couldn’t take the risk.
Hence there was probably a whole bunch of back and forth script redrafts with the Network, with Dabb and Singer fighting to make a finale that would appeal to everyone. There was most likely no way that they could bring Cas back without addressing what had already been filmed, because any resolution of that plot would either a. make Dean queer, or b. address it awkwardly by having Dean reject Cas (this storyline would probably have been slammed by critics worse than the finale because it meant addressing it. It might have got the attention of LGBTQ activist groups and caused a bigger shitstorm than what we got). The best option was therefore C. Bury it and Cas, pretend it never happened. Never address it again and distract Dean with other things. Hope that Destiel fans will accept no answer from Dean as ambiguous enough to imagine a future reunion rather than shutting it down with a rejection, and still keep hold of the blissfully ignorant heteronormative straight boys so they can carry over to Walker when it starts.
I also believe (controversially probably) that there was concern that any resolution of Dean and Cas would have overshadowed network darling Jared Padalecki. If Dean and Cas had come together in the finale, with a very clearly textual homosexual reunion, then that would have been all anyone talked about. The reviewers, the critics, the audience, everyone. It would have been nothing but Dean and Cas (and look, if they did think this, they were right, Destiel trending over the US ELECTION.)
So what is the network to do, when they are losing the two stars who would get the most attention from this storyline? The one star they were holding on to and getting his own show, relegated to third place in the finale of the show where he was first on the call sheet? Nope. That’s pretty unacceptable. Even without Walker I can imagine people at all levels side eyeing the Destiel thing over the years. This IS a show about two brothers, and their relationship should be the core relationship, we can’t have one brother pushed aside in the finale to make way for a queer relationship that will get all the attention instead. It was never gonna get approved for this reason ALONE.
At the end of the day, if I look at it from a business perspective, it makes far more sense that the CW shut down Destiel, rather than “oh Dabb never cared and ruined it because he’s an idiot.” The writers cared, and had built on that story over years. But their mistake was leaving any Destiel resolution to the finale. If they had instead gone and got Dean and Cas together in early season 15, then they could have ended it in a way that satisfied everyone. Destiel wouldn’t have threatened pulling focus away from Sam and Dean, and the show could have gone out on a high.
When I lay out all the conspiracy theories, and line them up next to the cold hard facts, the conspiracy theories in some way or another, make more sense. To believe the company line, the narrative we have been fed, is to ignore your own eyes, ears, and memories pre March 2020.
All I’m asking people to do is take a look at the show, the narrative presented in the show, and the information presented above. I’m not telling you to believe what I’ve written here, half of which is just my own opinion. I’m asking you to ask yourselves if it makes sense to you. Because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied.
#destiel#deancas#supernatural#spn finale conspiracies#fandom conspiracies#anti spn finale#castiel#dean winchester#destiel is canon#and also not canon i guess#forever stuck in a state of almost#schrodingers destiel#the rancid nutwork#anti CW#my opinions#plus a whole bunch of logic#and a refusal to believe blatant lies#meta essay#I wrote this all out in one afternoon#because it got too much for my brain#and i was fed up of all the info going around#and the mockery#reducing destiel shippers once again to deluded teenagers#which we are not#nor have we ever been#anyway i now feel a sense of calm#and peace#and i am going to make some tea
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S1 Dean and S4 Cas are a relationship dynamic that hasn't been explored to the fullest by this fandom. I'm so disappointed. Imagine the flirting, the fighting, the absolute adorable chaos that would come from these two. You thought there was sexual tension before? You're in for a whole new eye fucking drama here.
Dean being downright playful with Castiel and not so reserved because he hasn't been to hell or lost people yet. He isn't jaded or as paranoid so when he sees this literal angel who squints his eyes and tilts his head a lot, Dean is completely enamoured. He can't believe his mom was right about angels; he can't believe angels were so goddamn hot. He's always using cheesy one liners on Cas that completely go over the angel's head.
"Are you from Tennessee? Cuz you're the only ten I see."
"Dean, you know I'm a celestial being from heaven and not the U.S. state of tennessee."
Castiel's confusion with Dean immediately turning into fondness into complete adoration. Dean immediately breaks Cas out of his robotic solider persona because he's too damn playful that Cas simply couldn't keep up.
Castiel always just being in awe of Dean because he hasn't lifted this soul from hell yet and therefore doesn't know it so intimately. This soul is a complete mystery to him and he's so freaking intrigued. He's always staring at Dean - even more so than in canon - because his soul is so bright and warm and lovely. He wants to know what it feels like to hold it close, to touch it, protect it. Dean calls him out on the staring with a smug smirk and a wink. Cas tries to wink back but ends up blinking both eyes and Dean is a mess of laughter. Castiel is confused but he loves Dean's laugh. Dean always mentions "personal space" but gets closer to Cas as he says it. A wide smile on his face.
Whenever Dean has nightmares and wakes up to find Castiel watching over him, he just grabs his hand and pulls him into the bed with him. None of this repression shit. Not with a literal angel of the lord. Dean doesn't have faith in many things but he does in this one awkward cosmic entity who once told him he counted Dean's freckles and he had 234 approximately. Dean thinks it's ok to be vulnerable around this one.
Dean would immediately jump into teaching Castiel pop culture and taking him out to movies and sharing his casettes. He'd show Cas all his favorite things, like an excited child because he's been alone for so long with Sam at college and no one has ever shown an interest in the things he likes. His dad was always busy and Sam was always so different from him. Dean loves the happy surprised look on Cas' face everytime he shows him something so mundane but new all at once to the angel. Like pie or leather jackets or cats. Castiel would watch new Dr Sexy episodes with Dean and have long conversations with him about it and Dean would be so freaking happy.
Cas would want to share every small human experience with Dean. Like opening a jar for the first time, or firing a gun, or driving. Yes, S1 Dean would let Cas drive the impala. You can't convince me otherwise. Cas is practically buzzing the first time they go to a grocery store together to pick some carrots up for Sam. Dean thinks he's adorable. Cas would bring Dean small rocks he thinks are cool and Dean would line each and every one of them up on baby's dashboard.
They're always smiling around each other. Dean's playful flirting and Cas' dry humor has everyone rolling their eyes at how sickeningly cute they are. These two would fall head over heels with each other in .3 seconds and be fucking in the back of the impala in .4 seconds. It would not be a slowburn at all. They'd be so goddamn in love that they immediately start fighting heaven and hell to be together. They'd have the world saved by the end of season 1 and their wedding would be in season 2. Someone please start writing for this dynamic. I'm begging you.
#supernatural#destiel#deancas#dean winchester#castiel#dean x castiel#spn#S1 Dean#S4 Castiel#Season 1 Dean#Season 4 Castiel#Season 1 Dean x Season 4 Castiel#S1 Dean x S4 Castiel
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Episode 67 (wooo!) 4.07 It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester!
What I consider to be the beginning of Castiel’s arc toward truly understanding Free Will and eventually accepting it for himself, this episode is packed with things that will become central tenets of the show for the rest of the series. Considering this is Julie Siege’s first episode, and she only wrote a total of six episodes over two seasons, her impact on the core of the narrative of the entire series can’t really be overstated.
Sam battles with his own power, his addiction to it, and can’t even see just how much it’s already begun to burn him. He also gets to meet angels for the first time, and it really blows the shine off the whole heaven, god, and prayer thing he’d always believed so strongly in before. And that revelation-- that angels are dicks-- doesn’t really help Sam with his own internal struggle this season. Poor Sam. Maybe he’s just not “sincere” enough in his belief in that Great Pumpkin...
Things referenced in this episode:
The Superwiki page for this episode
My tag for this episode
But especially these posts:
a conversation with lizbob from January 2017 (accidental meta)
rewatch notes from April 2017
rambling about Cas and what his confession means to him here
a simple observation on a single screencap from my March 2019 rewatch
rewatch notes from June 2019
rewatch notes from January 2020
thoughts on Cas’s character arc, specifically in relation to Anna’s character arc
from Lizbob’s Dean and Cas are In Love series (there will be a lot of these for the next 4~ seasons!)
Casting sides for Tracy, Don, and Uriel (the ones for Uriel are worth the click alone)
The extended scene of Uriel and Cas talking about their orders (less than 2 minutes, on youtube)
the CW promo for this episode (30 seconds, on youtube)
Listen now on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!
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penny for your thoughts on salmondean codependency ?
Sure. Fair warning it’s long (was longer but I stopped myself.)
I think it’s complicated in a show that’s had so many different showrunners because they’ve all handled Sam and Dean’s relationship very differently. In Kripke’s era (s1-5) there was a romanticization of the bond. Sure there was a lot of in-depth exploration of how they wound up at the place they were at, spoiler alert: it was all because of John and his obsessive crusade to find the demon that killed his wife. That’s all he cared about and as a result, Sam and Dean had to be everything to each other. But Kripke had no intention of dismantling that at any point because he was (and always had been) writing a tragedy. Gamble continued that too. There was no room for anyone else in their lives and it would always just be the two of them against the world. So Cas had to go. Bobby had to go.
(Actually, it's funny because Gamble didn't intend this at the time, her plan was to kill Cas off, but by Edlund creating the masterpiece that is The Man Who Would Be King, he not only saved Cas from being seen as a villain, but he also deepened Dean and Cas' relationship in such a profound way and inextricably linked the two of them emotionally. And since Cas was eventually brought back, that laid the foundation for a lot of what their relationship would become.)
Up until this point, there hadn’t really been any significant dismantling of perhaps the more unhealthy parts of Sam and Dean’s relationship. Enter Carver. He stripped things down and started to explore what drove these characters. What they wanted and why they couldn’t have it. It starts with Dean being mad at Sam for not looking for him in purgatory, which sets up the whole speech in the s8 finale of Sam’s guilt about letting Dean down, but the thing is, Dean was never honest with Sam about his year away either. He never told Sam he could have gotten out much sooner if he hadn’t stayed to find Cas. I mean Dean had assumed Sam was up there alone doing God knows what to try to bring him back, and yet still he stayed in Purgatory because things were clear there. He needed Cas. Anyway, I just find that interesting, but Cas isn’t a victim of Sam and Dean’s relationship in s8.
Who gets the honour of being cast aside? That would be Benny and Amelia, two characters they introduced in s8 specifically to highlight that Sam and Dean’s relationship doesn’t allow for anyone else to be a significant part of their life. I mean that’s nothing new, we’ve watched that happen many times before. Lisa even said as much to Dean. The thing is this time? It’s framed as a truly sad thing. That moment at the end of 8x10 when Dean has just ended things with Benny and Sam leaves Amelia, and they’re sitting alone drinking beer and watching tv is such a hollow empty moment. This is not what they want. But it’s the way things have to be.
I’m actually fascinated by Sam and Dean’s conversation in the church in the s8 finale. Not so much Dean’s assertion that there is no one else he would put before Sam, but more so what provokes it, which is Sam saying “who are you going to turn to instead of me. Another angel? Another vampire?” See the thing is Dean saying he would always put Sam first is not news. We know this and it’s not really an unhealthy statement in itself either. A lot of people would put their sibling above anything else, not less a sibling who you raised and is the most important person to you. But in this context? After what Sam said? It just highlights how unhealthy they are if Sam believes that Dean having other people in his life means he doesn’t love him enough. That he’s a disappointment to him. That’s so profoundly fucked up.
(Note, Dean tells Sam that he killed Benny for him but he doesn’t say anything about Cas. I think like I said before, this is because Cas and Dean’s relationship has largely existed out of the Sam and Dean stuff up to this point - Sam and Cas don’t even really have much of a relationship yet besides both of their connections to Dean.)
And then from here, things start getting steadily worse. But we also keep being shown how bad they are. Dean lying to Sam, taking away his free will by letting Gadreel possess him. Dean sending Cas away, Kevin dying. It’s all awful. The whole “there ain’t no me if there ain’t no you line” from 9x01 isn’t really said by Dean, it’s Gadreel, but that is how Dean feels. He does think that’s all he’s good for. And over the season we’re shown how much of himself and what he truly wants he’s had to give up because of his ingrained “Save Sammy” and “Sammy comes first” mentality. It’s always been this way for him. In 9x07 we see that he had found a happy home, a good father figure, and his first love, a first love might I add that he had to leave behind with no real explanation because Sam needed him, and Sam comes first.
I mean just one episode earlier we had him rushing out the door elated about seeing Cas and spending time with him, only for their time together to come to sad and melancholic end when Dean once again leaves Cas behind without any real explanation, because despite what he wants Sammy comes first. What he wants doesn’t matter.
See I think after the Gadreel stuff comes out is where the narrative starts to get a little wonky for me. You can clearly see that this was intended to be a shorter story that they ended up stretching out to a much longer one because of renewals. There’s also the fact that this is a formula show so they can’t necessarily be separated for longer than an episode or two. S10 is a rough one to get through at times, I think the themes still mostly hold up but it’s a rough one to get through.
S10 highlights all the connections that Dean has, Cas, Charlie, Crowley even, but Sam doesn’t really have those bonds in the same way. For Sam it’s just Dean, so he goes down a reckless destructive “do anything to save Dean!” path and so many innocents pay the price, and ultimately with the release of The Darkness, the whole world.
They skirted right up to the edge of exploring just how toxic and dangerous their relationship had become in the season 10 finale.
DEAN: I let Rudy die. How was that not evil? I know what I am, Sam. But who were you when you drove that man to sell his soul... Or when you bullied Charlie into getting herself killed? And to what end? A..a good end? A just end? To remove the Mark no matter what the consequences? Sam, how is that not evil? I have this thing on my arm, and you're willing to let the Darkness into the world.
I can’t say evil is the right word, they were never evil, but they were wilfully blind to everything and everyone else when it came to saving each other. S10 tested my love for the show because after watching it, because there was certainly a feeling that the two of them had become the villains of this story. And don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a problem with that, it’s just after 2 seasons of this I can’t say I had a lot of faith that this was going to be properly addressed or if we were going to keep going in circles around it. Keep being shown, it’s bad and then nothing much being done to fix it. Your mileage may vary on how it was handled, but I think s11 did a relatively ok job considering it wasn’t the end of the story, and the show needed to keep going.
See from Dean’s side a lot of the codependency rests on 1. His father’s orders to always save Sammy 2. His low self-esteem where he sees himself as nothing but a blunt instrument. 3. His guilt at not being able to perfectly fulfil every familial role in Sam’s life 4. His belief that no one could choose to love him but family has to love you. 5. The unhealthy example of what it should look like to love someone that he got from John. You give up everything but them.
For Sam (and honestly it’s not as clear for me as Dean’s side is so feel free to correct me/disagree on this) 1. Everytime he’s tried to leave and create his own life it’s never ended well. 2. His guilt over wanting freedom and a normal life when he was younger (I’m referring specifically to Stanford era here) 3. His guilt over everything Dean has given up for him. 4. John. 5. Jess.
Ultimately it all comes down to isolation. They both had to be everything to each other, and the deeper they got into this fight, the more people that they lost, the tighter they clung to this notion of family and brothers. I think s11 (and 11x23 in particular) was an important turning point, both for Sam and Dean’s relationship, as well as for them as individuals. Because they weren’t alone there anymore. Cas was there. Sam let Dean walk to his death. Of course, it would devastate him, but he knew it was what had to be done. And he didn’t walk out of that bar and go back to the bunker alone. He had Cas, he had someone who cared about him and wanted to help him and talk to him. Sure Dean asked Cas to take care of Sam for him (you know after Cas offered to walk to his death with him) but Sam let him. He let him be there for him. We didn’t get to see much before the BMOL showed up and blasted Cas away, but still, we saw enough.
I think that’s a significant difference to note why their relationship was different in the Dabb era. It wasn’t just them anymore. Cas was an important member of their family and given a level of importance he’d never been given before and couldn’t have been when the story they were telling was of the dangers of their codependency. Mary was back. Eventually, Jack would become a part of their unit too. Just the two of them wasn’t enough for them anymore. This is made abundantly clear with all of Dean’s desperate attempts to get Cas to stay in s12, followed by his inability to keep going when they lose Cas and Mary in s13. Similarly, Sam really struggles when they lose Jack and fail to get Mary back later in the season.
Another big moment is Dean letting Sam go alone to lead the hunters against the BMOL in 12x22 while he stays back to try and reach Mary. Like he tells Mary, he’s had to be a brother, a father and a mother to Sam and he never stopped seeing him as his kid, but in that moment he makes a choice. He lets Sam take charge and he shows that he trusts him and believes in him. He knows he can handle it.
Sometimes it’s not even a character growth thing. Sometimes having other people there stops you from making destructive choices even though that’s still your first instinct. I’m thinking specifically of 13x21 after Sam was killed. Dean would have run headlong into that nest of vampires and got himself torn apart, but Cas was there to stop him. He was able to make him see reason.
Basically, I think that for a long time, they thought the only relationship they could have was each other, which then became a self-fulfilling prophecy because their desperate attempts to keep each other around led to them losing the people around them. They eventually started to learn that that wasn’t true, they could have more, they were allowed to want more, and that it wasn’t an either-or situation. Dean didn’t have to choose between Sam and Cas. They didn’t have to choose between each other or Jack. The same goes for Mary. Different relationships can coexist without threatening each other, and not say that their relationship in s12-15 was all smooth sailing, but it was certainly so very different from everything that came before.
(There’s maybe a point to be made about how they didn’t have anyone or anything in the finale and how that relates to the story we got, but honestly I have no idea what the intention was with any of the choices made in that episode so I’ll leave it at that for now.)
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Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 257
Keep Calm and Carry On/Sleep No More
“Keep Calm and Carry On”
Plot Description: as Crowley conducts a desperate search for Lucifer’s vessel, Dean must come to grips with an unbelievable sight: the return of his mother
Oh. So NOW we’re getting a “the road so far”??? But not to carry on wayward son…feels wrong
Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: No, but not for the normal reasons. We picked right back up with Dean and Mary
Omg Dean’s right around my age now, too??? I can’t
Oh right. Castiel got super banished from the bunker at the end of last episode
Everything that Mary’s saying about how many times she and Dean have met over the course of the series sounds so fake, but it all really happened
This lady just bribed a veterinarian with like…$200k maybe? To dig the bullet out of Sam. Ohhhhhh, she’d shot him in the leg!
This interrogation is going super well for London Lady (maybe one day I’ll learn her name). That. Um. That was sarcastic.
Omg Mary almost shot her son’s boyfriend
Two things: Cas initiating a hug!!!! And two, when you see your boyfriend who you thought died when you sent him to go blow up god’s sister
Castiel and Mary are kind of funny together. Dean, on a normal laptop
Mary: is that a computer?
Cas: Yes. I don’t trust them
(But like….he’s and angel and she’s from 1983)
The face of a man who just realized his mom is remembering the times his parents fucked in the car that would eventually be his….and his confused boyfriend he looks to directly afterward
Lady. No. It’s just that your country is so much smaller. It’s easier to control monster populations.
Wait, are the writers trying to make supernatural beings a metaphor for guns? Because she was just saying there hasn’t been a monster related death in the UK since 1965…guess I’ll have to watch this season to find out
We must stay strong. I love when Cas gets to show his ruthless side. That was almost season 4 Cas levels. They soften him so much, which I also love..:but every so often, the old Castiel comes out. It’s just nice to see he’s still got it
I wanna go to a fruit stand slash outdoor cafe!! Why do Mary, her son, and her son’s boyfriend get to and I don’t??
Mmmmm, it was only 100k. But man…it’s hard to say no to that when you’ve got doctor student loans
Did you really think they wouldn’t lock the cellar they’re keeping you in, Sam???
Do angel abilities stop at consciousness? Like Cas can heal just about anything but waking up someone who was knocked unconscious?
Does this other UK men of letters woman have some sort of angel warding that keeps her safe from whatever Cas can do??? Guess it doesn’t matter, Mary just stabbed her
Oh, you fucked up BIG TIME, lady. And maybe I should have had just a little more faith in Sam. I mean, he’s lived through all those things before, and every hurtful thing Dean’s said to him…
I can’t believe he said the “saving people, hunting things” line now, here in season 12
(The Crowley subplot was super small and almost unimportant. He was literally just jumping around to where Lucifer HAD been, all the people he’s burnt out by needing them as a vessel)
“Sleep No More”
Plot Description: this terrifying story is assembled from footage discovered in the wreckage of Le Verrier Space Station
*fingers crossed I don’t see “to be continued…” at the end of this episode*
*google translates “le verrier” from French to English ahead of time just in case that’s an important derail* it means glassmaker
I can’t tell if the video’s stalled or if they made this part intentionally ACTUALLY pitch black. Just blank screen. Feeling like I’m watching Season 8 Episode 3 of game of thrones
It’s really been a few minutes of a blank screen…i signed up for doctor who not a scripted drama podcast. It’s giving Wolf 359 but I’m annoyed
They’re orbiting Neptune…I’m literally absorbing NOTHING ELSE. Except Clara thinks this place looks like a Japanese restaurant in space
…I watched like 8-10 minute just like this…I just fixed it. There was supposed to be picture this WHOLE TIME. I thought it was a weird style choice. I hate this
You know…we DO need more multi-season Doctor and companion pairings with no romantic tension. This is no hate to Nine/TenRose (a little ick to Eleven and Amy), but you wouldn’t get these dumbass conversations about how people don’t call things that look high tech and whatnot “space [noun (restaurant, champagne, and hat were used in the show)]”. There’s a big difference between how you act around your crush and how you act around your bff, and unfortunately Donna was robbed of a good deal of her time due to Ten’s time being nearly up. But Twelve and Clara? Have had a LOT of time together to get to be dumb together as friends, and we get it on screen
Ok ok ok. So there’s some kind of creature made of sand aboard this space laboratory that’s named glassmaker where this rescue mission is taking place. I’m connecting the two dots
Why’d that one guy not go with LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE?? They were all in a group and he just split off for no reason while they were running
I’m having less and less faith that this is a one part episode. They’re spending entirely too much time trying to get in touch with their missing teammate
Why would you put a hologram of a 1960s-ish girl group singing Mr Sandman on a 38th century dohickey you’ve called Morpheus but refuse to explain? I’m saying, the thing shuts with a person inside, the small hologram appears singing Mr Sandman. I’m just saying, would we be putting 4th century music on a space station today?
Ewwwwwww, why’d they put turbo capitalism on Neptune??? Morpheus gives you the energy to work for a month straight in, like, five minute time. Thanks! I hate it!
I did not connect the dots. These sand creatures are potentially made of sleep dust…sure
I hate this dude. He’s trying to shorten the amount of time people sleep even MORE
The original crew of this space station sucks too. Why would you make the password to open all doors singing Mr Sandman (my phone tried to autofill Saxon…awww John Simms Master)
PREACH, Doctor! Sleep IS important and blessed! Please ignore how late I’ll be up tonight for the mha leaks…I’m sorry, Doctor
WHAT. The sleep dust is collecting the footage from all this?? That…feels like a step too far for my suspension of disbelief
What the fuuuuuuuck. Horrible Turbo Capitalist is trying to make these sandmen the new human because…..they’re more efficient workers? I don’t know. All I’ve seen them do is near mindlessly attack.
Ok. So the whole premise is that they embedded the signal that turns you into a sandman into this video that you’re now watching, and they made it exciting but nonsensical with no real conclusion. This feels like they tried to make another Blink-esque episode but it didn’t work as well
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Hordak vs. Redemption
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Here’s a youtube video I was linked.
I’ve responded with this comment, and it was long enough that I think it deserves to be in a post:
“Wonderful analysis, my friend. I'm still watching it now.
Shadow Weaver - I wrote up a response when you linked this to my tumblr, but that was before I finished your video. I agree with your points entirely here. I would say however that Catra and Adora haven't necessarily "forgiven" her in any way, they are just moving on.
Hordak - I think more needs to be said about his dynamic with Catra in season 4. I found it so interesting how he stomped her down, and when she started doing the same to him, he began to trust and respect her. But more also needs to be said about how he lashed out when he thought Entrapta betrayed him. He was no longer that cold echo of Prime - Hordak was CHOOSING to act evil this time, he was choosing to lash out and fight, from hurt and betrayal, but also as an attempt to connect to Entrapta again!!!! He so wanted to be fighting her robots, to face her on the battlefield, see her recordings, and maybe figure out why she would leave him.
This makes him remarkably similar to Catra. Because Entrapta has always paralleled Adora, as early back as when she first switched sides and became Catra's rival for Hordak's favouritism, but Hordak goes from paralleling Shadow Weaver to Catra herself. So hurt and angry and acting like the evil bad guy because that's all he believes he can be. Entrapta coming into his life and caring about him made him feel like he didn't deserve their friendship, and when she "leaves" him, he immediately accepts Catra's lie, because he believes he can't be anything except a monster. It validates all those self doubts he had before. It's easy for him to trust Catra after that, because he is nothing without her, and she too has become something monstrous, due to what he did to her.
Makes it all the more heartbreaking when he finds out that Catra was lying, he trusted the wrong person, and basically let Entrapta die, or - at the bare minimum - is letting her get rescued by his sworn enemy, because HE let her down!!! He should have stopped it from happening, should have trusted her, but fell so easily for Catra's lie and got so absorbed in his revenge plot that he basically betrayed her himself, and now She-Ra is making up for HIS mistakes! If he didn't already feel undeserving, he certainly does now - It makes him feel so devastated, worthless, and enraged!!!! And the only thing he can do is throw away all his ambitions for beating the Rebellion, and turn the gun on Catra.
But I was still rooting for Catra during their fight. After all, he had the big laser arm cannon, she was at her lowest. And when she wins, unlike when she beat Shadow Weaver in season 1 with Hordak's approval and her friends by her side, it's not a moment of victory for her at all.... it's just so devastating. In beating down Hordak, she's just punching herself. Like she did when he was first heartbroken over Entrapta, like she did when she told him he didn't need her recordings, she screams at him words that she wants to scream at herself. She fully realises what she has become, and can't stand herself any more.
All the more poignant when Glimmer comes into the room, and they're both alone together, and Prime zaps these three broken souls onto his ship.
I really like Hordak's role in season 5. I like that we had Entrapta going on adventures with the Best Friend Squad, growing as a person and making so many friends, while Hordak had this parallel story of reflecting on his desires in Prime's ship. He had everything he'd been aiming for, he was by Prime's side and even perhaps his favourite, but.... to be this way, Hordak had to have everything about himself REMOVED. All of his pain, anguish, all of that humanity which drove him to very specific, non-Prime-inspired acts of villainy in season 4.... There was no room for Hordak in Prime's life, only the purest of his clones.
When Hordak sees Catra and remembers her, he's really scared by the pain and anger that her presence brings up. He can't stand what he was before, all of his feelings. But.... they're still a part of him. And when he finds Entrapta's crystal, engraved with a message he doesn't even understand, instead of throwing it away, he keeps it close.... when he starts getting memory flashes, after his SECOND mindwipe, he doesn't tell Prime to erase them from him, he thinks about them and remembers her. And it's so painful for him because he can't go back to how things were, but at the same time, nostalgic too. When he finally meets her, he isn't ready to leave Prime, nor is he willing to capture her. He simply states, "What have you done to me?" Hordak cannot go back to how he was before he met Entrapta and experienced friendship, to how he was before that really emotional and painful time in his life. No matter how many times his mind is wiped, he is marked by the changes he experienced with their bond.
And Hordak in the finale decides to embrace this. He is asked to erase this part of himself by shooting Entrapta, but after holding the gun to her face, he decides he WILL not do it. He will never let her down again. And he is PROUD to be Hordak, to be an individual, and he will eradicate Prime for trying to destroy everything that is unique in this universe. He returns Entrapta's gift of free will with his own self actualisation, and freedom for all.
It's.... so, so sad watching Prime take him over. Both the instant redaction of his freedom in the final version, and the heartbreaking extended version where Prime holds Entrapta by the neck and screams at her, in Hordak's body, that they are most unworthy and unloved. It's feelings they have both struggled with for so long, and seeing them have their bright hope replaced with only Prime, being so close to each other at the end of the world, but still ripped apart and alone with Him as Etheria crumbles, it's true despair.
And the moment Adora frees him, puts her hands to the side of his face, and he recalls the day he found a baby in a portal, taking her back to the Freight Zone in a strange moment of compassion.... how Adora gently holds his hands as he stands up... Entrapta's excitement as she realises he is free, and launches into a hug.... Adora smiling and turning back to return to Catra....
It's profound and beautiful.
It's not a redemption arc in any traditional sense. Hordak was not fighting to make up for his past crimes. He was fighting for himself and for the person he cared about. He was fighting to be free to MAKE those choices about how to make things up, whether he wants to or not, what he will be moving forward.
"Are we all, like, okay with this now?" - We don't know if the other characters will forgive him, but the audience is able to understand that Hordak deserves a chance to become better, to live in peace. Even if he is still a grouchy bastard, even if he shows little remorse, and has to work on rebuilding the damage he's done for the rest of his life, he deserves the chance to make those choices.”
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