#spn universe discourse

[soullessjack]

high as shit thinking about how steven universe fans would never survive supernatural . The discourse would be insane

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

I've been thinking about the Richard Siken discourse again, and why exactly, besides the obvious, I've always found it so cringe that people read Crush as if it's actual honest to god intentional fanwork of Supernatural.

Obvious: the timelines don't add up, artists are their own people existing on their own terms, your framework is your framework and you cannot assume other people have worlds just as small, and most people do not write a whole fucking collection of poetry and go to the trouble of getting it published because they like a TV show. you are underestimating the slog of the publishing process.

Less obvious: having not seen SPN, but being culturally SPN-ish because I am on tumblr dot com, as far as I can tell the reason that people think Crush is a fanwork is because a reoccurring motif is Boys In Cars. Hot Guys Being Hot In Cars.

But that's because Hot Guys In Cars is just like, a thing. If you like guys you probably like Guys In Cars. It has nothing to do with if you like cars or not. I am utterly indifferent to cars. Not only did I never learn the breeds of cars: the general classification of cars eludes me, because I am so thoroughly disinterested in cars. The rideshare app says the driver will arrive in a sedan. What does this mean? I do not know. It is a mystery.

But I love Guys In Cars. It's so hot. But it is not about the car. It's about the intimacy of two people crammed into a small space for an indeterminate amount of time. Potentially a very long time, if we're talking American for roads and distances (and probably also guys and cars). It's that a car is a capsule is a hotel room is a shared journey is a getaway is a trap, and those people in there are just stuck together. Temporary, yes, but what isn't?

Shared space (car), shared goal (destination), isolation (limit to how many other people are in the car).

So it's intimate, is what I'm saying here, it's intimate over and over.

"You're in a car with a beautiful boy," Siken writes, and that line does so much work already. It implies that it's just you and the beautiful boy, maybe. Probably. He's trapped in there with you. You're trapped in there with him. He won't tell you he loves you: this is not an ideal place but it is an in-between place. "But he loves you." It is the place you have. Trapped in there with him. Trapped in there with you.

So it's intimate, it's hot. It is general as much as it is specific. It is, I would say, a fucking foundational ingredient. It's like this man wrote an omelet and you guys went "omg that HAS to be about my blorbos" because anything made with eggs is a direct reference to your blorbos.

Stop it. Recognize the universality of the things you read. Why is it relatable? Why is it delicious? Or I mean, you don't have to think about it, actually. You can just enjoy the omelet. But stop going directly to the chef about it, okay?

[hoelandah]

Icon Credit Zaboizu

Greetings

Hallooo. I'm Astrid. 32. He/She/They. This is a Homelander!Thirst/The Boys/Butchlander bloggo.

I do not assault my eyeballs with Kripke's botched show, I'm a former big SPN/Destiel fan, not a blind hater. I genuinely think that he is a very weak writer who is only carried by captivating characters that the actors give life to and active fandoms filling in his weak spots with fan works.

I basically read "The Boys" episode synopses, note audience and fandom reception/reactions and consume in other ways to try to know what I'm talking about. So, I may get things wrong or miss context that I would have gained watching the show. Just be patient with me.

I do not read the comic. I cannot stand it, I can barely take in its canon for comparison it squicks me so goddamn bad. I cannot read anything that Garth Ennis does. I personally think it's just shock value schlock with no artistic merit but that's an opinion. I tend to give comic less criticism than the show, however, because it is not trying to be anything besides what it is and it is not lampooning a current political climate clumsily. Ennis's work can absolutely be adapted successfully. Preacher, another Ennis property, was adapted pretty well for AMC and it was just as gross comic-wise.

So, in my opinion, The Boys and the characterization of Homelander suffers from trying to make something unfilmable mainstream, being unfortunately timed in US history, and the pervasive neolib tone of even the most progressive of American media.

About the Blog

This is a Homelander thirst blog ofc. I also play in the sandbox of the universe and love analyzing possible themes, in show politics and characters, in particular, in relation to Homelander. I'm a leftist that consumes politics and social issues discourse on a daily basis as a special interest so that features heavily in my meta and analysis.

Do know that my analysis is subjective. It is simply engagement with the media. I am not condemning or assuming malice of anyone in the writer's room unless it seems obvious and even then. The nature of analysis with art is that sometimes there are no right or wrong answers, there is only what we see, how it may be perceived, and what it could reflect. Talking about our media frankly with a conscious, not necessarily critical lens, is healthy even when it is deemed pretty "unproblematic." There is also a lot of Watsonian vs Doylist fuckery going on.

I'm also american, leftist, black, DFAB, bigender, and queer, I mention this only so that you all know what angle I'm coming from in my analyses.

Feel free to ask me anything or chat.

Disclaimer:

This is not a "Homelander Apologist" blog. I do, however, critically engage with how culpable Homelander is for his actions considering his neglect, absolute lack of genuine human relationships, lack of good behaviors to model, and people in his life actively influencing him to take questionable actions. Basically, I ponder on: If you were never taught "good," are you "evil" if you never knew the opposite? So, in my controversial opinion, he should not pay for his crimes because he would never understand it and it would let everyone else off the hook. Instead his demise is simply a public safety service.

Tags for your blocking pleasure:

Meta: 'the kays meta'

All meta is tagged this. Sometimes I back and forth reblog if I'm having a good meta discussion.

Asks: 'the kays asks'

Messages I answer are tagged this. Feel free to drop a line.

Me just yappin: 'kay talks'

Stuff that's not meta, just me talking in general, are tagged this.

My OCs tags

Celestia (a Magical Girl Supe): 'oc: celestia' | 'the contingency plan' | 'oc: naomi edgar'

Virtue (A secret Empath Supe): 'oc: virtue' | 'cursed virtue signaling' | 'oc: sera velois'

(Tags have my old name and I'm too lazy to change them. 😩😩😩)

[hataketobi]

be respectful in the tags pls! i’m not rly interested in discourse i just like stats so this will probably be the only one i do of these

[blacknidstang]

2, 9, 12, 17 💓💓

Hiii hellooo <33

Alright here we gooo

2) overall worst season

OH BOY WHERE DO I START. Ok i think s15 is a very easy answer to this and it is the objective answer but the show being burdened by corona and if I'm not wrong, number of new writers, i cannot take it seriously. However for me, very personally s12 was the most unwatchable one. Like yes s13 is also wretched with all the fucking dinosaurs and just overall terrible everything but i got more soft spot for it. S12 does not land on his feet because i think the writers in that very specific season forgot how to write Sam & Dean's dynamic & this entire show has its golden moments because of them so if you mess that up you lose everything . Plus i think bmol were worst than dinosaurs & empty & apocalyptic world & dean/lucifer mid air fight. The only unexpectedly amazing scene there was Dean's speech in Mary's head and if it wasn't for that, i'd find a way to wipe this season from face of the universe.

9) best season finale

CAN I EVER GIVE A STRAIGHT ANSWER? NO. i am always very very torn betwen ahbl and swan song. I think both are unforgettable masterpieces and both hold different values to me. I often end up voting for swan song myself bc it felt like SUCH a conclusion to a big story. And because of the "Impala Story" that literally ruined me but there's something about Swan Song that was very overall perfect.

With ahbl i dare to say, it holds probably some of my favorite moments in the entire tv show history. The same way swan song was the conclusion to the story, ahbl was a conclusion to a very emotional build up that blew me away. I think story-wise tho the second part especially was less impactful for me. In the entirety of the episode it"s the beginning aka. Dean's speech and the ending witj Sam's "did i die dean?" THOSE where the ones that stayed with me. Much more than the whole deal with closing the hell's gate. So when i rewatch i'm watching thes3 selected scenes: Sam's death, dean selling his soul & them facing this decision at the end. It was life altering for me but swan song as an episode on a whole level remained more with me.

Then there's also Sacrifice. That finale remains the best episode ever after Kripke. I can't put above the other two but it also is so amazing on every single level that i cannot NOT mention it

12) favorite sam season

I love sam in every episode and every season but if i gotta pick, I think sam in s5 is my upmost favorite one bc of how beaten and ruined he is. I can go forever and ever peeling off layers of his self hatred, self doubts, wish to grow, to make up for everything, all leading to his big sacrifice. This makes my heart ache over and over and over. And after that it would be s10, i love when is just fucking unhinged doing messiest thing, trial era and s9 just because he is so fucking pretty in s9. Prettiest malewife ever.

17) favorite villain

Without a shadow of doubt it would be Azazel for me. Everything about this character was perfect. The actor's delivery, the way he ruined lives, the danger he posed that i never felt the felt repeating in the series ever again.

Except for one.

See i love characters like Crowley and Lucifer (pre-Dabb especially) but i like them more as characters than villains, but beside Azazel there's one imo underrated villain that really fucked me up and it's Zachariah. I think there was something so vile about an angel being that manipulative and vicious. The scene in dark side of the moon with Mary still makes my skin crawl & i think just like Azazel's actor, this guy delivered every scene with such brilliant wretchedness that i cannot help but be in love with.

Spn discourse asks

[youre-only-gay-once]

#Wait Krike put himself into the boys??? (@paage)

yeah there's a shot of twitter discourse in-universe and kripke is one of the users.

there's also a scene where someone made a fanvideo of the impala running over stormfront which implies spn exists.... which means this post is unfortunately plausible

misha collins is going to play himself french mistake style and they're going to stab him again

[laurelwinchester]

imagine being one of those weirdly bitter and permanently miserable anti jensen dean stans right now. you guys are really missing out. today was a blast.

[castielnova]

i log off from my genetics class on university dot edu and log on to tumblr dot edu to see a fucking punnett square of dean’s hair colour on my dash. im killing everyone 

[stevegasnsip]

I am firmly standing on my "it should have gone semi canon in Lebanon" hill, it was romantic and they all knew it was romantic, but Dean makes the wish on the pearl and it's not John coming back because by season 14 he has shown multiple times that he knows John wasn't always a good parent, and I think he feels guilty that a part of him his relieved his dad is dead but I don't think he feels guilty enough to want his dad to come back especially not after Mary come back and it wasn't the perfect fantasy he had imagined all those years

I just think that at that point we know he's tired, he's admitted it before so we know that he has this sliver of hope that he gets to have a peaceful life one day, and through the leans of them being in love despite not being together, Lebanon could have been about Dean coming home to Cas, it could have been the reveal that Dean's greatest wish was to get to a point where things were calm enough that he could retire, or take a Bobby-like role where he helps out and only actually hunts when absolutely necessary, but outside of that he has a life, a little house in town with Cas and Jack, and Sam has a room there because he didn't stop hunting but Dean hates the though of being somewhere he doesn't have space for Sam if he wants it or needs it, but mostly it's all casual stuff, Cas wakes him up in the morning because Dean works at the mechanic in town, just like he wanted to when he was 16, and Jack calls him dad over breakfast, and when he's leaving Cas gives him a kiss on the cheek, and Dean spends the day working with other people and having fun, he pretends to be some FBI guy on the phone to help Claire out, and he gets caught up the normalcy of it all, in getting to just be and not worry that Cas is going to die in front of him again, in not having to worry about Jack dying, and in trusting Sam enough to let him go, to let him use the bunker by himself and lead the hunters the way they showed us he's good at, and by the end of the day Dean comes home and Sam found them and he sits and they all have dinner together, and Dean kisses Cas, he really kisses him, and he says "I love you" and Cas says it back, and then Dean takes Sam outside and tells him they have to break the pearl, because this is good but this doesn't defeat Michael, and when they do and Sam tries to bring up that being with Cas is Dean's greatest wish, Dean tells him the same thing he told him about Ben and Lisa, and Sam doesn't bring it up, and he doesn't point out that Cas very clearly loves Dean back because the world is ending, it's always ending, and they never catch a break, and it's not like Sam can talk to Cas about it because Cas made the deal with the empty 5 episodes before, so he's not about to entertain conversations about his feelings for Dean

I just think it was the perfect place to drop it and never mention it again

[kalashtars]

surviving in the supernatural fandom really just consists of hanging out in your own corner because i went to go look at the supernatural tag and saw one of the worst takes i've seen in like, a week.

[glitterinlowgravity]

the existence of the spn books still fucks me up so much like. what do the google results of the Winchesters even look like? news stories about them having committed various crimes, true crime forums, and fanfic of the books? do the true crime and book communities have discourse about whether or not fic is rpf?

[onlyonekenobi]

Has 'you and i' by 1d been discussed or no because: 'you and I, we don't wanna be like them / we can make it 'til the end / nothing can come between you and I / not even the Gods above / can separate the two of us / no, nothing can come between you and I'

it is ALWAYS a good time to talk about “you and I” re: deancas

that line!! and also the line “I know how it goes / I know how it goes from wrong and right / Silence and sound / Did they ever hold each other tight like us? / Did they ever fight like us?” in particular GETS to me for them. (anything about silence, really. a one hit knockout)

also midnight memories came out 25 november 2013, plausibly making it written in the wake of season gr8, and last minute edited in the wake of “heaven can’t wait,” I will be taking no questions at this time

[starplatinumnun]

the discourse in the in-universe spn fandom must be fucking wild

- one one hand we have the "supernatural is real" truthers (it's a poorly kept secret and an inside joke)

- then the "if supernatural is real then we shouldn't be glorifying murderers" camp of people (it's called murdergate and every once in a while it gets a massive resurgence)

- the "i think they're real and murderers but i've decided the crimes are funny" group. (they argue with the murdergate group a lot)

- the "god is carver edlund" truthers (about 90% of the fandom, to varying degrees of belief)

- "if supernatural is real then is shipping spn characters RPF?" (no one can agree on this)

- the "carver edlund is a prophet" theorists (they argue with god chuck truthers a lot)

- people just straight up start praying to castiel (and a few get their prayers answered)

- people straight up attempt rituals from the books to see what'll happen (gone incredibly wrong)

- there is a non-zero group of people who know that the winchesters are real for certain (and have probably met them)

- a popular supernatural fan-theorist is revealed to be a prophet or some shit

- the percentage of people who pick up hunting skills from supernatural and keep salt around their houses is surprisingly large

[dotthings]

There's a lot of content to go through but definitely check out Jensen, Danneel, and Robbie's commentary in this interview with Nerds and Beyond about making the SPN universe more inclusive.

Some bullet points to note:

Jensen acknowledging the era SPN started in and the limits the mothership had. "And I also want to say too just to touch on that because you mentioned Supernatural and the mothership, we did have a lot of older white, straight men. That was just the nature of the show and how it was built and laid out. Everyone was always well aware that it was that and we needed to make an effort not to do that and to diversify." Jensen went on to talk about bridging the eras and drawing on the knowledge of the old guard while opening the universe up to new voices. "we’re looking at things more from a 'let’s make sure we’re getting this right, let’s make sure we’re bringing in people who can do that' but then 'let’s also make sure we’re using every chance we get to broaden our horizons.'"

Danneel talked about the importance of inclusion but also, emphasized that it's accurate for the 1970's: "Yeah, it was a goal, but it’s a reflection of what society truly is and truly was in the 70s. It’s just that television never was an accurate representation of us as people."

Robbie about the inclusiveness on The Winchesters discussed the importance of found family: "Diversity is great, inclusion is better. So we had an opportunity from the jump to really differentiate ourselves by having more than just the two hander. Obviously, this is John and Mary’s supernatural love story, but within that it was who are the people with them? The thing that I really, truly loved about Supernatural whether it was season 1 or season 15 was that family don’t end in blood is really about, to me, is about the family that you find. There’s the family that you’re born into, and for some people like myself they are blessed, it’s a wonderful thing. For others they’re not as blessed, it’s a terrible thing. But then there’s the family that you make and that was really important to be as inclusive in that family as possible from the beginning."

Robbie also mentions that his father is Mexican and his wife is latine. Something to keep in mind.

Robbie differentiating between "diversity" and "inclusion" is also really interesting. To me, that is a reflection on how diversity can sometimes winds up being checking off ticky boxes to fend of accusations of not being diverse enough. Inclusion is far deeper and more thorough. It means the characters are given sustained pov and are crucial parts of the story, not tacked on to say "look how diverse we are."

The link between family don't end with blood and these inclusion issues with SPN has always been fraught, and it's at the point where the anti-found family discourse is very tangled with narrow-minded thinking that wants things to stay stuck in the past and stick to just 2 brothers in the car.

Robbie's acknowledged elsewhere how SPN started out with a small cast, and then grew, so it's not even right wrt the mothership to say it was "only" one thing. But The Winchesters has an opportunity to go much farther and everyone at CMP is taking it. Supernatural is for everybody and that should be reflected on the screen and behind the scenes. I'm really happy about what they want to accomplish here.

[clandestinegardenias]

please enjoy the following powerpoint brought to you by the judith butler spn tumblr discourse, my realization that Marx would be the ulitmate heller, my obviously extremely useful phd in sociology, Misha Collins’ B.A. in social theory from University of Chicago, and my pathological need to cope with this damn show SOMEHOW

...if you all are (un)lucky I’ll do contemporary theorists next

[seanwinchester]

imagine gen z monster kids in the spn universe reading the supernatural books because rumors say they're the most accurate description of monsters out there to the extent that they think this was even written by a monster, so they're excited to see themselves represented in the books but then reading it they realize it's obviously biased and like in cop shows the bad guys are the heroes and they (monsters) are always type-cast as bloodthirsty killers (so 90s) and there are not enough nice monsters in the story to make up for it :/ but then some of them still like sam and dean as villains in the same way we people like hannibal so like thinking they're hot for being evil and writing fanfic about them and then monsters are discussing between them and some going like nooooo stop you're romanticizing harmful behavior you literally support the oppressor, and there's discourse in the very niche monster fandom of spn and disturbing fanart and young naive female monsters actually seeking out hunters in the same way some twilight girls did irl with vampires because in the books sam hooks up with madison so they think they have a shot and and–