#spn universe discourse

[soullessjack]

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

[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.

[hoelandah]

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.

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.

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. Though I do 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?

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'

[dotthings]

Some thoughts:

The characters and events we’re seeing on TW are not an alternate timeline from what we saw on spn prime.

John could have had all the growth we’re seeing, and been a better human, and had a close knit group of hunter friends, and still fall the way he did. The differences between TW and spn prime are the results of unreliable narrators, how memory works, and assumptions made based on the bits and pieces of the puzzle we saw.

Dean didn’t have the whole story before. We didn’t have the whole story before.

This is the path that will to the John we know in the mothership. A lot of the spec and discourse around this relies on fully dehumanizing John, where he has to be always all terrible, and there can be no good and he can’t have had loving supportive friends and still fall.

Without the love and support John has in TW, things would have gone even worse. For him, for everyone.

Without this specific timeline of events we’re seeing on TW, this family would have been even more broken with increased generational trauma and whatever worse outcomes you can imagine.

Because Sam and Dean weren’t the Sam and Dean we know.

Also no Sam and Dean as they are, no Cas. No Cas, world is lost. The only Cas in all the worlds who refused to follow orders. Who fell in love.

And John and Mary fell even farther. Because the good parts were lessened even further. Don’t dehumanize them. This isn’t an apologia. On the mothership, John and Mary were never evil and we did see the loving parts of them, buried or damaged but still alive.

On TW we’re learning just how much their capacity for love really is. Their hope and their love that becomes damaged and buried, but it’s never burned out. They are not fully lost.

The monster club of 1972 is what leads to Team Free Will being who they are.

This is it.

It’s what “really happened.”

Not a “better timeline” — this is the path that leads to the events of spn prime.

The EP’s expressly told us they aren’t changing the mothership events, that TW isn’t alteration to mothership events, and that there’s no polaroid fade effect.

This timeline isn’t getting wiped out. Maybe the temptation arises. In hopes of an even happier outcome, but the loss of this particular timeline dooms everyone.

Recontextualizing and filling in blanks and giving the fuller version of history. Telling the spn universe through a kinder, warmer lens.

Dean gave John the letter. Dean sent John to Mary and Mary led John to Carlos and Lata.

The rebar death isn’t being undone. And I want it undone. But that’s not how this is going to work, but, listen, the rebar death is going to get its comeuppance. It’s going to be overshadowed by what’s next for Dean’s continuing story. That rebar is going to pay.

Dean’s legacy and his ongoing story is going to melt it down and the story engine will roar on beyond it.

Dean, who has been the biggest heart center of the spn mothership, with his big way of loving, not only the author of this story in the sense that he is telling it, he is actually the spark who set of these specific events, he pushed over that domino. He picked the music.

And with an opportunity to stop himself, he’s going to stay his hand, let it play out how it did, and be good with who he is.

[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

[marxistluffy]

There's probably a lot of little things that played into this, but here are some of the major ones I've been around for and noticed:

Immediately before this period of dark nihilism, 2010-2014 fandom culture was starting to be considered "super cringe" so people were constantly taking away words and phrases you couldn't say anymore. "Oh you still use XD? Weird! You're probably really old (fandom ageism taking root) Get outta here!" People would cast you out as weird or cringe for even so much as thinking about using an old-fashioned, text emote (the silly old ones like :P, or :> or TwT). There was whole long discourses about which ones were still acceptable, and it seemed like only the simple smiley :) (passive aggressive) and the uwu survived, which spawned a whole new culture in itself. Young fans were really trying to claim the tumblr space, and tension got super high because of it.

Right after this weird aggressive period, Trump and this utter sense of apocalypse happened, so everyone's mood just... turned dark and sour. That, combined with this weird toxicity on internet spaces (especially tumblr, where fandoms became battlegrounds), made everything very toxic and broody, which was a stark contrast to the kinds of fandoms that were suddenly thriving (Steven Universe, Voltron, a lot of new, potentially diverse kids cartoons, where these kind of rising stars that reeked of toxicity.) Internet dadaism and majorrr nihilism became a thing in the midst of this weird angst train, and it decimated both perky show fandoms, and darker themed ones (GoT, SPN, etc). There was also, however, just this growing sense of unity in... despair and gloom in the growing state of worldly chaos. Covid was hitting EVERYONE, and it was, finally, something we could all talk about and more or less agree on, so long as you were on the same political side of the issue. This probably reached its peak, or maybe climax, when Destiel "becoming canon" happened around the same time we were all watching each state struggle to tally votes and commenting on it like the weirdest, most universal soccer match. The memes were unreal, and the cascade of real-world mixing with fandom events was unparalleled. Life truly felt incredibly surreal at that moment.

It was only after all this drama, weirdness, and STRESS hat things... finally started to calm down. Almost universally, people started to relax, and just... take the little things for granted. Even though worldly issues didn't exactly get better, they did get easier, especially since the vaccines came out, as that was a huge relief for everyone. Internet romanticism hit its peak yet again, except this time it wasn't excitement about being on the internet with quirky little abbreviations and emotes, but with being able to enjoy... outside life as well. After being trapped at home for basically two years or longer in many places, people really wanted to bridge that gap, even all the worst of the tragically depressed nerds. And yeah, that's when the whole real-life-romanticism hit. People are still incredibly addicted to the internet, but with the way we were all condensed onto it in such a toxic mess before, being able to appreciate that space to breathe was just.. a huge feeling everyone wanted to share.

Also the tumblr NSFW ban of 2018 drove a LOT of young people off tumblr, and onto twitter, and while you would probably assume that'd drive just the adults and artists to twitter (it partially did), it also drove most of the younger fandom members with it. Most of the ones that stuck around were older adults, 20s to 30s and beyond. You can see it in the kinds of hit posts that deal with mundane, very adult activities, like getting groceries or parking the car. It's literally settled down because the rampant energy has all moved.. to twitter. And having been on both the whole time, I can confirm that it is still much more of a chaotic mess there, where the youngest fandom-goers gather in bulk and continue to send death threats, share kys jokes, and bully each other <3 Some things never change.

I haven’t been on tumblr for quite as long as a lot of people but over several years I’ve noticed this interesting gradual sorta,, shift in the general culture? that it went from this mostly depressed, nihilistic outlook where people would regularly joke about hating themselves and being hopeless and depressed, to a wave of vehemence of “STOP hating everything actually the world is Good and you deserve love!!!” type posts, to now, where those aggressive ‘PSAs’ have faded away and instead I regularly see people romanticizing simple things like stars and hot tea and rainy mornings, and waxing poetic about their friends, and just trying to put love out there. and I don’t know exactly what that means (someone who knows more than me could probably say something smart about generational expression and trauma or popular perception of mental health and whatnot), but I do know that it makes my heart very full to see people learn to love the world and themselves by extension, and a whole userbase adopting healthier coping mechanisms, and therefore teaching the younger users to do so as well. I might just be following different people, but I really do think we’ve grown. everyone has grown. five years ago it wasn’t unusual for the next post on my dash to be a scathing commentary on why nothing matters or an anon ripping into someone they barely knew or someone complaining about how pathetic their interests are. now I have mutuals who get excited and spam reblog art of cows and friends I see tagging each other in pictures of frogs and strangers writing paragraphs about how much I matter. it makes me happy. idk. just an observation I wanted to make. I think people are good and everyone’s just trying their best at the end of the day

[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?

[tellthemhowihope]

actual footage of supernatural saying “fuck nina in particular” i’m crying i miss school so bad 😂 

[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