#the subtext IS there in his romance! it’s just not obvious without hindsight

[eye-of-yelough]

the lucanis almost kiss scene with the demisexual virgin confirmation changes everything in the best way possible, because, as an aroace, lemme tell ya. i have had so many times where i’ve SHOCKED myself with my own game. turns out flirting comes very easily when there’s no actual attraction or plans to follow through. and then, once i realise that’s what i’m doing? leading someone on? i immediately have to remove myself. usually much more gracelessly than he does, so good on him.

[communisticrevolution]

I wrote another essay about homoeroticism - this one’s on The Great Gatsby

I’m not sure if anyone cares about this because I can’t envision The Great Gatsby fandom being as desperate for such content as the Lord of the Flies one, but I hope that anyone who can be bothered to read enjoys it! Thank you for all the positive feedback, and check out The Great Gatsby if you haven’t already :))

-

Although on a purely superficial level, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a blatantly obvious examination of the American Dream, the shallowness of the upper classes, and the underlying corruption and hedonism perpetually underpinning affluent 1920s society, an alternative and previously analysed reading of the novel lies partially below the surface, yet evident enough to possess a significant critical following. This theme is, undeniably, homoeroticism, perhaps hidden and coded implicitly within the text to disguise still criminalised components, but crucially important, particularly from the perspective of understanding Nick Carraway’s narration, and the nature of his conspicuous bias towards Jay Gatsby which skews his reliability significantly when recognised by the reader. Despite his proclamation at the end of Chapter 3 stating that his ‘cardinal virtue’ is that he is ‘one of the few honest people that I have (he has) ever known,’ from the beginning of his subjective account of events, his descriptions of others suggest that his statement of being ‘inclined to reserve all judgments’ on the first page is contradicted by his profiling of others, both physically and in regards to their personalities. This is almost relentless and lacking in exclusive scrutiny, offering an insight which appears to be detached, consequently lulling the reader into believing Carraway’s points surrounding his allegedly objectively accurate retelling of the summer – however, even before this, Nick admits the one major and vital fault of his perception, which is Gatsby. Even as it becomes clear to all parties that Gatsby is, in many ways, extremely morally flawed (he is an illegal bootlegger by profession, he is obsessive and somewhat manipulative of Daisy, he facilitates and encourages her infidelity, he is fixated on materialistic wealth, and he frequently lacks consideration for others if it ensures his ability to pursue his ambitions), to Nick, he represents ‘everything for which I have (he has) unaffected scorn.’ For our narrator, this character is symbolic of hope, success, and romance, and when the inherently decaying American Dream inevitably collapses, as exhibited by Gatsby’s murder towards the end of the plot, Nick’s portrayal in hindsight is not altered by Jay’s faults, but by his positive attributes. Prior to a genuine introduction with a scene involving the two, Nick writes that ‘there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,’ and this permeates all. Regardless of whether or not the assumption is made that Nick is describing merely Gatsby’s metaphorical and figurative role in the story, it is clear since the book commences that his perception of the titular man could, in many ways, be interpreted as one of intense passion and attraction, far beyond the platonic relationships he has with other individuals, and later extending to him conveying the physical beauty that is highly appealing to him concerning Gatsby. Even Nick’s love interest, Jordan Baker, is not exempt from his reproval, and is, in fact, articulated to be ‘dishonest,’ with negative and emotionally lacklustre depictions that prompt questions surrounding the easily debatable strength and plausibility of his romantic interest in her.

One major scene that is consistently referenced and considered to be majorly indicative of Nick’s sexual orientation occurs very early on into the novel towards the end of Chapter 2 – it is incredibly subtle and often overlooked especially by first time readers due to the cryptic nature of its language and the seemingly comparatively unimportant series of events that ensue. In fact, one could argue that there is generally very little need to include such a scene, and thus contemplate why Fitzgerald decides to do so regardless. Usually, from a literary perspective, for something to be rendered worthy of inclusion, it must serve to develop plot, characters, or a specific setting and atmosphere in adherence to overriding themes, and the focus upon Nick, still as a relatively submissive bystander who is simultaneously immersed enough to offer a narrative insight, indicates that the only feasible value available must be revolving around his character development. The plot is not advanced as the occurrences are entirely overlooked and left with no true contextual repercussions, and the setting at this point is not focal nor enhanced with adjectives and figurative language that would suggest a distinct relationship between the whole surrounding set of dates and the West and East Egg regions which become recurring areas with allocated symbolic values, and ergo this being the reason.

Here, most notably, Fitzgerald must be attempting to prove or infer something about Nick Carraway, which I believe, largely due to substantial implicit evidence within the text, to be referring primarily to one of the many factors culminating to formulate his broad unreliability; a sense of sexual ambiguity, and the blatantly apparent evasion and withholding of information, but still without avoidance of the subject in its entirety, implied by the use of ellipses to signify both time passing and suppressed detailing of the true events. In regards to homoerotic subtext, this component potentially begins with the description of Mr McKee, the character that Nick purportedly has an affair with, as ‘pale’ and ‘feminine’ upon first encounter, two adjectives directly referencing a lack of masculinity and, in turn, the stereotype of effeminate fragility typically associated with homosexual men. His involvement in the ‘’artistic game’’ has, again, subtextual connotations with homosexual and, possibly to a lesser extent, bisexual males, as the following of artistic pursuits was perceived to be more traditionally feminine, and perhaps later adhering to forms of aestheticism and the almost synonymously analogous and prominent figure of Oscar Wilde, who was and still is renowned for both aesthetic and philosophical reasons and his historical persecution for gross indecency. With this evocation of Mr McKee in mind, suggesting his lack of conformity to societal norms through sexual deviation, at around 10 o’clock, Nick wipes ‘from his cheek the spot of dried lather’ that had ‘been bothering him’ over the course of the evening, a remarkably intimate gesture, and an otherwise broadly inexplicable fixation within the context of this man’s likely homosexuality. Later, Mr McKee proceeds to leave the room, and Nick follows without hesitation, implying almost a non-verbal communication which results in the scene in the elevator, laden with highly euphemistic linguistic choices. Mr McKee uses the command ‘Come to lunch with me some day’ in a manner reminiscent of an individual asking another out in a cryptically heteronormative tone, coupled with the pair ‘groaning’ down the elevator, a verb synonymous with overtly sexual onomatopoeia. Nick agrees, saying he’ll ‘be glad to,’ perhaps an admission to both the reader and Mr McKee that the feeling implied by the latter is to some extent reciprocated, indicating that Nick himself is not heterosexual. Just before this, a ‘lever’ is incorporated which Mr McKee is shunned for allegedly touching, seemingly a clear phallic symbol due to its vague resemblance of a penis, reinforcing the layers of homoerotism and the ambiance leading up to a romantic or sexual encounter involving the two characters that have distanced themselves from the overwhelming group, potentially a metaphor for the exclusion and separation of the LGBT community necessary for protection in an intolerant outside world. This scenario, abruptly led and finished with a series of ellipses, concludes with Nick, our narrator, ‘standing beside his (Mr McKee’s) bed,’ as Mr McKee is ‘sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.’ Nick ends up at a train station waiting for the ‘four o’ clock train,’ leaving what truly happened with Mr McKee largely a mystery, but the aforementioned’s nakedness and the presence of a bed, as well as the feasibly metaphorical ‘portfolio,’ all indicate that a sexual encounter took place between the two, as little other explanation is given for the passing of six hours shown to have been almost exclusively in each other’s company. As always, Nick’s bystander-esque lack of involvement even in situations centring predominantly around him leaves room for plausible deniability; maybe the scene is exclusively a reflection on Mr McKee’s sexual orientation and subsequent moral perversion, or, more significantly, Nick’s willingness to go along with anything without reaffirming his own beliefs or desires, painting him as a fully submissive and detached narrator. Regardless, this relatively brief passage is undeniably dense in highly homoerotic content, portraying Nick largely as a closeted homosexual (or simply a heterosexual man who had a short and sexually intimate relationship with someone of the same gender, but this is far more difficult to believe in the surrounding circumstances), with this conveying an image of both and unreliable narrator and one who could conceivably be infatuated with the protagonist (Gatsby).

Nick’s relationship with Gatsby is vital throughout the novel, in both plot and in how Nick chooses and is capable of narrating a story focusing mainly upon the latter – one which is, evidently, biased invariably in his favour, even amidst ethical decay and his eventual death, which appears to influence Nick far more profoundly than the others, all of whom decide to abandon Gatsby by not attending his funeral as the book comes to a close. Despite the brevity of the period in which they interact and become extremely close, Nick organises the majority of Gatsby’s funeral, as previously mentioned, is loyal to him throughout with consistently lacking personal gain, offers him advice and support, and after his death, decides to write a memoir framing him in an overwhelmingly positive and complimentary manner, one which is likely far from the reality of his existence and impact upon others. Physically, Nick is evidently immensely attracted to Gatsby; when his love interest is given an unenthusiastic paragraph with phrases including ‘I enjoyed looking at her’ and emphasis upon her more masculine features and attributes (‘small-breasted,’ and ‘like a young cadet’), Gatsby’s intrigue is delivered impactfully, with several sentences dedicated to his smile alone, which is stated to have had ‘a quality of eternal reassurance in it.’ The last interaction between Nick and Jay consists of a long and emotional confession delivered by the latter, involving the true history of his origins, a story which he escapes explicitly mentioning, denies, and formulates lies to detract from right up until the end of the text, signifying that the bond established between both men may even be greater than the romanticised superficiality of Gatsby’s infatuation and fixation with Daisy. Whether or not Gatsby ever truly loved her is easy to speculate, with the most common theory being that he was simply enamoured with an idea that he had attached to her for his own sanity and aspirations – in a more uncommon homosexual reading of Gatsby, perhaps he ascribes an idea of the American Dream, wealth, success, and integration with the ‘old-money’ elite to her as a means of distracting from his real sexual and romantic interests, although this is admittedly far from substantiated. Nick finishes the dialogue with allegedly the ‘only compliment I (he) ever gave him,’ which is stated as written: ‘’They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ Gatsby responds to this with his ‘radiant and understanding smile,’ one glimpse of a world in which Nick’s love for him may have not been so apparently unrequited, and potentially a revelation into the growing mutuality of what could have been a romance in different circumstances. Nick’s description of Gatsby and his actions is close to being perpetually complimentary, and usually resumes to this position quickly when it falters, so this reinforces his unreliability and a degree of obliviousness to his own feelings and emotions, whilst simultaneously demonstrating to the reader what is already salient at most levels of observance – that Nick views Gatsby and his worth above all others, including his friend of many years, Tom, his cousin, Daisy, and his romantic interest, Jordan. This level of attraction and love is usually reserved to forms outside of what is known to be platonic, suggesting that what Nick feels for Gatsby also transcends friendship. In Tom and Nick’s last interaction, Tom states that Gatsby ‘threw dust into your (Nick’s) eyes just like he did in Daisy’s,’ conveying that he might himself have deemed Nick and Gatsby’s relationship to be of a similar nature to Daisy and Gatsby’s. Gatsby ‘throwing dust’ into her eyes was a way of performing a romantic illusion that caused her to fall in love with him, implying that Nick also fell in love with Gatsby as he became similarly enchanted by his hope, dedication, and beauty, leading into his romanticised retelling of the man himself.

Ultimately, I personally believe that homoeroticism is definitely existing and, at times, prevalent within The Great Gatsby, and that above all, it is critical to Nick’s characterisation and generating an acceptable explanation of his behaviour and actions, as well as his identity as a character. Many of his attributes, such as his submission and tendency to behave as a bystander in his own life and social interactions, could be found as possessing origins in both a desire to fit in as a social chameleon and avoid extreme scrutiny under the masculine ideal, and also in the repressed identity exhibited by a vast number of sexual minorities in communities and historical contexts of heightened intolerance, where it would be necessary for non-heterosexual individuals to conform to norms and avoid confrontation. In Chapter 7, as Nick remembers that it is his birthday, he reflects on ‘the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know,’ a poignant evaluation to finish this essay with – adhering to his consistent writing style and internal monologue, Nick focuses on men here, not women, avoiding the topic of getting a wife and settling down into the rhythm of 1920s America, and instead accentuating his declining list of opportunities in romantic prospects, as well as concentrating on the ‘promise of loneliness’ that homosexuality undoubtedly was prior to at the very least decriminalisation. He will remain incapable of finding love and fulfilment in the sense that others can with relative ease, and he will continue to restrict his personal identity and expression for safety in the aftermath of the death of arguably his only true friend (and genuine romantic interest), with even Gatsby failing to treat him with equal respect and admiration. Some argue that the true tragedy of The Great Gatsby lies in the story of unrequited love detailed by the narrator, and I would not fully dispute this; this great American novel is, on the surface, a story surrounding the corruption of the American Dream, capitalism, disillusionment, and the ethically abhorrent upper classes, but more obscurely, it could potentially be interpreted as an enlightened representation of closeted sexual identity, genuine love (not concerning Daisy and Gatsby), and unreliability in narration.

[mittensmorgul]

When do you think Dean and Cas's relationship became romantically coded in a consistent, linear, textual way? In other words, when do you think the writers started taking destiel seriously? I love the early stages of their relationship where it was based mainly on surface-level flirting and trying to figure each other out. But I think I really noticed a difference in the direction the writers were taking with them around S6. And of course it really took of in season 8.

Oh gosh, this is a curious thing to ponder… I mean, you can look back at the entire history of the series and with the Wondrous Power of Hindsight, draw a straight line back to like… s1… and say it’s all being set up for Dean and Cas to have an endgame romantic relationship. But the Wondrous Power of Hindsight is… a slightly flawed lens, because of the nature of writing.

Let me explain.

Supernatural has been going on for a Really Long Time now, and it’s intensely self-referential. (see everything I’ve tagged “it’s spirals all the way down” if you don’t get what I mean here). The way they write the story in the present relies heavily on what they have already written in the past. It’s not fair to say they didn’t plant some narrative seeds years ago that are finally beginning to bear fruit now, but some of those were… selectively planted, while others were just happy accidents. Not that this isn’t good storytelling, or unintentional, or happened without any of them noticing trends and themes that they tended to lean on more and more over the years.

This is actually the mark of an incredibly fertile field of oodles of widely-scattered seeds that Dabb and Company are now going back through and weeding things out of (rip fuckface, for example), as well as fertilizing and pruning and watering and tending the garden of the seeds they want to see flourish, you know?

Why am I using gardening metaphors? Eh. Whatever. Hopefully that conveyed the point I was trying to make. Now that I’ve dug this hole for myself, may as well plant myself firmly in this soil and see what sprouts…

So at what point did the gardener step in and put up trellises for Dean and Cas? At what point did they begin actively encouraging them to grow together rather than just occasionally getting knocked into one another by the wind, so to speak? It’s a really difficult question.

I mean, there’s some obvious paralleling going on between them right from the start, with them bonding over the notion of absent and disappointing fathers, being thrown together by circumstance– even if that circumstance is the apocalypse. And they had chemistry with one another from the moment Cas barged through those barn doors (not to mention the whole “I resurrected you from Hell!” aspect of the story that is immediately romantic if you choose to see it that way… and it is a romance trope so that’s an entirely legit way to see it).

Sometimes during those early seasons their “profound bond” and increasingly close friendship was played up for laughs (the whole phone scene and their interactions with the cupid in 5.14, for example), sometimes it was played up for heartbreaking emotion (4.16, for example), and sometimes it was left to be an easy camaraderie, allowing the two of them to work together for a common goal. And all of it began to build this foundation for a much deeper relationship (whether they’d taken it down a more brother/friend road or what eventually became more and more romantically coded).

Even knowing that during the writing of s6, they were fully intending to kill Cas off, potentially permanently, it’s impossible to deny the fact they were trying to milk his eventual death for as much emotional suffering as possible… setting it up so that he’d sacrificed everything in order to spare Dean. And then we had s7, where Dean lost nearly everything over the course of the season, but Cas had been the #1 foundation stone in the pile of things they took from Dean. And like Dean finding out about Cas’s resurrection at the end of 13.05, finding Cas alive in 7.17 was the turning point of the entire emotional arc of s7. That’s when things began looking up and Dean began taking things back. :)

Which brings us to s8… which only continued to build on the themes set up before. They had a choice, and they chose to start throwing high quality fertilizer on Dean and Cas. :P

If nothing else, I’d say they’ve been writing it with underlying intent, quietly in the subtext, since then. And it began poking through into the text in a serious way in s10 (and then got derailed by the plot accordion of doom because they were getting too close to dangerous waters and had to dial it back when they were renewed for s11).

How seriously are they focusing on this now? I mean… after s13, and Dean’s pining, and now hopefully seeing some of that pining from Cas’s side in s14… well… Not to say they’re suddenly going to make wild love confessions or whatever, but they’re still continuing along, growing up that trellis steadily, you know?

[elizabethrobertajones]

I think Destiel is the show's end game but they want it to be the very last thing. So they set up the story around season 8/9 because they didn't really know if they were gonna get picked up and they had to dial it back up when it continued. Now it started again during season 12 knowing the show is gonna end in the next couple of years for sure without it being cancelled. Maybe? Thoughts? Love your meta!

Hi! Love you too!

I weirdly had a conversation about this yesterday in private so I’ve managed to actually coalesce some thoughts about this… Lots of thoughts.

Seeing as I joined fandom in the end of season 9, I basically joined a fandom that had been pretty hurt by the spec that season 8 might have been endgame if the show was cancelled… Obviously we’re never going to get any sort of statement on it until after we know the definitive line on whatever else they were doing with Destiel after the point it matters, so it’s going to be small potatoes if it was or not. 

But I don’t particularly think that it actually WAS - and the different way Cas, and his and Dean’s relationship, was portrayed in season 8 immediately threw a whole bunch of fuel on the fire but it was shocking in a way that it was being given attention rather than specifically being romantic, and it’s hard to tell the two apart, especially when you’re looking in the subtext and seeing romantic stuff, which when you’re a starving shipper suddenly seems like a feast of both charged interaction AND the old subtext, which is suddenly slathered all over everything when Cas is a major part of Dean’s emotional arc for the first time (in a good way). 

(LOTS more under the cut)

Whether there was an intent or not, season 8 changed the game and without knowing what they were doing or where it would lead (aka hello I am Hindsight from the future) it would look pretty shocking and suggestive that something might come of it. Because I know I’d flip out in the same scenario just from wondering, and kind of feel like I’m in the same place after season 12, because again it feels like the game changed.

I’m trying hard not to leap to conclusions to be honest, and I do *not* want to be in the middle of it which is partially why I’ve reacted so strongly to twice in the last month people using me as some sort of fandom leader whose words mean more than others’, because I really really hope not and I wish I didn’t have to disclaimer it because it makes my ego look enormous but on the other hand twice in a month is a pretty frightening wake up call about how people see me?

So. 

Even if it was written with intent in season 8, we’re so far past the point that if that was their plan they could have delayed it over and over without doing something substantial *in Carver era* about it, that it twists the fandom narrative about this into the show being very cruel. This narrative is a great one for people who feel wanky, to feel like they’ve got justified reasons to be upset that it didn’t happen and that they’re getting strung along. I’m not saying everyone who thinks that Destiel was slated to go canon in season 8 does, but it is a great narrative for those who do to feel somewhat certain the show is deliberately dangling and then holding back on Destiel, because nothing bonds a community like feeling as if some more important group of people is mistreating them. Justified rage and all that. If you don’t like the show because you feel it got kinda shitty over the last few years but instead need to take it as a personal betrayal in order to break up with the show, it’s a great thing to get riled up about. The bait and switch seems clear to them, and there’s been many discussions of the way they seem to build up only to yank away, in every season since 8. And part of the build up is meta writers freaking out about how canon it all looks and being naturally excited to see what happens with the story they’ve been reading positively (and this isn’t our fault, though some people think we’re complicit in queerbaiting just by wanting to analyse the show and give any credit to teasing the ship by pointing out its structural integrity).

Some people who see the idea it was going to be canon in season 8 positively also tell this as a way of making themselves feel good that it has been on the books and therefore has a chance of going canon in the future. 

You can get the same story of the show’s intent in two different places, but the ONLY way we can ever construct this narrative is by reading into the show and trying to guess at what they’re doing because they’ve never admitted to writing a Destiel narrative. 

A side effect of the 9x03 wank was a bemused message from someone waaaay up the chain and out of the writers’ room, who said they’d never been pitched the story. I’m inclined to believe that, because I don’t believe in any conspiracy except for the NHI (shh don’t ask if you don’t remember :P), meaning that at no point in season 8 was it EVER anything more than subtextual fun from the writers among themselves. And nothing that was on the books at least in the first half of season 9. Like, at the most generous thought that it might be later if you REALLY want to go hard on theorising about what they’re up to, it wasn’t at that point. 

(The NHI sprang from 10x10 so I’m covered there.)

(Also if you see people handwave 9x03′s wank as a conspiracy to cover it up and that it HAD been real but NDAs mean they’d say it wasn’t, don’t use a pinch of salt, put a whole salt circle around that thought and run away.)

Another thing about this sort of expectation or narrative is that I feel the recent meta writers wank has made it really obvious there’s still people in fandom hanging on for fanon content and character stanning who really don’t need more canon to unfurl, ever, and are only going to get more angry about it, and were hurt at some point in one of these mass-wanks about the show, probably one of these early positivity bubble bursts, but who nevertheless feel like meta still has some sort of mystical power or social influence or… something or other… that from how it sounds, seems like they were once all in on the “it should be canon at the end of season 8″ hype or equivalent for their season, and of course were shattered when it didn’t happen. 

And if season 8 didn’t finish them off, later things did - season 9 was a horrific obstacle course even just with 9x03′s wank and then JIB at the end of the year and the “we don’t play it that way” comment. Which I am contractually obliged to repeat every time I quote Jensen to give context of “as in a secret relationship where they’ve been fucking off screen as per whatever dirty fanart he was shown to get the concept of what he thought Destiel was”

I am fairly certain that season 8 hype was partially manufactured (a Known Fandom Cultist was in the mix and the heady combination of a new big fandom flooding tumblr from Netflix and all the season 8 subtext AND the chance for attention and followers is a wonderful mix for exploitation when the fandom hasn’t been hurt before from this particular direction), and definitely this hype was used to whip the fandom up into a frenzy of expectation that a lot of people either innocently repeated or expanded on in their own meta because the idea sounded interesting or halfway plausible based on their theories (as it was a positive growth of Destiel subtext and narrative ANYWAY) or they thought we deserved the best world of the show, or else they weren’t meta writers and just read it and bought into it and allowed this narrative to have *incredible* power over them by putting all their thoughts into someone else’s basket, and sharing the ideas and being excited in gifsets and fic and other fandom contributions for how the show had become a romance overnight.

(Spoilers: it hadn’t.) 

I don’t like theories which use abstract examples to hold up to the show like basic plot structures, character arc templates, etc, pretty much exactly for this reason, because you can ONLY apply those as analysis backwards on finished arcs without immediately being wrong about something, and that’s a generous thought for if you’re not trying to whip up a frenzy of enthusiasm for fake emotional currency of Tumblr followers :P Essentially I have no problem with meta written about this sort of thing so long as it isn’t “they ARE using this trope so this HAS TO MEAN that this WILL happen,” or “they ARE employing such and such narrative structure and that means they WILL do this next step exactly as it says here” 

… I could crack open my copy of The Seven Basic Plots right, now, pick one at random, apply it to the season 13 spoilers with dead certainty that it all adds up to Destiel and cash in my entire reputation on a 1/7 chance of being utterly right that the structure will look like it’s going that way to the letter, and hope I’d only lose a third of my new followers in the resulting storm when I’m not right about the pay off :P 

If you just think it’s interesting and might be USEFUL to try and UNDERSTAND what will happen next, then by all means as long as you’re not using it and hoping that it sounds academic will mean people without a good grounding in rationalising these things for themselves will just assume you’re smart and know what you’re talking about. And then you use it to push home ideas which you can’t possibly know like that Destiel is being built up to go canon at the end of the season/endgame or whatever, some people will go right along with it because it’s tantalising.

Whatever happened, though, I have heard more than enough since joining fandom about the end of season 8 wank and people quitting the fandom and basically the first positivity bubble shattering (over an episode I feel does no harm and considerable good to the ship without making it canon), so that even before season 9 the wank and bitterness about many things such as the disproportionate freak out about Tracey Bell being a love interest or rumours spread that April or Nora would be multi-episode love interests for Cas, had everyone behaving like the way fandom does before every season or character announcement now. Which is to get disproportionately upset about things which have not yet happened, because they’re already feeling *so hurt* by the things which have, for not living up to the expectations, that surely everything is IT, the END, the thing that will kill Destiel out of the show forever. Every female character is a threat and everyone’s always certain the show is out to damage the thing they love just out of spite.

(I know some people will pop up like, it’s not about the ship, it’s about Cas! but I really can not help feeling that it’s just a sliding of feelings from the ship, because of feeling Dean was horrible to Cas over season 9 and 10 for example, to being over-protective of Cas in particular, and, like, I get it. I do. I don’t feel it that way because I never got invested in any particular pay off that I then didn’t feel happened, and that by whatever point, Cas should be living with them or getting his own episodes on the regular or that Dean should have apologised for whatever, or that they should now be dating. I have a personal investment in this tailored to look for positive things and see good changes like Cas getting more episodes ABOUT him, a strong place in the narrative, a in-depth personal arc, and love from the cast and show. For others, almost nothing will go far enough towards what they want, so even these huge positive changes from what I experienced in season 10 as a Cas fan will get over the hurdle.)

I also think there’s a serious secondary problem that for some people the promise of “it’s going canon at the end of season 8″ turned into “well of course it got renewed so it’ll be whenever the show ends INSTEAD” but carried on essentially giving the same super positive message that Destiel was absolutely 100% on the mind of all the writers all the time as the overall conclusion of the character arc. Which is something you can almost never tell when people write about it and I think again is more like an idea that moved into general conversation so I don’t think there’s really anyone out there I encounter who is angling for anything. But it can be misleading about the concept that just because meta writers find a consistent narrative and are optimistic it will continue and be honoured through the show, that we’re saying that there’s a guaranteed endgame and everyone ought to hang onto it. 

Honestly if you can’t hack the wait, I’d much rather people went full-fanon, didn’t cast opinions on the show at all, put away the negativity in favour of enjoying the stuff they like - fics, art, canon-free headcanons, etc, and when the end of the show came, if they even halfway liked the sound of what people were saying about it, went and re-watched from the start to re-immerse themselves and try a positive take on it knowing what they were in for, canon or not. I’ve stopped watching several times out of DGAF feelings towards the show (weird dog episodes :|) and come back and again I can’t really claim to have the most healthy attitude, everyone follow my lead, but I do think I can be objective and careful about how I engage with it and try and not get sucked into negativity OR positivity rollercoasters that only go to hurt town. >.> 

I mean, I honestly feel in season 12, it’s the first time we’ve had an entire writers’ room of writers I even think *know* about it as a solid narrative construct (and yes I am including Buckleming because they DO write Destiel into the show, they just also write all the racism and rape and whatever else in along with it :P) Between the scattered application of serious subtext through Carver era and the approach to canon they occasionally winked at, they never seemed particularly competent at the work needed to actually make Destiel canon if it was EVER supposed to be building up towards it. I think the bait and switch yank away is too clever for them and their handling of the narrative :P I don’t think they’re stupid but, NHI aside, they are not up for complicated conspiracies.

To be serious, though… I know people say they saw it all the time from space, and their casual viewer mom did etc, but the fact remains they never wrote a CLEAR romance narrative except for the splitting Dean and Cas at the start of season 10 and *paralleling* their narratives with Crowley and Hannah, while everything else has been situational tropes or strong emotional narratives which could work either way. A slow burn romance in a show that will admit it’s one will use many similar tropes but also ones which expressly make it a romance that everyone’s supposed to read as happening, usually quite corny, on the nose ones, and Destiel has more of the subtextual or emotionally bonding romantic tropes than like… anything else ever… but very few of the “oops walked in on him changing, let me just accidentally turn around again on the way out the door” type nonsense that broadcasts to people on Mars that they’re going to bang, and probably soon. I say very few because there’s little outliers like the boner scene or “i can’t let you do this” which are copy pasted from corny romance, but of ALL the Destiel that happened in season 12, ONLY the mixtape crosses boundaries like that and even so people CAN argue it’s platonic love, and the only thing we can really say is nonsense is that it’s not conveying any love at all. 

Something like Crowley mourning his romance with demon!Dean and looking at photos to some sort of “all by myself” level song was very clearly a rom com trope and the one that for me sealed the deal that Drowley was intentionally meant to be seen in canon. Something like Dean and Aaron is disproportionately powerful because their main interpersonal interaction was literally described as being something from a rom com BY the director’s commentary :P Destiel is a 10 year old behemoth, largely NOT defined by rom com tropes, but with a few peppered here and there in a low enough concentration that it’s not the absolute norm to assume it’s going to happen.

But in season 12, like in season 8, Cas got a LOT of attention in the story, a good chunk of that was through Dean because Dean’s got the old profound bond, and Cas and Dean are intrinsically and inseparably connected in some ways that no amount of bro-ing up with Sam or forging a tentative friendship with Mary will do to NOT make it seem like Cas is talking to Dean first and foremost, especially when all 3 Winchesters pile through the door and Cas just says “Dean” :P 

This season has a STRONG narrative about Cas’s relationship to the Winchesters and through Dean in particular, and there’s one of the stand out romantic tropes in basically ever in this season, along with several other hallmarks of the things that made season 8 such fertile ground. 

12x10 had the crypt scene rehash to hopefully end these loops around Dean and Cas with the positive conclusion it needed, and a lot of the meta about season 8 flipped out about the human/supernatural relationships (with Charlie and Gilda foreshadowing the crypt scene perfectly, because Robbie) so 12x10 filled in a missing link from season 8, of a story about how angels might be into humans too. 

And it was the season with Aaron which was Dean’s personal stand out bi moment which made a lot of people feel the show was going to start taking it seriously on his behalf, and season 12 had Aaron back, even if it was only one scene, it was a reminder he existed and the main interesting context for most people was him and Dean. 

And season 8 had the angel fall spell, including the cupid nonsense in 8x23, and the nephilim which was the early forerunner of the suggestion of 12x10, that angels and humans can couple up, while in season 12 the angel fall spell was directly mentioned, 12x15 mirrored the first Hell trial, nephilim were back, and Crowley offered to close the gates of Hell. So season 8′s mytharc was slathered all over the season. 

And in the crypt scene Dean was supposed to say “I love you” and in 12x12 they found a way to make Cas say it instead, which I agree was the more logical progression, that Cas would crack first :P 

Anyway, season 8 was all over this season but season 12 felt amped up and going places season 8 didn’t, going several steps further and as I’ve said before to go straight from season 8 meta mindset to season 12, would utterly blow your mind. 

BUT to go right back to the start, I don’t think season 8 was building to canon Destiel ever, not even as a failsafe for cancelleation. I don’t think that the planned “I love you” was going to do more than make the fight about canon that much more bloody if it aired and doesn’t help even without it airing, knowing it was going to happen. Jensen was the one who argued it away, and they agreed for character reasons supposedly, so there was no meddling from above to say, wait, hit the brakes, we can’t barrel right into the canon build up.

I think season 8 was supposed to be used to bring Cas back in from the cold - kind of literally with using Purgatory to stagger his return - because after season 6 & 7 showing Dean cared about him in ANY way was important, and to establish that whatever Cas had done, Dean would forgive and want to rescue him and have him back in the family. I don’t think season 8 is a clean slate for Cas despite his attempt to put on the old uniform and carve a new path for himself in like… 2 episodes after he got back while he was still being fucked around with by Heaven unknowingly to him. He’s still burdened with guilt, and if anything, the season renewal is probably more to blame for stretching out Dean forgiving him than smooching him, with a lil more manufactured drama and Dean lashing out at him for season 6 & 7 in 8x22. He lashes out again in 9x22, but by season 10 he’s pretty much moved on, to be angry about like… everything else to push Cas away at the end of the season. I guess they’re living in the moment rather than the past by 10x22 :P Pfft. Sorry, got to be facetious about some things here.

I think the focus on Cas in season 8 was much more about his repentance and forgiveness from others - Metatron snags him by seeing he still wants to repent for Heaven, WHILE he’s in the gas station trying to buy stuff to repent to Dean for OTHER stuff. I think it makes perfect sense to read the season 8 narrative as a strong emotional narrative between Dean and Cas specifically engineered to delve into their relationship issues, let Cas back in to TFW, let him back into Dean’s heart, and try and establish for US what Cas is truly like as we’ve never been so deep in his head as in season 8 as a whole, except for in 6x20 where we learned A: he loved them and Dean in particular, and B: he was busy lying and betraying them and justifying it all on the slimmest reasons to keep himself going. If you love Cas, 6x20 is a goldmine. If you’re indifferent or don’t like him, as a one episode event, it might not warm your heart especially with the end of season 6 and his resulting failures, especially perceived moral ones against his friends. 

Season 8 let us right into Cas and showed us his inner processes, desires, and a narrative about how he wanted to do penance for season 6 and 7, and a feeling that Sam and Dean love him back, of course, but to them Cas is still a shaky person to depend on and Dean is going a great deal on faith that Cas is good even while thinking he’s sketchy and lying the entire time between 8x07 and 8x17, showing a conflict between Dean’s baseline faith in Cas and Cas’s behaviour towards them. Being in his head and seeing Naomi all season makes US insiders to Cas’s issues and puts us on his side firmly by knowing WHY he’s acting this way, so it’s a good storyline to nurture us through Dean’s issues with Cas while being given an inside line to being sympathetic to Cas since we know what Dean doesn’t about how he’s being controlled the entire time. 

Taken in that spirit, I can see the show just wanting to reconcile TFW and Dean and Cas in particular as a goal to shoot towards and the conclusion might just have been that they all make it good before whatever ending they had in mind for the main plot stuff. Along with a healthy dose of subtext to keep you guessing about how that relationship was. 

Anyway, as I said, I don’t like subscribing to theories which are too speculative and treating them like they’re too real and like… definitely what the show is doing… makes me really itchy for the above reasons in the fan wank section of this reply… so the one that Destiel is now being woven into season 12 to the same way it was in season 8 to the eventual aim of canon puts me off for the reasons I hope you can guess from all that rambling :P 

Even if I have hope that it MIGHT be on the books doesn’t mean I’ll really commit to saying it’s narratively going anywhere for sure, because that seems like a great way to start a cult and end up in the shame bin and reviled by people one day. I want to see fandom through to the end of the show and see what happens with you all, so short-sighted plans about building a rocket to Mars in my back yard seems like a great way to end up sitting in a fizzled out rocket still on the ground in my yard with a bunch of people who want their money back :D

I do think the endgame the show is working towards is going to be positive for Destiel fans and probably at the very least a good final touching moment, although I think the show will pretty much certainly end on Sam and Dean together as the sign off moment, even if the moment before that is Dean smooching Cas in the kitchen before grabbing a couple of beers to go hang with his brother just the 2 of them out on the front porch of their weirdo hunter commune house. Or whatever happens. But you know, even in the Destiel is totally canon and it all ends happily world, it’s not ABOUT them, it’s about Sam and Dean and as much as it’s about everyone else they love too, they’d be there to show there’s a world for them to save/that they have saved and can retire to, if Mary and Cas survive to the end. 

But there are many subtextual ways between that hazy dream ending and, like, total character death save the world through mass sacrifice kinda ending, and all of which can make Destiel look like it was where things were/would have gone. At the current point in canon you can say the exact same thing, which is the point I was making that went right over some heads where they got fixated on me dancing gleefully around Cas’s dead body fulfilling my prophecy or whatever. If the show ended there, with the way Dean and Cas were connected over the season, you could argue their hearts belonged to each other, but they never got a chance to really do anything about it. 

It’s the shitty subtextual Cas is dead ending I’d always dreaded if the show really wanted to fuck with us, but it’s one they could have done, and it would have left things open ended enough for academics and fans and whoever else to yell forever about if it had all meant what we thought it did, to a collection of contradictory comments from cast and crew.

The only way is up from here for Cas’s personal development, seeing as he’s finally doing the truly transformative death experience, and Cas’s personal development is where Destiel subtext is most closely tied, while Dean’s personal development has been a mess of performing Dean and bi Dean and issues with his parents and the codependency, and he’s opening up like a beautiful flower, but it’s still largely a sort of concept that Destiel can just sort of happen when Dean’s got far enough down the line on dealing with all these issues as a kind of lump problem, and Cas’s arc is much more mythological, tied into identity and belonging, but the target has been clear since like… 4x22… (and I mean “clear” rather than “oh shit it’s going to haaaappen” like it is from the start of the season :P) that it’s going to all land on Dean. And clear since like… idk, 6x20? that the feeling is pretty romantic from his end so in an ideal world he lands on Dean romantically. 

And all subsequent positive development on the ship’s possibility has been clearing hurdles and tidying up character development that’s all pretty much check lists made back in season 8 or after the wank when with clearer heads people began to wonder just what was standing in the way of them if they were going to go canon, but not right then. Stuff like Claire and the vessel occupancy issue. Or the slow progress of Cas putting words to his family to call them that and the Bunker home and so on. Steps that all the stretching of the story has let them explore in minute detail.

So I can see that it’s possible that this all develops into something that works incredibly well for the chances of Destiel and since season 10 I’ve had the suspicion, thanks to Claire and the Dean-focused character development episodes, that they were working on the same tick list as us. But I’m not sure if it will pay off exactly as we want to see, while at the same time  being over the moon delighted when another step forward happens. And season 12 moved a lot of ground, some of it unexpectedly quickly, and other things like, unburying them from ruts they’d been stuck in forever. 

I don’t think going on from here season 13 will be immediately disappointing if Cas and Dean aren’t desperately romantically linked all the time because the show still acts like they have their own personal dramas when it’s not letting them see each other as the only people in a room. I don’t think it would be very productive to tally up events as if they’re constructing a narrative where we have to wait for pay off at a very set date, because even though I think that pay off will come at a very set date if we’re lucky and they honour their subtext. The show doesn’t seem to have an end, I honestly don’t trust Dabb as far as I can throw him not to just randomly make Destiel canon because he thinks it’ll be funny and make us happy because I have no grasp on his showrunning except he’s a massive troll with his finger on the fandom pulse. And honestly I don’t get much pleasure from constructing the elaborate forward narratives when I can be much more excited about the immediate stuff, living in the moment, and taking the Destiel subtext as it comes. 

After the mixtape moment there was a lot of spec about if we’d see it again or what it meant building forwards, and I felt it wasn’t going to be mentioned again, and that it was much more valuable for that moment and what it told us about Dean and Cas, than using it for a forwards sign, which to me often just means taking quick stock of a thing happening in present canon then barrelling ahead into the future. While to me the richness in the story is wallowing in what has been opened up about the past, about Dean making the mixtape, when he gave it to Cas, and all the backstory implied by the 5 second moment of that exchange, because it implies so much more going backwards than it ever meant going forwards, as it wasn’t mentioned again all season. We could go forwards knowing Dean and Cas were at the sort of stage of the relationship where mixtapes happen in such a way, but we can’t use it to divine an entire forward plot about it, because that way lies the sort of “make everything Cas ever does about guinea pigs and bees” nonsense because fixating on passing moments as information about character stuff we need to know for later, that there’ll be a bigger pay off later, to me does sort of ruin the fun of the present.

There’s manageable foreshadowing and speculation like guessing what the turducken sign is all about, because its original context was very Destiel, and there’s stuff like guessing about the PB&J where it has so many contexts that even when it connects to Cas I saw that as somewhat connecting him with *Kevin* and lil baby Sam in 9x07 when Cas was eating it in 9x11, and the Destiel connection was the link to humanity, and Dean as being somewhat connected as the PB&J provider to their weirdo family. But he also brought Kevin prune juice as a far more loving gesture, you know? :P Until we have context on these things I hate to get invested in many forward spec things as Destiel related or feeding a larger narrative.

I also think there’s a big difference between meta and spec and I am much more comfortable offering analysis of what has already happened and maybe venturing an idea of how things will play out but not wedding myself to it, especially as that’s how I’ve seen people get fandom burn out, and also I hate looking wrong :P So for my own ego, again, it’s nice to sit and enjoy spec as entertainment but not get so involved I’m writing convoluted theories about it.

Tl;dr, I’m hopefully understandably wary about what canon positivity can do to a fandom, even just from second-hand tales and snooping old blogs back in season 9 when it was all a bit closer to the surface. I have a very comfortable place I’m sitting, which has been rocked about a bit by how on the nose season 12 was, but until I can be sure I really do not want to ever commit to a speculation about anything being set up for canon that we can see in the narrative. I think we’re at an AMAZING place with where we’ve progressed in canon but I’m trying so so hard to keep it contained as if season 12 is where it all ends for now, and I will try and take each episode as it comes when it’s what people might read about what happens next with Destiel, because none of us are qualified to answer it. And the meta community seems to be in a really weird place again with an up surge in positivity that’s making the gold standard of speculation rise, and I’d rather learn from the past and be OVER CAREFUL than get involved in a huge fandom fuck up about all this :P And I hope if I really am supposedly that influential, I can try and be an example of not counting chickens, even when I think I’m holding a very full basket.