#toxic spn set

[jarpadswalker]

Now, we all know exactly when, who, and how SPN set became toxic. Misha was the leech that hit SPN and made everything toxic. You could see how he impacted Jared just by looking at his health. Jared is glowing ever since Supernatural ended.

Also, it is very telling how not a single person has ever talked about how great it is to work with Misha in a public context ( barring the PR activity/con where actors have to give the party line). Nor, is he getting any new projects clearly seeing how unlikeable and toxic he is.

Also, not to forget this is not the first instance even during S7 when Misha was removed (a great initiative by Sara)he couldn't find a single job and started blaming Supernatural.

[laf-outloud]

It strikes me a lot of unprofessional people were allowed to get their hands on Spn. No wonder Jared talked about agendas and toxic environments and wanted to leave.

One of these days, after the conventions are over and the possibility of a reboot is dead, some crew member is going to write a tell-all and at this point, I'm not sure there's much that could surprise me. Jared was far too generous to let these people leech off of SPN for as long as they did.

I'm so grateful that Jared was able to move directly to another set where he has the ability and the authority to shut down any toxicity. It makes me wonder if he didn't have Walker if he would have even come back to acting.

[dotthings]

lolol the way spn standom treats this canon it supposedly loves so much is a crisis every single day and I know the show is over so people think it’s not supposed to matter the way it once did but it matters. I’m not going to just sit here while that source text gets mangled in an endless loop by most of what’s left of spn “fandom.” It is not only record breaking as the longest running genre tv series on US broadcast history (or streaming too), it’s among the greatest genre series in US tv history. Flaws and all. It is. I am just going to say it. It deserves better than to be relegated to the chronic ~edgy hot take that it’s the worst show ever and people shouldn’t like it. GTFO if you hate it so much.

* the “everything about this sucks after S3 mentality” or “everything about this sucks since Kripke left” needs to get thrown into a hole. These aren’t spn fans. They were once upon a time probably but no longer are and they need to leave.

* the parasocialized lenses warping the canon takes, where people have latched onto any of J2M to the point where they’ve allowed it to govern how they perceive the entire show and characters instead of seeing the story as a story and the characters as they actually are in canon and where they literally think spn sprang fully formed out of J2M’s brains and writers don’t exist. My kingdom for some media literacy.

* narrow-minded warped lenses that keep thumping on like evangelists about how the show is only about the brothers and the entire rich narrative gets flushed down the toilet by these so-called bestest truest stans ever. They do not pay attention to this canon, they do not appreciate this canon, they’re fixated on a broship, and that’s the extent of their ability to comprehend the actual source text of a show they are supposedly such huge fans of. Also years of marketing is also guilty on this. Guilty!! J’accuse, marketing. Marketing is a simplistic packaged gloss and does not reflect the richness within. Some of the marketing reflects more of that richness, but mostly the standard branding line “about two brothers” gets slapped on it and reality is a whole lot more to it. People don’t really use critical thinking or media literacy to understand that’s just the backbone construct of it and not a reflection of all the actual flesh.

[rubyrubyrubytuesday]

The Halliwells are sort of 'what if Sam and Dean were more normal about each other because they aren't doomed by the narrative to be in a horror show, stuck in a cycle of endless hopeless paranoid tragedy'.

They're the model for The Most Normal I Think They Are Ever Capable Of Being (living in a house together where their SOs get disrespected because only Siblings Get Votes)

Right down to 'younger sibling gets demon bf/gf, older sibling gets angel bf'

[he13na]

can 2023 be the year we stop thinking it’s cute and edgy to misgender celebrities and fictional characters

[eisforeidolon]

In regards to that post [X]:

We could talk about the same old fallacies - OMG, Dean's siren is a guy! Yeah, a brother. OMG, Dean was supposed to say I love you in the Crypt scene! Yeah, it was removed and replaced with what the writer explicitly said was the less OOC version of what he meant anyway, "We're family". We could talk about the blatant absurdity of statements like "Dean liked men it happened on my screen" which bear no resemblance to the SPN that aired. But we've done that before and others have got this reiteration of it well covered.

So I wanna focus for the moment on this particular even more repulsive gem: "Like he literally doesn't need to verbally tell us he's bisexual we just know. He may not know but we do. This is an unmovable fact sorry."

It tells us a few things. One, this person is a fucking idiot. Two, this person, yet again, thinks that ~*interpreting*~ sexuality from the way someone looks/stands/makes eye contact/eats pastry/whatever numbnuts conspiracy bullshit you like? Is more valid than how a character identifies and is identified by those who created him. People can just look at you and know what your sexuality is better than you do, there's nothing repulsive about that idea at all! I've got a mountain of shiny pennies that says if Dean had literally never interacted with a man for the entire span of the series, they would have insisted it was because he was so afraid of how much he wanted to fuck them. There was no way the writers could have written Dean that someone like that would have accepted as actually heterosexual, because that's not what they personally wanted, so that's not what they were going to see.

I'm not saying there aren't things that might be said about how relatively questionable some of the gay jokes in SPN are, especially in the early years in terms of making queerness a punchline. But if we're going to talk about that? We need to do it not only in the cultural context of 2005 rather than 2023, but in the context of portrayals of real world men - and particularly those in fairly rural settings who aren't going to be particularly conscientious in the way they rib each other. Which becomes a whole other discussion about where to draw lines when you're writing fiction and dealing with things that might be realistic but also potentially offensive.

Furthermore, I'm not saying there aren't things that might be said about how SPN continually used romantic tropes for platonic relationships and how it's not entirely absurd for that to land different with the audience when the characters are not blood-related. Except that discussion needs to include not just how maybe the writers shouldn't have treated it as such a joke that a relationship between two male characters might have been possible, but also how fans should absolutely not have equated a relationship being theoretically possible with any specific relationship they wanted being owed to them. Especially in the context of those romantic tropes being used so so so much more between brothers all the fucking time setting the tone. As well as how it's not just problematic to treat the possibility of homosexual relationships as a joke, but problematic to insist literally any closeness between two male entities is gay, reinforcing all kinds of nasty toxic stereotypes about sexuality and masculinity which underlay a lot of modern adult men's issues with expressing their emotions and having genuinely close and open relationships outside of their romantic partners. I've seen fans wonder how heterosexual dudes can watch this show and love the brothers' relationship without seemingly noticing the weird undertones of how claustrophobically intertwined they are, and I think it's very much that when it comes to wanting a fantasy of platonic closeness, they're looking for realism as much as most women reading trashy romance novels are - but that's a whole other digression and this is already too long.

At the end of the day, not only was SPN not created in the cultural context of Very Online Tumbrites in 2023, convinced that nothing should ever be is heterosexual and every fictional story should be about them and what they want? The fact their ostensible original point misses is the real world and most other media of 2023 aren't like that either! Some of these shippers come across like they've literally never seen two adult male friends interact with each other or any actual love stories in media - and it's not just early 2000's television characters getting this treatment from entitled shippers who want to use representation as a weapon against creators as to why they're owed things they absolutely aren't.

[follows-the-bees]

There are some legit things that need critiqued/discussed with the show, particularly the second season. I have talked about several of these many times.

And I know that for many, these things outweigh the good, and may cause one to not be able to watch the show right now. I remember after SPN's terrible finale, I couldn't watch the show for months, until I listened to a podcast and talked to people and started to fall in love with it again.

I had the opposite reaction to OFMD, and even with the critiques and issues, I still love the show. And while I'm mad it didn't get to finish it's run, I am also grateful that it didn't end at season one. I love that Ed and Stede are together (I wish we could see them work and talk everything out, actually get to see them be a couple) and that the crew is together. Captain Frenchie! I love that they are on their way to defeat the colonizers, that the toxic ways of piracy are behind and instead they set sail to a golden sunset. To a new day.

I hope that the people who are still feeling down, get the closure they need. This show is so loving, kind, and compassionate, and I hope that on others.

[lol-jackles]

Does anyone else think that Kripke is an immature dude bro with an ego the size of Texas, who writes stores vilifying “toxic” masculinity just so he can get away with writing characters who say and do shitty things without getting the woke police set on his ass? Is it just me?

Kripke has always been this way. He was “too problematic” for Supernatural and “too PC” for The Boys because he treats both set of fans the same. Kripke successfully painted SPN fangirls as crazy that shouldn’t be listened to.  And now he’s doing the same to The Boys fans by painting them as bigoted neckbeards that no one should listen to in order to justify away all criticism because he can't handle any legit criticism. Writers like this become what they’ve previously mocked in the past, so Kripke is becoming Vought and focusing on popularity and projections.

[aliusfrater]

my fav part about how long spn is that it went on long enough for sam & dean to switch places as the main character and it really cemented the toxicity of their relationship because of how much agency whoever is considered the main character within a moment is robbed of because of the amount of control the other is given when it comes to the main brother's fate. like sam had so little control over his fate, right up until it comes to a head when dean literally manipulates him out of Death's (capital d) hands simply because he wouldn't be able to live without sam which tosses the plot onto dean and how the amount of control dean has over his life affects sam but then once they reach relative neutrality, dean gains the mark of cain and suddenly the thought of losing dean propels the plot into the direction of sam working to keep dean alive, and id say that by doing so sam rips dean's agency from him but dean had straight up given up at that point. dean practically set his agency down on a table in the open and sam snatches it up before it could even touch its surface. there's something else to be said about dean doing everything to control sam's fate with the intent of doing what's best for sam but it coming out as the selfish needs of a little boy craving his brother's companionship and sam picking up the pace right beside dean once dean isn't able to walk fast enough to be in front of sam anymore

[unforth]

h-how is someone into wincest also an anti i. the sheer cognitive dissonance involved

well, to be clear, Kelios isn't the kind of anti that says "no dark content ever!" she's the kind of anti that says "I hate THAT SPECIFIC OTHER THING so much that I'm going to be awful about it all the time." So she's anti-Destiel, and anti-Castiel, and in the same way that people in MDZS are anti-Jiang Cheng and just can't engage with the fandom in any normal way as a result of how virulently they hate That One Guy.

Like iirc it was Kelios and her friends who spent cumulatively thousands of dollars to go to a con and get a big group photo op with Misha Collins, the actor who plays Castiel, just so they could make him hold a sign about how much he sucks and use that to be rude and humiliating about a whole-ass REAL PERSON on the internet...because they didn't like Castiel and Destiel.

She's also an RPF tin-hatter for the actors of the incest ship (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, the ship is usually called J2). Like she literally hates Misha Collins...because he's in the way...of her RPF ship that she believes is real...

Like. It's genuinely hard to understate how truly unhinged Kelios is, which is why Bobo Berens taking her down was so so so lovely.

(to be clear: I don't care of people ship incest ships - I literally ship incest too... - and I don't care of people ship rpf - it squicks me but don't like, don't read - but like. This is the kind of person who deliberately set out to befriend the cast and crew while being this unhinged, who truly thinks that the actors' wives are beards and the actors are a thing, and who has bullied countless real life people INCLUDING THE LITERAL ACTORS AND CAST AND CREW because reality didn't match their delusions. Like. Kelios is batshit. Kelios is so well-known for being batshit that the writer replied and then the post did numbers on Twitter and Tumblr so that all the people who knew Kelios was batshit could delight in watching her get told to stfu by someone with the authority to say that to her in a way that would infuriate her instead of being something she could laugh at and ignore. Like, fuck bullying, but she brought this on herself.)

(tl:dr, if you have any interest in SPN at all, please block Kelios on every platform - regardless of what you ship - because no one needs that much toxic. You'll be happier and healthier.)

(god I hope I don't get in trouble for posting this, I don't mean it as a call-out post, this is all just. known information about her. except that The Old Lore gets lost and maybe it does need to be said??? idk maybe I shouldn't post it. *sweatdrop*)

[laf-outloud]

If anyone wants receipts, here's the article where they mention the cast and crew of The Winchesters working while sick (as well as working long hours).

[dotthings]

For some further context on my recent CW posts, some history. Since I'm an spn fandom old.

Never was I a fan of the CW Network itself. I started watching SPN when the pilot aired and it was on WB. The WB/UPN merger and Ostroff era followed. Ostroff didn't understand SPN. Most of SPN fandom back then had this feeling of SPN being on a platform where it didn't belong and it wasn't appreciated, but we loved SPN, and endured.

Pedowitz era was better about supporting SPN which I'm sure won some SPN fans over. But still, there was this atmosphere of long-suffering endurance from most SPN fans. We knew SPN was the red-headed stepchild there. Even with Pedowitz's support. Despite it being one of their big tentpole series.

What changed my mind about CW's capacity for quality series, as a platform, was Arrowverse. I was already a DC fan, and I got into Arrowverse for a while.

Until every one of those shows got FUBAR'd for me and I gave up. And I was salty. Because I really loved Arrowverse. And there is no excuse for that many bad decisions on that many shows except a systemic issue with the platform.

I'm a fan of the shows. Not the platform. Not in any era. I have supported the shows, and the creatives, and often felt they deserved a better platform.

Ostroff, Pedowitz, Schwartz era--it's different flavors of fail, it's all not great. In their own ways.

So the great idealization of CW Network by the cw stans who seem to love the platform more than they care at all how the platform abused the shows they supposedly love, is weird to me.

Late Pedowitz era, leading up to the sale, improved on some of the systemic inclusion issues that had me utterly despising the entire platform. Someone at the top finally got it together and mandated better efforts. Because it was up for sale. Have to gloss it up for potential buyers.

Reminders that CW:

Never made a profit

Was WB/Viacom CBS's cheap quick way to make a buck off streaming

Would have collapsed much much sooner if not for the Netflix deal

Had shows fans adored and abused the shows and the fanbases

Had terrible substandard marketing

Little quality oversight on set life or stories

Meddled in shows in not good ways including queer censorship and how PoC were treated. Or looked the other way with toxic showrunners and their bad decisions.

Virtue signaled with its other rep while PR tire fire after tire fire flared over inclusion issues. But hey, here's a GLAAD award and look, we have all this other rep so you can't complain!!!! True intersectional rep was not valued there. This is a reflection of systemic industry wide issues, but CW was an unusually blatant tire fire that exposed them on main again and again and again.

Because it was a mess and nobody cared and it was there to make a cheap buck for WB/ViacomCBS

Made things even more difficult for creatives who were trying to tell better and more inclusive stories and were grateful for the opportunity to make TV shows at all. Sure, CW gave a lot of opportunities to new voices. And then its systemic issues ruined shows and made things harder on creatives.

Actors were mistreated often

This current era of trying to wash away classic CW problems existing whatsoever after all the justified fan rage I saw from multiple fan bases year after year after seen all the harm done.

The idealization of classic CW and denial of those issues at CW and revisionist history from people claiming to care about systemic TV industry issues continues to be surreal and irritating to witness. That erasure is actively harmful to the very cause people claim to support. By erasing that troublesome history at classic CW, that is enabling these industry issues to continue without criticism.

If you're running with "Nexstar CW sucks and is the only era it's okay to criticize" and trying to silence anyone who criticizes og CW you are not in fact advocating for a better TV industry.

Love the shows. Support the shows. The creatives.

The megacorporation does not love you. It never did.

[dothwrites]

sam girls look away and do not perceive this post

sam PISSES ME OFF throughout most of s8 because he's just so very childish about benny!

he's mad at dean for keeping benny a "secret" which is RICH of him, considering that sam has kept secrets about his psychic powers, ruby, demon blood, and his soullessness. he really is just a kid mad because because his dad has a new boyfriend.

he sets martin on benny because he has a vendetta and he cannot believe that benny is what dean says he is, and martin almost killed an innocent woman just to "win" his hunt.

meanwhile sam treats dean sending him a spoof text is an UNFORGIVABLE CRIME™ like he's never done anything bad ever.

i just find it very obnoxious. and it does very much feel like they're trying to manufacture tension between the brothers for drama's sake because the writers weren't able to conceive of how to make spn interesting without having ~drama~ between sam and dean

and then sam gives dean his ultimatum of "it's either him or me" which is about the height of the toxic relationship. god forbid dean has friends

[deaneverafter]

Literally cannot with so-called "Jensen fans" who will spend all day, every day, obsessing over "the coven", a dozen people who while vile, ultimately have zero reach and can really do nothing to affect Jensen, while ignoring (or worse, defending and befriending) heller cult, who say the same exact toxic things, but more often than that, much worse things, about Jensen. But haha, it's okay because they said they love him, so it makes it okay, doesn't it? Call him ugly, this phobic, that phobic, but end it all with "but I love him, haha", "I say this hateful manifesto with the utmost love, because I want to FIX him", but it's all fine, them saying THE worst things about him. All thousands and thousands of them, and their multiple accounts, spamming every account and post, showing up for every project he does to cause drama, embarrass him. But a handful of bullies that only get any traction when someone else is obsessing over them, now that is the real threat 🙄 That, and apparently, if you hate Jared, it's fine, you can do whatever you want, say whatever gross, damaging things about Jensen, and it's all okay, because "they're on our side" (spoiler alert, they very much are not). And lastly, it's the whole "I haven't seen them say anything bad about Danneel, so they're good in my books". That seems to really set off some "fans". Because when tinhatters or antis say Danneel treats Jensen like garbage, they call that bad behaviour. But when the hellers say the same exact things, Danneel has him worshipping at her feet, Danneel thinks he's nothing, Danneel loves Misha more than she loves him, Danneel's main priority is deathstiel, Danneel wants to force Jensen to bang Misha, they act as if it's all good stuff, yass, Queen. Even though, if true, it would actually be incredibly toxic and downright abusive. But they praise it, and I suppose, that's good enough? As long as you hate Jared, love Danneel and use her to put Jensen down, you can say whatever you want about Jensen, attack him in any way, without any repercussions. Such "Jensen fans" will have your back! Do also notice that every drama, every "controversy" that has come Jensen's way these past couple of years, it came from heller fam and Misha, it wasn't the haters who admit they're haters (despite their best efforts to damage Jensen and his career, they just don't have it), it was the snakes in the grass. Even a huge portion of the things those antis accuse him of, criticize him for, those "social justice issues" come from hellers (for example, their tantrums about the con photographers, calling him a predator, thief, etc. That was hellers who started that, the haters, "the coven" just saw the opportunity and continued it). If you were actually a Jensen fan, that should be the most important thing to think about, protecting him, not about fighting Jared stans, not about backing up "supernatural fam" (wtf even is that, other than a bunch of opportunists leeching off Jensen?). Of course, at the end of the day, everyone's allowed to care about what they want. All I wish is for people to not be hypocrites and put their money where their mouth is. Like, absolutely call out the weirdo haters and tinhatters, etc. But if you actually care about Jensen, have the same energy with hellers and Misha stans being disgusting as well

The priority shouldn't be whether "spn fam" is being overhyped, their importance to the Supernatural story or the show's legacy being overstated. Especially when they've shown they really don't care about Jensen, they don't see him as a friend or even a coworker they respect, Misha and the rest only see him as a way to gain clout, habitually use him to get attention for themselves, to make themselves less irrelevant for just a bit. The priority shouldn't just be is Danneel being worshipped blindly or "respected" (because let's be real, the things hellers say don't exactly paint a pretty picture. Hellers only think they're singing praises, because anything they can use to mock or demean Jensen is a good thing in their books), while Jensen gets treated like a leper, a loser, no biggie. The priority should be, at the very least, is Jensen being treated like a person, being afforded basic human respect. The priority should be, what can I do so people who enjoy mocking him, insulting him, spreading gross rumours about him, don't feel welcome to stick around, so they're not hurting him and his career. It shouldn't be let's defend and befriend them

[lightofraye]

I will answer the question of anon on why they stayed together. I'v seen alot of toxic couples like this, they usually don't last that long. In case of jenneel it lasted that long for 2 reasons, reason no 1, D is a leech and she wont leave as long as he is rich. Reason no 2, Jensen is a person that's incapable of setting boundaries ( letting her being disrespectful towards him, letting her use his ig account, letting her brother live with them) .he is also incapable of setting standards for himself. I remember when he told the story about him not being in home and not seeing her in 2 months. U know couples in such situations will either break up or go to couple counselling because there must be something wrong. not Jensen though, he defended that situation by saying this is their norms. My point is Jensen settled for this toxic relationship and let it continue. I think his ego also played a role, it's hard for him to admit that his life is a nightmare and he chose wrong and elta sucks major time so he totally surrendered to his situation and made an adaptations to it by staying away from home so he can tolerate her and telling lies to spn fans who live through him and D. It's extremely pathetic life if u ask me but that's his choice so he have to live with it.

Hi anon! Thank you for your answer.

This is so wildly correct. Yes. many a toxic relationships exist and can/do last a long time. Hell, my own parents' marriage was severely toxic and last 13 years before my mother had enough and divorced my father. I only last four years with my ex-husband and tried to plan to leave him within the second year. (Circumstances forced me to stay longer, but I was absolutely done before then.)

The fact that their marriage only works because they're apart speaks very badly of their marriage. Hell, when the pandemic lock down happened, a ton of marriages fell apart because the couples realized they couldn't stand their partner!

A healthy marriage is one where together or apart, they're okay. One marriage I follow on Facebook (it's actually a wildlife rescue!) has been around for at least 10 years, longer pre-marriage, and you know what I see when they post? A couple with a healthy, happy, loving relationship--absolutely relationship goals. Through them, I've realized what I needed in a relationship and marriage--and I sure as hell won't settle for less.

Sadly, too many are scared to admit they got it wrong. There's still a strong stigma against divorce, as though therapy and marriage counseling will "fix" the problem. Sometimes the best thing to do is to leave the relationship, not force it to be fixed somehow.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to let it fail.

[eisforeidolon]

Do you think spn was a toxic set? Heard a lot of chatter on this recently and I’ve heard the opposite? Mark shepphard who is infamously honest and will talk about his issues with a certain power that he goes on about how wonderful the set was, so I just don’t buy it?

I don't buy it and I'd look at who is saying it and what their agendas are, because I'll bet it's single actor stans doing the whole bullshit 'my fave was so persecuted and oppressed for not being treated as the only worthy solo star featured in every shot *sob*' woobie conspiracy olympics thing again.

Sure, it's definitely A Thing that media productions pretend to be one big happy family where there's no conflicts and everything smells like roses all the time. Except a set is a place with a lot of people on it, so gossip tends to leak out sooner rather than later if it's genuinely bad. Yet we're supposed to believe the set was so very terrible it was toxic ... while the stars didn't just claim to be besties but were spotted by fans hanging out and taking vacations together, while almost every guest star still effusively praises the atmosphere as welcoming and positive, while many individual crew members chose to stay on that specific set the entire run of fifteen fucking years instead of working elsewhere? That's a long fucking time for there to be no substantial rumors of supposedly extant major disfunction.

So yeah, I'd look at who is talking and what they're trying to prove, which is generally a good idea in this fandom anyway. Especially since, so far as I'm aware, the long term direct and gossip statements about the set from people with first-hand knowledge remain the exact opposite.