#andrew dabb moment

[autisticandroids]

supernatural television show lines.

[ardentpoop]

i wish people could tell the difference btwn:

this is in the story as an important and intentional theme

this is in the story unintentionally but says something culturally significant and might still tie into the story's key themes

this is in the story solely to please the fans

this is in the story solely to shock the fans

[deancoded-deangirl]

I am going to say something that I think (?) is an unpopular opinion. i genuinely enjoy so many dabb episodes. I’ve seen some Dabb hate going around and I have never understood it because his eps ATE (so did Robbie’s and bedlund’s) but anyway if you hate Dabb please explain why

[insanesonofabitch]

You know, as a (kind of) new fan, I barely know shit about the full spn experience of watching shit unfold in real time—which obviously took years. When I was scrolling through Nov 5th tag, destielgate and all that, I found a fairly huge amount of people shitting on Andrew Dabb, especially for writing the finale. And I got curious about this infamous writer guy, like what else did he write?

Then I went to Google and saw that he wrote What’s Up Tiger Mommy. Then Hunteri Heroici. Clip Show. Road Trip. Bloodlines??? Stairway to Heaven?????? The Things We Left Behind????????

The Prisoner???????????

All Along The Watchtower?????????????

Lost & Found??????????????????

Like obviously, none of these episodes are perfect. But these includes HUGE destiel scenes—like pivotal moments that greatly affects the relationship and it’s development and how the audience view it. And so much of these are obviously, blatantly romantic. As explicit as it can be. Like the direct canon couple parallels? At least THREE times? You’re telling me this man is responsible for The Lovers Quarrel ft. Suffering Sam in season 8? “I’ll watch over you”? The Dean/Cas - David/Violet parallel???? Cas’ deleted personal heaven???? “Don’t lose it over one man”????? Cas giving up his Angel army for one guy?????? The Dinner Date?????? The Sam/Jess - Dean/Cas - Claire/Kaia parallel??????? The climax of Cain/Colette - Dean/Cas Mark of Cain plot line??????? “You know, I always thought I could be a good dancer if I wanted to be”???????? The PURGATORY REUNION?????????? The start of THE FUCKING WIDOWER ARC?????????????

The Fucking. Widower. Arc. The stark contrast between that and Cas being barely mentioned in 15x19 and 15x20???????? Listen—and I’m just spitballing here—but what if this guy isn’t the fucking problem. You cannot convince me that someone who wrote all that, who contributed to all that, does not fucking see it…

…oh my fucking god. What the fuck were in those omitted scenes?

[icaruspendragon]

hey berk :/ i’m in dire need of a reminder that healing can happen and that there is such a thing as a soft sequel to a harsher story—and i have come to humbly ask for, as one does, any destiel fic recs that you have where they just. get to go somewhere quiet and sunny and slow and. heal. and grow. and have a gentle epilogue.

so if you have a spare moment at some point… please send some my way <3

hello! here are some stories that make me feel soft!!

the lovers choice : “Give me the short version,” says Bobby, and Dean looks at Cas, and Cas just shrugs.

“Uh,” says Dean. “I kind of adopted God.”

or: andrew dabb i see your request for the return of fan favourites and i raise you “jack resurrects them all bc he thinks his dads should have more friends”

things happen (they do, they do, and they do) : So, the first thing that happens is Castiel comes back.

~~~

"Right," Dean says eventually, gruffly. He looks down at his shoes. "I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life, man. It's—you know, yours. Do your thing, love who you love, whatever. I can't really stop you from loving me, if that's what you've decided to do, but I don't—I can't—"

"I know," Castiel murmurs, still just smiling a little, not looking heartbroken at all. "Don't worry about it, Dean, that's all I ask."

"So we're—" Dean risks a glance up, swallowing thickly. "We're good?"

Castiel hums. "We're good."

for which no words exist : 'a prayer for which no words exist' // richard siken

"Dear Cas who art in my bathtub, give me the strength to be honest about how I feel. For your sake and for mine. Forgive me all the times I wasn’t in the past, all the words I should have said but didn’t. And please stay. Please stay with me when all is said and done. Amen. "

Dean rescues a newly human Cas from the Empty. That's the easy step.

until the end and after : A year ago, the world didn't end. Now it's summer and the cicadas are buzzing, and something is changing. Something is going to give.

and this one is my own fic, but it fits what you’re asking for nearly to the letter so i’m including it.

one more sweet boy to be butchered by men : Daddy’s blunt little instrument.

It’s all he had ever known because it’s all he was ever shown. He was only as good as his last kill. His worth came from his ability to take care of Sam. He existed to take care of others. And Dean had been okay with that, or at least he thought he had been.

Everything changed for Dean when he met Castiel. And everything changed again with the love that came from knowing Castiel.

or; love changes everything, doesn’t it?

i hope you enjoy these!!

[mlobsters]

supernatural s13e23 let the good times roll (w. andrew dabb)

well, carry on my wayward son has lost pretty all of its emotional punch that it once had for me back in the early seasons.

the moment we see sam in front of the corkboard and "the ice caps are melting" i felt like i was going to combust. what is this nonsense. our-earth 101 catching them up to speed even though we're just here to regroup and arm up before a showdown with michael? and how long was the apocalypse apocalypsing over there? longer than it would have without the boys to stop it in 2010 or whatever? mortifying. i fast forwarded. i don't need the spn cliffs notes on awful things here too

you want to hear some nonsense? i was sort of looking forward to yesterday's episode. i don't know why. well, it disabused me of that notion right quick.

why are we on some rando werewolf hunt

man mary is beautiful. and sure, she and bobby get umbrellas

MARY So what are you gonna do now? BOBBY Honestly, I got no clue. Everyone seems to be settling in okay in town. Ketch is out doing Ketch things. Rowena and Charlie are road tripping it through the Southwest.

i get that it's for production reasons they're not gonna have the whole cast around but hokay.

BOBBY Anyways...without an archangel, it's not like we can go back home. And I'm not sure I'd want to.

all right then. obviously, shit's gonna happen with lucifer and michael though right. don't have a lot of episodes left (lol) and i know michael gets all up in there at some point

DEAN Hey, you remember...remember when you asked if we could stop it? All the evil in the world? SAM Yeah. DEAN If we could...really change things? Well, maybe with Jack, we can. SAM Maybe you're right. But then what will we do? DEAN Mm. Yeah. This. (Dean holds a beer he has been carrying and Sam looks down at his) A whole lot of this. But on a beach somewhere, you know? Can you imagine? You, me, Cass, toes in the sand, couple of them little umbrella drinks. Matching Hawaiian shirts, obviously. Some hula girls. SAM (scoffing) You talking about retiring? You? DEAN If I knew the world was safe? Hell, yeah. And you know why? 'Cause we freaking earned it, man. SAM (holding up his beer) I'll drink to that. DEAN Yeah. Hell, yeah.

being optimistic is surely a sign for everything to turn to absolute shit. is cas gonna wear the trench over the hawaiian shirt? he's awfully commited to that look

tired of myself talking about this show.

DEAN Jack? Hey. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy. You're just having a bad dream. JACK Sorry. DEAN It's okay. You don't have to apologize. I have 'em, too. All the time. JACK You do? DEAN Sure. JACK You, um... What do you see? DEAN Well, depends. Mostly... mostly people I couldn't save.

thanks for saying that i guess, pretty sure he's only gonna talk to someone that's zoned as a kid about it. but without specifics of course

DEAN Jack... it's not about being strong. I mean...Look, I don't know what you saw over there, and I don't know what you went through. I know it was bad. But I also know that you came out the other side because you are strong. But even when we're strong, man, things are gonna happen. We're gonna make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. Right? But we can get better. Every day, we can get better. So whatever you're dealing with, you know, whatever...whatever comes at us, we'll figure out a way to deal with it, together. You're family, kid, and we look after our own.

needed some Quality Dad Bonding time between jack and dean, i guess now that he's not convinced he's gonna go evil and blow up the world. also always slightly amused that jack's actor, alexander calvert, is 27 at this point

didn't take long for lucifer to show up

jack flitting off to basically kill this guy with no proof of wrongdoing, like. it's such a weird character because he's an adult, i think in world he's supposed be i dunno, late teens? and he's got a very childlike view of events. it's like infantilizing except that he is basically a baby with extremely limited life experince so?? i dunno. doesn't really work for me on the regular

in a way i wish pellegrino had a different role so i could like the character he's playing. i want to believe this thing with jack because he's just so good at being sincere and horrible. like, some fucking random play at getting jack on his side is making me cry??? because the idea of starting over and him actually leaving everyone alone is just so... i wish.

MARY Sam, even if we find Lucifer, how we gonna stop him?

did they lose their archangel blade over in au world?

MAGGIE Does it matter? Kinda seems like you have bigger, you know, Satan-y problems. SAM Yeah, but -- but we're -- we're dealing with those. Mostly.

the little muttered "mostly" did get a chuckle out of me

CASTIEL Yeah, angel radio is nothing but static, which is disturbing.

i mean there's only what, 9 angels left anyway lol

laughing at this ridiculous slow float downstairs while they shoot at him, knowing nothing is going to do anything

well. that big reveal of lucifer is actually evil to jack thing, well played by pellegrino as i'd expect. did not expect him flashing out of there with jack and sammy in tow.

DEAN No. What if...what if you had your sword?

well. i wondered what on earth could get dean to say yes.

LUCIFER Wow, Daddy Sammy coming to the rescue. But your little Jackie, the nougat-loving boy that you had before, he's killed people. He's got lots of blood on his hands. SAM (standing) I don't care. He's family.

i mean, so has sam and the rest of their family so?? not exactly a convincing argument :p

DEAN (to Castiel) Lucifer has Sam. He has Jack. Cass, I don't have a choice! DEAN (To Michael) If we do this, it's a one-time deal. I'm in charge. You're the engine, but I'm behind the wheel. Understand?

i'm sure that'll work out fine

mmmk.

convenient that michael and lucifer brought the archangel blades with them so we can have a little showdown

lol reminds me of the matrix training with morpheus fight but cheesier. and we're just gonna have a fist fight in the air. oy

are they actually committing to killing lucifer? his character was more than done but sad to see pellegrino leave, but glad that plotline is over finally

SAM You did it. DEAN No. No, we did it. We did it.

and dean immediately hunches over in pain and it's like s8e23 all over again

and now michael has his special sword vessel and he broke the deal and they can't go killing him while he's wearing dean, right. wonder how long that's gonna drag on in the next season. i haven't seen a lot of gifs of michael!dean so lol i figure it can't be that long??

[jensensitive]

So what did show creator Eric Kripke think of the ending? First, let's remember where Kripke's story ended. "In my last episode, 'Swan Song,' I probably, in hindsight foolishly, spent maybe like 80 percent of how I wanted that show to end. I didn't know it was going to go 15 years. I probably wouldn't have done that again had I had another chance but I thought maybe there was another year or two! Outside of a few little scenes and a few more moments, that was the meat of where I thought this show should end, which is Sam versus Dean and then ultimately good versus evil but brotherhood wins and sacrifices are made." When the show didn't end in another year or two, Kripke says, "From that point forward, it's inevitable that over many years, the show is going to spend every idea I had in terms of where it could go or end. By the time they reach this ending, it's not like I had some preconceived notion of how it should end. I was completely open-minded to what the gang was cooking up." So how did he feel about the final pitch? "I had a long talk with Jensen [Ackles] about it and I had a long talk with [co-showrunners] Andrew [Dabb] and Bob [Singer] about it and I think it's the best possible ending for the show. It was interesting, they pitched it to me and I went off to think about it for a couple days, and admittedly, me being me, I spent some time thinking, 'Okay, is there any other ending I would pitch back that I think is better?' And I spent a couple days trying to chase down a couple avenues and couldn't come up with anything better. So I went back and I was like, 'Guys I think it's the right one.' There's some substance to it but there's something emotional, I think there's a positive energy around it." "I will say this," continues Kripke. "There's only one scene that I haven't done that I would've done for the end of the show and I'm certainly not going to give it away, maybe one day I will. But I can assure the fans that my ending was so much darker than the ending they're going with, so anyone who's like, 'Kripke should've ended it,' I'm like, 'You would've hated my ending!' Because it was a horror movie and it was going to have a horror movie ending, so I can promise you the ending [they went with] you'll love much more than if you had let me end the show." (Kripke, EW, nov 19 2020)

anyway.......

[dothwrites]

this might be an unpopular opinion but bearded sam looks good

i can't decide whether or not i like michael's accent. it just feels a little inconsistent. but props to jensen for taking a page out of misha's book and choosing to do a funny little accent

i really do like the bunker being the hub of hunterdom. it's the bunker being used as it should be! sam takes the leadership role SO NATURALLY and it is a CRIME that they didn't continue with this character development. it's one of the few times that i find sam interesting in later seasons because he's finally stepping out of dean's shadow and making his own place in the world. being the head of the hunters was GOOD for him, and i think it is STUPID that they never developed this more.

"the two of you were joined at the... you know. everything" i do go INSANE over this line. even random demon #847 knows that dean and cas are husbands. we love cas when he threatens to burn someone to ash! (we hate that andrew dabb writes cas as a pathetic little weakling who can't stand up against stunt demon #6!)

i wish that the glimpse of trueform angels we get was a little more... more

nick is STUPID omg WHY AM I SUBJECTED TO THIS "i don't understand how lucifer could die and i could live" neither do i other than the fact that buckleming fucking hates me

the damseling of cas! we hate to see it! big fight scene going on and he's just chilling in his hostage chair. i don't know why andrew dabb hates cas so much or why he thinks that cas is this weird incompetent loser but it's really annoying bitch can't nobody be crowley but crowley

i don't necessarily mind mary and au!bobby romance but i think that mary should have gotten herself a girlfriend. it's what her gen x self deserves!

i do appreciate this father-son bonding moment between cas and jack. cas expounding on the importance of family is *chef's kiss* to me

[orionsangel86]

A bit of a moan under the cut...

It's funny to be in this position where I follow a ton of SPN blogs, and a ton of Good Omens blogs, and so I get a lot of interesting hot takes across my dash.

It's fine for people to be critical, but I do find criticism of GO from SPN fans kinda hilarious and hypocritical.

"the writing was like bad fanfiction"

You did actually watch Supernatural yes? Even season 4 had its terrible fanfiction moments *cue trauma memory of Sam Winchester explaining "w*ncest" to his brother and shudder*

"There was no plot at all and it was all pointless."

Hmmm... reminds me of seasons 12, 13, and 14 of SPN

"The relationship reveal at the end was so stupid and clearly a crack ship from tumblr"

Yeah I was also really surprised when Dean and Crowley hooked up in Season 10.

"Neil Gaiman was clearly bullied into making them canon by tumblr, he absolutely hated fans asking if Crowley and Aziraphale were gay and in love back before the first season came out"

And? Why is him changing his mind (if thats what happened) a bad thing? What exactly do you think was happening behind the scenes at Supernatural regarding Destiel?

"Even if Neil Gaiman DID change his mind and decide to make it romantic, its still disingenuous and he's lying to you about what he planned with Terry Pratchett"

Sure. He could be. Funny how sometimes at some point people may see the light regarding their characters and realise that the story works better if they are together - at least Neil Gaiman was able to follow through, unlike Bobo Berens and Andrew Dabb who had their vision shat on by the CW.

Maybe he is exaggerating about what exactly he and Terry plotted out. He's protective of Terry's memory but clearly also painfully aware of how rabid the fans are and has gone a bit overboard in reassuring them. How many lies have you been told by the creators of SPN? How many times have Jackles and Mollins lied to you? Queerbaited you? Mocked you? Have you ever heard of a little thing called growth?

If you are gonna be critical about GO and Neil Gaiman, by all means go ahead. But DO NOT then sit there in the same breath and say SPN was better, that SPN had your back, or sing SPNs praises in any way.

Both shows have good and bad moments. Both sets of creators have lied at times, and tried to do whats best for their fans at times. Both shows are filled to the fucking brim with fanservice - at least GO didn't mock and ridicule its fans by either portraying them all as sad loser men, obsessive stalkers, or teenage girls who are a bit too obsessed with the sappier moments to be taken seriously. The fandom inserts in GO were older, wiser, calmer, and rather badass lesbians actually. I thought that was pretty neat.

I'm not even a huge Neil Gaiman stan, find most of his asks cringe (and often wonder if he picks out the cringier ones specifically to toy with and mock the fandom) and def find some of his explanations surrounding the origins of the GO sequel contradictory and nonsensical. Whilst he is a great fantasy writer, he isn't the best at screenwriting imo. He is also rubbish at comedy and needs support on that always. It is very clear to me that he has absorbed some of the tumblr mentality in his later years, as this is apparant to me in both GO and the Sandman, and yet, as someone who rather loves the tumblr mentality, I'm all for it. I think he is maybe trying a bit TOO hard to appeal to the tumblr specific queer community which can be alienating for wider audiences (i say this as someone who considers herself very much part of the tumblr specific queer community), and I do sometimes wonder if there is something a little bit disengenuous on his side about that, because, well, how much can an older cishet white man ever really understand the overly millennial/Gen Z queer majority AFAB leaning tumblr space? I do think some people have really got to crawl out of Neil Gaiman's ass because he is not your God. He is just a guy.

But I also think a lot of the hate thrown his way is unnecessary. A lot of people's gripes about him seem to be complaints that he is too wrapped up in tumblr culture. Which is an ironic criticism to come from tumblr users. If you hated GOS2 that's totally fine. But if you hated it and then proudly proclaim that "Supernatural did it first" "Supernatural did it better" or just "Supernatural was the best and Good Omens will never be Supernatural". Please, for the love of God, shut the fuck up. Supernatural was heavily influenced BY Good Omens, and the Sandman. Supernatural was so braizen in its stealing ideas from GO and the Sandman that it even stole one of the main characters NAMES.

As a long time SPN fan, any SPN fans ever claiming Neil Gaiman stole ideas from SPN is a fucking embarassment to the rest of the SPN fandom. By all means criticise Gaiman's work to your hearts content, but at least criticise it correctly and leave the hypocrisy at the door.

[antigonewinchester]

The Mark of Achilles, Part 2

Previous parts: Intro post; Dean & Hell, season 4; the Mark & Hell, part 1; Dean & Hell redux; the Mark & Hell, part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5; the Mark of Achilles, part 1.

Shay describing berserk violence as “demonic” fits quite well with the Mark and Blade being used to turn Dean into a literal demon at the end of season 9, freeing Dean from his previous human constraints. Demon!Dean in 10x01 through 10x03 could be seen as a quasi-berserker state, with Dean being violent, cruel, and socially isolated, pushing away Sam and Cas and eventually Anne Marie and Crowley as well. It’s also only after Sam traps him in the bunker and hurts him through the forced cure that demon!Dean tries to kill him.

10x06, with Dean killing Olivia and then shooting her seven more times, highly implied to have been from the Mark’s influence, is one of the few times where none of the situation that trigger a berserk state appear.

In 10x09, Dean has a dream about the Mark, where he’s in a small room surrounded by people he’s killed. The final image we see is of a red lamp with the same red lighting as from Cain’s fight in 9x11. (I still think this “dream” makes the most sense as a flashback to Dean’s time in Hell, although according to the director from an interview on Winchester Radio, he wasn’t thinking about it as such, and it’s unclear if Andrew Dabb as the writer intended that read either.) At the end of the episode, Dean is wounded by Sinclair with a bottle to the head and then trapped in Randy’s house, surrounded by the whole group of loan sharks who want to kill him. Similar to Cain’s fight in 9x11, we get Sam’s outside perspective and his going back into the house to reveal Dean surrounded by everyone he’s just killed.

We can see the next two episodes as a continuing of the berserking power of the Mark in how Dean attacks Metatron and Charlie. In 10x10, despite the importance of needing to give Metatron back to the angels “in one piece,” Dean attacks him, tortures him and would have killed him if Sam and Cas hadn’t pulled him away. Then in 10x11, despite good!Charlie and dark!Charlie being directly physically connected to each other, Dean keeps beating dark!Charlie up even when she’s down, leading to Charlie being very hurt when her two sides recombine. I’ll also note that the worst of Dean’s violence towards dark!Charlie happens after she hurts him first, hitting him and throwing him face-first into a stair railing, consistent with soldiers going berserk after being wounded. 10x11 also marks a turning point for Dean’s violence, with Dean protecting Sam and killing the witch in 10x12, “About a Boy,” without being overtaken by the Mark’s influence. The power of the Mark then goes on a narrative lull until it reappears later in the season.

In 10x14, “Executioner’s Song,” it’s Cain who has gone berserk, consumed by the Mark and going on a killing spree against his descendants. If we take Cain picking up the First Blade and attacking Abaddon’s demons back in 9x11 as his once again using the Mark’s berserker power, going back on his promise to Colette that he would no longer kill, then we can see his slaughter in 10x14 as a continuation of that moment. His actions could be described as “god-like,” with Cain casting his judgement and punishment onto humanity in his genocide. It also intrigues me that Cain connects his current actions back to his original killing of Abel, perhaps Cain’s own original moral wound in his murdering his brother to “save” him.

In 10x21, Sam and Dean rush to Charlie’s hotel only to find her dead, semi-mutilated body in the bathtub. In 10x22, after Charlie’s funeral and Dean harshly telling Sam that “it should [have been him] up [on the pyre], not her,” he leaves to purse revenge against the Stynes.

Shay says that “after Patroklos’s death, Achilles – to use the words of our veterans – ‘lost it.’ When a veteran says he “lost it,” what did he lose? What did Achilles lose?… In the veterans’ own words, they lost their humanity. Beast-god and god-beast replaced human identity” (82). It’s after Charlie’s death that we see Dean under the Mark at his worst, full of unrestrained violence and detached from social norms.

After he’s attacked and trapped by the Stynes, Dean frees himself and slaughters everyone using the Mark’s power, from the controlling patriarch Monroe to the abused teenager Cyrus, before using his new-found strength to beat up Cas. Investigating Rose’s death and Crystal’s disappearance, he makes misogynistic comments about both girls, and pulls a gun on both Crystal’s father and brother during his investigation. Vietnam veterans who went berserk, Shay writes, often “lost all concern for the safety of others, as much as for [their] own…,” and that especially “after the death of [a] veteran’s special comrade… all the diversity and multiplicity of social morality [became] replaced by the single value of revenge,” which fits with how Dean treats everyone and anyone, from victims like Rose to hunters like Rudy, during this part of the show (90).

Shay makes a strong case that becoming an “animal” is connected symbolically to the berserker state, as well as warfare and combat generally. He writes that “[many] ancient cultures teach us to refer to the cruelty of one human to another as “animal” behavior,” and that Homer “compares attacking warriors to wild animals dozens of times” (82, 83). For example, in the climax of his fight with Hektor, Achilles links himself to a lion and wolf, proclaiming his connection to Hektor isn’t one between men, but between animal and animal (83). In light of this metaphor, Alastair in 4x16 comparing Dean to an “animal” (ALASTAIR: I carved you into a new animal, Dean. There is no going back. DEAN: Maybe you're right. But now it's my turn to carve.) fits into the idea of inhuman cruelty during war, and given the threads of Dean’s time in Hell within the Mark of Cain arc, we could connect these two experiences as being similar times of berserking violence and Dean unconstrained from usual human limitations.

While Dean agrees with Alastair’s “animal” line in 4x16, in 4x11 he resists seeing himself that way, framing what he did in Hell as especially horrifying because he was still human. One veteran, looking back on his war experience, expresses a similar sentiment:

“War changes you, changes you. Strips you, strips you of all your beliefs, your religion, takes your dignity away, you become an animal. I know animals don’t… Y’know, it’s unbelievable what humans can do it each other.” (Shay, 83).

Viewing Dean’s violence through the lens of berserking also gives a compelling thematic frame to Charlie’s death.

I’d heard about Charlie being killed off, and the controversy surrounding it, way before I actually got it within the show. From what I’ve seen, it’s a sore spot for fandom, with the majority of takes being that her death is bad writing, narratively pointless, and sexist. Based on the contemporaneous reaction in 2015, the fandom took a similar attitude back then, too. Just see the incredibly awkward moment of Carver being asked about Charlie's death by a fan at Comic-Con 2015. Several articles were written about it in 2015, with three of them from the Supernatural Wiki (from the EW, the MarySue, and Gizmodo) all echoing similar sentiments: “there was no reason for her death to happen,” that her death “[follows] the same formula of fridging female characters with no apparent explanation or even good reason,” and that it was just a “hail-mary throw” for cheaply raising the stakes.

The fandom ire around Charlie’s death isn’t a surprise to me, and I certainly understand the frustration. It fits into the long-running pattern of killing off female characters to raise the stakes and / or give Sam and Dean something to angst over. (From my old LJ lurker days, I still remember the vid “Women’s Work” and its critical look at the show’s treatment of female characters through season 1 – 3.) While both male and female characters die in the show, women are more likely to be killed off than men, and even when men die, they’re also more likely to brought back in one form or another: compare Anna and Ruby’s singular deaths vs. Cas’s many deaths and resurrections; or Naomi getting killed off at the end of season 8 vs. Metatron lasting thru 5 seasons, although Naomi does briefly return in season 13 and 14. Charlie was also a lesbian, so her death meant the loss of one of the show’s few explicitly queer characters, a fan favorite to boot.

As frustrating as Charlie’s death is given these narrative patterns, I would disagree with critiques that frame it as pointless, without a reason, or pulled out of thin air, instead seeing it as a key turning point to season 10 and the Mark of Cain arc.

Shay not only names the death of a comrade in war as a consistent trigger for berserking, but paints it as one with a special importance, both in fiction and in real life: “Homer’s narrative and veterans’ narratives agree that betrayal of “what’s right'' is a conditioning event that prepares a soldier to go berserk at the death of closest friend-in-arms” (96). Patroklos’s death is an iconic part of the Iliad; even if people can’t name him specifically, they likely know someone killed Achilles’s best friend and that’s why he went berserk

The deaths of close friends is a part of war even for today’s soldiers, with technology and battle tactics the Greeks and Trojans could never have imagined. But in American military culture, especially in Vietnam but even now, soldiers’s grief is often downplayed and denied, with men being told instead to buck up, stop crying, and often explicitly to get revenge. For Shay, this denial of grief contrasted to its prominence in the Iliad and points to a particularly American, particularly horrifying problem for veterans: their society encourages the sublimation of grief into rage. “The virtual suppression of social griefwork in Vietnam contrasts vividly with the powerful expression of communal mourning recorded in Homeric epic. I believe that numerous military, cultural, institutional, and historical factors conspired to thwart the griefwork of Vietnam combat veterans, and I believe that this matters. The emergence of rage out of intense grief may be a human universal; long-held obstruction of grief and failure to communalize grief can imprison a person in endless swinging between rage and emotional deadness as a permanent way of being in the world.” (40 – 41).

This thread of grief shifting to rage very much calls to mind the Kripke era’s focus on the danger and futility of revenge, ala John and Sam’s previous arcs. John (who himself was a Vietnam veteran) and his quest for revenge against the YED neatly fit into this framework, especially with how it became an entrenched way of “being in the world” for him. Sam then followed in his father’s footsteps in season 1 after Jess’s death. Often, rage and grief intermingle with one another; John and Sam’s pursuits of the YED are a futile way of keeping both Mary and Jess alive, even if just in their memories. But while John and Sam’s revenge quests may have been “for” their loved ones, Mary, Jess (and later Dean) would have all been horrified to see what John and Sam did and who they became in trying to avenge them.

This same turn happens both in the Iliad and for Dean in season 10: a self-centered need for revenge over what their loved one would have wanted. For Achilles, this idea is directly addressed within the story. After he has killed Hektor and desecrated his body, the ghost of Patroklos appears to him and “reproaches [him] for the whole urgent enterprise of revenge against Hektor,” particularly because Achilles has still not buried him (88). For Dean, there’s first his conversation with Anne-Marie in 10x01, after he’s beaten up her ex. Demon!Dean says he was “protecting her donor,” to which Anne-Marie calls bullshit: “Yeah. I thought so, too… But then you kept going and going, and I realized whatever is going on with you has nothing to do with my “honor” at all.” This same sentiment returns at the end of the season after Charlie’s death with Dean’s killing of the Styne family. Dean justifies his actions as getting revenge for Charlie, specifically mentioning her when he confronts the Stynes in the bunker at the end of 10x22, but she wouldn’t have wanted him to kill Cyrus, let alone go on the whole family murder spree, in the first place.

All of this together means Charlie’s death fits into both the show’s long-running sexism and its questioning of revenge and pursuing vengeance for dead loved ones. Especially considering how the show killed off both Mary and Jess to spur John and Sam on, it would have seemed odd for the writers not to do the same for Dean with Charlie. She was the character who fit best into the narrative role of ‘loved one killed to send Dean on his final revenge quest,’ with her unique connection to him and being another ‘comrade in arms’ as a fellow hunter, and someone whose death would have hurt, both for Dean in-universe and for the audience watching (as is evident from the backlash from a vocal portion of the fandom). Personally, and in contrast to other deaths that do feel more like shock value or convenience, I feel Charlie’s death was a tragic yet thematically fitting end, illustrating her significance as Dean’s ‘Patrokolos’ and the ultimate tragedy of hunting and revenge, and I don’t think the Mark of Cain story line would have worked as well without it.

Sources

“4.16 On the Head of a Pin (transcript).” Supernatural Wiki: A Supernatural Canon & Fanon Resource. 11 Feb 2021.

“10.10 The Hunter Games (transcript).” Supernatural Wiki: A Supernatural Canon & Fanon Resource. 22 Apr 2019.

“Dear 'Supernatural' writers, what were you thinking?” Geek Girl Diva, Community Contributor. Entertainment Weekly, uploaded to the WayBack Machine, 7 May 2015.

Lane, Carly. “Supernatural’s Ongoing Fridging Problem Isn’t a Laughing Matter.” The Mary Sue, 15 Jul. 2015.

Luminosity, Sisabet. “Women’s Work -Supernatural.” The Internet Archive, 21 May 2019.

Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York, Scribner, 1994.

“SUPERNATURAL Comic Con Panel 2015.” YouTube, uploaded by Flicks and the City, 12 Jul. 2015.

“Ugh, Supernatural. You Really Didn't Have To Go There.” Anders, Charlie Jane. Gizmodo, 7 May 2015.

WinchesterBros. “Winchester Radio Discussion of The Things We Left Behind w/ guest Guy Bee.” Blog Talk Radio, 2015.

“Women’s Work.” Fanlore, 30 August 2022.

[autisticandroids]

andrew dabb foot torture moment.

[tvxcue]

i do still find it really funny that bringing mary back was a #feminism moment bc they unfridged thee fridged icon of spn and also they were showing that she was a Person but they set her entire story up by having amara be like “dean im going to give you what You need :)” and then at the end she goes “i brought her back to show You she was a Real Person :)” like yeah it’s so important to alter the life and death of a woman to teach a man a lesson. thank you for that andrew dabb.

[chocolatecakecas]

Okay but Garth and Bess are the parallel.....so where the fuck was the shot of Dean and Cas dancing in their living room??? WhERE WAS IT????

[foxthefanboi]

10x02 - Reichenbach

[mlobsters]

supernatural s9e2 devil may care (w. andrew dabb)

isn't it nice to get resurrected or whatever the fuck that was with abaddon naked but with your full face of makeup on

CROWLEY Torture. Brilliant. Can't wait to see Sam in stilettos and a leather bustier, really putting the S-A-M into S&M. Honestly, boys. What are you gonna do to me that I don't do to myself just for kicks every Friday night?

okay.

there's this little drum hit the composer uses sometimes that i swear is used exactly the same way in hannibal and it's been driving me slightly batty for a number of episodes. because can i dredge up a hannibal scene that uses what i'm thinking of...? well. this isn't it exactly but it's in a similar (or same) percussion instrument and reverb/effects on it

supernatural s9e2 / hannibal s2e8 - dramatic drums of doom

lol the transition of sound to the hannibal clip was so smooth i missed the drums i was trying to listen for in the spn one. sigh. this ... is why this watching one episode thing turns into a 2-3 hour ordeal.

SERGEANT (cont'd) So unless you can give me one good reason you got a couple of pretty-boy agents poking around my crime scene, I'm gonna put them in cuffs and spank your ass raw, understand?

all right. they are very pretty, can't argue with that

CROWLEY Oh, I know plenty. For example, I know she'd love you. Skinny, submissive... you're just her type.

crowley's in a mood. needs that weekly torture wank seems like

TRACY I watched a demon slaughter my parents. And the whole time it talked about how it was celebrating. Some dumb kid let Lucifer out of his cage.

that was unnecessary

kevin's a smart cookie, he better not be falling for any of crowley's bullshit

LOL practically a nip slip with how bundled up they usually are

ABADDON So appreciate you boys coming when I call. I think that's what I like most about you Winchesters. You're so obedient. And suicidally stupid. I like that, too.

DEAN Are we gonna fight or make out? 'Cause I'm getting some real mixed signals here. ABADDON I want Crowley. Or what's left of him. DEAN Yeah? What's in it for me? ABADDON I let you die. You give me Crowley's head, and I will snap your neck, quick and clean. You won't feel a thing, trust me. DEAN And if I tell you to get bent? ABADDON Oh. Well... you know, I've loved this body since the moment I first saw it. You're the perfect vessel, Dean. You give a girl all sorts of nasty ideas. So go ahead and play hard to get, and I'll peel off this "no demons allowed" tattoo and blow smoke up your ass. DEAN Ooh. Well, I gotta tell you, between you and me, it is a horror show up there. ABADDON It can get worse. Trust me. 'Cause once I'm on top, I'll make you watch. And I'll use your body. Have you ever felt an infant's blood drip down your chin? Or listened to a girl scream as you rip her guts out? Because you will. It's you and me, lover. We'll have a grand old time.

i don't really see all the threatened sexualized violence against dean in the same way as some people (which i mean, for me is good, because it's upsetting when it does read that way to me). this one is by far way more graphic and clear in intent and distressing. up there with hallucifer's constant mentioning of rape to sam.

angel possessed eyes are cool. janky wings with feathers actively falling off made me snort

ZEKE!SAM You are troubled, still. DEAN Yeah, it's just that, uh... this is on me. I was the one who talked Sam out of boarding up Hell. Okay? So every demon deal, every kill that they make... well, you're looking at the person who let it happen. ZEKE!SAM You were protecting your brother. I am in Sam's head. Everything he knows, I know. And I know that what you did, you did out of love. DEAN Yeah, uh, look, Zeke—I'm gonna call you Zeke—I'm not really with the whole, uh, love, and... love. ZEKE!SAM But it is why I said yes.

i am, however, here for someone making dean uncomfortable talking about his very obvious feelings about sam

DEAN This is nuts. I mean, you're Sam, but you're not Sam, and normally he's the one I'm talking to about all this stuff. I'm trusting you, Zeke. I just gotta hope that you're one of the good guys.

i'm sure it'll all be fine, dean

CROWLEY Please. Your little plan to have me stew in my own... delicious... juices... pathetic. You want intel. I want things, too. Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement. Quid pro quo, gentlemen.

very hannibal of you

supernatural s9e2 / hannibal s1e13

"Savoureux" is the thirteenth episode of Season 1, and overall the thirteenth produced hour of Hannibal. It originally aired on June 20, 2013.

Episode # Season 9, Episode 2 First aired October 15, 2013

funny. the very special episode that everything reminds nic of hannibal

DEAN Well... if she is alive, then she's dead. In every way that matters, she's dead, Kevin, I'm sorry. I know you're dying to bolt, man. I get it. But out that door, it's demons, and it's angels, and they would all love to get their hands on a prophet. So even with Crowley here, this is still the safest place for you. It just is. And we need you, man. KEVIN Because I'm useful. DEAN Because you're family. After all the crap we've been through, after all the good that you've done... man, if you don't think that we would die for you... I don't know what to tell you. Because you, me, Sam and Cas, we are all we've got. But hey, if none of that matters to you, then I won't stop you.

well i do kind of love how quick dean is to adopt someone, this kind of emotional scene with kevin feels a little out of left field. like i can see the components that led to it, but kevin was out here being miserable and tortured by himself, dean gave some encouragement and drugs. but for dean just gettin all squirrely over ezekial saying he loves sam, now he's gonna have a heart to heart with kevin? i mean, in dean-land i guess talking mushy about family is acceptable, but the L word is not.

DEAN Crap. We're living in a freaking sitcom. What about you, how's the uh, the engine running? SAM Honestly, um, I feel better than I have in a long time. I mean, I realize it's crazy out there, and we have trouble coming for us, but I look around and I see friends, and family. I am happy with my life, for the first time in... forever. I-I am, I really am. It's just, things are... things are good.

LAYING IT ON A LITTLE THICK, SHOW.

choke back that guilt there dean-o

[katya-goncharov]

Oh my God Dean deserved to get to go to therapy and instead he just went to hell :( :( :( :(