#dabb still does the structure game better than anyone else before him or likely after

[neven-ebrez]

I'm having a lot of trouble connecting to S14 meta. Most are so upbeat about Dean's current state, seeing everything pointing to Dean's bisexuality & Destiel endgame. But the show doesn't see Dean just thru a shipping lens. And by side stepping around the Michael arc, I feel like these metas are ignoring how Dean's past trauma, his self worth issues, his search for an individual identity, etc have to be (painfully) resolved first. Maybe, as you say, it's b/c Sam's already in endgame?

I’m sorry but I’ve honestly got no clue what is being said!  I don’t actively seek out Destiel positive meta anymore because my opinion on the whole Destiel writing situation is pretty firm and imo is a fair opinion that doesn’t need to change because there’s no one out there who is writing “meta” who knows anything more than what I already do.  I absolutely mean that without arrogance.  I say this because I can’t know where your disconnect is because I’m not reading what you are reading so I can’t even begin to know where the trouble is.  

I’d say Dean’s current state isn’t any more or less hopeful than what it was in S13 after getting Cas, Mary and Jack back.  Dean is off visiting Mary and Bobby, maintaining his family connections.  Dean is out helping to train Jack because he listened to him and helped Jack with what he said he needed emotionally and physically.  All that is good.  Dean keeps a beat on what Cas is doing and he’s okay with him not 100% being by his side at all times, just so long as he’s in his life.  Same for things with Sam.  Everyone is alive so Dean “is good”.  It’s all very “healthy”.  But.  When push comes to shove, if any of this was taken away I’m really very sure Dean would slide right back down as far as the show needed him to go in order to buy time.  This is Sam and Dean’s dream, the best situation for their well being.  Their family is more or less “safe” and they are no longer isolated and desperate to be in one another’s pockets.  If this was threatened, if any of this was taken away, I think they’d be right back in the same mindset and situation they always have been in, desperate to get their “core” family back.  The impending loss of Jack threatens this more than any other current factor.  

The lens of “family” is how this show operates, and yes, some of that is romantically coded.  I’d argue Destiel has been actively coded as romantic since 6x20.  It’s been subtextually romantically structured for Dean’s happiness since S8 (arguably S7).  But structure and coding are not active plans for text.  In my opinion, there’s an active structure in place for Dean to be developed to a point to say something to get Cas to stay, and that there have been many textual bridges burned at this point, but none of that absolutely means romantic text is definite, only reasonably more likely.  I can say this, however.  Nothing is actively and structurally being done to address Dean’s bisexuality to bring that subtext into text.  Nothing.  Whether that’s positive or negative, I can’t say, due to the show’s age.  Subtextual hints are just that, hints.  And stuff like 8x13, 10x16, 11x04, 11x11 these are all unstructured vague texts that structurally lead nowhere, because the show historically has a problem with its own subtextual --- > textual follow through.  They are not writing a “coming out” arc for Dean.  It’s honestly too late for that.  A decade too late.  

We could get into the question of “Does the show not think this is needed then, for possible eventual text?” and at this point I’d argue, “No, they don’t think it is needed.”  Then we ask, “Why not?” and there’s two reasonable answers: because the subtext and vague text is never becoming anything more OR the show is gonna lean so hard into the vague text and visual presentation of Destiel that they think this will be enough to get their point across (which either could or could not leave room for interpretation, depending on what is done exactly).  A coming out narrative is always obvious to those that know what to look for, just look at what B99 did recently.  A coming out narrative always leans into getting both dialogue and (usually, eventually) visual text.  Supernatural has no interest in this from what I can tell and I’ve honestly been looking at it for a long ass time.  I could argue this is without malicious intent simply because of the show’s age, and the position showrunner Dabb has been left in, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is never happening at this point imo.  

Prior to the start of the season I think it was tough to see how Michael was going to translate structurally into Dean’s character development exactly.  But now I think it’s clearer.  He’s the father version of Dean’s childhood trauma in the same way Amara (and the whole MOC arc) was the mother version of the same.  Until Dean confronts his father (likely, physically) he’s standing still, much like he was without Cas in early S13.  And while Dean is reasonably surviving and living now, that’s not the same as truly thriving and stepping into the future.  I think if you are reading meta that doesn’t acknowledge this is needed (for Destiel, Dean’s general development, whatever) then you are simply reading someone who doesn’t understand what Michael structurally translates to.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell.  I was rough on S12 because I didn’t realize what the MOL really “translated” to until after the season was over.  Sometimes these things can only be seen at the end.  It’s even tougher when you see how Dabb likes to tell and structure two stories at once: the present season and the next one.  

I fell for the same trap and gave a real harsh structural opinion on early S13 because I didn’t yet recognize this as Dabb’s structuring style.  He did it in S12 too, but I was so thoroughly bored with the MOL that I didn’t bother to actively consider what they structurally translated to, how they and Mary effected Sam’s trajectory, nor how Dabb was having us consider the nature of Jack before he ever entered the picture.  It was an unknowable storyline at the time S12 aired so the full appreciation of the structure is only apparent on retrospection.  S13 was the same, with foreshadowing for Michael!Dean very, very early in the season.  Whatever is coming next, it’s likely that we’ve already been exposed to the idea of it.  I think the important thing to take away is this though: Dabb finishes what he starts.  That isn’t to say the show doesn’t have a history of dropping things, even structurally significant things, but Dabb so far doesn’t do this (with the exception of the fall through of Wayward, which has been reworked back into Supernatural).  If the structure is saying Dean needs to confront his dad about his past trauma (but again, his repressed sexuality doesn’t seem to be a factor as I believe we would have gotten heavy mirrors by now if the show was going to do this in a textual way), then I think that’s exactly what we are going to get.  The show structurally blamed Mary.  Now it structurally blames John.  

And then none of this is even touching Cas’ side of things.  He’s happy and accepting that no matter what he’s got himself.  He’s in a good mental place.  He doesn’t even care about his powers and “usefulness” anymore in the way he used to and he’s honestly much better for it.  There’s still shame, I think, in how he views how he wants Dean in his life (and here the show has provided a lot of structural support and this is honestly like a flavor of a coming out narrative, closer than anything Dean himself has anyway). But before that, I think if he had the option he’d still like to try and help Heaven.  And we know he’s going to be drawn back in to something there soon...  

There’s still a lot to address.  For them both.  The fact these structures exist, and that they exist around them and between them both (Cas is absolutely essential to Dean’s well being and his future courtesy of S13), tells us how the show approaches its own endgame.  But I can’t say this enough, neither one of these structures (not Dean’s leveled on dialogue and not Cas’ leveled on action) present a narrative that requires explicit romantic text or action to be resolved.  This is something that must always be kept in mind imo, so I don’t mind saying it as much as I have to as a balance to all the optimism and hope.  I do think, however, that the chances of text are greater now than they ever had been (whereas before me saying this was just wishful thinking against unknowable pacing).  For whatever that’s worth to those that care to read my opinions on this.

[mittensmorgul]

hey mittens! i know you’ve written off the finale at this point (and haven’t we all), but i was just wondering: do we know whose idea it was to have kripke co-write that ep? because like, in hindsight, that was...a choice, and i’ve been thinking that might explain SOME of the weirdness of that ep (emphasis on SOME because uh. i really do think that some of the cringiest details didn’t come from writers at all). anyway—thoughts?

I don’t think Kripke had anything to do with writing the final ep. It just... felt like a Kripke ep, and I’m starting to think that Dabb did that intentionally. He’s the most meta writer the show might’ve ever had, and in refusing to allow Sam and Dean to live out past their ultimate victory, in choosing to “force an ending” on the characters instead of leaving their world “open” with no concrete ending, he succeeded at the task that Chuck- as Kripke’s avatar in the original story of Supernatural-- had failed to do.

Dabb, in a very real sense, is the one who “ended the story of Supernatural.” He wanted to bring it full circle, to “close the universe” and make it “reboot-proof.” This is something he’s talked about going back as far as SDCC 2019, and many of us had hoped that would mean something “better” than what Chuck wanted for the Winchesters, and for Cas.

I was hoping, and watching the show for the last few years under the assumption that Dabb’s in-story avatar was more a combination of different characters. At first, Billie, who started as a reaper but was elevated to the role of Death (like Dabb himself started as a writer who became more important to the telling of the tale, and eventually became the final showrunner who would eventually reap the show in the end, as it were).

After Jack’s introduction, I wondered if he was going to “grow into the role” of the Authorial Avatar. After all, he served as a mirror for all three other characters, reflecting their stories back at them and allowing them to process their own emotional and psychological issues by helping Jack through them. I wrote long ago, back in s13, how this enabled TFW to sort of graduate from student to master, in the martial arts sense of the word, because one truly only completes learning a thing through the process of teaching others.

And then the Empty became involved as an actual being that manifested through the identities of others, and didn’t really have its own identity other than “I need to sleep, stop disturbing me!” which... felt like it might’ve become relevant when Jack’s power was able to break through into its realm.

Then these three beings began plotting the final overthrow of the Original Author. One laid claim to the lives of Sam and Dean (Billie), one laid claim to Castiel (the Empty). We watched Jack-- the incarnation of “balance” and the vehicle through which the show demonstrated what the human soul’s function is, what the function of angelic grace WITHOUT a human soul’s function is, and what Jack as a whole being with both actually is, as he fully came to his own understanding of what humanity, human love, and the responsibility and function of cosmic power and balance is within himself.

I never doubted (especially after he consumed Michael’s grace and made that power his own) that Jack’s function would be as the ultimate role that Chuck had been trying to force on Dean since s11-- “the firewall between light and darkness.” That Jack would be the crucible to fully unite the power embodied in Amara and Chuck. Chuck’s ending was about as poetic as it gets, and I 100% appreciate Jack’s “end” in the narrative that isn’t really an end for him, because the story also implied that Chuck’s original “problem” stemmed from his wanting to give himself an ego and play with his own creation like so many tinkertoys, to force his will on a universe he created to be ruled by the will of others. 

The ultimate act of Team Free Will left Chuck fully human and an effectively blank book, with no power to force anyone else to play his games. Excellent, right? Poetic even!

But the story wasn’t really over, because in our world, there was one more episode, a coda fic if you will. And all of the characters I’d associated with Dabb-as-avatar were... rendered mute. Billie was dead or dying in the Empty, Jack came into his full power and had already healed the universe, implying that the Empty’s conditions were fulfilled and could finally go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, Chuck’s Book, while appearing blank, still contained all the words. Only Death could read them, and as far as we know, nobody in that universe had ascended to that role. But in our universe, we know that’s Dabb’s function in the narrative. What sort of ending could he write?

Most of us hoped that it would be a “once more, with feeling” sort of “you can finally lay down your arms and make a new life for yourself” ending. Many of us were baffled first off that Jack wouldn’t have brought Cas back from the Empty to Earth. We never really had a satisfactory explanation in canon of what happened there. Was Cas actually dead? What function does he have if he’s in Heaven? Has he been relegated to a role of duty and service as punishment for daring to yearn for human things? It just... it felt like the final stab from a story that had just told us that he truly has been the one disrupting for in Chuck’s story, that he was something that Chuck could never force out of the story or control, who demonstrated free will and learned to love humanity because of Dean, and yet doomed to never have that for himself. Most of us felt that line in 15.18 deserved subversion in the aftermath, and yet we never even get concrete confirmation that he’s even really alive in the same way he was before. It’s... what Chuck always wanted for Cas, to shunt him out of the story and render him powerless and plotless.

What did Chuck want for Sam and Dean? What story did he force them into over and over again? One of them tragically dead and the other miserable and mourning. He wrote billions of iterations of this exact story, over and over throughout billions of universes created for the sole purpose of doing exactly this to every incarnation of Sam and Dean he possibly could. Most of us hoped this might be the ONE universe where that was subverted, like it was the ONE universe where Castiel refused to fall in line with Heaven’s orders and plans. But nope, Dean died tragically (almost immediately after saying in canon that the only way they could honor Cas and Jack’s sacrifices for them was to keep living), and Sam lived a rather bleak and hollow life where the only thing we know he did was to raise a son named for his dead brother.

Chuck would’ve been freaking DELIGHTED!

Which... brings us to Heaven... where we get the vague hint that Cas “helped” Jack “knock down the walls” and make it a paradise that Dean would love and feel rewarded by. We never actually find out what role Cas played in that, or if he was also there in some capacity. But how I’ve always personally understood Heaven as it was in Chuck’s creation, was as a self-sustaining and ever expanding Destiny Generator, like a power generator or a giant battery where each Heaven Cubicle functioned as a cell. The show itself has been using the soul-as-power-source for ages (it was pretty much the running theme of s6-- it’s the souls!-- and this theme was returned in force in s11, culminating in the “soul bomb” plot of (gasp!) Andrew Dabb’s season finale.

Heaven was beginning to break down as a “machine” and a power generator not for lack of human souls, but for lack of angels to maintain the structure of heaven itself. In one of his first episodes, Cas even described the function of angels as being “agents of fate.” Their sole role was to literally “hold Chuck’s narrative together.” Metaphorically in the story-- in the original Apocalypse as the guides who tried to force Sam and Dean into the roles they were destined for-- as well as metaphorically in Heaven which was the “battery” that gave the angels their power in the first place. Remember what happened to Cas when he has been “cut off from Heaven” and began to lose his powers.

So the way I’d always understood the function of Heaven in Chuck’s story was exactly that. Without Chuck’s narrative, the walls would fall and the paradise Jack’s birth heralded would come to fruition THERE. Because as long as there is life, and free will, and more than one person on EARTH, that sort of paradise is an impossible dream. We’re seeing that exemplified now in real life, actually, with people claiming their rights and freedoms are being infringed upon by being asked to wear a mask and limit their social interactions to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. Does their “freedom” override the “freedom” of others who would prefer to remain alive and not infected by a virus that could kill them? It’s an impossible balance, because true freedom cannon exist in life without compromise and sacrifice.

Which brings us to Dean, and his essential humanity, which had been exemplified in his selfless love of humanity so strong that he became a cosmic disrupting force of his own by simply refusing to let Chuck’s story defeat him. He struggled with this throughout s15 as Chuck told him that his life had never truly been his own, and that he’d always been a character in a bigger story. He’d finally begun to feel at peace with who he was, with the family he’d made for himself, and everything and every experience he’d endured that had shaped him into the person he’d become, and Chuck’s revelation led him to doubt everything. In the end, he was finally able to see what truly DID matter, what really WAS real (thank you to 15.17 for confirming that Cas was one of those things that Chuck had also never intended to be part of his story, and that Cas truly had always chosen Dean freely, because his doubt of Cas was one of the main things hurting Dean in s15, epitomized in his crisis in 15.09 in Purgatory). So the fact that Cas was not “allowed” to come back to Dean afterward feels... punitive. The fact that Dean was not “allowed” to actually experience a real human life on the Earth he’d devoted his entire life to saving, the fact that Sam was never able to achieve peace and happiness in a life he’d struggled to find balance between a destiny he’d never wanted and a normalcy that had been merely performative for decades because shoving the majority of his life experience down to play at being “normal” was never truly possible, and required truly accepting all of himself to actually free himself from the half-life we saw him live after Dean’s death... all of that just... it’s exactly what Chuck would’ve wanted for all three of them.

And it’s depressing af, that when given the power to “end the story of Team Free Will,” Dabb chose to enact Chuck’s final draft, rather than handing blank books to these three to write their own lives. And it just looks like Kripke’s writing, because it kind of is his story. We just hoped it wasn’t, and that the final avatar of The Author in the story would be TFW themselves. But that was probably never meant to be. Because destiny is apparently still stronger than human free will, and isn’t that just depressing af.

[elizabethrobertajones]

With Cas and the whole I love you thing, we are excited because the camera went right to Dean after it. But I feel like this is where the disconnect comes from, because that's a director decision right? And so who knows what the writers, etc intended to portray but the director chose that shot and isn't this just business as usual with queer baiting because nothing real will probably come from it. I'm trying to be rationale about it and maybe failing?

Ick, sorry to leave you waiting on a reply for days. This one needs a lot of brain for me to answer >.>

I’m not totally sure if you’re disappointed entirely, or warring with yourself about being excited but also wary of queerbaiting at the same time… I don’t really want to talk about queerbaiting because I have been trying to keep my blog for a couple of years already mostly about analysing the show and just enjoying what is on screen, and indulging in the subtext because it’s there and it’s fun and I like it, while keeping my expectations about what the show will do with it in the future low, even while I feel good, as I have always said, that they will absolutely drive this subtext to the end of the road, and never attempt to “kill” Destiel out of the text because it’s such an intrinsic part of it now. I’m along for that ride, and everything else is someone else’s problem because I am tired and just want to have fun and enjoy some stuff >.>

(I know some people at the start of the season were worried they had and that Dean n Cas were just very buddy buddy, but they were building up to new drama between them, and now in the space of a very few episodes we’ve been dipping into references to all the big episodes, including coming at 8x17 and 6x20 again in different ways over multiple episodes, and using that very specific language the show has developed to convey Destiel in all its ridiculous, romantic glory.)

Anyway. The show is a collaborative effort. 

The writers offer up the basic lines but are VERY clever about the references - Dabb has ALWAYS been canny about it and getting more and more canny the longer the show went on and it’s no surprise at all to me that when he takes over the show the writing becomes all about looking inward and retreading the past, from Destiel events to Yellow Eyes - the first wave of MotW were about Sam and Mary’s trauma, the second about Dean’s crap and the Cas-centric stuff… Now 12x12 mixes it all together spectacularly along with a whole bunch more references rehashing the past in exciting ways - the Destiel subtext is just swept along in this same thing… 

There’s the actors, who have been making faces at each other for 9-12 years depending on who you’re talking about, and are very good at making those face, but they are just following the scripts (mostly) and at the mercy of what story is being told; they bring the texture and nuance to all these moments, but they’re still being told what to do by the directors. Speight might be a bad example because while he’s clearly fucking amazing, this was only his second episode. I’m still in a 12x10 mood, and that was directed by Thomas J Wright who has been directing episodes on the show for years, and has a few things he does all the time that you can tell it’s one of his episodes - he does a TON of overhead shots of the Bunker war room with everyone in the cage imagery of the railings or shadows of the lighting or what have you (he has been really creative with it; I think he has like 3 different ways to convey the same thing :P) and it’s clearly one of his favourite shots to set up. 

He also has kept up a thread of this crypt scene rehashing that not only has happened in his episodes at least 3 times, but the 8x17 fight mirrored the 10x22 one blow by blow, and the dramatic conclusion of 10x22 mirrored shot by shot a fight he once directed in Dark Angel with very similar conditions (there were gifsets, they’ll be very deep in my 10x22 tag although if you have an afternoon to kill, knock yourself out >.>) - and then in 12x10 he directs a similar fight but happening to Cas with a 3rd person present and mirrors his shots from 10x22 again; the end of the fight would have been scripted and I don’t know how much input he’d have on it or how much the fight would have been suggested to him, but it was written to have a positive conclusion and he directed it to mirror a whole thread that went back to 8x17 and the original crypt scene and actually put some emotional closure on that moment for the first time after 4+ rehashings of it. 

And they don’t work in a bubble because one of those rehashings was not directed by him - it was Director Ackles, who had acted like 4 of them BEFORE that because of the Dark Angel one :P Anyway I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these scenes kept on happening but written by Robbie, Dabb, Buckleming and Yockey (and also possibly Buckleming again in 11x21 because there was a lot of discussion about that at the time wondering if it worked as a crypt scene parallel and it was the same director so we were suspicious because it was Destiel AF) 

With all these different people having some input in a really coherent thread of events that obviously the director put the finishing touches to to mirror the previous happenings, I don’t think director choices are at all random or isolated from the story. It’s a collaborative episode and they CLEARLY re-watch old episodes, read their lore and find ways to tell the story as coherently as they can. I picked on a Destiel thread to explain this but I’m sure there’s tons of other stuff. I mean, like, the El Sol thing which is the set department, ANOTHER apparently random branch of the storytelling which has been putting in visual clues like death beer, mom beer, dream beer, Heaven beer… which hold up to strong scrutiny and analysis despite appearing practically at random, you might think. The show has a LOT of languages to tell the story and they’re not all things written in the script, and the script is not the be all and end all of where the story comes from. Mostly the writers seem really chill with any changes and embellishments… The only petty think I can think of is in 9x04 the line about Dean reading got swapped, and Robbie came back with a vengeance and in 11x04 got in an identical line which they could not wriggle out of swapping, AND made Dean like 5x more nerdy in the process by talking about reading seriously thinky stuff instead of vaguely suggesting he might like to read Game of Thrones one day :P Aside from that I think we haven’t had too much petty in-fighting about the story, at least not in that mic drop sort of way :P

… Anyway I don’t know about expectations and I don’t wanna encourage them, but these people know what they’re doing and no one person is completely responsible for what’s going on all the time, so I don’t think there’s any ACCIDENTAL storytelling or stuff which is just one actor or director or writing playing with something all by themselves. I mean, the writers and directors seem to have quirks that they love including so you can usually sort of feel you know what you’re getting if you know who’s responsible for certain elements, but those quirks don’t affect a bigger narrative and something like Destiel, there’s stuff going on at every level of the storytelling to at least stress how important Cas and Dean are to each other, who knows how much nod nod wink wink from up top but those directly responsible for the episodes - directors, writers, actors, set people - contribute enough to make the subtext endlessly compelling to me… And of course at a higher level it’s all put together by editors and the people in charge of the show at the top level dictating what the writers and directors work on, and how they do it, and coming up with the long game, and, I think, generally being the only people who know what the long game is meant to look like, since it certainly does not get as far as the actors because I’m pretty sure they find out the story script by script and MAYBE get ominous warnings about how to act certain things such as when they’re starting a descent arc or have a secret or whatever and their overall behaviour changes…

I don’t know, I just think… It’s MORE than just a ton of random disconnected moments because there’s a real persistent narrative about it that they make where the reading is always there and everyone’s chipping in, and then we’re emphatically not discouraged from making the reading (10x05) and we’re informed is there and that we’re supposed to read into it (9x18)… I know this answer has to be about how I and only I relate to the text because it’s personal to everyone, but I like this structure and it intrigues me and they keep on playing into their own game, and the collaborative WHOLE of the show works well for me, as something I enjoy as just a fun show to watch, and ALSO as having all this depth and SO MUCH to read into it. At this point I’m really happy just enjoying how the show is so layered even for regular plot things. I felt actual GLEE with the Yellow Eyed demon and those sound effects around him and so on because it’s all coming around again in such interesting ways… Like the heavy Destiel subtext is just a bonus because I’m a nerd about this show who also likes Destiel and can read it into the text in a way that makes me happy and comfortable with it, and… when you don’t have that same approach all I can do is explain why I do or how I see it but I can’t tell anyone it’s NOT queerbaiting or that anything will come of it >.> I just like it despite my better judgement because this show has been there for me SO LONG and oh god the SOAP OPERA of it all :P 

I do think rampant optimism is ALWAYS dangerous for fandom because it makes people expect too much too quickly or at all, and this show intends to keep on plodding to at least episode 300 which I think someone said is halfway through season 14, which means we’re like 2 years off closure AT BEST if you’re waiting for the show to end and knot up all its loose ends… So I’m happy to play it cautious with my hopes and enjoy it as it comes… Though as I have rambled at in great length, I don’t think that’s taking it all as totally random unconnected moments which have no meaning in a wider context for the writers or actors or whoever might not seem to have been consulted for some random moment or other, when there’s so MANY of them and they’re as self-referential and complex as the rest of the show…