#fuck andrew dabb

[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?

[darkshrimpemotions]

Actually @mybrainproblems you have me reaching for my redacted-omitted-gunshots finale conspiracist tinhat again now because like. I look at all of Dabb's previous work and I look at 15x20 and I just think. Like. WHAT could possibly incentivize any writer, any storyteller, whether character or plot driven, to write an ending THAT horribly bad on every level for a show and character they put over a decade of work into??? And then I started thinking...what could possibly make ME do that? Is there anything?

And the first answer was no, but then the second answer was "someone else planning to do something even worse."

With everything we now KNOW is true about network interference and censorship of SPN basically from season 6 onward, with all those omitted script sections, with all the BTS details that were never, ever explained, and with the conflicting (but consistently so) reports from various actors and writers of different endings that got shifted/changed...I will never believe that any of the SPN writers, least of all Andrew "domesticate that masculine power fantasy" Dabb, actually liked or wanted that ending or thought it was in any way good. It's giving "mercy kill my child before the invading forces capture us" so fucking hard.

[fuckspn]

"if [the family thing] was to work... eileen, y'know, she gets it, she gets us, she gets the life" and then they wrote her out of the finale and gave sam an ambiguous blurry wife. andrew dabb i'm biting you and biting you and biting you and biting you

[themanwhowouldbefruit]

it what. IT what????

jensen assless returning to a streaming service near you

[twomancon]

I cannnnottttt get over the themes of this season being Rugged American Exceptionalism + Abortion is Evil.

[ardentpoop]

ok. kissing episode 11.17 "red meat" on the mouth with tongue

[laurelwinchester]

i mean i knew jensen hated dean’s ending but i don’t think i realized just how much searing anger this dude was holding in until the winchesters happened. it’s extremely entertaining to watch. 

[miabucky]

overthinking about the finale and i’m just sad about how cool it would’ve been to have a role reversal scenario. like it was established in s14 that sam is good with hunters and a natural leader. a huge part of his character development was realizing that he was a hunter, and he liked it. to me it makes more sense for him to have dean be the one who retired and sam be the one to keep hunting? creating a network and community and making sure no kids of hunters are raised like they were.

since the beginning, dean has been constantly mourning the death of his childhood and the life they lived and being tired of hunting. all he wanted was to stop, and for a long time he thought the only way out was to die. like a good soldier, he can’t abandon his post.

but what if. dean could retire and raise his children because he of all people knows you don’t stop needing support and love just because you’re adult shaped. he can reunite with his husband and go for long drives and cook and read and take his time. and the producers can all take a moment to put aside their homophobia and realize that dean accepting all of the parts of himself is an extremely rewarding character arc. and just Maybe the fact that he’s attracted to men doesn’t have to change anything about his character ¿ maybe there’s more than one way to be queer on television ??

S1: they were both running from what they wanted because they were afraid of what it said about them. Sam was afraid of being a monster, and thought there was only one way to be normal. Dean was afraid of being weak, of not meeting his fathers expectations.

S15: Sam was never a monster, and he doesn’t need to be normal. He can have a family and be a hunter; he already has both.

Dean was never what his father wanted, and he doesn’t need to be. he is his own person with his own feelings and desires. he isn’t a failure for wanting to be normal. he doesn’t have to die young and bloody.

they were never family because of blood. they’re family because they chose each other, just like they did all of their other family members.

This is about Jess, Bobby, Rufus, Ellen, Ash, Jo, Cas, Adam, Charlie, Kevin, Crowley, Meg, Benny, Garth, Claire, Jody, Donna, Jack, Eileen, Rowena, and a million more. i refuse to let cishetnormative producers tell me that this isn’t what the Winchester family looks like. supernatural was never just about two brothers.

[tvxcue]

i think one of the most surreal moments in my spnblr career was when i wrote a huge thing abt s12 being racist and a few people reblogged with tags going “why does everyone hate s12 this sounds so interesting” like. just bc there’s a lot to talk about in that season does not make it good. it being racist makes it actively bad, i don’t hate it bc it’s empty, i hate it because of how hateful it is.

[the-wild-wolves-around-you]

ok why the fuck is 15x19 not the end of spn???? it wrapped up like everything (well or not well can be debated) but why the fuck did they add an extra ep JUST to kill dean? really just an extra spit in the face 😤

[soullessjack]

honestly as much as I hate when Jack is dumbed down to the ‘destiel baby/lovechild’ (especially for domestic au reasons) I won’t pretend the actual textual aspect of it isn’t there yknow….like andrew dabb took an established trio, the Team Free Will and just stuck another guy in there and said “fuck you they have a kid now and this the cooler version of the established team.” if that happened in any other show I think it’d be the subject of at least twelve THE FALL OF THIS FRANCHISE type video essays on YouTube

[lol-jackles]

I am not sure if you have seen the latest ramblings of Mr Collins over the weekend or not, but he called the the CW homophobic.

This seems like a bad career move to me - especially since the CW has won so much glaadrecognition over the years.

This isn't the first time he had loudly criticised the network that basically gave him a career, so I am curious about your view on how this might be viewed by potential employers in the future

https://twitter.com/mollstiel/status/1784630732863812012?t=pKa7NVlcs6HYsPd4eBKEhA&s=19

Link.

It's notable that Misha hasn’t been offered roles in shows produced by Supernatural alumnus: Kripke’s The Boys, Gamble’s You, Carver’s Doom Patrol, Andrew Dabb’s Resident Evil, Thompson’s The Winchesters.  

Friendly reminder that in general Hollywood is not homophobic and are pretty accepting of gay artists since a good many positions of power are held by gay people.  The gay people in power are just as responsible (if not more so) for keeping gay actors and musicians in the closet because everybody wants to make money off of their mostly straight audience.  GLAAD have praised The CW for its LGBT+++ representation.

With that said, Misha has been known to troll hard outside the U.S convention circuit because it's not going to get attention from the U.S-based media, especially with a show that's been over for 4 years. At an Australia con he claimed to have gotten "in trouble several times with writers and producers”  ... and I was, "lol not fucking likely dude, not even Singer can keep covering for you if you continuously get into trouble with writers and producers, especially not with those Q scores."

[queermania]

so they were really writing dean as queer on purpose the whole time huh

i'm gonna be honest i don't think it was on purpose in the beginning. i think it was the 00s and they were making gay jokes at the expense of jensen ackles' pretty fucking face and then sera gamble and bedlund were like "hey wait a minute" but like in the most homophobic way possible and then robbie thompson and andrew dabb were like "hey wait a minute" but with love in their hearts and now here we are

[themauvesoul]

The thing abt spn is that to be a good show runner you have to be fucked up in a unique and interesting way. You gotta. Otherwise the show gets boring. And this is why carver era is a standout flop. Carver has like one or two normal things wrong with him. He just can’t compete with Andrew dabb and his exmormon pussy slaying powers or sera gamble and her inexplicable impenetrable psyche. And I think Eric kripke is beset some sort of radioactive substance or like. You know those pics they have at the dentist that r like these are your teeth on 3 sodas a day???? Eric kripke is your brain on normative masculinity 24/7. You start drinking man juice and ur like yeah this is great! And then if ur not careful you start saying shit like umbrellas aren’t manly and also I think putting actors in a room with one million bees is an excellent idea for my television show. Pass me the whiskey, because bourbon is for women!

[mybrainproblems]

look. the levels of "you know, i always thought i could be a good dancer if i wanted to be" in 15x10 are just. so much to me!!

the more i think about s15, the more i see the little callbacks and easter eggs to earlier seasons. (the writers did their homework!) we have what i think is probably the most recognized/cited one, "daddy's blunt instrument" which predates every writer working on s15. i guess arguments could be made for singer but i just don't see him making that sort of contribution to a berens-penned ep. but there are so many other little things and i do think dean's line about thinking he could've been a good dancer is both a metaphor and a callback to 07x16 out with the old.

which like.

it was also something of a metaphor in s7. you have the literal meaning of dean seeing the ballet shoes in s7 and clearly being drawn to them in a way that sam isn't, the references to both black swan and swan lake. (and clearly a knowledge of swan lake given the reference to prince siegfried.) but you also have the metaphorical meaning of the shoes with dean being drawn to something that is perceived to be non-masculine and "delicate" and nothing like hunting. that he wants to have that in some capacity. and then we get a reference back to that in 15x10!! the acknowledgement that he always thought he could be a good dancer if he wanted to be. said with wistfulness! and it's said as they watch garth and bess dancing together. the face he makes when sam jokes he was good at the macarena and totally brushes off what dean is saying. given the lamp. given everything in the episode. yes, it's about dancing and wanting normalcy. it's about settling down and having a life. it's about dancing with someone.

you ask "why lamp?" you fucking know why. and so does andrew dabb.

-

also: references to swan lake the ep before cas returns is uh. a lot. this is however an instance where i'm not 100% onboard with it being an intentional destiel thing.

* there is literally nothing delicate about dance/dancers tho, it's literally just perception. i had friends who danced and they were pure muscle and grace. it's wild.

[ananke-xiii]

Form and Void... and Hands and Hearts.

Intro.

I really like "Form od Void" from S11. It's one of my favorite episodes and it enrages me to no end that it was Andrew Dabb who wrote it. Sometimes a girl just wants to be a hater. But I don't have it in me :(.

Talking about H-A-T-E...

The episodes starts with this word:

H-a-t-e. It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-o-v-e. You see these fingers? They're arched. These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends -- the hand of love. Now watch, and I'll show you the story of life. These fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warrin' and a-tuggin', one against the other. Now watch 'em. Old brother left hand -- left hand hates a-fightin'. And it looks like love's a goner. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hot dog! Love's a-winnin'. Yes, siree. It's love that won. And old left-hand hate is down for the count.

This little monologue here is taken from "The Night of the Hunter" by Charles Laughton, his first and only movie. Laughton was bisexual and I'm telling you this because it's relevant to the usual queer stuff happening in SPN and to the point I want to make in this post.

The title of the episode, "Form and Void" , refers to the Genesis but it contains a meaningful omission. The King James version reads:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Earth is without form, and void. This changes everything because the subject of the sentence is the earth but here we're talking about "form and void" as nouns, not attributes. It's a brilliant call-back to the Genesis (therefore to the beginning of time and the beginning of SPN) and to the dichotomy of God and Amara but it's a smokescreen. The episode abounds with biblical references but there's more, at least to me. There is a secret.

If we look a little beyond Christianity the terms "form and void" are used in one of the most important sutras from Mahayana Buddhism. The Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom", or simply called "The Heart Sutra".

I think you know where I'm going with this. The heart of the Heart Sutra is the following: "Form is emptiness (śūnyatā), emptiness is form". Sūnyatā is such a vast concept that I cannot possibly even IMAGINE of summarizing it here. Just for the sake of my argument I'll say that it's often translated as emptiness, vacuity, void... without form. Very broadly (and I'll go to different kinds of Hell in different religions just talking about this stuff in relation to fucking CW Supernatural LOL) it means that ultimate reality is EMPTINESS because there is no FIXED reality, no STABLE self and EVERYTHING is connected and dependent on something else. Therefore form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

You undestand that in this light "Form and Void" is no dichotomy, thefore the episode is telling us to subvert how we view things. And it starts with that quote from "The Night of the Hunter".

Little useful background: the movie is about a fake preacher who preys on two children to get to their father's hidden treasure. He's the big wolf in disguise, a hunter wearing a preacher persona. So we need to take what he says with a grain of salt and he says a lot.

Right hand vs left hand: the preacher/hunter says that the right hand is the hand of love and the left hand is the hand of hate. This follow a well-know misconception regarding everything associated with the left as "sinister" and satanic. It's a Christian view of the world. He also says that Cain killed his brother using his left hand while the right hand has "veins that run straight to the soul of man". This man is conning people.

Notoriously, the hand that has veins that run to the heart is the left hand. This is the reason why people put their wedding rings on their left hand's...ring finger. It's an incredible old assumption that has been debunked by science but we don't care about science here. We care about symbols. And symbolically-speaking the left hand is the hand of the heart and love, not the right hand.

Now where in the hell does this idea of right and left hand? And am I crazy for seeing hints of Buddhism in a story about the Christian God? No.

The left-hand and right-hand paths are two approaches to magic and Western esotericism in general. They're called this way because people in the '800 got interested in Tantrism and translated the sanskrit terms "vāmācāra" and "dakṣiṇācāra" respectively "left-hand path" and "right-hand path". I'm not gonna go into details but I think you understood by now that the "left-hand path" was the "evil" one, the one with sex and other Very Bad Things, while the "right-hand path" was Good and Sexless and Serious and Real. In other words, the right hand represents White Magic and Controlled Sexuality while the left hand represents Black magic and Uncontrolled Sexuality. Practitioners of black magic were evil AND gay.

LOL.

Let's go back to the serial killer preacher: he says that Love wins and that it's the right hand that triumphs over the left hand. All these fingers connected to the soul that are always tugging and warring and getting entwined and hot dog! it's hot in here! But, remember folks, he's conning people. So what he says it's the opposite of what we should understand.

the preacher shouldn't be talking about this stuff in front of children. but then again, he's a predator.

Wait there's more: do you want to know if you're left-hemisphere dominant or right-hemishpere dominant? All you gotta do is to weave your fingers. If your right thumb goes over your left one then you're LEFT-dominant. If your left thumb goes over your right one you're RIGHT-dominant.

Confused much? As you know left emisphere controls controls speech, comprehension, arithmetic, and writing while right hemisphere controls creativity, spatial ability, artistic, and musical skills. It's the opposite of what we might think (because of the stupid assumption according to which left is Bad and Evil. Well, ACTUALLY left is rationality and control so the joke's on you, stupid assumption).

The dear preacher over here is right-hemisphere dominant. It may possibly mean that he's LEFT-handed and thus this image is a huge foreshadow of his "evilness" and his eventual demise. It also means that what he's saying is bullshit.

So to sum it up: in this episodes there are hunters and preachers that aren't really hunters and preachers, there are innocent children who might be seen not as innocent, left hand and right hand are subverted and they mean the opposite of what they should mean thus actually meaning what they mean, the title refers to something AND to something else and this something is very much related to hands and love and hearts...

In just one fucking scene we are told the whole episode and I H-A-T-E-that Dabb wrote it, have I mentioned it?