#mostly because of the way dean treats cas

[theebarnscene]

i think the main reason why i prefer sastiel over destiel is because there’s just this wonderful understanding and respect between sam and cas that cas and dean never had. sam is also the one who always treats cas like an actual person. sam actually respects the choices that cas makes instead of making it all about himself (like dean tends to do).

dean’s love for cas (and really anyone who isn’t sam) has always felt conditional. he cares about them as long as they don’t go against him. then when they decide to do their own thing he lashes out and maybe even physically or verbally abuses them. that’s obviously mostly because of his abandonment issues but i still don’t think it’s okay and i don’t want cas (or anyone obviously) to be treated like that.

idk i just feel like cas deserves better than dean. he deserves to be with someone who loves him for who he is and who trusts him and respects the decisions he makes and that’s always been sam, not dean.

[quietwingsinthesky]

like. okay. i have no real horse in the race of “which brother is the secret bad abuser” because the show does not actually care about that or think that either of them is actually treating each other that badly (except for when sam get manipulated, which is always his own fault and he should suffer for it /s)

but what i will say is that the way dean is written sometimes manages to make me more uncomfortable than any of the villains on this show. dean scares me. completely unintentionally, they did write a guy who only gets Worse over time, and it’s compelling, and it’s upsetting for me to watch.

[laurelwinchester]

the thing is i do love cas but his stans behave exactly like felicity smoak stans and this is a problem.

[thenameisgul]

The thing with Castiel is that he had a lot of storylines that had potential to develop, but were cut short for whatever reason I don't understand: like Godtiel, humancas. For example, with humancas, an entire season could be devoted to exploiting that, it could be a separate storyline unrelated to Sam or Dean, he could meet other angels and have to solve problems himself. etc. But no, they abandoned it after a few episodes, for what? to make Dean not look like an asshole for abandoning Cas when he was most vulnerable, so as not to divert the audience's attention away from two brothers? I have a feeling the writers kept Cas/Misha around because of his popularity with fans, but never gave him the status he deserved for a character with so much potential and importance to the story line. I'm only in ss10 and heard that Cas is treated even worse in the later seasons, I don't know if I should continue watching or not.

if there's one thing I realized pretty early on when I was finally watching season 7 after a decade long break, was that in the Supernatural universe, there was no other character that was as interesting and multifaceted as Castiel.

The second thing I realized was that it was not a very good thing for the showrunners to have a supporting character be like that when your entire show revolves around two brothers.

The reason they killed off Castiel in early season 7 was because they wanted the show to go back to being about Sam and Dean and with Apocalypse over, they didn't know what to do with Castiel. But clearly, he was too popular and they brought him back because the network itself told them to bring him back.

Now, a good writer would've been able to find a balance to keep Cas' story relevant and entangled with the Winchesters, as they did in season 6 but with Kripke leaving the show and new management in the writer's room, that didn't happen.

I almost, almost get it? Like, you have your story, you have your lead characters and people love them but suddenly you bring a supporting character who becomes an instant fan favorite, who's, debatably, a lot more interesting because of the history you gave him but never intended to explore and now he's sticking around so you just don't know what to do to make him not take over the narrative? You make him weak.

Cas couldn't have stayed the badass, powerful angel who's lived for a millennia because then that'll require the show to have villians even more powerful than that to be any competition and that leaves the Winchesters irrelevant.

So they tamed him down alot, which in itself wouldn't have been such a bad thing, especially if they went with the human!cas arc for longer like you said but to do that would've meant they couldn't use Cas as an easy way out of all winchester's problems and they needed that too so 🤷‍♀️

My main problem with all of that, mostly comes from the fact that, and I may be wrong here, but it seemed like the writers actively resented misha/castiel for being popular. Like he was, in misha's words "a foil to the boys" and while the writers couldn't let him go because the show would lose ratings, they actively diminished him. The random demeaning comments about Castiel from other characters, especially, from dean seemed a little too pointed. Not to mention how the producers actually publicly said 'misha wasnt a good actor' when he's literally one of the best actors on the show!

So yeah, if supernatural had better writers, or atleast if they kept hold of the good ones (because there were some good ones) they could've given Cas and the show a better story.

I hate to say it but they did it to Sam too. Sam was such an complex character but they just stopped trying after a while with his character. So I guess it was a theme with these writers.

And as a Castiel fan, its frustrating, I gotta say that. But you know what the best part is? that no matter what they did, how dumb the storyline they gave him he still came out as the most interesting character every time. So there you go.

So I'd say watch the show, its really good when it gets good or maybe just open Misha's page on Supernatural wiki and only watch his episodes if that's your thing because tbh, you wouldn't miss much if you left the rest. lol

[worst-siblings-tournament]

Round 1, Match 28

Sam and Dean Winchester (Supernatural) vs John Wilkes and Edwin Booth (US history)

Propaganda under break. Spoilers for Supernatural

Sam and Dean Winchester

Unlicensed and unregistered guns/vigilante justice

---------

they try to kill each other SO many times. well maybe not that often but more often that is emotionally healthy for both of them. dean tries to kill sam (4.14, 8.06, 10.03, 10.23) and sam tries to kill dean (4.14).

in s10 dean has this really shitty curse that basically makes him really violent and want to kill people. however he also wants to just try to deal with it instead of trying to remove the curse because they know removing the curse would cause something really bad to happen. they don't know WHAT the bad thing is but they do know it would be devastating. anyways sam goes behind dean's back and gathers a bunch of other people to try and remove this curse even though dean doesn't want him to AND even though he knows it would cause terrible consequences. eventually sam does get the curse removed and surprise! the bad thing that happens is THE FUCKING APOCALYPSE. basically.

in s9 dean lets an angel possess sam - something he knows sam would never consent to under normal circumstances - in order to save his life and then, when sam finds out and gets mad about it, dean basically refuses to apologize. and then he just never gets around to apologizing about it or even showing regret about doing it.

in s4 sam lies to dean continuously and works with a demon behind dean's back, and he's also doing the supernatural equivalent of drugs that give him powers. when dean finds out about this he locks sam up in a panic room to suffer through his (very painful) withdrawal completely alone. also sam is having hallucinations of dean calling him a monster. and when another character says that he thinks they should let sam out because sam is at risk of dying, dean says "at least he dies human." later sam gets out of the panic room, dean catches up to him, and they have this huge fight where sam just beats dean up.

honorable mention: in between s7-s8 dean dies and goes to purgatory. the concept of purgatory is previously mostly unexplored on supernatural so sam doesn't really know that dean is in purgatory in the first place but also he just straight up does not bother looking for dean at all and just goes back to living a normal suburban life for a couple months. and then when dean gets back he is SO upset about this and resents sam for it for basically the whole season. (this is also one of the reasons he tries to kill sam.)

also they continually try to save each other, at the expense of themselves + each other + everyone around them. they also treat cas (cas!! my best girl cas!!) really shittily on multiple occasions just because he's in the way of their goals.

ALSO. very important. sam & dean are, respectively, the vessels of lucifer & michael (like the archangels) and essentially they are destined to each get possessed by lucifer/michael and kill each other in the apocalypse (the 1st apocalypse, not the 2nd).

all this propaganda might be a little bit biased in favor of sam because i'm a samgirl but you get the point. they think they're so normal but they are SO fucked up. they hurt themselves AND each other in the pursuit of trying to do what they each think is best and they never ever learn from it. i don't even ship wincest i just think they are so interestingly fucked up AND that's not even going into all the stuff about their childhoods / pre-canon

John Wilkes and Edwin Booth

They were actors which is fine. Except. Edwin was better and John was bitter. And the John assassinated the President while delivering a line well associated with Edwin's Brutus. Edwin (already on the outs with John) disowned his brother after that.

Poll Runner's Note: Also their brother Junius Brutus Booth Jr was arrested because of John Wilkes Booth shooting the president. And the three of them had just done Julius Caesar in 1864 (John Wilkes was Mark Antony and Junius was Crassus), the year before the assassination.

One of Junius' other famous roles was as King John, also in this tournament!

[spnyouresostupid]

Suptober One Shot

So I didn't have another pumpkin picture to share, so I though I would share this one shot I wrote last year for the Harvest prompt, there's a pumpkin patch so I thought that works! (If you see this posted on AO3 under superherogrl, yes that's me it's my fic)

Suptober23 day 2 part 2 - Pumpkin Patch

Family Corn Maze Trip

Going to the farmers market was one thing, he actually got some really good stuff there and he liked talking to some of the vendors. But this...

This was one step too far.

"A corn maze? Come on Cas that's so...lame." Dean made a face at him from across the kitchen table.

"Dean, Jack's really excited about it, and you know how fussy he gets when you don't come to things like this."

"God powers, and he's gonna cry over me not wanting to get lost in a field?" He grumbled. He knew Cas was right, their 3 year old, that used to be 20 something, and is currently The God of all creation (Dean still couldn't quite wrap his mind around that) wanted Dean to come on all the little outings Cas planned. He wanted to hold Dean's hand and show Dean every little interesting rock along the way. He wanted Dean to pick him up when he got tired, (it took Dean a few months to realize that Jack didn't get tired and just wanted to be held) and just be close to him.

"Good, I'm glad you understand we'll leave at 11." Cas said standing and kissing the top of Dean's head, before going to get Jack around for the day. Dean scowled at his back, and thought in disbelief how is this my life?

*****************

"Looking at the map is cheating, Cas." Dean said after they walked into a dead end. Cas rolled his eyes.

"If you say so."

"Can you see anything up there, Bud?" Dean asked Jack, who was sitting on his shoulders.

"I see all things." He said, very matter of fact. Mostly he talked like a regular 3 year old. Then every once in while he'd say some weird shit like that.

"I meant can you see over the corn stalks." Dean tried again.

"Yeah! That way!" He shouted, pointing left.

"How is using Jack not cheating?" Cas asked in an accusing tone that Dean did not appreciate.

"It's not, because we're here for him anyway." Dean said, sure enough the end was now in sight. Cas just smiled and shook his head. Once out of the maze Dean set Jack down and he immediately ran over to where the pumpkins were. "Pick out a good one for us!" Dean called after him. Dean put his arm around Cas and he leaned his head on Dean's shoulder.

"So, pumpkin carving is okay?" Cas asked, watching Jack touch every single pumpkin in reach.

"Yeah, scary pumpkins and knives? What's not to like?"

"We are not giving Jack knives." Cas said emphatically. Even though it was impossible for Jack to hurt himself, they still tried their best to treat him like a regular kid. Then Dean spotted Jack bringing them a pumpkin almost as big as he was, carrying it with no problem. Both men rushed over and Dean took the thing from him, crouching down to speak to him.

"Hey, remember Buddy, no picking up heavy things in public." He said gently but slightly panicked. He looked around to see if anyone noticed.

"Sowy daddy." Jack said tilting his chin down like he did when he was in trouble. Dean though was focused on that one word. Cas was daddy, Dean was Dean. Jack never called him that before. He couldn't believe it. Was he daddy now too? Dean smiled so wide that it made Jack give him a big toothy grin too.

"You don't have to be sorry, it's okay. Let's buy this pumpkin and head home, alright?" He said passing the pumpkin to Cas, who also lifted it one handed like it weighed nothing.

"Yeah!" Jack reached out for Dean to carry him. He obliged, settling him on his hip and pressing a kiss to his sandy blond hair. Cas in turn pressed a kiss to his cheek and one to Dean's too.

Dean walked with his son in his arms, and Cas' arm around his waist. Dean smiled to himself and thought in awe how is this my life?

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

it’s never too late by steppenwolf (aka the song from the end of 13x5) is thee dean winchester song. let me elaborate.

(i haven’t seen any posts about this so if there are any i would love to know about it bc i am passionate about this.)

firstly, i could pick that entire scene apart with how it relates to dean and what he’s going through as well as all the symbolism—the mother losing her child, billie in death’s library, the shots of the impala, the neon signs in shot when they finally drive up to cas—but honestly i would never run out of things to say about it.

the overarching themes of both that scene and this song are regret and guilt and wishing you could go back and do things, treat people, differently, and so putting them together in that way is perfect. more specifically, the song is about a man who had all these ambitions, mostly because of pressure from his parents, but finds himself grown up having achieved none of them and because of that, it starts to affect the people around him. sound familiar?

especially right now, dean is suffering so much loss, and (somewhat inadvertently) is taking it out on sam and jack, both his kids in a way (on your woman and your child / you release your bitterness). all he wants is his family back (i.e. mary and cas) but since there’s nothing he can do to go back and fix what took them away from him, he has a lot of trouble seeing the point in going on.

although you’re trained to make your mark / you still don’t quite know what to do

yeah. he’s lived like that for a while, but he’s especially feeling it now. his reaction to billie telling him he still has work to do was not exactly enthusiastic.

as he says to sam in this ep, he’s taken every previous loss in stride and just kept going, kept working, and (in some ways) kept starting over despite it all. but he might not be able to do it anymore. we’re seeing him at his lowest, all he wants is to die, but he’s finally let sam in, even if neither of them are sure where to go from here. and what happens next? his phone rings, and his best friend is on the other end.

we all know there’s a stark difference in dean from one episode to the next (13x6 is tombstone), and why is that? dean got the win he needed. he got cas back, and he’s no longer just watching time slip by until his death. a reason to live just walked back into his life. he’s learning that, maybe, it really is never too late.

this happens a lot for dean, specifically with losing cas, where it feels like he’s finally lost for good this time, but he’s always managed to get cas back or to find some way to keep going.

another line i find very fitting for dean is in the second verse:

the god of your childhood you can’t find / to save you from your emptiness

obviously, this could be about chuck and how unreliable he is, especially when dean (and sam) needs him most, which we saw most recently at the end of 13x1. (“the god of your childhood” could also be the samulet, but thats a different discussion.)

again, there’s a lot of lines that i think reflect dean’s character and everything he’s been through really well, but rather than enduring the essay i could write about it, go (re)listen and you’ll see what i mean. it’s just so beautifully fitting, especially given it’s 60s/70s rock which i think dean would appreciate.

that ending scene of dean and cas seeing each other again, particularly with that song in the background, is one i think about a lot and, to me, is criminally underrated in terms of destiel moments. it’s one of my favs and it makes me cry like a baby.

so yes, it’s never too late by steppenwolf is THEE dean winchester song and i hope you agree. it’s also just an excellent song tbh go listen to it and cry with me xx

[demenior]

go full keith ya dumbass and the novaks for wip ask

Check my list of current wips here and send me a title and I’ll post a bit or share some details about it.

the novaks is where i've been putting ideas about how The Novak Family fits in the the love it takes series. The basic idea is that the Novaks (Amelia and Claire) end up in the Winchester orbit at some point, and then pain. I don't have any scenes written, but here's the ideas:

Amelia reads Dean n Cas a new one for stealing and killing her husband

When she finds out Dean n Cas are Together she rightfully goes after Dean for sleeping with her husbands’ corpse

Why couldn’t Cas have taken someone else? Why couldn’t he have gotten a new vessel? Does he even understand how hard it is to know Jimmy’s gone? That Jimmy trusted Cas and now he’s dead, and now they have an empty grave because Cas is still out in the world with Jimmy’s body and neither Amelia nor Claire can get any closure

Amelia also gets to be pissed for the crisis of faith she got: God and angels are real, but they don’t care about you. They will destroy your family and you get nothing in return.

Claire asks Cas to hold her for a minute. Because that's her dad, or at least his body. It's a strange creature wearing her dad's skin and calling it his own now. And she's a girl who lost her father and misses him desperately.

“Dad put his arms like this” “Do you want me to do that?” “Yeah. And don’t… don’t talk for a minute, okay?”

She just wants to be held by her dad one last time, and cries into Cas' arms

Claire, who can kinda Perceive Cas’ true form, because she’s a vessel: hey you got bigger (or changed?)

Cas, looking at Claire who is a few years older now: so did you

---

go full keith ya dumbass is a segment from an (unfinished) Switch the Beat series (Voltron) in which, well, Keith was going Full Keith and launching himself into space. This bit focused on Keith tapping into the bond with the Red Lion, as I was going to start exploring the Paladin bond (and what the Lions are) in the next Switch story

--

The darkness of Keith's closed eyes grows deeper, like Keith has stepped into something dark and enveloping. Gravity finds him, and Keith settles on his feet. There's cold around his ankles, a river moving in one direction.

He's been here before. This is what it's like to bond with a lion. The water is alive in the way a wild animal is alive. It's unpredictable, unknowable and untamable. At this first level it's mostly safe. The current isn't too strong, the water is shallow. Keith would have to work to be lost here. But to strengthen the bond he has to venture deeper. To be heard he needs to be deeper. 

Keith walks slowly, testing his steps before he commits his weight. He runs through the training in his mind.

The first layer of the bond is simple. It's basic awareness. He can command his Lion from here, but it's basically like treating it like any other ship. There's nothing special here, but it is the first step in becoming a Paladin. Allura has guided them here several times before. Keith glances down at his hands-- he can see the strings that represent the other Paladins tied around his wrists. They never tangle, and they don't get dragged along in the water. They float off into the darkness, to some unknowable destination. Keith isn't sure how it connects them all, but he knows the deeper they go, even when they form Voltron, he can feel the others like an echo in his bones. 

Keith finds his way to the gate. The second level, to go deeper into the bond, lays ahead. He rarely taps into this-- only in the midst of battle when they need to form Voltron or he needs his Lion to respond to him in ways no ship can.

The gate is made of stairs, almost invisible in the dark and under the flow of chilled water. Keith stands on the edge. He can remember standing on this precipice all those weeks ago, the first time they formed Voltron, when the bonds on his wrist had dragged him down and into the dark. 

"Hey!" He calls, "can you hear me? I need help!"

He waits, and waits, and there is no response. The water is freezing, even through his armor. Keith can see his breath when he exhales.

"Okay," he decides, "I'm coming in." 

Keith walks down the stairs.

[autisticandroids]

one thing that makes me feel crazy is when people like. man this is about to sound like a "slash fans devalue male friendship" ass take which is not like. what i'm saying. but people like. they don't differentiate between ordinary care and romantic love. if that makes sense. like one thing i have noticed is that fanfictions and posts will kind of blur the line between dean caring about cas at all, or dean being closer to cas than sam is, and dean being in love with cas.

like, to me, the general vibes of evidence that dean is in love with cas goes as follows: 1) i think dean is gay, 2) i think dean essentially treats cas as a life partner, 3) it's clear to me that dean has some degree of repression and secrecy in his relationship to cas, and 4) there are certain specific behaviors that dean engages in with cas (touching him a lot, being obsessed with his sex life, etc.) that i think sexualize their relationship to some extent.

and each of these categories on their own doesn't really mean that dean is in love with cas. like, for an easy example, dean could be gay and simply not in love with his best friend. like just because dean and benny fucked raw against a tree in purgatory doesn't mean dean wants to get with cas.

the life partner thing is sticky specifically for dean because he's also treated sam that way in the past and i don't think dean is in love with his brother lol. like i think for a lot of people their experience of romantic love and their experience of having a life partner-esque relationship are like, the same thing? the venn diagram is a circle? but that's not dean's experience.

the repression is harder to handwave away, but i think you can reasonably argue that dean is repressed in all his affection because he has a masculinity complex about showing vulnerability.

and then there's the sexualized behaviors which like. honestly on their own they are indicative of at the very least a crush. come on man. there's only two things i know for certain etc.

i think these four pieces of evidence, taken together as a whole picture rather than individually, are evidence that dean is in love with cas. but i don't think any of them on their own is really proof of that except maybe number 4, but even then crushes are fleeting, they fade, dean making heart eyes in season five doesn't necessarily mean he was *in lurve* in season ten. like you need to look at all the evidence for a complete picture.

and it's notable that there's a lot of behavior i don't really put here at all. like i don't think a lot of the care dean shows cas can reasonably be argued to be evidence that dean is in love with cas, or like, i don't think dean's extreme jealousy and possessiveness is indicative of that either because he is also jealous and possessive of his family members (at least, sam and mary) and he would probably be possessive of anyone else he was super close to if there was anybody. the only person we've seen dean get that close to and not get jealous over is bobby, which is interesting but i think mostly comes down to the fact that dean sees bobby as an authority figure over him rather than the other way 'round.

(also a little off topic but i'm always saying this and it bears repeating: i also think dean is happy in their relationship as it is in the late seasons, at least 13/14/15, like i think that what he wants, he has. the positive things that would result from them making it official are 1) dean unpacking his own sexuality would be good for him in a variety of complex ways that mostly don't really directly touch on his relationship with cas and are more related to his own identity, 2) cas would be a LOT happier for a variety of obvious and not-so-obvious reasons that i won't enumerate here because they're not really relevant to the dean analysis i'm doing, and 2.5) with the relationship now named, dean would be forced to contemplate and think about his relationship with cas and what it consists of, instead of just using it as a building block of his life without really looking at it. anyway, don't get me wrong, dean would be very happy to be explicitly in a romantic relationship with cas. but he's also very happy in a platonic domestic partnership.)

(also re: the abandonment issues objection: personally i think dean has fewer abandonment issues as the show goes on and sam and cas stop leaving/trying to (for evidence, see the divorce arc: dean is extremely confident that cas won't leave, so he feels comfortable taking out his anger and pain on cas, and is then shocked when this drives cas away), and i don't really think getting into a relationship would either increase or decrease his level of abandonment issues anyway.)

anyway the thing is that this is all motivated by a fanfic i saw that assumed that it would be logical for sam not to differentiate between "dean and cas' relationship is close and intense, and certainly dean has more of a right to cas' time than i do by dint of how close our different relationships to cas are" and "dean and cas are In Love." when it's like... no. i think that from, say, sam's point of view, from what sam has seen, it's perfectly logical to simply think dean and cas are extremely close.

(personally imo if sam knows dean is in love with cas it's because sam already suspects that dean is gay from the evidence he has from other situations (e.g. the siren, the way dean acted with benny), and because he has that information, he can then put two and two together wrt. dean and cas' extreme closeness. like just the closeness isn't enough.)

and then i started thinking about another fic i read which wove the concept of dean and cas being in love into the homeless cas arc in a way that made me feel like the author was failing to differentiate between dean being in love with cas and showing him basic care. like in fact i think that dean was both in love with cas in season nine and a phenomenally shitty friend and person to him during that time, both are true.

anyway the point of this essay is elusive to me it's a collection of thoughts that don't quite fit together in a way i can verbalize but essentially it's... i don't know. people inject too much romance (and too many ideas about romance) into destiel even though destiel is a romantic relationship? that's not right but it's part of it. there's not only one way to interpret most of dean's actions even though overall they paint a specific picture? that's also not it even though it's in there. people can be important to each other without being in love, and person a being important to person b is not good evidence that person b is in love with person a? that's closer to what i was going for.

anyway the thing is i do think dean is in love with cas and that this is the most accurate reading of the text but i don't think it's obvious and it's definitely not obvious to anyone but the audience because only the audience has all the evidence from which this conclusion can be drawn.

[dotthings]

Please understand, if I'm addressing problems in the Destiel lane, it's not because antis deserve a free pass. And it's probably very obvious I am willing to to speak about antis and the horrendous amounts of hate and willful bad faith denialism Destiel shippers have to deal with. But it is mostly irrelevant noise, they are never going to change and will only quadruple down as time goes on.

At this point, the internal problems of the Destiel lane do seem far more relevant to me. Not saying people can't address what they want to about fandom problems, or Destiel shippers can't express their sense of disappointment, and I don't mean to step on anyone's sense of hurt, but they don't seem to care at all what hurt they're doing to shippers who find meaning and welcome and validation and comfort, either. So I will speak.

The Destiel lane keeps eating itself. Maybe there's some changes. Maybe some things aren't as popularized as they were. Maybe more people are aware and are pushing back.

For years, part of the lane attacks and undermines the very thing it claims to support. This goes far beyond how actors are treated. It's how the story's been treated. It's how the concept of "canon" is still treated. It was even more hellish for the final 3 seasons of spn. Maybe more light bulbs went on for people. I'll remain hopeful.

This isn't to gatekeep at anybody, or say people aren't entitled to their hurt and sense of disappointment, people can do what they want, but it truly is hard to understand why...persist like this, in that case.

Why, if Dean and Cas aren't enough. If the only way some can engage with Destiel for canon or about spn creatives is a perpetual sense of disappointment and anger and accusation. And people can't even see the support.

There's been a never-ending succession of slippery goalposts while trampling on the validity and and power of the Destiel story that's already in front of us and knee jerk negative assumptions on what's to come. While looking down on all the shippers who want to be here and support and who are excited and who refuse to erase what we already had and the ceilings this ship shattered at spn. Why? Why keep doing this?

I've been through a lot in spn fandom and with Destiel and trust, I would not be here, bothering with this, if I didn't feel strongly there are reasons to stick with it. Others can do what they want. But if all it is for them is disappointment and despair and anger to the point where they want to make the Destiel lane an inhospitable space for Destiel shippers, creating an atmosphere that's every bit as invalidating as the antidestiel hatedom at times, why don't they just enjoy the fanfics and otherwise move on, when it comes to issues of canon, to a piece of media that will suit them better?

[soulsam]

Ask game!! For Sam and Dean both:

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

OMG HELLO TUMBLR USER SPNTRUNK???? WHAT AN HONOR

I will ramble about my samdean thoughts ANY TIME so thank you for indulging me lol

1a. for sam, I loooove when the fandom acknowledges and magnifies his obsession with dean. he's slightly quieter about it (he doesn't go around yelling YOU TOUCH MY BROTHER AND ILL KILL YOU the way dean does) but that doesn't make him any less codependent or any less freakish!!!!!! he is JUST as insane about dean as dean is about him, and I LOVE to see that explored

1b. for dean, I love fandom discussions of his experiences with romance and sex and what they mean to him. I feel like the show mostly goes "dean sleeps around lol" and leaves it at that, but sometimes you get a glimpse of something else (cassie, lisa), and I always found those parts to be extremely intriguing. because dean can be such a hopeless romantic!!! he just doesn't let himself have good things, he holds them at arms length so that when he inevitably loses them it might not hurt so much. it's so heartbreaking and I could write academic essays about it probably. (as a sidenote, this aspect of his character is part of why I love samdean so much. he and sam have their moments, they've been separated by thousands of miles and death itself and it hurts dean terribly, but they always find their way back to each other. sam is the one person who dean has never really lost, not forever. and now that they're in their shared(!!!!) heaven, he never will.)

2a. I am going to have to try so so so so so hard not to write an essay about this one. the way the wider fandom treats sam makes my blood BOIL. tossing him to the side, pretending he doesn't exist, saying dean would be better off without him, etc. I hate all of it. I hate the way he gets sidelined in his own story, and the worst part is that THE SHOW ITSELF DOES IT TOO. SO I CANT EVEN BLAME THE STUPID FANDOM ENTIRELY. but if I had to pick one thing that I hate the most about the fandom's treatment of sam...I think I would be unoriginal and choose the purgatory debacle. there are just so many reasons why he shouldn't be blamed so harshly for the way he handled that time period. like. 1. he had JUST gotten hallucifer out of his head. he was having psychotic episodes so bad he nearly DIED, he barely even knew what was real and what was a hallucination. 2. he was ALONE. bobby was dead, dean and cas were, by all accounts, dead. his whole family was GONE. I can't even imagine the grief he must have endured in that time. I wouldn't be surprised if he had been suicidal, or if he'd had another psychotic break. and 3. WHERE WAS HE SUPPOSED TO GO LOOKING? he had no reason to think that dean SURVIVED the dick-splosion, and even if he was certain he had, sam KNOWS how dangerous it is to open the door to purgatory. and he couldn't exactly ask cas about it, could he? what was he supposed to do, summon crowley? yeah I'm sure that would've gone great. plus, 4. he and dean AGREED not to look for each other. sure, they make and break those kinds of promises often, but come the fuck on. how is it fair to ask sam, hopeless and alone and barely even functional enough to stand on his own two feet, to defy the promise he and dean made in order to bring him back from the dead and probably let something else nasty out along with him? that hardly seems reasonable to me.

um. I got heated about that one. anyway everyone lay off sam about purgatory okay. including dean. I get why he was upset but man cmon.

2b. this one's going to be shorter because I'm pissed about purgatory now lol but I hate when people make dean out to be some kind of. horrific wifebeater (and sam his battered, trapped woman). like. yeah. he's got anger issues and violent tendencies. yes, he often fails to break the cycle of abuse. yes, he lashes out at sam, and that's bad. but like. sam doesnt need protection from dean??? sam doesnt need liberation from dean???? dean isn't some horrible monster who belittles his brother for shits and giggles. he's a man who's seen way too much, lost way too much. it hurts to look at the ways he's changed, but he's doing the best he fucking can. also, pet peeve!! I HATE HATE HATE when people point to the behavior he exhibited while he had the mark of cain and go "see!! see!!! it was inside him all along!!!! he's a terrible person!!!!" LIKE. UM. HES LITERALLY BEEN SADDLED WITH AN ANCIENT CURSE. I DONT THINK ITS FAIR TO PROJECT ITS EFFECTS ONTO HIS CHARACTER, ACTUALLY. it annoys me soooooo bad. like did they miss the parts where he tried everything he could to keep his urges under control? did they miss the horrified look he'd have on his face after he went on a killing spree he couldn't stop? it's willful ignorance, and I hate that shit!!! I hate it!!!!!

genuinely though. and maybe this is silly to say after all that rambling. I don't want to be negative here. I love my (our!!) little corner of this fandom and I genuinely unironically love this show with every fiber of my being. it's my favorite piece of media ever and maybe that's partly just recency bias but like. I had sworn off live action TV for weird personal reasons (if you go looking, I have a personal post saying I refused to reblog spn posts because I didn't want gifs of real people on my blog. lmao) and yet here I am. I love this show. I love the wincest fandom. I love my mutuals. and as soon as I finish the finale I'm probably just going to start the whole damn thing over again.

oh also SPNTRUNK I LOVE YOUR ART !!! WTF!!!! HI???? IM STILL KIND OF IN AWE LOL

[ppersonalsspace]

I am just really fucking mad, y'know?

The past couple months I've been doing a rewatch mostly while I'm working or cooking, separate from making my bf watch spn. I started my rewatch on S4, watching just the episodes with Cas, but when I got to S12, I watched every episode. Mostly because S12 is when I stopped watching it as it aired. I was not in love with the rock star Luci plot, and I had a lot going on and just kind of stopped. I didn't start watching again until 2022, so well after it ended and the ending/ Despair was already known to me.

I think the thing that kept me from getting back into it for so long was I was so burnt out on the mixed messages, gaslighting, and queerbaiting. Just. Over it. And then finding out how nothing paid off... It took me being mostly home with my infant for a year before I made an effort to catch up.

I've since found so much to love about those last few seasons. (and things to hate even harder)... but since this rewatch I've had plenty of time to ferally dig through Tumblr for all the destiel Easter eggs, watch Jackles try to make his own fixit fanfic, witness all the post finale canon events. So because I have been seeing so much more subtext this time around, and because today is the day I hit 15.18 again on the rewatch...

I'm just mad, man.

Maybe this dumb, campy ass, horror-themed soap opera would go away if the CW powers-that-be didn't annihilate the ending of a show that'd spent 15 YEARS developing complicated characters who evolved over time. By the end of the show, TFW changed in so many ways but also didn't. And so much of season 15 (not all) completely ignores the Sam and Dean and Cas of 2020.

One of the things that stands out so much to me, was the episode I am too lazy to look up, where Sam and Dean investigate the death of a childhood friend, it was Baba Yaga, there's childhood flashbacks. That young Dean was HORRIBLE to Sam. Awful. Told him he was too dumb to go to college. Dean Winchester did not say that shit to Sammy. That was insane.

And the way Dean treats Jack. They just gotta have the Dean/Sam headbutting and lying arc (which by this point is ridiculous) so Dean goes back to treating Jack like shit and saying horrible shit.

And after Despair? Dean is just... Fine. Normal. He gets one line where Jensen gets a chance to express Dean's grief. I hate it.

If they had just been loyal to the characters, all of them, spn wouldn't be trending in 2023. I want to punch something.

[quietwingsinthesky]

13, 24

13. Worst blorbofication

See, the one I run into that bothers me the most is Dean. God forbid we treat him with an ounce of nuance and allow him to be a little shitty sometimes. But for the worst worst? Gabriel. Gabriel got hit so hard with the fandomification ray and he’s never recovered. I’d wager a bit of it is how a not inconsiderable amount of people did not watch s1-3 and so are. Less aware of the whole ‘killing Dean hundreds of times in a row for Sam’s personal torture in a misguided attempt to make Dean’s eventual real death hit less hard and uhm. Actually making it much much worse lmao.’ I feel like maybe if you didn’t sit there and watch Gabriel laugh off Sam’s distress at first and then force him to go six months without Dean + think he killed his pseudo-father figure for a minute, you perhaps are just going to believe he’s a funny goofy guy who stuck them in tv land for a bit. And this obviously makes it very easy to pair the spares with him & Sam in the background of destiel. Because this entire fandom is the worlds most boring game of politics influenced by dean and cas sucking each others dicks. All things can and shall be traced back to destiel. Or wincest. Sometimes. But mostly destiel.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

So many to choose from. I’m gonna pick the one that’s started to annoy me as I get deeper into the later seasons, and that’s Sam and Dean and the entire topic of the abuse literally happening on the screen in front of our eyes. Because, I think I’ve said this before, I don’t care if someone doesn’t want to engage with that topic, hell knows the show doesn’t care to examine what’s going on there beyond a surface level that always loops back around to ‘but dean was right to be paranoid and controlling because bad things happen otherwise’, but what is. So gross. Is the takes I have now been forced to see ranging from ‘well ACTUALLY none of the things Dean does are abusive and are normal’ which is Worrying to ‘Sam deserves it because if it was that bad, he would just leave Dean and he doesn’t, so he must like the way he’s being treated’ which is Rancid! Well aware of this fandom’s inability to do nuance ever or recognize that emotional abuse is as destructive as physical abuse (see: every fic that insists John hit his kids when show canon has a literal actual episode emphasizing to us that John did not in fact hit his kids, but the damage he did through neglect and emotional abuse is just as harmful.)

Oh, actually, you know what. Changing my answer. John Winchester. That’s my answer. Rancid takes all around. Holding my nose wading through metas about him looking for the rare gold that actually understands his character.

[dothwrites]

i love that part of cas' story in game night came about because danneel was so insistent that she share an episode with misha. this is good and normal and not giving me brainworms also, danneel being misha/cas' #1 fan is something that is so precious to me. because, same girl same.

cas brings such good gifts. "lightly cursed" rubies.

i do just love cas casually threatening people. love it.

(once again, i am forced to watch the character of nick across my screen; the hardest battles to the sexiest soldiers, etc etc)

cas being so worried about jack's soul being gone. and here we have the crux of the problem and why dean is actually a little justified in turning his anger on cas. cas KNEW that something was wrong with jack. he HAD his fears about jack's soul being gone but he kept them to himself. and he had good reasons to do so--he wasn't entirely sure, he didn't want to worry the winchesters, he didn't want them to treat jack any differently. but he STILL holds back information! and if sam and dean had known about cas' fears and misgivings, then they definitely would have done things differently with jack and kept the kids gloves on.

that being said, the winchesters ALSO had their fears and doubts about jack, and they still continued to put him into Situations, so. they're not entirely blameless. jack is acting unpredictably and erratically, and in the end, no one's really to BLAME.

am i supposed to be upset that jack killed nick? am i supposed to feel bad? I DON'T! I WISH HE DID IT MORE! I WISH HE DID IT EARLIER! like? sam literally almost killed nick just five minutes ago in the episode? and that was okay with everyone? this dude murdered people and was trying to bring back lucifer and it's treated as a moral lapse to kill him? idk, it just seems like it's okay when the winchesters kill people and not okay whenever anyone else does it.

i DO subscribe to the theory that chuck was manipulating jack into killing mary, mostly because that was the ONLY way that the winchesters were ever going to turn on jack to the point of trying to kill him. chuck needed jack taken off the board, and he wasn't going to get that unless he manipulated the winchesters into hunting jack.

[worst-siblings-tournament]

ok so propaganda for sam & dean: they try to kill each other SO many times. well maybe not that often but more often that is emotionally healthy for both of them. dean tries to kill sam (4.14, 8.06, 10.03, 10.23) and sam tries to kill dean (4.14).

in s10 dean has this really shitty curse that basically makes him really violent and want to kill people. however he also wants to just try to deal with it instead of trying to remove the curse because they know removing the curse would cause something really bad to happen. they don't know WHAT the bad thing is but they do know it would be devastating. anyways sam goes behind dean's back and gathers a bunch of other people to try and remove this curse even though dean doesn't want him to AND even though he knows it would cause terrible consequences. eventually sam does get the curse removed and surprise! the bad thing that happens is THE FUCKING APOCALYPSE. basically.

in s9 dean lets an angel possess sam - something he knows sam would never consent to under normal circumstances - in order to save his life and then, when sam finds out and gets mad about it, dean basically refuses to apologize. and then he just never gets around to apologizing about it or even showing regret about doing it.

in s4 sam lies to dean continuously and works with a demon behind dean's back, and he's also doing the supernatural equivalent of drugs that give him powers. when dean finds out about this he locks sam up in a panic room to suffer through his (very painful) withdrawal completely alone. also sam is having hallucinations of dean calling him a monster. and when another character says that he thinks they should let sam out because sam is at risk of dying, dean says "at least he dies human." later sam gets out of the panic room, dean catches up to him, and they have this huge fight where sam just beats dean up.

honorable mention: in between s7-s8 dean dies and goes to purgatory. the concept of purgatory is previously mostly unexplored on supernatural so sam doesn't really know that dean is in purgatory in the first place but also he just straight up does not bother looking for dean at all and just goes back to living a normal suburban life for a couple months. and then when dean gets back he is SO upset about this and resents sam for it for basically the whole season. (this is also one of the reasons he tries to kill sam.)

also they continually try to save each other, at the expense of themselves + each other + everyone around them. they also treat cas (cas!! my best girl cas!!) really shittily on multiple occasions just because he's in the way of their goals.

ALSO. very important. sam & dean are, respectively, the vessels of lucifer & michael (like the archangels) and essentially they are destined to each get possessed by lucifer/michael and kill each other in the apocalypse (the 1st apocalypse, not the 2nd).

all this propaganda might be a little bit biased in favor of sam because i'm a samgirl but you get the point. they think they're so normal but they are SO fucked up. they hurt themselves AND each other in the pursuit of trying to do what they each think is best and they never ever learn from it. i don't even ship wincest i just think they are so interestingly fucked up AND that's not even going into all the stuff about their childhoods / pre-canon

You did just say Sam was a drug addicted liar who's possessed by the devil and causes the apocalypse, I hate to see what propaganda biased against Sam would look like!

[rennerator]

A little bit of what I am feeling

So, based on this post here:

I was going to write this as a reply to it, but I thought it would be better as my own post here. (It is a BIG POST)

I agree with what the anon was saying there and I wanted to add my opinion to it.

And, just to clarify, this is NOT a "competition" or anything like that!

I LOVE Jensen, unfortunately whenever we have the opportunity to interact with him about Supernatural (sadly, only CE cons nowadays, here is hoping for a breath of fresh air on JIB), the topics of Destiel or even CASTIEL are almost never brought up (excluding that Cockles panel that we had cause that happened on the spot when Misha brought it up to answer the question), and yeah, multiple factors can be pointed out, like the panels, and the person accompaning him on those, and the audience, and PR, and the company... Sadly, there is ALWAYS something… I am just TIRED of, in the end, it "relying" on Misha to be the one that talks/answers about anything related to Destiel AND with it, him always getting the short end of the stick and the hate when something goes wrong, he could just NOT talk about it and not interact with it, some may say, but that is the thing, if he doesn't then who will? Jensen doesn't get involved with the subject on his panels because of the envirionment and the company there... The panels are mostly focused on J--2 and Sam and Dean (Creation probably having a say on this) which DEFINITELY doesn't help cause then the other side think that they are on the right and that even J--2 support them and also think that it is only about their sibling ship...

I also don't understand how they (Creation) continuously do that B*rn Photo OP ROMANTICIZING Dean's death if Jensen himself has already said that Dean's death is something that he still struggles with... They (Creation) veto LOTS of things, why not that one? Because we ALL KNOW that while the OPs can say that they are asking for it as a "Brothers moment", it is so NOT about THAT at all! (according to some of them, sooner or later those two are going to kiss, in fact they can't wait for that to happen, it seems...) And unfortunately, I saw the latest one of those, that happened on this weekend's con, and... Yeah... So what gets me is that THAT is allowed but to talk about a CANON moment (at least from Cas' side) that happened on the show, is not, cause it is uncomfortable... SERIOUSLY, are you telling me that talking about a gay angel is more uncomfortable than those Photo OPs?? (Again, this is relating to Creation and the vetos)

Jensen doesn't NEED to confirm Destiel from Dean's side if, for any reason, he can't or doesn't want to(although it is CONFIRMED to me THAT they BOTH LOVE EACH OTHER and NO ONE will take THAT AWAY FROM ME), I just would LIKE to HEAR his thoughts about it like the normal thing that it is, if not as lovers AT LEAST as BEST FRIENDS.... Instead of it being seeing/portrayed (by Creation) as this "BANNED THING" that should never be spoken about…

The way we have been treated (at least it feels that way to me) is like we are INSANE, we are DELUSIONAL, we FORCE our SHIP, we are THE HORRIBLE AWFUL fans that are ALWAYS ruining it... The SPN production ALREADY said "F* YOU, you don't matter" to us with that HORRENDUOS FIASCO OF A FINALE, but THEN to be "forced" to hear about how the Finale was PERFECTION and it was the BEST THING that happened to Sam and Dean and all that (PR or not), when they KNEW that the Finale HURT LOTS of FANS; to CONTINUE to be TREATED LIKE we DON'T MATTER, like we are NOT WORTH talking with or about unless it is for jokes; to exclude us and the characters that we like; and make it that there is ONLY Sam and Dean and "everything" related to them is allowed, but almost EVERYTHING related to Destiel/Cas/Misha (even some fanarts and questions) is not; and how fans of Destiel/Misha/Cas are treated badly not only by the other side BUT ALSO by the organizers, when they put people that are DEFINITELY AGAINST them as handlers for the things that these fans will be interacting with... It HURTS us EVEN MORE... Punishing US and making US be seen as the ones FORCING it on them WHEN THEY were the ones that made it happen, is not fair…

Misha was THERE for US, he LISTENED, he ANSWERED, he TALKED to us, he MADE US FEEL SEEN, he made us feel like we MATTER, he SUPPORTED us and OUR ARTS and OUR LOVE (at least, I FELT all of that)!!! He received SO MUCH SH* ALREADY JUST BY DOING THAT, BY STANDING BY OUR SIDE... Why is HE the one that is ALWAYS gettting THE HATE? Why is HE the one ALWAYS at FAULT??? THAT is SO NOT FAIR to him, one of the ONLY ONES that had our backs for all this time and that FOUGHT for us and HE is the one that "fans" don't think TWICE about ATTACKING and saying HATEFUL things to and being horrible to…

Don't get me WRONG, I am NOT saying to hate on Jensen, nor that it is all Jensen's fault, NOT AT ALL, HATE IS NOT THE SOLUTION and it is NOT all his fault EITHER!! I just WISH he would able to show us, fans, more support, I wish he would try (talking to Creation maybe?) to make a LITTLE TIME for us, and to TALK to us, NOT in a TOXIC OPPRESIVE ENVIRONMENT where if you say Cas/Misha/Destiel name in it (or even ask a question about just Jensen/Dean) you will DEFINITELY at least be the target of hateful glares and "ruin the mood" AND will not even receive an honest answer most of the time… But in an environment that we could feel like we belong, we could feel safe, a Panel with Jensen and/or someone else, not necessarily Misha, but at least a Panel where Jensen can talk freely about other things that are not just the boring "same old same old" just to please THAT audience, but I THINK that it HAS to come from HIM, he needs to be the one that wants to do it, you know, and sadly, I can't help but feel like he is comfortable with what he has right now... Being it because of the contract that he has, his projects, being it because of the industry in itself, or other things that might factor in. I am still hopeful that MAYBE we will FINALLY get that when that whole "division" thing happens, but, like, we shouldn't have to "wait" until then when there are others basking on the luxury of doing whatever they want and how they want it disregarding common etiquette and respect... And the little moments and confirmations that we get whenever someone gives Jensen an autograph item that has Destiel in it or a Photo OP with something related to Destiel and he smiles or says something about it are CUTE and LOVELY but I don't think they are enough, they still make us (at least me) feel like a secret, a thing to be "ashamed" of when we are only acknowledge there, at that moment…

I just wish people would be MORE considerate of Misha and of EVERYTHING that he has GONE THROUGH for us, EVERYTHING that he has DONE for us , for us to feel at HOME, for us to feel LOVED and that WE MATTER and that OUR OPINIONS MATTER, and that OUR LOVE MATTERS!

Sorry for the rant, but I just wanted to let this out of my chest. EDIT: Just a little bit of editing here, I want to make sure that people understand that the topics related to the change/choices in panels and the "being uncomfortable" parts are regarding CE (Creation) not Jensen, because the company is the one that makes the schedules and decides mostly what is vetoed and what is not! They are the ones that should make sure the environment that fans are paying to be in IS a SAFE ONE! English is not my main language, and I am sorry if sometimes my point might come across as rude or something like that, it is not my intention at all! My PMs are open, feel free to come talk to me about any doubts on what I said here! I LOVE THOSE TWO GUYS so F* MUCH and I just want happiness for them and for us! :)