#on the side blog because i'm scared of posting criticism on the main blog in case someone calls me a loser idiot and i get ratioed

[yourfourthparent]

something interesting about dick riordan is how he never compares white characters to food in physical descriptions but when a character of colour is white passing he still finds a way to compare them to food. it won't be about their skin but it'll be about their hair or their eyes. and yet he doesn't do it with white folks. huh. i wonder why that is (sarcastic).

[still-a-morosexual-help]

i just hope the original obm isn't forgotten in the process, what with all the new charas coming in and the development and lore of the original LIs itself being forgotten. well yes, this can be a means FOR it to work out but for some reason i can also imagine how it can end badly. guess it's just my pessimistic brain after all the disappointment i've had to experience (yet i still adore this game to pieces).

Me, who has genuinely enjoyed the main storyline so far: 😀

Like I understand people having genuine problems with the game or story or whatever but (and I've said this before) real life is hard and anxiety inducing and I'm just here to have the occassional escape from it. I don't want to be pessimistic and trigger my anxiety about things that haven't happened yet in the place I come to get away from it all.

God I've taken an antihistamine so my brain's fuzzy and groggy and words are really hard and it tooke three tries to be able to spell groggy so this might not make sense

There are actually no parts in the main storyline that I have any big issue with, I liked how season 4 focused more on the side characters while still having the main characters be involved in the story and showing off parts of their personalities as well (Lucifer being protective of Simeon and soft and sympathetic to MC, Mammon being serious about what happened to Simeon and immediately picking out Michael as the one who had done something, Asmo's entire trauma, Satan's entire trauma, Belphie trying to take something seriously and work hard for once - I have long posts about three of these but I'm too out of it to find them sorry) in my opinion they did a good job balancing it out. Though there are some events I didn't care for (the ones that jump from MC spending one chapter with each of the characters without having a real story)

But even if there was something I disliked I don't want to get stuck on it? Like I'm here ti have fun and not think about shit that pisses me off so why would I get pissed off at the game that does that yknow

Whatever happens happens yknow. 's not like you can change it so why get caught up in the details? This is one of those things where you can go with the flow and have fun and not worry about what'll happen in the future because in the end it's a game and fandom's always there to catch ya if the game disappoints

I understand if you have valid concerns or criticisms but that just ain't it for me, that is absolutely not what I'm here for

I don't know how to explain it but I don't mind discussing harder topics or things that annoy me (the whole thing when Thirteen was first introduced or the people who think Mammon steals from MC) because they're sort of outside the game (which said Thirteen is a character whether you like it or not and said as early as in Lesson 4 that Mammon doesn't steal from MC) if that makes sense? Because those things come from fandom and after discussing those things on my blog I can choose not to interact with those parts of fandom

But when it comes to parts of the game that piss me off I can't block it out so;

I'm sure there are huge parts of the fandom that feels seriously let down for valid reasons but if I felt that way I wouldn't be here? If there was a part of the game I genuinely disliked or was disappointed in - something that made me unhappy - I wouldn't be playing it because it's no fun if the place I go to get away from all those negative feelings gives me the very same negative feelings

Also, I can't speculate what the new game will be like at all and what it will do to the original, but I don't see it replicating chat, devilgram or the forward moving main storyline in the same way?

Does any of this make sense or am i just babbling rn?

Basically what I'm trying to say is, everything has pros and cons. Unfortunately I'm not here to focus on any of the cons. I'm pessimistic abojt change/scared of change enough in my real life that if I was the same here regarding things about om! or any game/movie/show/book i was interested in then i'd be miserable and it would defeat the purpose of being interested in om! (or anything else) in the first place

I feel like i repeated the same simple.poing over and over again becaise im not sure which time properly explained what I was trying to say and I couldn"t be bothered to read it all again so sorry and I'm still not sure if I said what I wanted to say? What should have been one paragraph someone became like 5 paragraphs sorry

Sorry anon I have no real insight to what you're saying other than whatever this is im gonna pass out now

[naruhearts]

OKAY SO I've just spent the best part of an hour scrolling through your blog and reading a bunch of your destiel meta and I HAD to message you... I was one of the many people who STRONGLY believed destiel had a chance of being canon after season 8 (more like season gr8 am i right), but throughout the years I slowly lost all hope. However, S14 has made me 110% invested in the show again and YOUR META IS GIVING ME HOPE FOR DESTIEL, which is TERRIFYING. Your writing is wonderful and I'm STRESSED.

Got back from Washington late last night!

Oh my gosh @alovelikecas, your message really made my day and I’m SO glad you enjoy my meta xox (even when most of my meta looks like, to me, sloppy-ass writing, haha! I’ll probably make an end-season meta post after 14x20 — if I have the time — that touches upon SPN’s current and repeating themes since Season New Beginnings S12/Dabb Era, not to mention I have, like, some more unfinished meta in my drafts >.>)

Yeah I mean, I didn’t join Destiel land until Summer 2016, and before that, I was late to the Season 11 party, so I basically had no narrative context for anything, and I’ll copy-paste what I said here: 

Looking back, one significant thing I recall? S11 gave me a sense of Destiel’s true narrative validity (as not a ‘fanon’ ship but organically developed in the canon) when I perceived it as a season that was ‘missing something’. Keep in mind I had no idea about Destiel yet while watching S11 at the time.

I was literally asking myself — repeatedly — why Dean/Amara seemed to contain odd narrative holes, considering A. Dean explicitly said that the non-consensual attraction he felt for Amara was NOT love and “it scares him”, B. Amara told Dean that ‘something stops you - keeps you from having it all’, C. Djinn!Amara stated that she can: ‘feel the love [Dean] feels, except it’s cloaked in shame,’ and D. Mildred’s iconic ‘You’re pining for someone’ —> which did not logically correlate with A and C, meaning: since Dean doesn’t freely love Amara and thus isn’t possibly pining for her — with female love interests as currently non-existent (I remember crossing off the dead/gone girls on a piece of paper lol) — who the hell was he pining for, then?

Originally posted by elizabethrobertajones

Obviously, without writing long-ass paragraphs of meta about it again in this post, S11 made sense as soon as I watched it within the Destiel context (especially after I read up on some grandiose pieces of Destiel meta (@charlie-minion was the very first person who inspired me to write meta; I followed her once I joined the fandom Oh my god, here we go, holy crap this subtext – I’m invested in this godforsaken ship because they’re in love with each other and I’m not getting off any time soon. The rest is history.

I’m aware that I do come off as positive (and I’m still Destiel-positive; whatever happens in 14x20 this week may or may not change that), but I hope you don’t mind if I use your lovely ask as an additional opportunity to clarify my meta standpoint: no one’s saying Destiel WILL become text. 

The general Destiel meta community (all subfactions: Destiel-positive, -negative, -neutral, and in-between) is not the Most Holy Canon Word, and we aren’t SPN writers, and again, we can’t actually speak to the veracity of Destiel as guaranteed-gonna-go-textual, but we — a diverse pool of critical thinkers from all walks of life: particularly those who have some degree of experience in literary academia/English literature studies (fun fact: I was actually pursuing a Minor’s in English until I changed my mind - my first love’s Health Science/Biology, which I stuck with, but here I am doing lit-crit analysis on the side *wink*) — can speak to the veracity of Destiel as a real, palpable, and ever-substantial long-running romance narrative aka the love story between Dean and Cas IS THERE. I see it. We all see it. We didn’t pluck it out of the random ether one day. It naturally evolved across the show’s overarching narrative like some vast spiderweb, linked together by numerous character arc amalgamations of Dean Winchester and Castiel as separate individuals who were then brought together — who brought themselves together, by the sheer force of free will and choice — and are now inherent parts of the other’s story (and respective character progression).

I say this too many times to count: the entire point of writing meta? Personally, it enables me to appreciate the literary gorgeousness of Dean and Cas’ relationship as, first and foremost, a tentative alliance offset by the very moment Cas raised Dean from perdition (it’s a poetic beginning). Their alliance then inevitably proliferated into a rocky — at times, necessarily turbulent — friendship, then a deep profound bond…one that crossed platonic boundaries since S7/8 and is, ultimately, indelibly rooted in romance. Together, Dean and Cas build up each other’s strengths, complement each other’s flaws, and narratively motivate the other to self-introspect — to become the best version of themselves that they were always meant to be: self-actualized entities who let go of their painful, horrifying, psychologically/emotionally destitute pasts.

These above reasons and more are why I think Destiel belongs right up there on the shelf of Ye Olde Classics, similar to epics by John Milton, Shakespearian tragic dramas, Homeric characteristic cruxes, and the great Odyssey journey: a legendary journey, fraught with circumstance, that finally ended with Odysseus (now an enlightened man) returning to Penelope, the love of his life.

Channeling the scope of Homer’s Odyssey, Destiel is an incredible storytelling feat of obstacles, both internal and external, romance tropes, mirroring, foreshadowing, and visual cadence/emotion, enhancing SPN’s already character-driven main plot in that Dean and Cas try to make it back to one another; like Penelope, their love holds true despite everything. If Destiel were an M/F couple, we all know their love story would be absolutely undeniable to the GA.

I do understand the bitterness S14’s fostered in some viewers, though. I do understand that Dean and Cas seem distant (and yeah, it’s a noticeable difference compared to S12/S13), but I believe the Destiel subtext is still heavy and holds steady.

Right now, at this point, there remains multiple personal issues for the characters to solve, you know? Dean and Cas aren’t talking properly; their love languages stay mistranslated, although we’re persistently shown that they still understand each other on a certain level that no one else can, and the visual narrative keeps framing them as on-the-nose solid counterparts: a domestic-spousal romantic unit independent of Sam.

Originally posted by incatastrophicmind

They want to be there for the other. They need to quash the final remnants of their respective internal loathing (Dean’s self-worthiness, Cas’ self-expendability) before they’re able to give the other 100% of their time, efforts, attention, and love (as flawed and complicated but compellingly beautiful as it can possibly be). During the times Dean and Cas do try to talk shit out, extraneous issues continue to get between them.

As other friends/meta pals discussed with me, S14 is like S10 in that it’s confusing the cast/audiences. And exactly: S8, besides S11/S12/early S13, also belongs in the close-to-canon serious Destiel narrative transition! I can discuss the showrunning/writer problem of SBL (Singer + Bucklemming; @occamshipper hits the nail on the head) that tugs subtext – especially subtext linked to Destiel – back and forth, sometimes in the weirdest nonsensical ways, but I won’t go too far into it here. I agree, however, with the recent idea that Jensen does seem a bit confused as to where he should bring Dean emotionally this season (don’t get me wrong, I do NOT believe Dean is OOC; OOC is a completely different concept vs expected character behaviour). And if Dean’s consistently romance-coded past interactions with Cas are any indication, Jensen would also — in the same vein as all of us — want Dean and Cas to start getting their shit together. Long-running fictional characters like Dean and Cas, conceived over 10 years, are so well-written to the point where you, the author, can predict what they’ll do even if you just plop both of them inside a room and give them no direction, and I personally feel that nowadays Jensen is prevented from achieving Dean’s further internal growth/unsure how to act in the moment because of some dumb SBL scripts saying one thing while his character’s heart says another. Wank aside—

Season 15 should hopefully convey a much more logical subtextual perspective e.g. unbelievably amazingly cohesive Season Destiel 11 that aired after choppy S10. Not all hope is lost!! I also want to clarify that I personally LOVED Season 14 in general. It’s been mostly Emotion-centric constant, with Yockey, Berens, Perez, and Dabb usually making my top-rank SPN writer list.

Currently the narrative’s still allowing pretty significant (imho) wiggle room for the lovers to fracture apart and get back together, where their miscommunication comes to a dramatic head. We just saw Dean and Cas argue over Jack’s well-being in 14x18 and 19. Dean — besides putting Cas at the top of his You’re-Dead-to-Me-Because-You-Lied-but-I-Still-Love-You-Goddammit hitlist (for clear spousal-coded reasons) and taking Cas’ actions to heart (he’s the person he trusted the most who lied to him) — no doubt blamed himself for what happened, and Sam was, like I said, the mouthpiece of truth. TFW were all culpable. They all failed Jack in some way, shape, or form.

I’m not expecting anything for 14x20, but I’m nervous either way! Thanks for sticking with my long answer