#saw a headcanon a bit ago that said when cas brought dean back from hell he brought him back in an amab body

[strawberrryangel]

in trans/ftm dean headcanons, do you think dean didn’t want j*hn to call him dean at first? like he would prefer j*hn deadname him than ruin his chosen name with the familiar burn of anger yk. so only sammy and bobby would call him dean at first and they just kinda kept it between them for a while.

[mittensmorgul]

aroundmyself

  I’m a little confused with ep. 8. I thought Adams...

so i guess there were people who were annoyed by our existence and people who are annoyed by your existence (in the fandom, not literally. people live your lives fully)

I was making a joke. and I suppose you didn’t read the post far enough to see the conclusion:

But then 15.08 did something shocking, and humanized Adam, and actually made me care about him. Finally he was a real person I could empathize with, and not a ghoul or a plot device, you know?

Because that’s all he ever was before. And the passion for him was just baffling to me. Especially when it was typically delivered in pointed “Supernatural sucks and here’s why” lists.

They barely mentioned a character for a decade. They told us if he said yes he'd go to Heaven. I was making a joke about that, because the whole thing-- especially 7-8 years ago, was ridiculous.

I guess here’s a little story about my personal history in this fandom.

When I first showed up in fandom, after having watched through s7 at the time, I saw all the memes (they were EVERYWHERE, like half the posts about Supernatural would end up with a gif reminding everyone that Adam was still in Hell... there were campaigns to bring Adam back...). I couldn't understand it. He was a one episode (well, three if you count being a ghoul in 4.19 and being Michael in 5.22) character that in the one episode we actually met him, wanted nothing to do with the Winchesters. I couldn't figure out why people were so desperate to have him back, or how he would even fit into the ongoing story.

The only reason they rolled with Dabb’s original Adam plotline was specifically because Adam would already be dead when they met him. That... was the condition on which they went with the episode pitch, because they had no way to fit a random Bonus Winchester into the story. Actually maybe go read that link in the original post of Dabb talking about the purpose of creating the character in the first place.

And it wasn't *my* theory to start with, it was a common theory I read in the meta community at the time. Because that's what we do... we talk about canon and theorize about what fills in the blanks. Adam was apparently a blank people wanted filled in.

Go back and look up old lists of "Plot Holes Supernatural Ignores" and Adam is at the top of every last one of those lists (and there were a LOT of those lists back in s8-9 or so-- new showrunner, people were hoping to have some of their issues addressed in canon, I guess? Maybe it was just that era of tumblr where people lived for lists like that? Blame Superwholock? I don't know). And a lot of those lists were written by people trying to make the point that “Supernatural is a bad and terrible show that nobody should watch.” So unfortunately for me, who arrived in fandom at just the right time and wanted to actually find other people who ENJOYED the show that I did, rather than just shit all over it, the whole “Adam is still in the cage!” argument got mentally lumped in with the rest of the dumb things (that 90% of weren’t actually plot holes... there are also posts that debunk most of those lists, as well). But we didn’t have any final, definitive word on Adam.

FOR YEARS.

He was mentioned in 6.11 as a sort of “false choice” for Dean-- do you really think he would even CONSIDER saving Adam from the cage over Sam? Right. It was a guilt move. (and the first time I watched 6.11, probably only a few days after watching 5.22 for the first time, where Michael told Dean that Adam “wasn’t home,” I PERSONALLY assumed that Adam had gone to Heaven, as he was promised. The show still gave me no reason to think otherwise, not even Death giving Dean a guilt trip over what he was attempting to do for Sam, since THAT was basically the point of the whole episode.)

He wasn’t mentioned again until 10.05, by Marie, who also wrote robots in space into her musical. She was writing FANFICTION, which... the Adam line felt like the same sort of fanfic wish that a lot of her other plot devices were.

And that was it... until we saw him on screen in 15.08. i.e. AFTER Chuck blew up his own story. Not through Dean’s entire AU!Michael arc in s14, not when they all went back to the cage in s11 and let Lucifer out... Michael was mentioned a couple of times, but never Adam. So what reason did we have to assume he hadn’t gotten exactly what he was promised in 5.18?

ETA, because this is key, after Sam was brought back and had his soul returned, he never ONCE mentioned that Adam was actually still in the cage with him all that time. NOT. ONCE. That seems kinda the thing Sam-- being a Good and Caring Human-- would’ve felt was something they could’t let stand, you know? If he had really been locked in that cage with Adam for that year and a half. So SAM’S reaction (or complete lack thereof) was the biggest bit of evidence for me that Adam was never actually in the cage. I didn’t believe that Sam could actually let it stand if Adam had really been in the cage. But apparently he could... I am kind of uncomfortable about what this revelation says about Sam now...

And I found a bunch of incredibly thoughtful, well-reasoned defenses of the theory I personally had understood while watching. And the show continued not addressing Adam. After a few years, you sort of have to accept canon as it stands and move on. Especially after reading the creator of the character’s intent in creating him in the first place. ESPECIALLY when said creator is now the showrunner:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184474002825/when-daniel-loflin-and-i-came-up-with-the-idea

The thing is, after s10, we all had even MORE fuel for our theory. After all, the second most common item on those “Lists of Why Supernatural Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad For Liking It” was Jimmy Novak. People 100% believed that Jimmy Novak was still rattling around inside Castiel, with the same fiery passion they still believed Adam was in the Cage.

This was another commonly debunked thing, often in the same posts and employing the identical headcanons and theories to fill in the blanks that were applied to Adam, because their situations were nearly identical. Angel possesses human--> angel explodes/is immolated/otherwise destroyed--> human soul goes to Heaven. At that time, there was actually MORE evidence to suggest that Adam was in Heaven than there was to suggest Jimmy was. Adam’s entire deal to say yes was predicated on it, while Jimmy only expected to go back to his “chained to a comet” experience with no hope of rest.

And then in 10.09 the show 100% confirmed that Jimmy had died the first time Cas was exploded (in 4.22, offscreen, we only saw the aftermath, so the video clip they used for the flashback was from 5.22, but the same thing happened in 4.22... so). If that wasn’t enough of a confirmation, we saw Jimmy and Amelia in Heaven in 10.20. That seemed, at the time, to be the definitive statement on what happens to human souls when their vessels are destroyed.

The show gave us little reason to believe that Adam wasn’t exactly where he was promised to go-- in Heaven.

And now, after we’ve learned about Chuck’s penchant for sending innocent people to Hell, and learned about the decade Adam and Michael spent with only themselves for company actually learning about one another and caring for one another... I am basically saying that the show found a way to actually make Adam and his story-- and the fact that it literally defies all other established canon-- interesting to me.

How... how is this... about you? A character created as a one-off joke in an episode that was basically one long Cousin Oliver gag, who was summarily wiped off the table by the end of the episode... but then repurposed for a Bigger Meta Plot Reason the following season... I find it FASCINATING that after being basically a joke in the show for the last decade, the writers have once again repurposed him for a Bigger Meta Plot Reason.

In case it’s not clear, I find this INCREDIBLY COOL, okay? I’m sorry your fave has never been my fave, and that I haven’t been holding a candle for his return all these years, but HOOBOY they got me interested in him now.

Maybe actually READ the posts you decide are a pointed attack on you personally before leaving bitter comments. Being impressed at a narrative callback that I was entirely prepared to hate is probably the best thing about s15 so far for me, personally, and that’s all my original post was attempting to state. With a bit of humor about my personal fandom experience. There was zero bitterness intended in any of this.

This show has over 300 episodes, and I’ve never been interested in descending into bitterness over a character who’s been absent from the narrative for a decade. As is my standard approach, I attempt to explain a thing as satisfactorily to MYSELF as possible, and then move on. It’s a healthy approach I highly recommend.