15x20

Comment from @dollysgirl04 (sorry that I can’t tag properly) on the 15x20 meta I posted yesterday:

Trying to positivey spin the hateful messages of burying your gays and only finding happiness in death is harmful. What they did was objectively wrong and you shouldn't dismiss that in a quest to make your own personal peace with the show. Dont make excuses for real harmful messaging.

Firstly, I was in no way trying to dismiss anything. I believe I even went so far as to make it clear in the post that I understand the anger, I felt it, and let me be perfectly and absolutely clear, in case I wasn’t, that I still feel it at some of the choices made. All I wanted to offer was the fact that, putting that anger aside, I can recognise why the choices were most likely made.

I agree the problematic way that, in the visual narrative, we saw both Stevie and Charlie disappear from our story, their happiness cut short and Charlie talking about how she’d dared open her heart making it seem as though love was the actual culprit all along, for us to then not have a visual reestablishing of both these characters brought back by Jack, and their relationship restored, is highly regrettable. Keeping this in the subtext is unnecessary and neglectful and yes, it angers me too, because all we can do is assume Jack brought them both back. We don’t know he did.

If there was no intention by Berens for us to draw the conclusion that these two were brought back by Jack, then I’ll concede that the 15x18 is a clusterfuck of offensive moments and that I have absolutely no idea who these writers are, yeah? But I’m not going to assume that’s what happened, because it doesn’t track with every single other episode that Berens has written, nor does it track with the subtext he established for us in that episode: the love story exists, because couple after couple was broken apart and then Dean and Cas were broken apart. Why would theirs be the only relationship where the love was established as romantic (by Cas’ speech) and yet not reciprocated, when both of the other couples were deeply in love with each other?

Cas is canonically alive--as an angel or as the soul of the man he grew into is up to us to decide--and so the bury your gays trope doesn’t actually work in relation to him. His sacrifice brought him the integration he needed to go fix what all of his previous bad choices and insecurities and lack of self-worth and self-insight made fall apart: Heaven. And his faith in Jack made all of this fixing possible. To my mind, this is an incredible way for his individual arc to end. 

Would I have preferred Heaven fixed by Jack and Cas being able to let Heaven go? Yup. But that’s not what we got, so hey ho.

All that said, your comment on how Dean is now shown to find happiness (or at least true happiness) in death is an enormous issue and I wholeheartedly agree with you on the fact that the narrative has made itself so vulnerable to this interpretation is beyond neglectful. 

Dean’s death shocked me to my core on Friday. It was such a slap in the face.

But you go on to mention how this is all really harmful messaging and I am so sorry, lovely, but on this I’m going to have to disagree with you again.

Messaging is intentional. Leaving the narrative open to this type of interpretation by its audience is not messaging. 

Do you sincerely believe that Jensen and Jared would go into this episode with the intention to send any type of damaging or harmful message to this fanbase, their fanbase, when they know that fanbase so well, when they’ve been so involved with creating hotlines and raising awareness about mental health, when Jared has nothing that is closer to his heart than this very issue?

Of course they wouldn’t. 

There’ll be peace when you are done. And all of us will be done at some point. This is an overarching message for human beings moving through life the best we know how, not knowing what waits for us at the end of the road. It’s not Dean’s choice to die. He’s not entirely ready. Just like most of us won’t be. But he accepts it nonetheless. And the reward he receives at the end of his journey is given to him by Cas: a Heaven that now knows free will.

Like I said, I can see the most likely reasons these choices were made. 

Do I like that the heart symbology was tied up through Dean’s death being linked to his heart? No. Do I like that the codependency was broken through Dean’s death, rather than active choice? No. Do I like that Dean died in a barn? No. Can I see positive things in all of these choices? Yes.

Not because I’m on a quest to make my own personal peace with the show, but because this is what I’ve done with this narrative for the past four years of writing meta analysis of it, looking at the deeper threads, finding ways to braid them together or pull them apart, see how things fit, see how they make sense with the bigger whole.

I’m quite okay with being called a clown for my positivity. I’ll even take bitch. (don’t worry someone else called me those things) But don’t come and accuse me of approaching my analysis with anything but the utmost fucking diligence and awareness and desire to suss out what the messaging is, based in what’s come before. 

And I know you don’t want to hear it, but I genuinely do not believe that messaging, in 15x20 or any other episode of this show, has ever been intentionally harmful. Neglectful and ignorant? Yes. But my positive spin wouldn’t have been possible if I actually believed that Jensen and Jared had stepped onto set knowing exactly how the visual exploration of “there’ll be peace when you are done” would be interpreted by the fandom. 

Am I thrilled with this ending? Am I full-out defending every choice made? Am I onboard with this ending now and all the disappointment has been left behind? Do I find it a fulfilling thought that Dean had to die to know true peace and, at least as hinted, even true love? Am I pleased with the brother threads that can be pulled on forever by that final visual where it’s just the two of them, rather than them together with their found family?

Of course not. I mean, I would even say a hell no to that. It sucks. But was it pure choice, or was it choice brought on by circumstance?

Either way, the fact that we didn’t get Misha in the finale will forever smart. 

And I wanted Cas back so badly that I kept that hope alive for two weeks because anything else was utterly unthinkable to me. Of course I’m still devastated. Of course I’m still aching. And of course now we’re left with a frustrating ending that many saw coming a mile away, but that I always hoped wouldn’t be necessary, given how progressive the times are.

These thoughts above are the basis for my positive meta. The questioning of why we got the ending we got, rather than something more in line with the progression of the show. There’s good in all the bad. And that’s really not me making excuses. That’s me actually fucking seeing it there. Just as I’ve seen everything in this narrative that I’ve meta’d over the years.

I’d thank you not to be dismissive of that.

xx

15x20: Oh fuck it’s actually really good. Dammit Dabb.

So I slept. And waking up the first thought in my head was... but there is this open ending with them all in Heaven and Cas not a stated angel even, just a helper to Jack...

And then I felt the need to watch the episode again. Because of how I’ve said, perhaps not for always, but often enough, that this show of ours was never about Destiel, was never about Dean and Cas’ love story, and beginning to hope that the ending would be focused on them... it wasn’t fair. Not really. And I remembered reading somewhere that a big chunk of the internet accepted Cas’ death as final, and seeing posts to that effect and thinking LUDICROUS and NO WAY and knowing all along that it could all be denial on my part.

And oh boy was it. 

I know there were plenty of us who kept that hope alive, and I’m thankful for you, but I made myself believe that he’d be back because I couldn’t imagine he’d die like that, or that the love story would end unreciprocated like that. And I guess, in a way, it still did, BUT... in another way, it really didn’t. 

It’s not enough. Subtext is not the representation I’ve always hoped for, but it wasn’t just erased either. And we got as much as we could get, because obviously Dean being textually bi and us getting an I Love You out of him was just never going to get green lit by the studio.

I’ve always believed the writers would’ve gone there if allowed. I think Cas’ love declaration underlines that they would’ve. But they weren’t given the opportunity, and I’ll lament it until the end of time, but it is what is.

What we did get, though, is quite beautiful. No, listen, IT IS.

There’s the emotional substitute Miracle Dog, getting so much LOVE from Dean, which I know most of us all went the big awwww at, no matter what we thought of the rest of the ep. 

There’s the healthy way Dean is dealing with the loss of Cas, and of Jack, knowing that pain will never go away, and accepting it. Accepting it because he’s feeling worthy of moving on without them. He’s no longer attaching his self-image to the perceived failure of protecting others. He’s letting them go, believing that they may meet somewhere further down the road.

But looking at the finale for what it is, rather than for what I wanted it to be (cardinal sin omfg my emotions really ran away with me and I wish I could’ve been more level headed and come on here with this positivity and calm) (but) (no dice) (anyway) it’s just beautiful how Cas is in the background, not waiting, not really, because he’s busy preparing Heaven and fixing his home in ways that will actually mean peace AND freedom when the brothers are done.

Something Cas would not have been able to do if he’d not fallen in love with Dean. If he’d not gone through his journey. I mean. Those implications are highly satisfying. 

Last night all I could think, ALL I could think, was that it’s not ENOUGH.

But it has to be. Because it’s not dismissive. It’s not erasing anything. It’s the same subtextual thread we’ve always been pulling on, and it’s there for us to continue to pull on, and that’s a goddamn gift.

I wish that 15x18 hadn’t been quite so in our face “kill your gays” buuuuuuuut that’s if you’re surface watching, yeah? Cas isn’t dead, for starters, and everyone was, obviously, brought back when Jack took Chuck’s power, so even if it wasn’t visually established that Stevie and Charlie are back and thriving, it’s narrative fact that they must be. What it is, more than anything else, is what I read it as to begin with: a love letter to the love story, where we get the subtext of couples loosing each other so strongly stated that there’s no way we’re not meant to understand that Dean losing Cas is within that exact same context.

We didn’t get textual Destiel, but we did get the love story textually confirmed through Cas’ declaration, and we did get it subtextually confirmed, not hinted, subtextually confirmed through all those other couples losing each other, that the love story EXISTS there, on that level, for us. 

Oh guys I feel so sad that I was so SAD yesterday. Why didn’t I just take a breath?? Guys, guys, guys, there’s such BEAUTY.

And Jensen.

Jensen in how he played that death scene. Jensen who kept it so even, so gentle, so... brotherly. These brothers have been through hell. Dean ending this way... it’s a travesty, but it also means he meant to go to the place where he doesn’t have to hope to see Cas again--because he will see Cas again.

And why didn’t Cas come right back to Dean once he was out of the Empty, why did he go off with Jack to fix Heaven?