Whoa, there, righteous crusader. We need to talk about a few things before you go storming the Supernatural castle and start worshiping at the altar of Sera Gamble. Important things.
I would like to preface this by saying that I am not in any way condoning what happened with April. I, too, found the situation confusing and uncomfortable (apart from my general amusement at Cas being canonically considered a highly sought-after piece of ass), especially in the latter incident with them bringing it up over drinks, and I highly doubt anyone would be considering giving Supernatural any kind of awards for advancement in feminism. But I do think you have gone a bit too far in your accusations against the current staff, and some of your statements make assumptions that are dubious at best and just plain false at worst.
The narrative depicted in your post paints a picture of the noble Sera Gamble being the lone voice of dissent on a controversial issue and fighting for the rest of the staff to do the right thing. And if only she were still around today, this stalwart protector of Morality and Women's Rights would have surely put a stop to this madness and saved dear Castiel and innocent April, as well as the viewing public, from this horrific experience. But the truth of the scenario is far different.
Going back to the original debate about Ruby in season 4, it is important to remember that we are going solely by Sera's account of what happened, which naturally would paint her in the most positive light possible in comparison to her fellow staffers. Even taking her statements at face value, though, she specifically says " I think I actually disappointed some people I work with, who thought I’d be tougher or darker or something. Or possibly just didn’t care as much as I did one way or another. "
There are some key words to consider here. Firstly, the fact that she said "some" rather than "all" indicates that not everyone on staff reacted the same way to her objections. Likewise, the phrases "I think" and "possibly" indicate some measure of conjecture on her part as to why she thought certain people reacted--or did not react-- in certain ways (the nature of which is also not specified). There very well could have been others who objected and saw the scenario as rape but didn't make as big a deal of it for one reason or another. We also don't know how much push back against Sera's objection there really was or from whom it came. Of course, Sera also wrote "I Know What You Did Last Summer" herself, so the only objections that would have potentially mattered in terms of removing the scene with Ruby taking over a vegetable would have been the director's and Kripke's.
It is also important to note that the season 4 writing staff consisted of 4 women (not just Sera) and 6 men. Similarly, the current writing staff includes 3 women and 7 men. So,even though there are more guys on staff, it is not exactly a pure boys' club either, which brings us back to the current situation in season 9.
9x03 and 9x09, which included the Cas/April scene and the later callback to it in the bar, were both co-written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming. A man and a woman, the latter being the wife of show producer and director Robert Singer. Neither of these writers was around in season 4, in fact, only two people in the entire writing staff were, so the entire argument that "there is no excuse for them to have not realized, since they should have remembered from last time" is just blatantly misconstruing the situation, particularly given your strongly-worded allegations against the entire staff as being misogynists.
The truth is, just like we we weren't privy to the original conversation re: Ruby, we also have no idea how the conversation went re: April. There could have been objections made that were simply ignored or overruled, given that those people were not writing the episode. Buckner and Ross-Lemming have an established history of dubcon in several of their past eps, so it doesn't seem far-fetched to me that they would have gone ahead with this idea regardless, with an added degree of protection from Eugenie being married to the bossman. Meanwhile, Robbie Thompson gave us a lovely heroine in Charlie. Adam Glass gave us Krissy and Abaddon/Josie Sands. And even the most cursory glance at Robert Berens's twitter feed shows that he has a very informed and passionate view on gender issues in media.
But, frankly, the average person really doesn't think about the individuals being possessed in these scenarios, as evidenced by the literally hundreds of people Sam, Dean, and Cas have murdered over the years without care or consequence.
I considered leaving the issue well enough alone, until I saw your tags (copied here for the benefit of others):
The level of condescension here, not only toward the writing staff, but to other viewers is honestly disturbing and offensive, not to mention hypocritical, coming from someone who just complained about a reporter's dismissal of fan debates. I've already covered the reasons why I find the hate towards the entire staff to be unwarranted, but what bothers me even more than that is the unmitigated praise of Sera Gamble purely on the grounds of one writing decision she made on one episode five years ago to the extent of shrugging off the myriad issues that viewers had with seasons 6 and 7. These were not "small choices" that people blew up into a big deal; here were major problems in terms of both general storytelling/writing issues and moral issues that made many people depressed and uncomfortable when watching, including, but not limited to:
- Killing off the entire support cast/treating all side characters as unimportant/expendable
- Inconsistent/unlikable portrayal of Lisa as a potential love interest, prior to writing her out entirely
- The mannequin episode
- Leaving Adam in the cage
- Dr. Visyak
- The abrupt corruption of Castiel, followed by his anti-climactic removal from the show
- Retconning Bobby's history to include killing his own father
- Daphne finding and marrying an amnesiac Castiel within a matter of months without making any efforts to discover his real identity
- The whitewashing of Meg/Megstiel as a canon ship (which, ftr, has just as many consent issues as April/Cas, but has tons of fan support)
- Becky abducting and magically drugging Sam into being her husband, while keeping him captive in her apartment, for the sake of showing him off as a trophy for her class reunion
- Dean being used for procreation by an Amazon, only to have their resulting daughter be killed. BY HER OWN UNCLE SAM for no other reason than "she's a monster" and that Dean killed Amy when Sam didn't want him too and then having Dean make jokes about how he's swearing off women in the very next episode, even though this should have been fairly traumatic for any normal person
- Treating mental illness as a non-issue/something to be made fun of
- Kevin portrayed as an extremely stereotypical Asian high schooler
- etc
So, please, do not even try to tell me that Sera Gamble was not problematic as hell as a showrunner or, even, as a writer and that we all should just completely forget and forgive the horrible things that went on during those seasons, as if they were trivial and meaningless quibbles. Because I know I sure as hell haven't forgotten any of it. And if you seriously think that Sera still being in charge would have yielded us better results in season 9, I present all of the above as evidence to the contrary.
