pov: you are watching your supernatural boyfriend die and get dragged into superhell because your love made him experience a moment of true happiness

pov: your (ethically sourced) blood drinking vampire boyfriend is about to sacrifice his life for others, after some difficult times with adjusting to life (among humans)  ｜ Buffy & Spike 7x22 / Dean Winchester & Benny Lafitte Supernatural 8x19  ｜

Okay, so I haven’t seen any posts (which doesn’t mean they don’t exist!) about racism towards Latine people in Supernatural. I think one post I saw might have mentioned Edgar? But the thing I want to talk about is the Pishtaco (which I know as the Ñakaq). The show called it the “Peruvian fat-sucker,” which is actually the first issue that I take with it. The first thing you need to know is that the Ñakaq are white men. The fact that they made the Ñakaq Latine people is incredibly messed up. Because the thing is that the legend comes from ACTUAL HISTORICAL WHITE COLONIZERS boiling the bodies of indigenous Peruvian people for fat to oil their guns and create a salve to treat their wounds. They literally stole life from Indigenous people (traditionally in Peru fat more than blood is considered a symbol of life—the negative associations of fatness are another WONDERFUL gift from the colonizers—plus they actually had to literally kill them to get it) and the conquistadors used that life force to take other Indigenous lives and to preserve their own lives.

Supernatural literally flips this narrative. Two Peruvian immigrants are shown to be sucking the fat out of wealthy white middle-upper class people. Instead of the conquistadors being parasites, now it is the Native Peruvian people. THEY LITERALLY MADE THEIR ONLY TWO PERUVIAN CHARACTERS (and some of their only Latine characters) P A R A S I T E S. That is so messed up. But even more messed up is that, in doing so, they flipped the script from “white people come to Peru to steal land, livelihoods, and lives from Native peoples” to “Peruvian people come to America to steal white lives and livelihoods.” Sound familiar? This flipping of the script is textbook colonialist rhetoric. And these two “Pishtacos” moved to the US to get AWAY from the Pishtacos back home who kill people, so that they can try to “help people” instead. (Because fat shaming is AWESOME, but that needs to be a different post.) They need to leave their homeland for America to find a “better way.” The implication being that the Peruvian people back in Peru are savages, and in order to stop being savage, you must become American (and buy into both capitalism and fat shaming, which—again—is not a concept endemic to Indigenous Andean peoples). And the woman who can “civilize” (THIS WORD IS LITERALLY USED IN THE EPISODE!) herself is co-owner of the business, while her brother who refuses to assimilate is reduced to a menial job that is literally coded as menial BOTH culturally and by Dean’s reaction to getting assigned that job himself. Hello assimilation narrative!

And then, of course, the Latina woman’s white husband calls her brother a freak (which means he obviously thinks on some level that she’s a freak as well). White boy literally threatens to deport(/kill???) the brother and tells him his sister WANTS HIM TO BE DEPORTED (after all, she is the one who demoted him for not assimilating well enough)! And she ultimately sells him out by putting her white husband over him even though the husband’s already dead! Because the Winchesters are the only people who are allowed to save their sibling-who-is-killing-people and have that be the right thing to do every. damn. time. Family loyalty is the most important thing if you’re white people, but if you’re not white, assimilation should trump everything else. And even then it’s not quite enough, because no matter how much you assimilate you will never actually be white. (Don’t ask me about my generational trauma wrt this lolol.) In Supernatural terms, even if you’re not a killer, you’re still a monster.

The whole thing just reinforces the idea that the very presence of Latine people in the US threatens white American livelihoods (again, traditionally in the Andes fat symbolizes life and health) and lives. Because of course all the clients are white. And overall it basically sends the message that Latine people can’t be successful business owners, or if they are it’s because they’re “cheating” somehow or doing something underhanded literally at the expense of white people. And the bros deport her at the end of the episode, thus signaling that even those Latine immigrants who give in to the pressure to assimilate and even put white people above their own families still don’t belong here and are dangerous because they’re “feeding off the system.” Because that’s the rub—to become “civilized,” you must not only become an American, but a WHITE American, which you can never do. And deporting her is framed as a mercy! Because they didn’t kill her! And the true monsters—the white people who try to enforce cultural assimilation and then reject any efforts as not enough—walk free. The Winchesters are once again protecting the white American way of life.

OH and also they named this episode “The Purge.” And it ends with the killing of one Latine person and the deportation of another. The only two Latine characters in the episode. YEAH.

!

It will never not infuriate me that everyone's response to Dean is just to guilt him until he does what they want.

[Rant below the cut]

! Dealing with “Do that” is one thing .. dealing with “would you be so kind to do ...” when you otherwise have to live with the guilt of not being a kind person .. is another 

The moments where Dean bears his soul like this are manifold and often understated. He resists being bullied into it, which somehow gets interpreted as “Dean doesn’t talk about his feelings.” And yet, there are so many instances of him doing exactly that. Of him offering to listen to others talk about theirs. Of him being comforting or encouraging when they do.

[“resists being bullied into it”] that hits too close home ^^ something to work on, It´s great that there is more emphasis on mental health, communication and opening up about emotions but I have the impression that sometimes this can have more of a performative quality instead of a genuine one? Like it´s about being that great kind, helpful person ... but if others don´t react in the expected way or need a different kind of help than the person had in mind (eg. said scenery of talking about ones feelings) there´s suddenly a lack of understanding and kindness. “Talk to me about your feelings” comes not so much as an offer but more of a demand. Sometimes there´s a quite narrow idea of what moments of communication should look like, what should be said, how it should be said, how things should go down and who should be grateful .. and if it doesn´t fit that script some people don´t recognize when there´s a character that´s actually being considerate and reflective about a a situation or emotional vulnerability .. ?  

EDIT: Also this post  with gerat meta by @agents-of-fangirling & @tenderdean

Cas’s treatment of Dean has far too much in common with the way Dean was treated by his father for my tastes; his frequent long absences to go do “more important things”, his unwillingness to trust Dean’s judgement, his making of huge decisions that affect those close to him without telling those people (let alone explaining wtf is going on), his relying heavily on a more vulnerable person (angel/human, adult/child) for his own emotional needs, and the emotional blackmail effect of “I sacrificed everything for you” when that person did not ask for him to do so.

bless you for this post!  The last part is getting me especially, you can´t outsource your own decisions, either you want to help then do good but don´t put a price tag on it, sure recognition and thanks would be great to get but if you just go on your own ideas of what a person needs or wants you can´t expect that they first of all agree on it and furthermore if they had agreed to pay the price you put on your help, (and guilt trips are a high one) 

If Dean had apologized to Cas only for being angry and cold, I would’ve been able to stomach it. I’d have hated it, but I know Dean always ends up apologizing even when he has nothing to apologize for, and nobody else apologizes to him or shows any understanding or validation for his perspective. This time, thanks to Jensen, we even had a warning about the prayer, so we knew to brace ourselves for it. I was ready to just bite the bullet and let it be.

But they went and outright made Dean say he was wrong. They had Cas show absolutely no remorse (the “I know you’re sorry about mom” / “I was talking about Jack” exchange was a slap to Dean’s face), no understanding for Dean’s side of things, no acknowledgment of Dean’s pain and loss. And of course, no apology, because Cas is only ever the victim, completely blameless. (Bringing up the mess he made as Godstiel is just a cover-up of the whitewashing of his far more recent screw-ups.)

I sort of hate that Jensen acted his heart out during that scene, because such awful writing doesn’t deserve his talent. I almost wish he’d phoned it in.

There were several things I disliked about this conflict and this hits on many of them. I will note that Castiel did apologize for Mary (or tried).

14.18: “I was scared. I believed in Jack for so long, I… I believed that he was – he was good. I – I knew that he would be good for the world. And he was good for us. My faith in him, it – it never wavered, and then I-I saw what he did. It wasn’t malice. It wasn’t evil. It was like Jack saw a problem, and in his mind, he just solved it with that snake… What he did wasn’t bad. It was the absence of good. And I saw that in him. But we were a family, and I didn’t want to lose that, so I thought I could… fix it on my own. Felt like it was my responsibility. So I left. And I didn’t tell you. If I could go back and just – just talk to him right then and there, I would. But I can’t, Dean. I failed you. And I failed Jack. And I failed –” Dean cuts him off.

15.02: “Dean, I recognize that I dropped the [ball]. I didn’t tell you about Jack, and then after what happened with your mother…” Dean cuts him off.

In 15.09, right after saying “I was talking about Jack”, Castiel says, “I already apologized to you. You just refused to hear it.”

I’d like to think what they were trying to get across was that Castiel resented Dean taking his anger out at him after he already apologized. Cas did refer to his earlier apologies being cut off with seeming frustration. Then he said that he left because Dean couldn’t forgive him, not because “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

In Dean’s prayer, he apologizes, but I don’t think he’s apologizing for blaming Castiel. I think he’s apologizing for refusing to hear his apologies and “letting” Cas leave (though that is another “blame game” I’m not super happy with). After all, Dean also says “Of course I forgive you”, which suggests there was something Cas needed to be forgiven for. He isn’t saying Cas never did anything wrong, but he is forgiving him. 

The whole making up thing didn’t come off super great though. During the scene while following the Leviathan, Cas’s, “I was talking about Jack” line comes off as if, after apologizing to Dean about Mary, Castiel considered the matter closed and lost all sense of personal regret over what happened to her. Given his continued guilt over Jack himself while his guilt over Mary has seemingly been dropped, this would suggest that Mary herself didn’t really matter to Castiel, only how her death affected his relationship with Dean. Jack on the other hand, still matters. I don’t think that was the intended message (I don’t think the writers intentionally want to make it seem as if Mary meant nothing to Cas), but it was an unfortunate result of how the conversation was written. In other words, a mess writing-wise.

What mainly makes it all so disappointing for me, is that this whole conflict as presented in 15.09 misses a very obvious character flaw that I have been hoping would be resolved in Castiel for a long time. Namely, keeping things away from Sam and Dean so he can handle things on his own, then having those things blow up in his face. It’s Castiel’s signature move. He always apologizes after. He’s always sorry. But his behavior doesn’t change, which is a colossal problem that I really can’t deal with anymore. The episode making mention of the Leviathan glosses over several far more recent examples of Castiel’s incredibly broken “I have to do it all on my own” mentality, and that mentality itself, which seems to be a defining component of Cas’ storyline almost ever season, needs to be dealt with. It should have been dealt with a long time ago. Recent examples:

Season 10: Cas (along with Sam) lied about the Book of the Damned. 

Season 11: He let Lucifer out of The Cage without giving Sam and Dean any say so. 

Season 12: He refused to answer the phone for weeks, came to Dean’s room to apologize, but it was all a lie. He just wanted to steal The Colt so he could go and kill Kelly and Jack. If he’d stuck around, he would have found out Sam and Dean had a plan to save both Kelly and Jack, but he didn’t stick around, and when they tried to call him, he again ignored their calls. After Castiel became convinced to ensure Jack’s birth rather than stop it, he again refused to even try and include Sam and Dean, instead knocking them both unconscious. 

Season 13: Worked with Lucifer, lied to Dean about it.

Season 14: Kept his feelings that Jack shouldn’t be alone with anyone to himself, and also made a deal with The Empty for Jack’s soul that he’s still lying about.

Within this pattern of behavior, Dean has every right to be upset. But for some reason, this very obvious PATTERN of incredibly broken behavior is just ignored by the narrative and then perpetuated by Cas every season. It makes Cas look incredibly careless and not truly sorry. It also makes him hypocritical at points. For example, in 14.12 when he chastises Dean for his “suicidal” plan to stop Michael while hiding the deal he’s already made for Jack’s soul. Or when he chastised Sam and Dean for going behind his back and wanting to put Jack in the mal’ak box, only to go by himself (behind Sam and Dean’s backs) the very next episode to enquire about the possibility of putting Jack in The Cage. Just this episode, Castiel treated Dean like a moron for suggesting they split up in Purgatory. The first thing Castiel did the last time he and Dean landed in Purgatory was abandon Dean to an entire pack of gorilla wolves, because he believed they were safer seperated. But now Dean is a moron for suggesting maybe they should split up since they’re on a time table and Sam is, you know, being tortured. Cas saying essentially, with an eye roll, “Well obviously we’ll both just end up dead if we’re seperated” shows a truly astounding lack of self-awareness over his past behavior patterns. With the whole matter at the beginning of the episode, when Dean wanted to go after Sam, I can’t help but also feel that if it had been Jack at stake, Castiel wouldn’t have been so quick to label the emotional desire to mount an immediate rescue, “stupid”. 

Perhaps I’m off here, but I also don’t like Castiel saying that him leaving is Dean’s fault because “You should have stopped me”. It shows a potential strategy on Cas’ end that’s quite childish. Castiel didn’t get forgiveness in the time frame that he wanted, so he tried to force one with an ultimatum (forgive me or I’m leaving). As framed in 15.03, that wasn’t necessarily his game, and I wouldn’t have been against Castiel leaving for a while if he just thought that was what was best, because both parties needed to cool off. Dean was indeed angry and the relationship between the two was tense. To leave was fine. But 15.09 gives us a different insight into Cas reason for leaving, since he says Dean could have stopped him. This makes it look as if, when he left, Cas intended to leverage his presence or lack thereof to get forgiveness. Him choosing to ignore Sam’s calls after leaving reinforces that this was his strategy. By punishing Sam through shunning, Cas further reinforces that leaving was about trying to hurt the brothers to force an apology from Dean that Dean wasn’t ready to give yet.

Reblogging for spot-on additional commentary.

Precisely this.  I could absolutely deal with Dean apologizing for being angry beyond the point of being able to talk.  I could maybe even deal with Dean apologizing for being wrong even though he wasn’t.  It would hardly be the first time he’s apologized to smooth things over. 

The dealbreaker is how the narrative bizarrely tries to act like Castiel is some innocent victim.  Again, we’re talking about the angel older than humanity that consistently chooses to not only fail to trust, but occasionally outright betray, his supposed friends.  They can insert a few words about being sorry or regretful in his mouth, but when he’s just going to go behind their backs, lie, abandon them in danger, or whatever yet again in an episode or two?  Any verbal expression of remorse is nigh impossible to see as anything more than empty words so long as he never even tries to change his behavior.  And you know what, considering how the angels in general seemed to just keep trying to follow the same behavior patterns of finding a new leader and then killing each other ‘til they were nearly extinct over and over?  I don’t necessarily expect him to be great at trying to learn, but when neither he, nor the writers, are willing to address that Castiel’s choices here were part of a consistent, long-standing pattern of behavior and not some momentary isolated misjudgement?  Well, personally, I ran out of sympathy quite a few miles back.

When you add on top of it how much of a self-centered child he was written as early this season, prioritizing his grief over not only the Winchesters’ own, but over trying to save the world?  Then on top of that add this further nonsense where it does very much come off like he felt he was entitled not only to be forgiven period, but to be forgiven on his personal timetable for it?  Someone who was truly sorry would have some awareness that no one is owed forgiveness, and most big things, like, oh, say the umpteenth failure to communicate leading to someone’s mother’s death?  Well, that sure isn’t automatically going to be forgivable within a couple days.

It’d be one thing if having Dean call Castiel their best friend over and over again was meant to be a depressing commentary on how paltry the choice of available friends is that Dean has to keep soothing the ego of the bumbling woobie asshole the character has been reduced to.  I certainly don’t get the impression that’s what these writers think they’re writing, though.

It's bad enough these idiots can't use the right spelling of "canon", now they can't even spell their fucking ship right.

Don't believe me, go look at that tag, a bunch of idiots that can't spell.

Everything since they met, huh?  So, that includes:

Yall some hateful ass bitches

You can hate it all you want, but you don't have to be such a dick about it. Say you don't like it and move on like tf kinda angry energy are you on

If a post has this many anti tags on, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT IT, YOU DUMBASS BITCH? 

15 going on 16. That would explain why you think you can tell adults what to do. We can hate it all we want and we tag it ANTI because we don’t want stupid babies like you seeing it. 

Now if stupid shits like you INSIST on looking at it, THEN FUCK YOU. 

Say you don’t like it and move on We did, so why don’t YOU move on and not look at the fucking post. 

DESTIEL was never mentioned in the post, so why the fuck are you looking at it? Put your big girl pants on and realize that tumblr is for adults. We don’t like shit but we don’t shove it in people’s faces, like YOUR fellow shippers do. 

Blacklist the anti tags and keep in your lane. 

Oh look, another immature dumbass to add to the block list!  And big surprise, she ships both Destiew and Sabriew.

Look, moron, @nancylou444​ and I commented on the original post because OP put their idiotic shipping crap in the general tags (i.e. the show and character tags) where everyone could see it, which is typical Destieheller behavior.  If OP had only used the ship-appropriate tags (and had enough brain cells to spell their own ship correctly), then only fans of the ship would see the post.  OP opened themselves up to criticism of their post by misusing the tags.

However, @nancylou444​‘s and my posts were in fact correctly tagged with the appropriate anti tags, so that only people who don’t like Destiew and Destiehellers should see them (and people who follow us, of course).  If someone who likes that ship sees these posts, it is because they are intentionally going into the anti tags looking for an excuse to be butt-hurt and start a fight.  And if you’re that much of an idiot and/or an asshole, you deserve what you get from us in response.

"Nobody cares that you're broken, Cass! Now clean up your mess!" Dean once said because that's how he'd been raised. Nobody cared if Dean was broken. He had to clean up John's messes and look after Sam.

that´s two sentences delivering juicy meta in a way that some really long posts haven´t managed to do 

Thoughts on “Dean deserved better” and “the writers betrayed their fanbase”

Alright. Yes, hello, I’m apparently writing Supernatural meta in the year 2020; this is where we’re at. I have so many goddamn things to say about the finale (and more specifically, fandom’s reaction to it) but that seems like a huge fucking topic, so let’s just take it one piece at a time I guess, starting here:

“Dean deserved better.”

That’s a take I keep seeing floating around. Don’t get me wrong, Dean’s death was tragic. I’ve seen close-ups on the papers lining his desk at the beginning of the finale, and they appear to be job applications. That, coupled with his domestic, pie festival montage with Sam, makes his death so fucking sad. What a knife to the heart, for real.

But “Dean deserved better” as an argument for why the finale should have gone a different way is… odd to me.

Of course Dean deserved better. They both did. Sam and Dean have deserved better their entire lives. They deserved to be raised as something besides child soldiers. They deserved to have a future to look forward to beyond a young, bloody death. They deserved to have lives made of things beyond constant fighting, pain, and driving from one end of the country to another.

Those lives, those things they deserved, were sacrificed at every turn, first by John (and arguably by God himself), and frequently by Sam and Dean themselves. They gave up what they deserved for each other and the greater good. This sacrifice is at the heart of their heroism. Happiness and peace was never part of the bargain, and I would say Dean knew that, maybe better than anyone else on the show.

Speaking of better, do you know who else deserved better? Bobby. Ellen and Jo. Charlie. Kevin. Basically every single person who has died on this show, because that’s the point of the show. Everyone dies too young and bloody: that’s the life of a hunter. It was never meant to be aspirational. There is no comfort here.

Dean has been passively suicidal since season 1, ready to die for any noble cause because death was the only way he could think of to stop. (It’s tragic; it really is. That tragedy is one of the pieces at the center of my own particular fascination with Dean.)

Dean’s death wasn’t a surprise to Dean, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise to us. Shocking? Absolutely. But Dean knew the risks, and so did we. Frankly, it’s a fucking miracle that he and Sam have managed to stay alive this long, and they mostly haven’t. Dean has died 114 times over the course of the show. He was once killed by a bad taco and faulty electrical wiring. Those deaths carried different narrative weight because they weren’t final, and yet. Signs of the times.

Dean was only ever meant to be human. Personally, I love how utterly random and low-stakes his death was, because to me, that’s at the heart of the show. The aesthetic of the show changed over the years, and with it, so did Sam and Dean—they went from two average dudes from Kansas to Men of Letters legacies—but no matter what they were, they were never meant to be anything more than human. Hunting was always a dangerous job. It could have always ended at any time, on any hunt. I’ve seen people complaining that Dean went out on a run-of-the-mill MOTW hunt, and if anything, I think the fact that we lost the stakes in MOTW hunts is an indictment of the show. Remember how dangerous the first few MOTW monsters felt? The woman in white? The wendigo? Bloody Mary?

Yeah. Yeah, that. I missed that. It was nice to go back.

I’m not even going to touch the “Dean died of tetanus” takes. If they’re jokes, they’re jokes meant for someone who isn’t me. If they’re serious takes, they’re bad takes probably tossed out by people whose only experience of the finale comes through the grapevine, and I’m not particularly interested in engaging with them.

Moving on:

“The writers betrayed their fanbase.”

I see this general sentiment being expressed from a few different angles, but this is perhaps the one I’m most interested in: the idea that the people involved in the creation of this show owed viewers the kind of ending they wanted to see. I’ve seen complaints that this has harmed people’s mental health, especially people who particularly identified with Dean or those who wanted to see a Destiel endgame.

I’m not unsympathetic to mental anguish brought on by fiction. Sometimes it blindsides you. Sometimes it turns out that your love for the thing has roots way down deep in your psyche, and that shit hurts more than you ever imagined it would. I get it, I do.

But the short version of my thoughts on the idea that the writers owe any of us anything is, “No, you’re wrong.”

I’m saying this as both a writer and someone who is highly invested in Supernatural, as someone with mental illness diagnoses of my own and a person who has been in a sadness funk ever since the finale came out (5 days and counting). There is no contractual writer/viewer obligation. You are free to leave whenever you want; you can turn off the TV at any time. The writers don’t owe you anything for the time and love you have put into this show; your devotion has bought you nothing. That isn’t to say that your devotion or your love for this media is worthless. I would never, ever say that. However, it does not represent any sort of buy-in that the CW or any of its staff would recognize.

The boys’ deaths (and Sam’s life without Dean) are devastating, but I’m not sure who gave anyone the idea that the ending wouldn’t hurt us. This entire show has been steeped in tragedy from the jump. It’s a Hobbesian hellscape that buys into the idea that life is nasty, brutish, and short. Problems are solved with fists here. Even the one who loves you best, who’d sell his soul for you, might punch you in the face, might betray you to save you. God is a man-child who can’t even be evil elegantly; instead, he’s a writing hack who’s full of himself and petty as the day is long. This is the show we’ve been watching.

And yet the ending was, somehow, elegant. Hallelujah, I’m fucking surprised.

This show was momentous. It had a fifteen year runtime, longer than any other live-action fantasy series. The writers and actors had the chance to tell the kind of deep, heart-wrenching ending that very few people ever get to tell, one that has all the weight of fifteen years of love and devotion behind it. We grew with these characters. Many of us literally grew up with them. They feel like familiar, old friends. Our love brought the rocketfuel that made that ending explosive.

Frankly, I find that amazing.

You couldn’t have paid me enough to give up the chance to write an ending that resonated that deeply, that shook the hearts of so many people. Fifteen years of buildup is a writer’s dream. That we got a happily ever after on top of that is just the icing on the cake. (Look at Swan Song as the original intended ending: that’s a real tragedy. We all got off easy.)

Couldn’t have said it any better. PERFECT!!!!! I really don’t understand the people who are saying that the writers wasted the character development and build up of over 15 years. I mean what was it that you expected ? Dean (along with Cas if you watch it for ships and all) and Sam driving off in the sunset?

It’s beautiful but it leaves a lot of open ends and questions and is not satisfying enough for people who “actually” watched the show for all those years. People grew up with it, it was a part of them and always will be ,even if it was about supernatural stuff but still it was very comparable to the way we would’ve acted to save our loved ones and to be honest I never found TVD or any other horror/supernatural show comparable but Supernatural is completely different it is about family and friends and not about romance which makes it even more real (no hate towards people who love supernatural/horror romance). I mean I don’t know why no one understands that Dean never wanted to settle down he just wanted a normal life which as you said was taken away on every step and since past few seasons there was nothing that he wanted more than rest, he and Sam both of them were tired of everything they just kept on going for people’s and each others sake .

Dean was ready to die anytime but he didn’t because he wanted to look after Sam that’s all he ever knew it was like his life mission to keep Sam save that’s all .And Sam on the other hand wanted a normal life like settling down completely opposite to Dean he was capable of moving on without Dean but Dean wasn’t . That’s why Dean told him to “Carry On” because he knew that Sam could and he did. Don’t hate Sam too btw just because he moved on from it, it hurted him a lot too but still he promised Dean that he would continue his life the way he wanted before Dean came knocking on the door that night. It’s not easy to say goodbye believe me it was really emotional and heart breaking to see Sam continue his life without Dean but that was the point of the episode it was titled “Carry On” for a reason it was about acceptance. Dean accepted his fate and so did Sam , at the end they were free to write their own stories they completed their mission of having a free will and not being the story characters that they had been all these years.

I mean it wasn’t the way I imagined Dean to die too but it’s okay I mean people die of a lot of silly things .I’m really thankful to the entire Supernatural cast and writers for existing the ending was as near as we can get to a perfect ending and as Chuck (God? not anymore !) said at the end of season 5 you can never satisfy everyone someone will always oppose you no matter how good the ending is . But I think what we can do is accept it and “Carry On” .

I´m sorry but this is not sitting right with me. I don´t want to say this post doesn´t have validity cause it has, but there are a few things I just can´t scroll past. Since when do we tell people that “are ready to die anytime”: “Jump.” How is Dean “accepting his fate” not basically validating suicidal urges.  I understand that there´s different philosophies about endings, whether they have to be happy or not so much, be it in a “realistic” or unnecessarily grimdark way. That´s all fine  But I do not like the notion here that “people who “actually” watched the show“ should have expected an ending that would hurt. Like I don´t at all think that this is the only or expected ending they could have given us. 

“I’m not sure who gave anyone the idea that the ending wouldn’t hurt us. This entire show has been steeped in tragedy from the jump.” Oh, I don´t know maybe people [can´t claim this includes me, I didn´t really hope/expect anything (specific) from the finale] got that idea from the fact that it also was a story of overcoming just these tragedies. Not just trying but also actually overcoming them! I don´t know how this can be seen as a story about tragedy instead of one where the tragedy is the vehicle to tell a story about the remarkable people facing them? A story that in it´s core operated on the message of: Carry on and keep fighting. In other words a story that is first and foremost driven by hope. By this exact hope that things can become better, that fighting does matter. Isn´t this what kept the characters going for so long and doesn´t that very much validate the same hope in the viewers that there might be something good coming out of all the effort, caring and fighting? 

However what I can sign without any complaints is the first part of this: “Speaking of better, do you know who else deserved better? Bobby. Ellen and Jo. Charlie. Kevin. Basically every single person who has died on this show, because that’s the point of the show. Everyone dies too young and bloody: that’s the life of a hunter. It was never meant to be aspirational. There is no comfort here.  But I´m actually confused about the later part. Like not to get into any minor characters but we´ve thankfully got a main one to address. Is this implying Sam hated his blurry wife and son? That his family life did not bring him any joy and comfort? Or is Sam an exception because he did not lead the life of a hunter, I mean he did but ?? Like even if I agree for a moment that this is in fact the point of the show, how does Sam´s ending work with that point??? [*]  And let´s go with “not happy ending” for a moment. There´s still a (for me) big issue with just how they presented this death:  “Dean has been passively suicidal since season 1, ready to die for any noble cause because death was the only way he could think of to stop. (It’s tragic; it really is. That tragedy is one of the pieces at the center of my own particular fascination with Dean.)" This is a tragedy yes! But they didn´t really frame it as one or not the kind that it is. Someone suicidal finally giving up and being “rewarded” in a sense for it with a great heaven it .. this is just not a good message. I have my personal grievances just with how they worded that scene this repeated “It is okay / It is good” Like hell no it´s not. I get that this was meant to reassure a dying brother but they could have at least put in a prominent “no it´s not good but I´ll do my best without you” message. Also it doesn´t even work for me within the episode. We´ve seen Dean having hope, we´ve seen him happy and excited. (Yes I´m aware this could have just been him masking his mental state I got a whole draft sitting over this and it´s killing me but)  we have seen him carrying on, going for a future.  Dean might have been “ready to die” but we have seen him “ready to live” as well! How is the former more “important” than the later?!  It could have been either fate for this hunter as well! Why go with the one that feeds into his mental health condition. > Because bad endings are valid. Yes. True. But I´m circling back right up to the beginning of this paragraph. Please don´t put it on screen in a way that isn´t like “hey it´s the fate of a suicidal character to die, also it´s kinda neat for that character"  “Happiness and peace was never part of the bargain, and I would say Dean knew that, maybe better than anyone else on the show.“ Dean accepted that as a risk, very much certainly. But there has also to be some hope if you want to keep going. Especially for a suicidal character. And we have seen that on screen. Dean was not all darkness and despair 24/7.  And over the 15 season I´d beg to differ but both happiness and peace HAVE been part of this bargain. They have had happy moments, they have had peaceful periods in their life. Even if short lived. This DOES matter!  This violent life of hunters has also brought them a lot of amazing connections to other people. They forged bonds. All of this does matter. Even if the risk is still present.  It could have gone either way for these hunters, and yeah if this had happened in earlier Seasons it would not feel half as jarring but it just hasn´t happened in an earlier Season it has happened after a shit ton of things going down.  These are characters that literally defeated God.  To think they could live a life after this is not so unrealistic imho.  Especially if this fight against God was framed as the struggle for independence, a free will, in other words a life.   How do you not “deserve better” after that ^^  Addendum: “Silly death” that´s like the least of all issues here. Also I do love the “shit happens to tough people too” thing but like it has been done with Khal Drogo, the mighty Kahl destined for greater, dying of an infection that was totally preventable cause he had to show off (Yes I understand that demonstrations of strength of whatever kind are probably integral to keeping his position but he didn´t have to walk into that blade) made sense for the character, plot and the workings of that whole world but in SPN where they kept just more or less bouncing back from all kinds of serious injuries and even death countless times it does not fit anymore, you can´t just switch the script like that without it being incredibly jarring. It does not feel realistic at all in that story. I get that it would be in real life, but in this world and with what they had to endure and experience it is odd. 

“Dean was only ever meant to be human. Personally, I love how utterly random and low-stakes his death was, because to me, that’s at the heart of the show.” Maybe that´s what he was meant to be but that´s for sure not what he was. (Like died, revived, repeatedly, been to literally hell and back again etc. etc). Just returning to factory settings at the end and more or less ignoring or putting aside all that what happened in between is ... it is just not good writing?!  [And I write that as someone that is actually a bit “peeved” that I got “lured” into this whole soap opera ;D Like not what I signed up for. I know Season 1 has had some hard hitting emotional plots too but I mostly came here for the “hunting things, saving people” for the lore of creatures, the mythology, the folklore stories come to life. But I just have to face that over all these seasons it changed into something else/more.] In other words I do very much understand this part of the sentiment: “Remember how dangerous the first few MOTW monsters felt? [ ....] Yeah. Yeah, that. I missed that. It was nice to go back.” But like a cracked egg is a cracked egg, trying to glue it back together doesn´t hide that. 

[Obligatory Link to the collection about Dean´s death & mental health] 

([*] Disclaimer: Not saying Sam´s ending is ultimately a “good” or “good” one. There´s more kinds of happiness than domestic life with wife, house, car, child. Like pointed out e.g. in this post. @peter-pantomime.)

i just rewatched 1.14 nightmare, the episode where sam is parallelled with max - the first of the other gifted children we see, who was brutally abused by his father and uncle his entire life. by the end of the episode, sam is saying that even though he and max were clearly linked, sam is the lucky one, because he and dean had john and not max’s dad. “well, it could have gone a whole nother way after mom. a little more tequila, a little less demon hunting, then we would’ve had max’s childhood.”

dean doesn’t say, “dad? he never wouldve hurt us”. he doesnt say “dad was nothing like max’s dad”. he doesnt try to distance john from the comparison or try to tell sam off for implying that maybe a john that was just a little more drunk wouldve been hitting his sons. he doesn’t say anything, actually, just does this

and them sam continues on to say, “all things considered, we turned out okay…thanks to him.” dean STILL says nothing here, face pretty blank. he looks back at max’s house over his shoulder, and then back at sam, to say “all thongs considered,” before he gets into the car and the WHOLE time his face is just….sort of stony. and theres a tiny pause where hes clearly thinking about something in the middle shot here before he looks back at sam:

and im just. it seems uncharacteristic to me that dean has nothing to say about sam saying their dad wouldve hit them if he was just a little farther gone, OR about sam finally saying that john was a decent dad to them (which. he wasnt, but thats beside the point). theres no anger response or attempts to separate john from max’s dad despite the fact that sam is saying, he was one shot away from it, one level of breakdown away from it, we wouldve been bruises and broken bones like max. and there isnt any i told you so, no “exactly, sammy, i told you, dad was always good to us” moment of victory or satsifaction from dean. just a blank silence, a sniff, a shrug, and the conversation is done.

there are moments in the series where the way dean trails off about john can be read as implying violence, and moments about john being prone to alcohol as a coping tool, and i just…..the way dean says “all things considered” is just a bland agreement with sam. he doesnt even say, “yeah, we were lucky we had dad, huh” or anything like it. he just looks at that house and theres a MOMENT where he pauses before he looks back at his little brother and says yeah, we sure did turn out alright, this conversation is over. and i cant help but overanlyze the intentional steady emotionlessness of dean’s face, his silence about the comparison, the way he looks over his shoulder at the house where max’s abuse happened just after sam says “thanks to him”……we know that sam and dean werent treated the same way by john, and werent subject to the same exact sorts of abuse and i cant help but think of that in this scene

okay okay but. literally the next scene is sam talking to dean again about how he and max are similar, specifically about their abilities and how he was able to exhibit the same telekinetic powers under duress. he admits that hes scared that he could turn into max, not jist in the way of abilities but in being violent, the sort of monster that has to be put down or people will be killed. he asks dean “arent you worried that i could turn into max?” to which dean says no, he’s not, because sam has an advantage that max didnt have.

and mirroring the conversation from the last scene, sam assumes that the advantage dean is talking about is john - that john wasn’t max’s dad, right, that’s what sam has, but john isn’t there— and unlike the last scene, dean speaks this time, to clarify

when sam says in the scene before this that they turned out alright thanks to john, dean looks away, and i cant help but think in light of THIS conversation immediately following that he’s thinking, well, not thanks to dad, maybe. because max didnt want to punish just his father and uncle for their abuse, but his step-mother for her inaction. max didnt have an ally, a protector, someone to look out for him, to shield him, to take the blows for him. and THAT made a difference. if we’re comparing john to max’s father (and uncle), the passive guilty by inaction step mother is the only other character in the family, but that wasnt sam’s expeeience, because dean WAS the protector, was the active shield

thats the difference, ultimately, when we read the first scene as dean swallowing down the fact that john was more like max’s dad than he would ever let sam know. dean saying that nothing bad is gonna happen to sam while he’s around isnt just talking about the future, not when we were just talking about their childhoods. the reason that sam isnt violent and isnt max and dean says he isnt afraid OF sam becoming max isnt because of john, like sam says in both scenes, but because of dean and the way that he was the buffer between john and sam. the abuse they endured was different, and sam doesnt know the extent of that; dean wouldnt want him to know, protecting sam from both physical harm and the burden of knowing. “thanks to him,” sam said, thinking of their father. and dean looked away, took a breath, pushed the trauma down, and then turned back to his little brother (protecting him still) and said alright, okay. he wont put that burden on sam, but in this next scene he does say hey, dad isnt here but youve got me, and that makes a difference. that IS the difference

tbh this is the only reason I don’t get Too mad about john winchester’s“redemption” that the writers tried to pull.

as far as I remember (and I could be totally wrong), every single time someone says “dad did the best he could” or tells john directly that he did a good job raising sam and dean, it’s Sam doing it - especially in the later seasons. it’s always dean that avoids saying it, or says nothing/makes a subtle comment when someone else praises john for parenting. because it’s dean who took the brunt of john’s abuse - and it’s implied he took all of john’s physical abuse - to protect sam. and of course since sam wasn’t there to see it, he doesn’t know at all. staying quiet about it is something dean included in that protection.

to sam, his father was just a troubled soul obsessed with avenging his lover (something he was too), something he understands and is willing to talk about and forgive. dean knows better. but because he won’t talk about it, we only see the surface of his experience.

Omg, this also kind of goes both ways?! Dean suggesting Sam doesn´t need to worry about turning violent like Max, not because of John but because of his brother. They both had John as a father but they both had a brother as well. Telekinetic powers or not they both have the capability for violence. As described here so well Sam had Dean to keep him from turning “bad”. But Sam might have just been that for Dean. Having someone else to care about certainly can give you a purpose. Can you imagine if it had just been Dean and John? Sam as his brother he had to protect might just have given Dean what he needed to see something good and something that´s worth not going down all the same paths like John.  To borrow @samdyke´s phrasing: Dean was a buffer between John and Sam but in a different way Sam might just have been a buffer between John and Dean as well.  As @eldestdaughtercoded​ points out Sam has a quite different perspective and especially a rather different way how he talks about John. Thanks to Dean, Sam must have had some genuinely lighthearted moments in his childhood. The point about Sam´s “surface experience” of John reminded me of that one moment in 5x16:   D: “Is this Flagstaff? [...] This is a good memory for you?”  S: “Yeah. I was on my own for two weeks. I lived off of Funyuns and Mr. Pibb.” D: “Wow.” S: “What?”  D: “Well, you don't remember, do you? You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you. I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home...”  S: “Dean, look, I'm sorry. I never thought about it like that.”  D: “Forget it. Let's roll.”  This must have been a pretty big thing for Dean and he´s genuinely surprised that Sam has a drastically memory of this. Basically he´s surprised about how well he´s actually been protecting Sam.  Dean is just addressing his own guilt and failure when it comes to speaking about what John did he trails off! And he doesn´t pick it up again. If he would he´d also in some way “nullify” what he did and endured all the previous years. Forget it and move on. Dean very much understands that these aren´t things a child needs in their life (and aren´t fun for a former child either).

So about Lisa and Dean.

She took Dean in when he was at his lowest, when he had lost his brother, when he was a complete mess. She loved him, sheltered him, gave him space to heal. She was patient with him. Dean wasn't completely happy with her (since Sam was in cage) but he was getting there.

Cas brought Sam back without his soul, he knew there was something wrong with Sam but didn't tell Dean. Soulless Sam put a wedge between Lisa and Dean. And Lisa and Dean broke up as a result.

Cas worked with Crowley in secret and Crowley kidnapped Lisa and Ben to blackmail Dean. Dean, who was already traumatized by Cas' betrayal, didn't want Lisa and Ben to suffer. He wanted them safe so he had himself erased from their life, he let them go. Dean had one chance at normal, and he lost that because of what Cas did. Because of Cas' betrayal.

I hope you can look back at season 6 in light of Cas' "one thing I can't have" confession and I hope you can draw your own conclusions. Next time you sing about Cas' selfless love please take a moment to think about Lisa and what she was to Dean and how that shelter was so cruelly taken away from him.

I see plenty of “if Cas were a female angel or in a female vessel we would’ve had destiel canon” type of posts around. This is a questionable premise, because even if the show sort of went there with Anna and Dean, she was human at that time. Also, unlike Sam, Dean has always sought out human partners. But for argument’s sake I’m willing to consider their point.

But at the same time, I wanna see the other side of this argument. Say, let us flip the positions and make Dean female and see what we have got now. If Dean were female, all these “but Dean and Cas’ relationship follows classic TV tropes” people would be horrified on Dean’s behalf( I sincerely hope so). Constant personal space violations in the early seasons, almost stalker-like behavior, beating up Dean for “disappointing” him, taking decisions on Dean’s behalf without informing Dean “for his own good”, and the classic “I did this, all of this for you” type of emotional manipulation does not sound very healthy to me.

No wonder, they rarely go with the “if Dean were a female” model, it’s always “if Cas were in a female vessel”. Because, see, if you make Dean anything other than a guy, this whole “they are in love” thing looks downright abusive. (I’m not implying that same-sex relationships cannot be abusive, I’m just pointing out that it is easier to see certain abusive elements in a hetero relationship because of the inherent power difference)

This was written years ago. It seems even more relavant today in light of Cas’ confession. Because now you can assign sinister motives to all of Cas’ past blunders thanks to his “one thing I wanted but can never have” line.

also this post .. The power imbalance thing has always slightly bugged me with posts that insisted on painting Castiel as uwu bean that needs to be protected (from the Winchesters), granted the show made him vulnerable at times but he always had resources and leverage that go beyond the humanly possible (which he kept using even behind peoples backs) which seemed to take a backseat in some people´s minds behind endearing rusty people skills ..     

This switch in gender certainly is an impactful change in perspective, and putting it in the context of the finale is a terrifying but interesting take ^^ 

[Disclaimer since shipping was mentioned, still gonna keep doing that cause idk when shipping started to mean that “this is the one and only perfectly healthy relationship”, never meant that for me and never will ^^ ] 

Not to make this into a class commentary or anything but isn’t crazy that Dean realized he’s “more than a killer” precisely long enough to spare a powerful white man who directly murdered billions?

Exactly.

I can't believe I'm going to say this but Buckl*ming literally showed better continuity and a better understanding of Dean's character than D*bb. I'm not sure it was really intentional or not, but Dean refusing to kill Chuck after this entire season and more importantly after what Cas told him was just logical. It made fucking sense.

And then 15x20 came and said, "character development? never heard of her. "

Yeah. Like Dean saying “I’m more than a killer” could have transitioned beautifully into his realization that it’s not his responsibility to save every persona on Earth, he can let other people do the hunting and actually live his own life, the one he wants, and be happy. 

Instead 20 has our new “not a killer” explaining that no, I’m definitely going to kill you, you just get to decide whether it’s fast or slow. Like I love to see the boys being badasses but if there was a clearer way to mark the episode as ‘character development erasure speedrun’ I don’t know what it would have been. 

I wasn´t sure whether to put up a new post  but I might have to work through something surrounding this killer & letting Chuck live question ^^°  If a (slightly) different perspective isn´t something anyone on this post wants to read pls ignore me  I absolutely always hated the trope of some action hero slicing or shooting through masses of underlings (that maybe even are just there to just get by) and then proclaiming that they are oh so great and honorable for letting the person live that has all the influence and resources to orchestrate whatever evil was going on... 100% horrible  but, I kinda feel like Chuck & other Monsters is a bit of a different case? Chuck was powerless (and I´m sure if he picked up a gun an made trouble they´d reconsider the letting him live thing) the Vampire was in the midst of a killing spree [[[ And I know the show touched upon the not murderous monster thing every now and then, just not really in depth imho .. but also I think with the Kitsune Dean made the wrong call .. and there might be something to say about ... how about filling up the Men of Letters Prisons before killing them, or setting up rehabilitation programs or some more structural change ;D  but .. let´s say that´s not helping the children and their families that got targeted right that moment ]]] so it was a matter of getting rid of an active threat? 

and I haven´t had the impression that the Cas & Dean scene was not so much about the act of killing/murder? Don´t get me wrong I do wholeheartedly believe that Dean wanted more from life than the hunter lifestyle and I´d give a lot to have seen that happen but what I got from Cas words was not only a reassurance for Dean but also a validation of the life he led including the killing: “Everything you have ever done the good and the bad you have done for love” (15x18) I felt it was also targeted at Dean feeling like / having the impression people around him die, get injured etc. and Cas is saying that´s not on him, the difficult choices he´s had to make he made for the right reasons. And mostly I feel like there´s a difference here between “Dean doesn´t kill” and “Dean is not a killer”. Killing monsters that would kill others aka. “saving lives with murder” .. is something Dean does, and something Cas also values him for but it´s not what defines him, it´s not who he is, it´s certainly not what he would do, if he “could”. He is not a killer in the sense that this is something he wants to do or seeks to do, or the only thing he can do and the only thing he puts out into the world but the capability to put that “burden” on himself is still a part of him  It´s the part that often is visible, and that often seems to define him but Cas saw more, it´s not like he didn´t see that but that he saw beyond and behind it and helped Dean do the same.  Like “he´s more than a killer” but also that too ... ^^  So I don´t think that going back to hunting aka.saving humans from monsters is too out of line after this development ....? If any of this makes sense? ... but yeah I´d have very much wished for a different life for Dean Winchester

I mean, I kinda see where you’re coming from, but it also kind of depends on your definition of “powerless”? Supernatural had plenty of human monsters. 

Chuck kills people because it amuses him to do so, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he’s going to stop just because it’s harder now. He wouldn’t be the first human in Supernatural to summon angels or demons to try to join forces. 

I mean, personally? When Cas first said “I know how you see yourself” my first thought was “I can’t believe we’re about to have a talk about the toxic masculinity keeping Dean in the closet all these years.” Personally I thought the issue of Dean being ‘nothing more than Daddy’s blunt instrument’ ended with him being a father to Ben and Jack, his domesticity in the bunker, him having friends, etc, and I was a little confused to see it brought up again. 

The more I reflect on this, the more I think that line was a band-aid to explain Cas’s speech to the general audience, and the pointed, borderline excessive violence in the vamp hunt was meant to convey that to the viewers who track story arcs for more than two episodes. Cas knows Dean has some issues with how he ‘sees himself’ and it’s got nothing to do with having a life outside hunting. 

yeah the power/lessness, that´s why I threw in the parenthesis, but that´s also just highlighting how little the finale actually answered, or it´s just me, cause I low key headcannon that “almightyIsh Jack that´s in everything” would keep an eye on Chuck and would interfere if he´d get into something big. But I´ve also read that it eg. dying on a “rusty” nail was the only way it could go for the Winchesters now that they don´t have angelic help .. and I was kind puzzled because I did wonder “ hey why not call an angel (or an ambulance .. )”  but I hadn´t figured that angelic aid was out of question now? Like demons and vampires are still around why not angels too? I guess that´s what some people read as Jack not inserting himself in the narrative? But I´m not sure about that especially .. to circle back to Chuck I can´t really see that as something Jack would do in case Chuck becomes a threat again, like that would be peak cynicism and negligence ^^   (((But to get totally headcanonny for a sec I can´t see Chuck pulling that off, just based on how utterly lost he looked when his snapping with Jack didn´t work. I think it would be a terribly long was for him to go to first deal with his sudden loss of what he had been used and depending on his I´m guessing whole life and to build something else up that would get him to a level of threath of that level .. hence the gun example above :D)))  

oh, working through (internalized) toxic masculinity, that would have certainly been a more interesting finale! I was trying to make sense of the (canon) we got on screen but .. ripping that bullshit “band-aid” off .. that´s a whole other story :D  In case they hadn´t plopped a speech in there like out of nowhere (I´m not trusting them to have handled that with the necessary care ^^). For all the toxic masculinity we also got a lot of moments where Dean did subvert that. Just thinking of the “my gay thing” (8x13). He´s been more than civil in the moment, must have talked to Sam about it, hence being able to reference it as such later, another character would have bent backwards to keep that moment under wraps and/or reacted with anger, hostility, disgust, fearing to loose face. If the moment with Cas and Dean if they could have picked that up and just tied those threads together ....  that would have been more than neat.   [  Like that´s the only thing I really liked about the canon scene, or just my interpretation of it, that´s wasn´t “just” a that´s not who you are implying it would be wholly bad to be, but the appreciation of what Dean did combined with the recognition that he´s so much more than that, that I´d like to keep in ^^] 

Daddy’s blunt instrument  I could see that being resolved that way but [totally personal opinion] in my perspective it wasn´t, just had shifted in a way? We also had some domesticity and parental role with Dean being responsible for taking care of his little brother. I do believe that another environment/situation and other people could have very much caused change here and I guess there certainly was progress with it, with all the things and people you listed. But there´s certainly also still the hunting aspect and just before Cas´ words Dean blames himself for just leading them “into another trap”, because of his anger, the killing and “because that's all I know how to do.” (15x18) He feels like his lack of skill in other areas is what got them to this low point, that he just can´t be more than that. This “bluntness” and having been raised in a way that had his whole being was focused on that, not have anything else count was still (just talking about canon) very much bothering him and arguably a rather important factor in that moment of immediate threat. No matter how many fatherly situations or washed dishes, in that moment he felt just like a hammer hitting onto a problem that would have needed a whole array of other tools to be solved. 

& @hazeldomain thanks for the interesting reply =) 

Ok guys we can log off now. All that we need to say about supernatural has been said 

disagree. this website’s silence on the fact that dean secretly likes ballet enough to be drawn to the cursed ballet shoes that only effect people with an avid appreciation for the craft in episode 7x16 is deafening. that alone should give us three extra days of stuff to talk about.

@bisexualrowena​ Silence you say?! “There used to be a different time”, I wanted to say because I´m still haunted by a particular post but turns out it doesn´t show on my tumblr anymore (I´ve noticed this issue with another post before and this is really concerning me cause there´s a couple of things I didn´t want to loose :/ but well other story, this time I crept into an archive and actually could find a old version that still had the Dean & Ballett post yay)  So the haunting thing ... someone thought to sum it up: an interest in ballet would “lower” Dean and that he needs to “regain his dignity” because of that  

Would I write that reply today, I might word it differently but I´m still standing behind the meaning. This was 2014 ... “three extra days” .. apparently this has been living rent free in my brain for years and I still want more Dean & Ballet content ... hard work, sweat, blood and pain..  7x16 Meta: I think though that the shoes “imprinting” on Dean was because he touched them when he wrestled them off the girl? And then the course affected him. Sam I think didn´t come in contact with them, they made it a point to show him carrying them on a pen. And I think the “Let me guess. He touched something he was not supposed to.“ line points to the curse probably affecting everyone? Just usually it would be dancers that touch pointe shoes. Or did I miss something?  However Dean says he saw “Black Swan” twice, he has a pretense for it but I´m gonna headcanon that´s just a bonus and he liked the dance too  “They are toe shoes full of crazy.”  // “You... and you would know this how?” // “I saw "Black Swan." Twice.”  Hot tutu-on-tutu action? Come on, Sam. What's wrong with you?” Moreover Dean is dishing out a ballet reference that someone just being there for the nice view probably wouldn´t even notice or pick up:  “Do they look like they're your size?” // “Shut up.” //  “Wait, are you...” // “Getting the strong urge to Prince Siegfried myself into oblivion? Yes.” // “You really did see "Black Swan."” After Sam drops a ballet dancer´s name Dean pulls out the technical terms and makes a pun:  “You okay there, Baryshnikov?” //  Yeah. Yeah, I'm "pas de done." [Edit: I only saw @aphony-cree​´s reblog here after typing that up  and I´m glad to see the cursed object meta & tutu headcanon confirmed] 

Supernatural Finale Mood  [15x20 “Carry On”]

OP’s tags:

You: Nancy, do they ship that ship? Me: How did you guess. Look at this huge pile of hypocritical bullshit:

Sooooooo, “wincest” is okay, when CASS is Dean’s other “brother”.

@nancylou444  @reddieandwaiting87  I don´t want to start any problems with reacting to the commentary on my post, I do 100% want my gifs to be a place where everyone can state their opinions and perspectives, but with some I do also want to put mine next to it. Some things here are what I do not enjoy about fandom, sooo I feel the need to put a reaction and clarification here:  First of all .. ah, no these examples here are actually NOT about shipping :D (*) That´s what you read into it, which is fine but also let me get into why not fitting here. I find it a bit disconcerting that shipping seems to have changed its meaning to “this is the one and only (healthy) relationship for that character” and sometimes even “and has to become canon.” That´s not what it ever meant for me and not what it ever will. I do “ship” Castiel with Dean, but also Benny (and at times that certainly was my fave ship), I really enjoyed the dynamic he had with Crowley, I even read wincest fics and believe the fandom (including me) has been sleeping on Garth and Dean ...  just to give a veeery brief example. Shipping for me certainly fist and foremost happens in Fanon and I think one of the greatest strengths of transformative fanwork is that you can explore ALL the different what ifs. It´s this diversity and nuance I love so much about it.   With Destiel & Canon I understand and agree with a lot of reasons why people think it should have happened and I (provided it was written well) would have liked to see that but I personally and purely egoistically could also have been happy with a Finale without Destiel. I´m a bit out of the loop with what DestiHellers (as this was tagged with by nancylou444) means these days but I´m gonna keep assuming it´s still not referring to someone who´s chill with multishipping :D

@reddieandwaiting87 Mad or angry is not how I feel about the finale (would maybe be better tho, youre at least right about the sucks to be me but you got the reason wrong ^^)  if it were there would be a couple of things I would be much more mad about than that ship, but please be kind to those who´s biggest or only complaint is Destiel/DeanCas.

@nancylou444​ Regarding the “Wincest” post: The post is not saying anything is okay or not okay, this really was just me being .. “oh boy wouldn´t it be ironic/a twist if THAT´s how things went” also getting on their use of “brother” at times .. and of course Adam ..  I did even add a “no disrespect” that should show that it was not about shipping or ship wars, so it should be clear that I wasn´t saying one is okay one isn´t! I really do not get where the hypocrisy accusation is coming from?  [[Like even IF someone WOULD claim Wincest Sam&Dean is not okay but Cas&Dean is (which I do NOT think) as far as I know the main “”argument”” against Sam&Dean is them being blood relatives and having grown up with each other, if the show/canon starts using “brother” as term referring to Cas he still isn´t related by blood and hasn´t grown up with them so it would not be hypocritical to accept “bro” Cas but still criticize “bro” Sam]]   

And I do want to add here that I support every ship. All ships are inherently “okay”, no exceptions. [Disclaimer: If there is a ship that is unarguably abusive etc. and someone e.g. claims this would irl be a healthy relationship, or presents their dynamic in Meta post as something to strive for .. that needs a discussion and is where problems w/could start, but not with the shipping per se.]  (*) So even if it were about shipping please still be kind with those you don´t share ships with and express views and preferences that are different from yours. 

[Edit:] Forgot to include the good, the that´s what I do like about fandom =)  @sammichgirl​ said: “It was fantastic. Agree to disagree.”   Fair enough ;)  guess that one is the better gif then ^^

I’m not even sure how Supernatural’s version of “””Heaven””” is supposed to bring Dean any kind of peace. They’ve thrown like every aspect of the Judeo-Christian Heaven in the trash and replaced it with a memory reel. No healing, no closeness to God, no answers to life’s questions, no affirming judgement that could finally tell Dean with absolute authority that he is Good, no nothing. Like he could easily tell himself that he only ended up there due to nepotism. So let me fucking ask: How is this ANY different than Dean learning how to deal with his trauma on Earth? 

I guess we’re just supposed to assume he at least left his damaged brain chemistry behind. That’s all we’ve really got and it’s not even textually supported (because we KNOW these writers don’t understand mental illness and probably know nothing about neurology) and we can’t assume anything that happens in Christianity’s Heaven happens here, it’s just me writing headcanons.

Dabb is literally just so fucking stupid that he connects western ideals of Heaven = good without even considering that they’ve already destroyed and replaced that ideal of Heaven in this universe. 

right .. this has been bugging me so much, I guess it might be difficult to visualize a different concept ... but THAT HEAVEN?! more or less like earth I´m assuming, just with unlimited resources and no scarcities that could cause trouble between humans ... it´s nevertheless the same people, with their personal issues(*) and all the potential for interpersonal conflict ... is puzzling  Just on a very basic level ... how does this work? Dean want´s his brother close,  Eileen probably wants her love close as well .. is there a Sam for everyone? Or is there some time shenanigans happening that make everyone feel like there´s always a Sam for them? I´ve also “hoped”(*) that this is a matter of heaven gives you perfect physical and mental health (which would also open another can or worms but well..) .. but even with that I still have trouble imagining that this works for everyone & everyone is happy ... unless there is also some kind of “post life serene bliss” .. or  rather  “sedation” going on ^^  What about hell, purgatory, the empty .. there´s so many souls we have not even an unsatisfying answer for (except maybe .. ehhh Jack is probably in the midst of setting things “right” and making them “good”).  Is this anything more than a “and they lived happily ever after” without even putting thought into what everyone´s happiness might look like?  That was a nice line hearing when someone read you a fairy tale as a child, but as an adult you are burdened with knowing that this is even for the Queens and Princes rather unlikely, unless they die soon or something about their reality is fundamentally different .. and .. the kind of fundamentally different the show gave us with that heaven is ... i don´t even know ..