Discussing my seeming lack of response to last night's deaths

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the problem with Supernatural is not that there's violence against/murder of female characters. There is violence against everyone in Supernatural. Nearly every single character we've ever met has faced some kind of assault, some kind of pain they didn't cause themselves. And most of them die (though, let's a thousand times discuss the fact that only the male characters come back in any real, lasting, non-fantasized way).

The problem is how these characters are written to die or disappear--with little to no fuss from anyone. Written as plot devices whose relevance to the SPN universe only occurs when the Winchesters (or their allies--and for some reason women are never elevated, though Ruby got the closest, to that particular level of narrative importance, I WONDER WHY) need them. Written in a way that forgets they exist when they die or get Put on a Bus. The problem is that so many female characters have so little significance that for most of them fridging isn't even a concept because the narrative doesn't imbue the audience's proxy, the protagonists, with enough fucking connection to the character for that. 

Characters that have huge impacts on both the protagonists and the SPN universe's makeup, good or bad, are forgotten, are erased, when they die or end up On a Bus. Supernatural actually rarely even respects women's significance to anything--anybody--enough to even call it fridging. The death or disappearance of female characters erases their histories, their current relationships or arcs, and their possible futures, entirely. Anna. Ruby. Meg. Lisa. Charlie. Etc. They don't just die: they're wiped completely out of fucking existence. Fridging would be too kind for what happens to most recurring characters cast with women in Supernatural. (And that's without even mentioning what happens to the ones in single episodes to whom the protagonists do seemingly connect, about whom you'd think they'd ever speak or worry, but don't.)

(Not to mention how often their assaults/deaths are far more gruesome or sexualized, but that's another post for another time: for the record, I thought last night was fairly good about that too. I like that they tend to do that with Dean, because it makes me feel safer, as someone who's faced big guys holding her against things with their bodies; Dean's [possibly chosen by Jensen] recurring desexualization of his holds on women [last night, iirc, he was beside Flagstaff with the blade to her neck, and he was holding Tessa's wrists between them instead of pinning her with his body against hers. I'll also never get the whole 'he sexually assaulted Bela' thing, though I fully support your fears if you do, because I've watched and rewatched that scene and his disarming is quick and methodical and doesn't touch her more than he needs to, but that's another write-up] when he gets violent with them is rare, in male heroes.)

I thought last night actually stepped up a bit in terms of this, writing Flagstaff spearheading her own retribution, contrary to what her Big Male Leader says, and Tessa arranging HER OWN death (as opposed to last season's 22, where Sarah had absolutely no power, her death was weaponized in a fight between heroic men and villainous men and the most blatant example of fridging on this show that's happened since the fucking pilot) to the anger of people who valued her (there was no 'our mother'; 'our friend'; 'our daughter'; 'our captain' etc. it was all 'TESSA?') instead of their relationship to her; we'll see how long that lasts.

(I do mourn Ice Cream Angel, "she" was pretty cool, but I have long given up on the idea of literally any angel or demon except maybe Castiel being allowed to live more than an episode or two [maybe half a dozen at most]. Esp. ones on the opposing side. My numbness to, my recovery time to Supernatural killing p. much anybody [except perhaps Cas: cos me] has reached an all-time high. It's not that I forgive the show; it's that I don't have the energy, the mental space, to devote my focus to the shit I can't change that hurts me right now. I care. I know it's problematic. I talk about it frequently. But I can't bring myself to make it The Thing right now.)