this place isn’t haunted it is the ghost

"Stuff like this is made to brainwash young girls into thinking that they can 'fix' dangerous men. Such girls usually end up in abusive relationships and their parents are right to worry."

It is rather strange to come across such a gross generalization, operating on an assumption that girls are blank slates whom anyone can manipulate and who can't distinguish between real and make believe on top of it.

In my entire "career"(if you can call it that) of engaging with fiction , the girls and women that I have run into in fandoms happened to be some of the most intelligent, talented, cool, witty and insightful people I have ever met. I've devoured the fics they have written. I have delighted in the arts and edits they've made. Their perspectives and interpretations about the characters and their relationships are genuinely fascinating to read about regardless of whether I agree with it or not. They are the ones who are most often at the receiving end of the antis' ire for no valid reason but they just keep deriving joy and inspiration from their favourite characters and ships and keep sharing it with others through stories, art and thoughts. They are not just smart but incredibly resilient, sensitive and aware not just about the media they consume but about the world around them and its issues.

I’ll bite. What’s the difference between those two?

“Fuck canon I do what I want” is just an approach to fandom that can mean any of the following:

I am not particularly concerned with being canon-compliant in my fanworks and headcanons.

I am not personally motivated to have an extensive knowledge of the canon I’m fannish about.

I will freely rewrite, overwrite, or just plain ignore part of canon that I don’t like.

All of which are, again, fine. Fandom is transformative. Rewriting and reimagining the text is part of what we do.

Death of the Author is a critical framework based on the 1967 essay “La mort de l'auteur” by French literary theorist Roland Barthes, and posits that a text should be interpreted without regard for the author’s intent. (It’s worth noting here that like all critical frameworks, Death of the Author has its limitations, and I’m not going to get into arguing for or against it here–only that it’s a theory that exists.)

Obviously, there’s some potential overlap between these two ideas. But the critical difference, as I see it, is that Death of the Author is not about discarding or rewriting the text; it simply suggests that once the text is out there, it exists unto itself separate from the author, and the author’s intended meaning is no more authoritative than the interpretation of a reader/viewer/audience member.

but something i'm noticing this time around is how at the beginning of 2.01, i don't actually think john was totally sold on not just letting dean die. very early on in the ep, sam calls him out for his seeming indifference.

JOHN: We'll look for someone. SAM: Yeah. JOHN: But Sam, I don't know if we're gonna find anyone. SAM: Why not? I found that faith healer before. JOHN: All right, that was, that was one in a million. SAM: So what? Do we just sit here with our thumbs up our ass? JOHN: No, I said we'd look. All right? I'll check under every stone.*

*obligatory note that he barely checks under one stone

and sam's right. john seems downright cold and defeatist in this scene. important context is that this is when john's asking sam to get stuff so he can summon azazel - which is when he makes the deal to save dean. but there's nothing to say that was his first plan in summoning him.

2.01 is marked by nearly constant butting heads between sam and john. so much so that it prompts dean to move a physical object even though he's a spirit. and i'm wondering if another reason behind john's choice of dean over himself was the simple fact that he has always left and left sam in dean's care because dean is just better at taking care of sam (read parentified).

john clearly doesn't want sam to die. but maybe he realizes, over the course of this episode, that left alone without dean, sam and john will fight and butt heads and that makes it so much more likely that the demons' plans about sam will succeed because it's all about sam tapping into his anger and his frustrated feelings of powerlessness. john decides that if he stays alive while dean dies, that's virtually a death sentence for sam at john's hands.

i'm just pondering all of this. anyway, nothing could convince me that john *only* saves dean out of love. so nothing can convince me that john's speech at the end of the episode is anything but twisted hypocrisy given the context of what he's allegedly apologizing for compared to what he's about to ask.

...

5.16 SAM: Dad always said they had the perfect marriage. DEAN: It wasn’t perfect until after she died.