Stage Left

PRE PANEL MADNESS

- misha and jensen ALMOST KISS while messing around between photo ops

- jensen appears to be wearing exclusively destiel colours; he changes from a blue shirt to a green shirt before his panel

JENSEN’S PANEL

- jensen LAUGHING when the crowd boos the finale

- completely shuts down wincest as he talks about how he refused for dean's last scene to be one where he's cradled on the floor by sam

- further, unnecessary proof jackles the biggest finale denialist of us all (“dean’s not dead”)

- talks about how “heavily debated” the finale script was

- HE WANTS A SPN COMEBACK MOVIE IN THREE YEARS TO START ALL OVER AGAIN (read: so there can be a version of spn in which dean and cas actually get to be together)

- jensen talking about how much he identified with dean and how hard it is to let him go <3

- naked jensen in the boys????

- he can’t see pie without thinking of dean (read: he is as derranged as all of us)

- literally changes the subject to avoid addressing whether or not the finale was good

- said that if cas had been behind the door in 15.19 the scene would have ended in a “big embrace”

FLEETING COCKLES PANEL

- misha crashes the panel and jensen literally gives up his seat for him

- heartfelt jenmish hugs

- misha: “we hugged last night and i was like, jesus. what is this? and jensen was like, aww, he’s so soft… like an angel plushie.”

- the much awaited return of jensen heart eyes ackles

MISHA’S PANEL

- starts off by misha affectionately literally the entire cast of spn apart from mark pellegrino

- talks about how much he loves cas

- misha being generally witty and hilarious and the wonderful human being we all love so much

- the pride in misha's voice when he tells the story of how NASA named a mountain on mars gishwhes because gish literally would not give up and leave them alone

- he finds jeremy bradshaw and his scapegoating of owls just as frustrating as the rest of us do (“come on, an OWL?!”)

- SEASON TWO OF BRIDGEWATER IS COMING

- castiel’s favourite place in heaven is back in the impala

- misha says, “i’m not supposed to talk about this” and everyone promptly loses their damn minds when he says that it's not canon or official but to him, cas is “imbued with this lasting happiness and quiet simmering contentment for having expressed himself” in telling dean he loved him

- he thinks there are whole other series that could explore the relationship between cas and dean

- the love and affection in his voice when he talks about how much fun he had on set and how many amazing memories he made there

- his favourite ever cas scene was cas’s confession scene; he says that getting to sink into the love confession in that supportive environment with jensen was incredible and something he’ll cherish forever

- legitimately choking up when talking about the confession scene between cas and dean

Here you go 👬

Y yo a ti Cas

@jet-siquliak @cisphobicthetasigma I actually posted it

@threeleastordered you kinda gave me the inspiration to draw this, so you get tagged too.

I know everyone in this Destiel corner of Tumblr is presently worried that the video of Misha discussing Castiel’s “homosexual declaration of love” in 15x18 is going to disappear, because of the Latin American dub scenario and its subsequent framing as the work of a “rogue translator”; which, whether cock-up or conspiracy, feels like queer erasure to many queer audience fractions.   

So, here is a PopBuzz article, published 11 Nov 2020, which gives the source:

“Speaking at the DarkLight Online Convention this weekend (Nov 8), Misha revealed all. He said: “Castiel tells Dean he loves him and basically makes Destiel canon.“”

I don’t consider that determination of the meaning of a television text rests with the actors. 

It rests with textual analysis and audience interpretations of the text. 

When we look at reception, Castiel’s love declaration scene in 15x18 (still) dances on the head of a pin in terms ambiguity - it’s clearly a “coming out” speech for some audience fractions, but it is being read as “angelic love” rather than queer love by others. 

On the other hand, when we look at the totality of the SPN text (its “supra-text” and sub-text together) a queer reading of Castiel has been available since his arrival on the show. 

This is Dean thinking that he might have lost Cas in purgatory (again) even with some time left to find him.

And then 15x20 comes around and tries to tell me that A) Dean gave up and was ok with Cas spending eternity in the empty. B) That once he got to heaven and finds out that Cas is there he just… smiles and goes for a drive.

If people want to say they’re completely done with the show after this, that’s valid and I completely understand. For me though, the finale doesn’t erase all the stories and voices that came before it. 

When Edlund wrote and directed the heartbreaking 6x20, he showed us how important Dean and Cas’ relationship was and how much they valued one another.

Robbie Thompson wrote beautiful episodes about how important family, happiness and self actualisation are to these guys.

Berens has spent his whole tenure on the show repeatedly emphasising how central Dean and Cas’ relationship was, both to the show and to who Dean and Cas were as individuals. Not to mention Wayward (seriously I can’t even think about Wayward right now and how much he deserved to make that show.)

Don’t even get me started on Meredith Glynn and how much she valued TFW as well as Dean and Cas and just family in general.

And how about Yockey? The man wrote so many gorgeous episodes with ruminations on the nature of Dean and Cas’ relationship as well as stories about the extended family Sam and Dean had built around them. 

I’m working on a finale fixit (I know, me and everyone else), and it follows the actual plot of the finale for a bit and I am trying to make this MOTW make sense and I just can’t.

Luther’s nest in Dead Man’s Blood was in Colorado. Yet apparently this nest has been in Ohio since 1986 at least. Why would Jenny suddenly be their leader?? She was a brand-new vampire last we saw her, and at some point in the past 15 years she moved across the country and these guys put her in charge??

And like… do they always wear these clown masks? If so, isn’t that a little recognizable? Shouldn’t there be more cases? Tongues being ripped out is also kind of a “serial killer calling card” type move. You can’t tell me that there would be no record of these guys between 1986 and 2020.

Or maybe we’re supposed to believe that they used that MO back then, dropped it, then randomly picked it back up recently?

Then there’s the “pattern” they follow. They have three data points from 1986: Akron, Canton, East Sparta.

So apparently this means that if they hit Akron again 24 years later, they’re definitely going to do Canton next?

What if they move north and south along I-77, and they’re on their way north right now?

What if they just happen to pick any other town along that highway besides Canton next?

(I will ignore some nitpicks about whether East Sparta is even “on” I-77, or the fact that “outside of own” means something completely different when you’re talking about a city of 200k people like Akron versus a town of 800 people like East Sparta. These are things the writers might ignore.)

But no, of course they’re going to do exactly the same thing they did 24 years ago but apparently have not done since. (Sure, supposedly they take a couple kids “every few years” but you can’t tell me that if there were a string of clown kidnappings with exsanguination and tongue-snatchings in the general Akron area every few years that wouldn’t be a huge deal.)

And then, all Sam and Dean have to go off of is “outside of town, isolated, kids between the ages of 5-10.” Now maybe if they’d made it down to East Sparta by now I could buy that that narrows it down enough, but Canton is a mid-sized town of 70k people? You’re telling me there is one family with kids aged 5-10 whose house is somewhat isolated outside of Canton??

Oh, and a family that doesn’t even notice when two bullets are fired in their yard in the middle of the night, apparently.

And then why? Are the vamps? Still wearing clown masks? In the barn??? Is this literally just so that they could have publicity stills of them to confuse people with?

And then, y’know, there’s the idea that Dean would happen to recognize this random skinny generic brunette who he spent like MAYBE five minutes in the presence of fifteen years ago???

Here’s “Jenny’s” previous appearance: They got to the barn or whatever she was being held in, then Sam is the one who found her and started trying to free her. Dean came over very briefly to see what Sam was doing, and she was still unconscious then. Then he left to keep trying to open the lock and Sam is the one who watched her wake up and got a front-row seat when she started yelling. Then at the end of the episode she’s there and drags Kate to the car, but it’s dark, everyone’s poorly list for ~dramatic effect~, she’s also kind of a mess, and Dean is 100% focused on Luther, who has Sam, for most of the brief time he’s within sight of her.

The bigger question is: How does Dean know her name????

So she and her boyfriend called 911 after they found a body, but by the time the police showed up, all three were missing. The police might have gotten the guy’s name from the vehicle registration, but her name? IMDB lists the guys as “Jenny’s boyfriend” so they weren’t married, her name was most likely not on his car’s registration. Maybe her purse was left behind with her ID, but when Kate shows Luther a pile of stuff from Elkins he asks “this all theirs?” as if it’s their usual MO to take whatever their victims have on them, so they probably took her purse. And even if the cops found her ID in the car, why the fuck would they tell John (random dude who walked up to them, probably pretending to ask what was going on that had the road blocked) her name???

And then there’s the fact that the vamps had a bunch of people locked up! There’s absolutely no reason for Dean to think that this lady just happens to be the one who was involved in that 911 call!!!

There’s absolutely no way the writers can actually expect us to believe that Dean would remember this random woman and know her name based on what we saw in that episode.

@impressivedisaster this comment deserved to be its own post. Here's what it was in reaction to.

The Question

We all now occupy a reality where the writers of our show seemingly chose to obliterate all of their years of thematic subversion and character development in one fell swoop: the series finale.

I know it's popular to hate the writers, and I get it. They're names we're familiar with, and we can interact directly with their work and see their individual impact on the story. They're a highly visible target on which to place the blame, and for the most part, fandom does so. But I need us all to take a moment and review what happened here.

The evolved story we love so dearly, and all of the things that have come to define it -- found family, healing, self acceptance, honesty, and yes, destiel and saileen -- are elements these very same writers spent the last several years placing emphasis on and weaving into complex story arcs that spanned multiple seasons. Beyond this, they also made a point to contrast this new vision with the old one by purposefully putting the old vision in a bad light. They did that. They told that story; it wasn't something we imagined, because you can track it.

So what the hell happened, then? Once again, the popular theory seems to be that this was all one long con to ridicule us and hurt our feelings. Call me crazy but it's hard for me to imagine eight or so people devoting years of their creative efforts into something without ever caring about the story they were telling. Or, that weren't prepared to follow through on if given the opportunity. I'm sorry, but it's all highly implausible-- especially when there is a simpler, and much more obvious explanation.

The Answer

Supernatural already has a lengthy history of being strangled into submission by outside forces. Most of the damage done to the story is imperceptible, and is at best difficult to trace, because unlike the writers, the network can meddle with the plot and story features virtually without detection. The blame, as intended by the network, always falls on the creative team. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I could get into how spn fandom is currently living out my worst nightmare of capitalist manipulation of a scorned demographic but that's its own post. Point here is, fandom, we've got the wrong guy. We are doing exactly what allows the establishment to get away with the corruption of a creative work again and again -- taking our anger out on the wrong people.

And guess what? As we are all sifting through this last season for what the hell went wrong, I can see us noticing that this turn of events was foreshadowed. The point of it seems to be sailing over a lot of heads, but all it takes to set that right is a better understanding of the hierarchy of decisionmaking in the entertainment business. The writers of the show have certain freedoms, but at the end of the day are beholden to the will of a higher power.

Sound familiar? I don't know, like the plot of season 15?

Now I have no interest in opinions that I'm giving the writers too much credit here. I'm not reading into things, I'm reading. I've correctly interpreted the authorial intent for several seasons now and the reason I failed to predict the 15x20 shitshow was because the authorial intent vanished. Instead, I found myself with a sloppily assembled 39 minutes of plot regression eerily similar to the kind of Supernatural the show told us Chuck wanted. Sure, you can tell me it was the writers showing their true colors. The beautiful story we had prior to it was a fluke, or a cruel joke. But that's a weak theory.

No. I think the right answer is the one that makes the most sense. The one we have precedent for. The one that explains the wheels falling off of the plot at the eleventh hour and everything going bad without warning. The one that breathes new meaning into Becky, and Chuck.

Chuck was never the writers. He was the network.

He is shown with books and paper - as a writer. He in this era perhaps symbolises Kripke - an author who puts his characters through hell for the sake of a good story, consistently writing in pain and horror and tragedy. He then begins to go to fan conventions and has a scorn for the fans and their work. He’s old school Supernatural. 

But this season, he is no longer writing. No longer is he symbolised heavily with paper and books - although he is shown writing at a laptop. This above image best symbolises who he has become - the Network. He has multiple shows that he portrays on TV - he is in charge of multiple stories across multiple screens.

“I don’t need more - more things, more distractions, I need less. It’s time to clear the board - all the other worlds, alternate realities, the sub-plots - the failed spin-offs - it’s time to start cancelling shows.”

A show’s writers don’t cancel other worlds (read: other shows), alternate realities (read: the ideas and spn scripts which never got past the network), the sub-plots (read: the subtextual plots) - the failed spin-offs (there’s nothing veiled about that one). It is THE NETWORK - it is THE CW who didn’t pick up the spin-offs, said no to subplots and subtext, said no to the writer’s wishes. 

Here is Chuck, stood in front of a MASS OF TELEVISIONS, calling each his own ‘show’ and saying that he is cancelling them - cancelling elements of their plots. This is not, in any way, metaphorical for what a series writer can do. Dabb didn’t cancel Wayward Sisters or Supernatural. The CW did. 

So Chuck has represented two entities - the old writers of S1-5 the Kripke era and Kripke (meta loving Kripke himself - as he admitted in The Road So Far or whatever that horseshit nostalgia fest was called) and now The Network. The Network wanted a sanitised, homophobic, good-for-advertisers finale, and Kripke wanted a brothers-only, go-out-swinging-and-bloody, S1-5 era finale. This Chuck is a Frankenstein’s monster Chuck of Kripke/Singer and The CW. Both the old writer and the current Network. Dabb didn’t write him into the show in the first place, he never represented Dabb and the writers Dabb hired. To Dabb, Chuck was Kripke and the old SPN team - constantly pushing back on his progressive Supernatural because they were all still EPs. Then the CW started rejecting his spin-offs, so Chuck started to morph from a character who was somewhat accepting of the fan’s stories and the new writer’s stories, into the new Big Bad. The ultimate Monster. With Wayward Sisters (remember, this was written by Dabb and Berens) not being picked up by The CW so that they could remake Charmed (ffs), Dabb and Berens had a LOT to be angry about, and so The CW was ingrained as Chuck, and he became the ultimate monster who would cause the demise of Supernatural and every single character on the show.

So who are the new, current writers represented as in our story? Chuck no longer represents them? Who represents the dreams and wishes of the writers? I know Dabb is in everyone’s bad books, but I truly believe he did love our characters. Remember again, that Berens AND Dabb wrote Wayward Sisters, the beautiful feminist queer spin-off that The CW said ‘fuck-you’ to. 

The new writers wanted to go ahead with what they’d been trying to do all season, try to defeat the Network and make destiel canon. And they knew they might not be able to have Dean and Cas together, sharing a kiss or sharing the rest of Dean’s life together. They were told the by Network that they couldn’t have that... but they could try and say it. 

“Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being, just saying it.”

The writers are being told by the Network that they can’t let Cas and Dean have a relationship or gay happiness, so they allow themselves to at least just say it - have it be told out loud.

"I know. I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You're destructive and you're angry and you're broken. You're... you're 'Daddy's Blunt Instrument.' And you think hate and anger, that's... that's what drives you. That's who you are. It's not. And everyone who knows you sees it. Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love. You raised your little brother for love. You fought for this whole world for love. That is who you are. You're the most caring man on Earth. You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.”

Here’s the thing with this speech. Who are these enemies? Which enemies see Dean as broken and Daddy’s blunt instrument? The random Monsters of the Week who don’t know Dean as a person? The leviathan? Lilith? Lucifer didn’t necessarily see Dean as daddy’s blunt instrument? Abbadon? Metatron? 

Do you know which enemy knows Dean well enough to even form such a detailed judgement about him. Which enemy actively plays into this idea of Dean? Chuck. Angry, broken, daddy’s blunt instrument, unworthy of living into old age, never able to have true love - this is how Kripke and The CW see Dean. THEY are the enemies Cas is talking about here. 

Cas, in this scene, takes on the direct opinions of the writers. These are the words the writers want Dean to hear before their enemies fuck everything up. They have settled on just telling Dean that he deserves more, and sacrificing themselves just so that they can have this one moment of professed gay love. They know Chuck/The CW is out there and they will win, but they’re going to go out epically. They know they can’t ultimately save Dean from his demise (caused by The CW), but they can give him this moment, right before they’re killed off and Chuck takes over for the next two episodes.

Cas’s speech was so utterly heartfelt. No one who doesn’t themselves mean it could have written such a beautiful speech. I truly think, maybe this was Berens and Dabb, along with Castiel, professing their love for Dean one final time before they yanked into the empty by The Network. 

With Cas’s death, the writers are gone. The audience, and Sam and Dean are now in the hands of the old writers (Kripke’s writers Bucklleming) and The Network.  

And whilst the writers were confirming Dean’s character arc as someone who isn’t his dadd’s blunt instrument, is someone they deeply love, is someone that they want to live and survive, Chuck/The Network is wreaking havoc on their world.

The CW: We don’t like your love interest for Jared as his female fans won’t like her and won’t be able to imagine they live happily ever after with Sam. Get rid of her. 

The CW: We don’t like your gay characters. Get rid of them. 

The CW: We don’t like your Found Family. Get rid of them.

The CW: We don’t like your female characters and Wayward Sisters. Get rid of them.

Did anyone else wonder why Donna was there? Was her brief appearance just a tad random? I love Donna, but she really didn’t need to be there. Unless she represented something bigger than herself...

We assume that all these people are brought back, but we never actually get to see them again and whether they all came back to life is never explicitly said. They’re eradicated. Dabb and the writers are gone, and The CW doesn’t want them back, so therefore they’re never seen again. Chuck got rid of everyone, but as viewers we are seen characters who each represent parts of the show that Dabb and the Writers were trying to protect. 

And we’re left with Sam and Dean (and Jack, but he’ll be gone by the end of episode 19). Chuck’s/Kripke’s/The CWs perfect ending. 

So the brothers defeat Chuck, but this doesn’t mean that The CW’s power is shown to be gone. It’s transferred. 

Chuck is an empty vessel, but the power that Chuck/The CW has lives on and they’re in charge now that Cas/The Writers have gone. 

Jack/The CW brings back the world full of people, but isn’t shown to have brought back Eileen, Charlie, Donna - the characters The CW never wanted or liked. Jack/The CW doesn’ bring back Cas (he says he has off-screen but... that’s not bringing someone back onto the screens so in my books, doesn't really count). Jack/The CW/Kripke doesn’t save Dean - they want him to die. They keep Sam alive to die in tired and useless old age, rather than the witchy leader MOL he was meant to be. Dean and Sam were never going to escape their S1-5 ending, because they never really destroyed the power of God/The CW. Their protector - Cas/The Writers - was dead and gone and couldn’t save them. 

Ultimately, when Chuck died, they didn’t kill God/The CW. The CW’s power can’t be killed. They always were, and always will be the true God in Supernatural’s world.

The writers went out with a bang with Cas’s confession, and after that, Dean and Sam were in the cruel hands of God’s power: The CW.

I’ve been so confused about Dabb and how he could have done this. But he didn’t. I’ve watched with my own eyes how he’s been running Supernatural and nothing about 19 or 20 made me feel like he had much to do with those episodes. As soon as Cas died, everything changed. Supernatural felt like a completely different show. Chuck was killed off at the end of episode 19. Chuck’s power was never killed off. The writers were never Chuck. The writers never had the power of a God. Dabb and Berens were angels, trying to protect and love their beloved humans, but they got yanked into the empty in episode 18, never to be seen again. Dabb and Berens went out screaming that Dean deserves gay love and freedom and not to die young and bloody and as his dad’s blunt instrument. But angels are no power for god. So Dean died the Kripke way - The CW way. And we’re letting the bastards get away with it. 

The episode is the same up to the barn scene. Dean gets slammed against a wall just inches from a rusty nail poking out. His eyes go wide as he realizes how close a call that was. Sam cuts off the vampire’s head before it can do anything else. Cut to them back in the bunker. It’s the following day. Sam is laughing as he FaceTimes Eileen. His smile falters when he walks into the library to find a somber Dean, still in last night’s clothes. He’s sitting at the research table, staring at the carvings on it. His hand rests near Castiel’s name. Sam, looking concerned, tells Eileen he’ll call her back. He opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but Dean beats him to it. “You were right,” he says, voice rough around the edges. “This, just the two of us, alone… It’s not how it’s supposed to be.” A hollow chuckle. “Hell, it’s the ending Chuck wanted.” Sam sighs. Sits across from him at the table. “I know.” A beat. “So, what do we do now?” Dean looks up from Cas’s name for the first time, determination in his eyes. “First, we save him.”

Warning: Boris is a salty, sad fangirl right now so the first part of this recap might be more bitter, reductive venting than is necessary. Please skip ahead to enjoy Natasha’s far more nuanced and enjoyable second half of the recap.

The Road So Far: Cue Carry On Wayward Son

Then:

Salmondean Winchester, the boy with the demon blood and daddy’s blunt little instrument, finally defeats Chuck and gets a taste of true free will

Now:

*Fun domestic montage*

Sam Dean gets a dog! (Okay, fine, Miracle is super cute, and a complete stand-in for Cas –but that thought just sends me on another anger spiral.) 

Dean squeezes the shit out of that dog, and I hurt for that touch-starved man. 

Sam goes for a run, so like, I guess his life is the same. (thanks to Dean always protecting him and allowing him some normalcy in life) (I’m bitter, remember?) 

Dean Sam makes breakfast! Dean brushes his teeth! Sam is SHIRTLESS one last time! 

*Shirtless Sammy Alert*

Dean’s room is INEXPLICABLY messy! I do get what this whole montage is doing, and it’s nice, but I’m pretty sure when Becky said the fans like the domestic stuff, it was supposed to include CAS AND OTHER FAMILY. Basically, overlay the Where’s the Angel? gif all over this sequence for me. 

And finally, we find the boys are still hunting. Because freedom is just a length of rope. 

Dean finds a case, but first they have to stop and get pie! Yay! Dean loves pie, and women, and fast cars. Grumpy-faced Sam humors his big, dumb brother. Yay!