Mumbling At Crossroads

spnhiatuscreations | week 3 ↳ dean winchester 

Spoiler alert: I firmly belong to the not camp.

A post just crossed my dash that put the worst taste in my mouth. I don’t want to reblog it, but I do want to address the contents because I think the subject is super important.

The post basically boiled down to: fanfic writers are thin-skinned babies “these days” because no one can take constructive criticism. In “my day” we all sent page-long critiques like the dedicated heroes we were! It made us better writers! Moreover, if I didn’t like something, I told the writer all about it! It was my job!

Hold up, what?

I’ve been posting fanfic online since 1998. Twenty years. Pre-archives. And “in my day” we had betas if we wanted/needed/asked for them (whose critiques didn’t have an audience). We said “concrit welcome” if we actually wanted constructive criticism. We did not show up unannounced to point out a work’s flaws because that is rude. Look, I am an editor. People pay me real money to edit things for them. I would rather cut off my own fingers than burst into someone’s comments and start “critiquing” their work without being asked first.

Here’s something that needs to be addressed: fanfiction is real writing, yes, but it is, by its nature as something that isn’t monetized, a hobby. As in, a thing people do for fun. A thing that hopefully brings both authors and readers joy! The story an author posts a is a gift; how dare anyone rip a gift apart in front of the gift-giver and all the other party attendees? How entitled and ungrateful can you be? Fandom is not a frigging battleground where authors learn to harden themselves for war. It’s a hobby. Done out of love and enthusiasm. 

Yes, some fanfiction writers (certainly not all!!) aspire to be original fiction writers. They may use fanfiction as a training ground. They may want or benefit from constructive criticism. Still, they have to ask. They have to start the conversation. I know (think?) it’s harder to find betas these days, but it’s always worth asking around if real critique is what you want. Put “concrit welcome and even begged for” in the author’s notes and hope someone takes you up on it. 

Some fanfiction writers with original fiction aspirations still don’t want criticism about their fic. Fic may be their fun-writing outlet. It may be about instant gratification (and there’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not in the business of denying ourselves pleasure out of some moral superiority here. It’s fandom). It may be the place where they post to get around their fears of showing things to others. It may be the place they take risks they wouldn’t in their original work because the stakes are lower. When you work on your original writing all day, every day—often putting that work through far more vigorous and exhausting paces than fanfic sees—the last thing you want is someone showing up during your time off to point out a frigging comma splice or shift in POV.

The point is unless someone asks for critique, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe fic is the only fun thing they have in their lives. Maybe they’re writing in a different language. Maybe they are 14. Or 82. Maybe they’ve never written fiction of any kind before and this is their baby step forward. Maybe fic is just escapism. Maybe they are depressed or anxious as hell and criticism is going to push them over an edge. Fandom belongs to everyone. Not just people deemed “good” or “perfect” or “permitted” or “thick-skinned.” People don’t need to be saved from grammar mistakes or poor turns of phrase or even plotholes so wide a semi could drive through them. Authors sure as hell don’t need to be told when a reader just doesn’t like something. There is no fandom police force in charge of perfection. If critique is so important to you, advertise your willingness to beta. If you do not like a story or think it’s “bad” hit the freaking back button. 

Unsolicited criticism is not helpful. Maybe you just catch someone off-guard and startle them. At worst, you may totally shatter someone’s self-esteem while they are partaking in a hobby they 100% do for fun—and not in pursuit of some unattainable perfection.

someone once told me - actually, many people have - that lgbt content isn’t appropriate for children. any content. not just kissing. i’m drowned in questions: “won’t the parents have to explain it?” “kids shouldn’t be thinking about sex at this age, or do you think differently?” “what will the kids think?”

at six i saw disney movies. people kiss and get married. i didn’t ask “what does that mean.” i didn’t ask “are those people going to have sex?” i didn’t ask anything, because i was six, and no six year old thinks twice about these things. nobody ever “explained” being straight to me, it was a fact, and it existed, and i was fine with that. why would being gay require a thesis, i wonder.

someone once told me that the one of the reasons people hate lgbt individuals is because they can’t see us as anything but sexual. we’re not people, so much as sinners. that they don’t see love, they see sex. just sex. it’s perversion, not a matter of the heart. only of the body.

i think i was in my early twenties before i saw someone like me. 

how old were you, though, before you saw violence? before you saw sexual assault on tv? i think something like that is only pg-13, and if it’s implied, they can get away with anything. i remember watching things and learning about blood, but knowing sex - sex was what was really wrong. sex was always rated r. sex was always kind of a bad word. i was told a lot that i wasn’t ready.

i had a dream last night that i made a site where people could ask any question they wanted about sex and get answered by a professional. it was shut down in moments because 15 year olds wanted to know if it should hurt, if “double-bagging” was a real thing, if this, if that. we shudder. don’t let the children know about that! 

but at thirteen i had seen enough violence it no longer struck me. i couldn’t say “fuck” but i knew that if you break your femur, you can bleed out internally in under half an hour. in school i wasn’t allowed to write about loving girls because what would the administration think - but i could write about wanting to kill myself and people would say how lovely, how blistering.

i have thought a lot about censorship. sometimes people on this site try it with me: don’t write this, don’t be so nasty. some of it is intrinsic. we know as people with a uterus not to complain about “that time of the month”, we know better than to talk about sexual assault (how shameful), we know that talking about a vagina is somehow scandalous. i can say “dick” and nobody questions me. some people only refer to the bottom half of me by “pussy”. they won’t wrap a mouth around “vagina” like it’s poison to them. even discussing this, that the language halts, that there’s an intrinsic desire to say “girls” instead of “women” - feels naughty, illicit. not for children.

the other day someone suggested i make my blog 18+. i said, okay, it deals a lot with depression and other problems that might be for a mature audience. oh no, they said, that’s not it, i think that’s helpful. i said, okay. so what is it then. well, you’re gay. you write about loving women. and i said, i don’t write about sex often and they said. it’s not about the sex. but wlw isn’t for a general audience. teenagers aren’t ready.

oh.

lolita is recommended for high school and up. i think about that a lot. i know girls who love it, who say it speaks to them on a deep level. it’s beautiful prose, after all. that was the whole point of the novel. something that looked like a rose but was intrinsically awful. i think about how if i was a model they’d want me to look young, thin, prepubescent. how my body would be sold and how through the mall i walk by images of barely-clothed women while mothers cannot breastfeed in public without fear of retribution. 

i think about how i can write a novel about violence and it will be pg-13 but if my characters say “fuck” twice it’s inappropriate. i said fuck three times so far in this post, which makes it only appropriate for adults. 

i think about that, and how my identity is something that people suggest lines up with a swear word. that people shouldn’t talk about it. that it’s a vulgarity. bad for children, harsh, confusing.

#on my way to jensen’s house for his acting in s13 like

Yeah, in 10x10, which is the only time he ever comments on it, to Claire, he says that it’s picking up a need to communicate - not even words, just that he is able to sense Claire’s location because of her wish to reach out to him. I doubt that includes any words, and in general angels are shown to be able to locate humans, sometimes by emotion, sometimes because they can just sense them, but that they only hear actual words when there’s a prayer involved.

Quick doodle of the S13 finale where everyone is happy. Lucifer and Michael are defeated and Dean still has powers~ And they all hug!

- driving baby like a lunatic and scuffing her tyres, spoiling the leather with juice and beetroot salad

- scratching Dean’s records and pulling the tape out of his cassettes while he calls him up so he can hear the whine as they unravel

- leaving the bunker kitchen an absolute mess and texting him pictures of it getting worse every few days

- driving baby like a lunatic and scuffing her tyres, spoiling the leather with juice and beetroot salad

- scratching Dean’s records and pulling the tape out of his cassettes while he calls him up so he can hear the whine as they unravel

- leaving the bunker kitchen an absolute mess and texting him pictures of it getting worse every few days

I couldn’t say specifically about recent episodes, since I watch at live airing and then buy the DVDs. Netflix have been called out in the past based on the bits of shows they cut. I know that they cut a lot, but putting deleted scenes back in is new knowledge to me (though why not, I guess, if it was a timing issue?). Does anyone have any examples?

NVM I found one of my own: https://ru-clip.com/video/yKZY8wqCcOo/supernatural-season-9-finale-deleted-shot-the-mark-of-cain-glows.html

This version of the scene is on the Netflix version apparently, but on my Pal-2 DVD it’s featured as a deleted scene. Huh. I sometimes think that the Netflix version is cut so that the people watching don’t have to think too hard, but lol I know that’s not it (or maybe it is? I mean peeps are watching it in bed, right?). But yeah I don’t really have any way to shed light on the set of rules behind the reasoning. In this example, the glowing Mark of Cain takes away from the shock of Dean’s eyes opening, and it doesn’t actually change the timing of the scene at all, since it’s a VFX thing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5eRm8R9efg (Sorry about my links, the embed feature isn’t working for me this morning)

In this walkthrough of the pilot’s differences, too, you get the original version - more witchcraft, more sexy, alongside the Netflix version IT’S A FUCKING GHOST before she even gets in the car. The Netflix version cuts moving scenes–for instance Dean’s clever escape of the police station, and Sam picking up the cupcake, and all I can assume is it’s to simplify things and move the plot along.

I would be curious to know how many of these scenes, especially from later seasons, have made it back into the Netflix version, since it really does make a difference, the implication being if they exist in one version of canon they could be considered canon… Hm.

Let me find the quote:

Here, from TVLine:

Any scoop on Supernatural? –SusanJust because Dean and Sam are trying to get Mary home doesn’t mean she’ll want to go back. “She actually enjoys the fight” in apocalypse world, executive producer Robert Singer says. “That’s something that when she was in our world, when she went off with the British Men of Letters, kind of upset the guys. She, in an odd way, has found a home there where she can be a pure fighter. She doesn’t think that the boys are coming. How would they get there? So she’s pretty entrenched in that world. When they do show up, it causes a little bit of tension between her and the boys.” (x)

So, yeah. It sounds like there will be some conflict there, but it totally makes sense. Mary is a fighter, she has little to no attachment to the regular world and here she can help people. I’m sure it would feel extremely irrisponsible for her to just up and leave when an entire WORLD is in danger and suffering.

The only argument I have for why it might be wonderful for Mary to choose to stick with her boys is that it will tell us that she’s moved out of that state of displacement, and is now choosing for herself where she thinks she belongs: with her family. We got the reason for her staying away given to us in S12, of course, and the reason was fear - of not living up to this ideal she felt her boys, and especially Dean, might have of her - and fear of the guilt she felt should be placed squarely on her shoulders for all the crap her boys have gone through. 

That was her real reason for teaming up with the BMoL, her desperate need to rid the world of monsters and right all those wrongs she felt she’d inadvertently done to her boys. It would keep them safe, too, rather than out risking their lives. Of course, she didn’t stop to think that she was taking away their right to choose for themselves and when she, in 12x01, told Dean she never wanted the hunter life for him and Sam (which of course Dean was already fully aware of because it’s not the first time he’s heard her say that), his response was more or less that this is what they do and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’ll be interesting to see if Dabb & Co. feel Mary has fulfilled her purpose in the narrative or not. They seem to love Sam Smith and to not mind having her stick around. If Mary does choose to leave Apocalypse World, I can see her totally  striking out on her own next season, much like she did in S12 but with better communication set up with the boys. She wouldn’t stick around the bunker, because she’s not just a mom, she’s a hunter, and perhaps the perspective afforded to her by the fact that her choice to make a deal effectively saved this world of ours (on multiple occasions) will bring her the peace she’s needed to actually enjoy this new chance at life. I can see her being an asset, as well, moving forward, when it comes to knowing the roots of the hunter community etc. but oh how it all depends on where they’re going with the narrative. 

I won’t be surprised if the writers start cutting back on characters by end of the season, and of course the Apocalypse World provides them with an excellent opportunity (Ketch is surely not only staying but sacrificing himself for Mary) (so there’s one character death on the horizon) 

As far as Jack is concerned… I’d hate to see him go, is really all I have to say on that, but he’s getting stronger by the minute and we can’t very well have a godlike character riding shotgun with TFW now can we? Boo hoo. And it makes sense he’d continue to learn about his powers while rebuilding Apocalypse World, because Jack - in contrast to Lucifer - surely CAN create. My only question then becomes if we’re meant to say goodbye to Jack for good if this is his choice, or if he stays there only to learn the skills needed to come back to our world and promote balance between Heaven and Hell, creating more angels etc. Is this the first part of a dual seasonal arc or are they wrapping S12 up with S13 and moving us forward into S14 with the focus on a new big bad.

It appears to me like S13 is setting up the stuff we’re going to deal with in S14, but…

I joined during S12. I knew about SPN and Destiel from Tumblr but I didn’t necessarily ship it because I prefer to judge for myself. What is bothering me is the S9-S10 “painfest” people claim. I admit it got a bit boring (and repetitive) for me MAINLY cuz of no Cas in S7 but otherwise I didn’t want to stop? I mean sure MOC was pretty angsty but a story is a story. I’m just trying to understand why people burned out during S9-S10? Why people thought it was “repetitive”? (I’m a hypocrite I know)

OK so I got both of these asks because I have been talking about season 10 lately and the mass exodus of fandom at the time.

The main reason people rage quit the show at the end of season 10 was because of the (horrific, stupid, unnecessary, cruel, disgusting, and to this day completely wrong) choice to kill off Charlie Bradbury in 10x21.

Season 10 was the first season I watched live. I followed a lot of meta writers on tumblr at the time with a skeleton blog and was the very definition of a lurker on tumblr. I followed ALL THE META and consumed it and it was the season 10 meta that inspired me to start writing my own in season 11 - even AFTER the wankfest. Season 10 was not painful to watch live going though it, I actually really enjoyed it at the time. It was after 10x21 that everything changed. Those last three episodes of season 10 are the biggest pile of shit SPN has come out with in a few years - even though 10x22 did redeem itself with a few scenes.

Before 10x21 it was actually pretty fucking epic to follow the fandom content and the excited shippers who were slowly becoming more and more convinced that season 10 would end with something huge.

It all started with this:

Now over the s9/s10 hiatus everyone was SUPER excited about Demon!Dean. Because a lot of people theorised that Demon!Dean would not be so extremely repressed as regular Dean and therefore we should get some fucking quality content and an insight into Dean’s emotions that we wouldn’t usually see. 

Well, we did. Sort of. I think there are still meta writers today that can’t quite believe Drowley was a thing and wonder if the whole implication of Drowley was in fact just some shared online fever dream. I still grumble about it in disbelief tbh. So OF COURSE Drowley gets us excited because the implication in the subtext was that Demon!Dean was totally cool with hooking up with guys. There are probably thousands and thousands of words written about Dean, Crowley, and the Triplets (who were definitely all male) and the loose implication in CANON that Dean has been part of an all male five-way is still something I can’t quite get over. 

So to the title card. EVEN BEFORE this season had aired people were getting excited about it, because this very much looks like angel grace casting out demon smoke. VERY MUCH SO. 

So right away people were putting theories around that Cas would be the one to cure Dean. Now remember that this was shortly after season 9 when Cas became human, he only took on the stolen grace out of duty and wanting to be useful to the action, that he had to be ready. Season 10 then explored Cas’s feelings towards “who he is” even more heavily and for the first 3 episodes it really seemed like they were building on a story that would end with Cas giving up his grace again, but this time by choice. This was implied over and over again throughout season 10 in mirrors, in his interactions with Hannah, and in his love for humanity and human things.

On top of all that we get the moment in 10x03 where Cas is able to stop Dean from attacking Sam and his eyes glow blue whilst Dean’s turn black. This was considered foreshadowing. 

The season then goes on and continues to explore the effects of the Mark of Cain on Dean - constantly framing it as an internal conflict and corruption of his soul. The darkness inside him and the question addressed throughout the season of what makes a monster? Sam is insistent that he will save Dean, we get amazing moments like Dean’s confession in 10x16 which once again seems to reinforce the reading that he is bisexual (still what I consider to be the closest moment to Dean being outed so far) and Cas exploring his humanity further by reaching out to Claire Novak and then pursuing Metatron (who always was the best character for calling Cas out on the things Cas has struggled to understand about himself).

On top of all this we have the freaking Cain/Colette parallel which again, strongly implied that love would be the cure… and well…

Add it up:

- Angel grace burns out demon smoke in the title card

- Cain/Colette show that love can stop the mark

- Dean spends the season exploring his inner self, and the things he represses, and desires.

- Cas spends the season questioning his place as an angel and what he truly desires.

It all seemed to be building to something spectacular. Something like for instance Cas choosing to give up his grace to cure Dean of the Mark of Cain - and by doing so, proving that the Power of Love is the most “powerful force” in the universe (interestingly enough Cas used this exact phrase when talking about how to cure the Mark in 10x10).

The thing is, throughout the whole season there were these breadcrumbs and elements which all seemed to imply that the mark would be cured by love, even if it wasn’t romantic love, love seemed to be the obvious cure. It also seemed pretty obvious that the mark was nothing more than a corruption of the soul. A completely internal force.

Then the wank storm happens. 10x21, Charlie is butchered and fridged, by freaking nazis who have such a stupid story line that I still cringe when I think about them. 10x22, Dean beats Cas to a pulp and doesn’t seem to show any *obvious* regret in the finale, 10x23, the whole idea of the mark being an internal corruption is flipped on its head - turns out the bloody thing was an external force all along. It wasn’t anything to do with Dean’s soul, it was some primordial Goddess of Darkness - who later turns out to be God’s bloody sister.

The kicker was that it literally took a pretty simple spell to remove the damn thing. With the primary ingredient being “the thing the spell caster loves most”. Well that made me flip my shit even if no one else did. WHY would the spell ingredient be for the spell CASTER. Wouldn’t it make more sense for that ingredient to be something that the SUFFERER of the Mark had a connection to instead? 

It’s like they took those elements that they had been playing with all season, about love being the cure, and decided to just fob it off on Rowena - write in a random character for her to love - who has never been heard of before or mentioned since - and be done with it. 

It literally felt like Carver got to a point in this story, and just chickened out, so instead wrote some bullshit last minute to cover himself. 10x23 was such a poor quality finale. I was just confused through most of it. Nothing made sense, it really did seem like Carver had typed it out in one crazy night a few nights before they were due to film whilst surviving on nothing but coffee and hot dogs like poor Kevin in season 8…

Everything else in season 10 seemed to be building to something wonderful. We all felt like Carver knew what he was doing, but it really does seem like he just changed his mind last minute. The last three episodes of season 10 are awful compared to the rest of the season and none of the themes or mirrors or subtext that was included throughout the season came to ANYTHING. 

Alot of people rage quit after Charlie, but a lot more gave up after 10x23 it seemed because it all just fell apart. Nothing made sense and it seemed like all the meta, all the speculation, all the build up, was just lost. it was a huge missed opportunity for the show. They could have ended that season spectacularly, but Carver lost the plot… literally… maybe his dog chewed up his original script I dunno.

Anyway, this is all my interpretation based on memory alone of course. Other meta writers who were around back then may say something completely different, but all this is based on my own experience and the huge amount of meta and speculation I consumed during that season.

This is why there are so many canon!verse fanfics on AO3 set after season 10 or set just before the final few episodes of season 10 where Cas cures Dean with his grace (and also confesses his love) if nothing else, the season spurned a huge amount of fix-it fics which were pretty awesome to read, all with their own different versions of how Cas would heal Dean. 

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/168510403535/what-does-plot-accordion-mean

(with links to actual interviews with Carver that 100% support this theory, and lizbob’s fantastic accordion diagrams :D)

So instead of tying up the story as it had been written for TWO AND A HALF SEASONS, we got the *wheeeeeeeze* of the plot accordion where they were scrambling for *stuff* to add in to fluff out the arcs and dodge the bullet they’d fired with that s10 title card because they were in no way ready to bring anyone’s emotional arc to a conclusion yet.

And I’m also wary and cringe any time I read “endgame” in speculation, because I’d been indoctrinated into the fandom during the s8 meta heyday and I know what it feels like to be burned. BUT! I think this is part of why Dabb has taken an entirely different tack with his larger narrative structure.

Part of it is that he CAN. The network has (since s11) begun saying that Supernatural will always have a place on the CW as long as everyone involved wants to keep making it. I mean, nothing is ever guaranteed, but they finally feel secure knowing that they can write the thing at their own leisurely pace and aren’t trying to fit the entire series character arcs into a set number of seasons anymore, you know?

But also, Dabb lived through that plot accordion. He was the guy who had the second half of s11 unceremoniously dumped in his lap with a post it note reading OKAY FIX THIS PLS when Carver left to helm his own series.

I believe if nothing else, we’ll know when the final season will begin airing. There will be PR. There will be Major Announcements from every corner reminding us of the Very Special Final Season of Supernatural. They’re gonna push it with everything they’ve got in hopes of finally drawing back a lot of the audience that’s fallen away over the years, if nothing else for the sake of nostalgia and the hope that people will want to be along for that incredibly emotional journey to the Winchesters’ personal finish line.

So between now and then, Dabb’s not actively running directly at that finish line, because he doesn’t have to. He can explore all sorts of side alleys, run around through the snowy forest, poke around in alternate universes and cartoons a bit, without feeling like there’s a Main Narrative Objective that needs to be reached on a set timeline.

And IT IS SO MUCH MORE CHILL omg. 

Yes, this does mean there’s not likely to be any resolution to the essential questions surrounding the three main characters and their personal growth any time soon, but Dabb is doing everything in his power to dig out and expose all of their issues to be dealt with in the mean time.

And when we do get the announcement that Supernatural will be coming to an end, we’ll all have an entire season to get used to the idea, and we’ll likely see all these themes that were abandoned in s10 come back around in major ways, because those were endgame themes that Carver accidentally started digging up before we reached the endgame.

I have never thought that Carver chickened out back then. It was just that, as @mittensmorgul said, when the network renewed the show, he ran out of plot. He realized that it was way too soon to deal with endgame, thus the accordion effect (y’all should click the link mittens shared). 

I understood why Charlie was killed off (though I will NEVER justify the way in which it came to pass). The codependency had gotten Kevin killed (thanks to Dean) and a contrapart was needed; another member of the “family” had to get killed, this time thanks to Sam. 

However, everything about the Styne family seemed to be pulled out of nowhere because it most likely was. If the showed had ended in season 10, killing Charlie off would’ve been illogical because there was no time for the Kevin = Charlie symmetry. But when they realized they did have the time, they decided to continue down that road. The codependency was NOT fixed and the way season 10 ended proved it. (I wrote about it at the time over here: http://charlie-minion.tumblr.com/post/120656327377/theres-always-been-unexplained-stuff-in-spn-but)

In s11, they gave us god and his sister as mirrors of Dean and Sam. It was a really good way to handle the toxic relationship between siblings after such a codependent couple of seasons (9 and 10) that saw no resolution of the issue. We actually saw complete resolution in 12x22, so it took them a long time. (Dean and Sam’s relationthip this season is a lot healthier; they are finally brothers, not parent and child anymore).  

When @bluestar86 says that in s10 it felt like Carver changed his mind last minute, she’s not wrong. He probably did, but it wasn’t out of fear, it was when he realized Supernatural is literally the show that shall never end (as I like to call it). He might have been ready to move on, but the fans, the cast and crew, and the network weren’t. 

Expecting a confession from Dean at this point in s13 is NOT WISE. It would be great, but it’s not wise! 

You guys are forgetting that we’ll have season 14 and that IT WON’T be the last one. As mittens said, I’m sure there will be a huge announcement once they know the final season is coming. They had a chance for that during PaleyFest but did nothing of the sort, so I’m positive we’ll get season 15. 

Do you know what that means? No resolution of major endgame themes! 

That’s just how things are and it’s not Dabb’s fault. It’s the format of the show! Some things simply won’t work until the show reaches its final season.  

Sam and Dean have to continue hunting as a team 

Sam still has to be far from his desired endgame (of which we still know very little) 

There still should be reasons why Dean can’t be with Cas (either emotional separation via miscommunication or literal physical separation)

Cas has to continue his journey to discover who he is, where he belongs and why exactly Dean needs him

We will get more subtext and more text as well, just enough to pave the way, but there won’t be any resolution until the end is close. People can get angry and scream and whine all they want, but that doesn’t make it any less true. 

So, I’m definitely NOT expecting a confession this season. I might hope for an argument between Dean and Cas and some words between them, but Dean won’t say enough (just as he didn’t in 11x23). 

Cas and Dean are NOT ready simply because the network isn’t ready to let go of its longest-running series. 

There is enough subtext and text to have Dean and Cas romantically together, but Dean still needs to be open about his feelings. And guess what? He won’t be open any time soon, because that’s the only thing keeping them apart this season.