and his own vendetta against michael is barely taken seriously by both the writers and the fandom bc there’s never any real room for it bc we HAD to have michael-dean (which was also failed). he tells cas yes, he is actually willing to kill dean if it means preventing another apocalypse world from being created, and the fact that he was tortured by the guy and waged a war against him pretty much singlehandedly should’ve carried more weight than it does. cas frankly should’ve understood it more than he did but instead it’s turned into “nuuuu don’t hurt my husbando •^•” and jack is like. being a disobedient toddler or some shit.

I HATE the fact that there is no in canon reference as to why Castiel gets ambushed by demons in that bar. He had clear vision of a lot of them and didnt see their faces?

Dabb guided PLOT-CENTRAL ROMANTIC STRUCTURE VALIDATED BY EVERY PARALLEL/THEME/CHUCK-AS-CW METANARRATIVE

Berens gave us CANON DESTIEL, FANFIC GAPS, DREAMHUNTER PARALLELS, CELEBRATION OF QUEER JOY/BEING AND DECONSTRUCTION OF HETERONORMATIVITY

Glynn brought MIXXTAPE/HERE'S TO BEING RIGHT COLLABS, DEANCAS DEFYING GOD/EVERY OTHER TIMELINE TO CHOOSE EACH OTHER

Yockey schooled us on CLASSICAL QUEERCODING, RECLAMATION OF MONSTROSITY/OTHERNESS

Perez said DOMESTIEL RIGHTS THEY WATCH OLD MOVIES SAY "I LOVE YOU" AND WATCH EACH OTHER LEAVE IN THE MORNING

BuckLeming-Singer

He introduces Jack and the rest of the season is focused on him, one way or the other. Even the mytharc of the season is about him, from being trapped in the apocalypse world, making a place for himself with the hunters, trying to figure out who he is. And meanwhile the actual protagonists of the show are…..running around chasing leads but actually accomplishing very little. They take turns being sad, make a few speeches but don’t really do anything. They are not the ones who move the story.

He downplays (if not outright erases) all of the older characters’ intelligence to make them fit the story and doesn’t bother with consistent growth/arc for any of them. He beats and forces them to fit the shape he’s cut out for them to portray in his story instead of understanding them: who they were, how they grew and where they are now and logically advancing their story from that point. He makes them regress or progress on a moment’s notice on an episode-to-episode basis and ignores any preceding canonical events when it suits him.

It’s most noticeable with Dean but he also takes away from Sam and Cas’ characters till they’re almost unrecognisable, bearing only the most superficial of similarities with the characters we have grown to love over 10+ seasons. But at the same time he also relies on this very love to keep the viewers watching, since the plot itself is barely held together by retcons or sudden personality changes/loss of logical reasoning in the characters.

There have been discussions on how, as the show goes on the themes (even the genre) change and how vastly different the later seasons are compared to the earlier ones and while that’s true, there is still some coherence to those changes-a graphical line changing direction erratically perhaps, but a line nonetheless-as the story progresses….upto s12. Forward of that Dabb just-tears the graph to pieces and handpicks a few of them to nail to the wall.

He twists the characters, their history, their personalities, the themes and events of the story and it’s very heart to fit the show he wants to make instead of adapting his writing to the show that he’s actually been handed the reins to. And it’s tiring honestly.

Ok, so as a deangirl I wholeheartedly believe Dean should have faced being wrong more, both because it would have made a better story and because it probably would have made Dean healthier and happier in the long run. Like Supernatural as it stands is not exactly great for him. The short term Dean suffering of one of his decisions blowing up in his face and a bunch of fighting with Sam/Cas/etc. would have been well worth actually addressing something like his abandonment issues that cause the deantransgressions in a way that would fundamentally matter. The writers contorting to make him "right" - or at least make any serious threat of consequences to his relationships or internal justifications fade away to preserve the status quo - effectively just denied a deeply traumatized character most opportunities for positive character growth. They boiled him in worse and worse dropped conflicts, and it sucks! *Holds up a pic of S1 Dean next to S14 Dean's Abraham moment* Look what they did to my boy! 😭

But at the same time, I can't really get - in the serious Dean character study sense - invested in the Jack arc / divorce arc as some kind of straw breaking the camel's back because, like, that ship sailed a long time ago.

Berens and Dabb's eleventh hour vague gesture toward nebulous "anger issues" isn't fixing Supernatural's insane protagonist syndrome, even before it fizzles back to status quo without delving into the underlying issues. There's nothing meaningfully indicating that this time Dean was particularly deserving of scorn / needed to face the music, other than the lack of following seasons to confirm intent to forget about this one. The main real drive to S14/S15 deancrit is that it was all up there in worst transgressions, and that's just because of escalation. It's the final season and they are pulling out their last cards to shock us for drama. Why not boil him to the point of trying to kill a kid twice??? (These fucking writers... 😤)

Like I don't think adding consequences to Supernatural would have made the divorce arc meaningfully better by coming down hard on Dean's relationship with Cas and Jack? I think adding consequences to Supernatural would have pushed back on Dean's destructive behavior years before Jack was even born, and inevitably eliminated the entire worsening deantransgression pattern (and the Jack-prompted divorce arc along with it). Too much has already been unrealistically swept under the rug at this point. Flipping the consequences switch only for S14/S15 would just be nonsensical.