This Is A Mood Beyond Anything I've Seen Rn. I Hate Yet I Love Last Night's Episode And I Hope They Don't

This is a mood beyond anything I've seen rn. I hate yet I love last night's episode and I hope they don't just throw Cas to the curb after this trauma.

I can handle loving and hating the confirmation. I can't handle watching Dean move on with his life like Cas didn't just admit his undying love.

I am glad I have reached a point in my simultanuous love and hatred for Supernatural that I will defend that destiel scene to the death while at the same time reblogging memes about how stupid it is because they're hilarious and absolutely true

pro tip on how to explain the spn ending to your friends

Have them imagine an alternate ending for the Harry Potter saga: what if Ron died in book 6 and never got mentioned again? Imagine he had no funeral and he was never grieved by any of the characters. 

After Harry kills Voldemort he starts planning to get a wizard career and finally rise to his full magic potential. First, he wants to visit the Dursleys and he falls off the stairs in their house. Hermione offers to heal him with magic but he says “he was always supposed to die in this staircase”. He promptly dies, right after a semi-romantic moment between him and his cousin. Nobody has time to attend his funreal because they’re busy with work (maybe?). Only Hermione and his owl show up.

Hermione moves on, gets a party wig and marries a man (but we never learn anything about him, his face is blurred). We do not know whether Hermione manages to follow her dreams and become the cleverest professor in all of Hogwarts, the details of her life are left out in favor of showing her son for some reason. 

All of the other characters - the Weasleys, Luna, Neville, Draco, Snape and Dumbledore - are killed by Voldemort and then resurrected off screen, we never see them again. 

Ginny’s arc is building up to have her be the love interest of one of the leads but then she’s just never mentioned again. 

Harry reunites with his abusive adoptive family in heaven because he doesn’t want to meet his actual parents. He doesn’t want to see Ron either but he smiles when he hears that he’s here.

The last shot is just Daniel Radcliff waving at the drone camera, thanking everybody for coming to the movie theater, as a Katy Perry cover of the main theme plays in the background.

Let’s misbehave...

I’m sure back when 15x10 aired, I was not alone in this, but readers, when I saw this scene, I screamed. Like, alarm the neighbors kind of screaming. This is - and it’s 100% subtextual but there is no earthly way this could be overinterpreted - a clear statement that the writers want to give us “canon Destiel”. (If anything it was underinterpreted by the audience - on Twitter, you could tell who was not used to examining subtext because they were very confused about why it was there.)

We’re seeing, essentially, a drug trip - Garth has just given Dean a good dose of laughing gas, and sends him on his way. “Let the gas do its thing… everything’s fine…” So (in the way film handles these things) we are accessing Dean’s subconscious, perhaps things he hides from himself - but Garth is reassuring us, we’re gonna like this.

The scene is shot in black and white, to old-timey music, in old-fashioned costumes. It evokes the Motion Picture Production Code (or the “Hays Code”), a semi-voluntary (in that you could ignore it but no reputable theater would show your film if you did) system of censorship designed to impose moral standards on film. Among the things forbidden? “Excessively lustful” sexual content - which means filmmakers got really good at finding ways to express sexual content via visual euphemism. Ways like watching fireworks together. Ways like… dancing. Hold that thought.

Dean is venturing into some territory that’s uncomfortable for him. He’s not sure what he’s doing. But Garth appears and offers to demonstrate. Narratively, Garth has been used to show us what Dean could be if he would get out of his own way: he’s well-adjusted, content, confident without being overconfident, unafraid of showing the world his internal softness, unashamed of what and who he loves. Garth is telling Dean: Drop the front, let the real you shine - and then he vanishes, and Dean tosses the prop away; he can trust himself, he’s got this.

He dances around the room by himself for a bit, but he’s looking for something -  a partner. (Dean has been dissatisfied with the ‘unattached drifter’ lifestyle for quite a while - he maybe first expressed this in “Rock and a Hard Place”, but there was a moment in “Baby” that made the point outright, if indirectly.) When he finds someone to dance with… it’s a lamp. There was a time when I could have quoted you chapter and verse on “lamps, the sun, and other light sources as a stand-in for Cas” in the show’s language of symbolism; my helpful friends came up with this, in which light was used to hold space for Cas and highlight his absence from a scene. Trust me that the lamp is a stand-in for Cas, and at a minimum the audience is being invited to imagine who that lamp might represent…

Then there’s the song: “Let’s Misbehave”, originally written by Cole Porter - we can’t know how he would label himself if he were alive today, but it’s known that he was married to a woman while also having male lovers so “bisexual” is at least in the neighborhood of right. As he closes out the dance with the lamp by blowing it a kiss, we hear…

They say the Spring Means just one thing to little lovebirds We’re not above birds Let’s misbehave

and then Dean dances his way up the stairs to the top of the map table where he stands, rapturous, in a beam of light: his highest bliss, his happiness, his heaven, and if the light was holding space for Cas in the past, that space is now right where Dean is.

…so the tl; dr on the whole scene: they have used tap dancing (symbolic of sex) with a lamp (symbolic of Cas) to “Let’s Misbehave” (not symbolic so much as just straight up about sex) to tell us that among Dean’s deepest desires is a relationship with Cas - or turn the decoder ring one click to the left and they’re simultaneously tapdancing around (i.e. addressing indirectly) and hanging a lampshade on Dean’s desire for a life partner. They bring this up again at the end of the episode: Garth and Bess are dancing together while Sam and Dean look on wistfully, and Dean comments, “You know, I always thought I could be a good dancer if I wanted to be.” - a reference both to the dream sequence and to the domestic contentment they’re watching.

(The caveat I want to hang on all this is that if you turn the decoder ring one more click and then look at the Hays Code again, they may be telling us about Network Meddling: we would like to give you an explicit Dean/Cas romance but someone higher up the food chain has shut us down. The caveat to that caveat is that they’re willing to misbehave. ;)  )

Supernatural had the opportunity to do something great. To send a message of love and validation to a whole community. Not only to the part of the community that liked their show, but to all of us. But instead they decided to pander to the people, who never had to fight for their representation.

I support #TheySilencedYou, #TheySilencedThem and #TheyWillNeverSilenceUs and I'm in awe of all of you. Of your eloquence, passion, coordination and decisiveness. And I feel like your message goes beyond this particular TV show and the CW.

It's about protesting a pattern of disrespect towards otherness in Mainstream Media. It's about demanding meaningful, unmistakably queer representation, that enables discourse and furthers understanding in a heterogenic audience. It's about asking Networks to not only hire diverse staff but to also give them the freedom to tell their stories the way they want to. It's about telling creators to own up to the inherent messages they leave us with in the end.

And that's inspiring and should be celebrated.

Stories matter.

Fuck man, Jensen Ackles investing 15 years of his life, his talent, blood, and tears into Dean Winchester and this small tv-series. 

Jensen Ackles A-star level actor declining other roles in big shows and movies like avengers out of loyalty and respect for Dean and the SPN fandom. Jensen Ackles, who could’ve easily earned an oscar had he left the show for something else.

Jensen Ackles leaving his family for 9 months every year to shoot the show.

Jensen Ackles calling Dean his friend and saying that he’ll carry him inside for the rest of his life. Jensen Ackles caring about Dean like no writer ever did, making deliberate changes to the way he portrayed Dean in order to reflect what Dean had been through and how it changed his character. Who analysed the shit out of scripts and made sure they were true to Dean’s character and journey, putting SO MUCH thought into his every single acting decision.

Jensen Ackles, who hated the ending, but was told convicted that he was wrong about it, that he was “too close”, when in reality he was THE ONLY who knew what was right and who Dean was all along. 

Jensen Ackles, who worked so hard for so long and gave up so much to make Dean so relatable, admirable, lovable, and complex like no other character out there….only to have him ended like that… 

We all deserved better and we all have been spat in the face, but no one more than Jensen Ackles & Dean Winchester. And while I am angry for myself, I am fucking furious for them.

For those of you that think this is just about Destiel, I'm sorry you're wrong.

This is about Lily, who was the first of the special children to die. She was murdered and hung on a tower for shock value.

This is about Corbett, who was the first and only of the ghost facers to die. who's sexuality was used for comic relief (yes, I know we all enjoy the "Gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day" line, but let's call a spade a spade.

This is about Demian and Barns, whose relationship was used for comedic shock.

This is about Charlie, our first recurring LGBTQ+ character, whose brutal off screen death was used to "move the story along."

This is about Max Banes, whose story was forgotten about, even though there was obviously more to tell.

This is about Kaia, who was killed after expressing interest in Claire. And claire, for being almost erased from the narrative after the confirmation that she felt the same.

This is about AU Charlie, who lost TWO separate girlfriends and then was killed herself. (And erasing the scene where she awkwardly talks to Sam about her tryst with ROWENA)

And yes, it is about Castiel. The NB Angel in a Male vessel who fell in love with a man, and was killed after confessing said love.

And Dean Winchester, because honestly, who knows, but all signs point a certain way, but it is not our story to tell. it was his. And he was killed before he could. Before he could even explore what it means to be truly free, he was killed.

These aren't the only instances on the show either. There are several throughout ALL of the seasons where LGBTQ+ people have been used for comedy or shock value and then never heard from or seen again.

They could have done so much by just letting three little words, Hell, two fucking words, on screen, but they refused to make a stand and chose to pander to a dying audience.

So yes, we will celebrate the "Y yo a ti, Cas." We will try to figure out what went wrong in translation or editing, because this is so much bigger than Destiel.

For those of you who see these examples and say " see, you've always had rep, you just wanted to see Castiel and Dean together." Let me ask you? Is killing or writing off every LGBTQ+ member on your show really good rep?

For those of you who say " Well, Dean was always straight and changing it this late in the Game would have been pandering!" While, I know alot of people saw him as uber heterosexual, some of us never did, but that's not the point. People do come out later in life you know? Being anything other than strictly heterosexual is terrifying. There are so many risks. It takes years to build up the courage to be yourself, some people never even get the chance.it would not have been pandering, it would have been groundbreaking. It would have let people see that it is never too late to be free. But they didn't want to do that.

For those of you who think it was fetishization of two "hot dudes"..... maybe for some, and those people should be ashamed, because sexuality should never be fetishized. But get this, the story of Destiel was loved by all members of the community, as well as straight people too, and believe me, some of those members have no desire to see two dudes getting it on. It was the story of unconditional love and respect that drew us in.

This isn't just about Destiel. It IS about showing people that it's okay to love who you love and being free to be who you are, regardless of what society thinks.

So yes, we will go feral. We deserve it.