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Jo is a Dean mirror, but not in the way people think like their stories being the same, but in a literal sense of the word like bizarro world. Dean lost his mom and was raised (I use that term extremely loosely) by his dad, Jo lost her dad and was raised by her mom. Dean never got to be a kid and was forced to grow up too fast, Jo was always treated like a kid and never allowed to grow up. John brought Dean into hunting, while Ellen kept Jo out of it. Dean was in the hunting life and only wanted a normal life, Jo had a normal life and only wanted to hunt. Etc. They're both twisted but in different directions

Hey remember when supernatural spent their first three seasons establishing that Dean was a mirror for John and then spent the next three seasons developing Cas as a mirror for Mary???

Because I cannot stop thinking about it please send help.

The Castiel and Mary parallels across seasons 4, 5 and 6 are just wild.

Please consider. That both thee dead wife and thee angel of the lord:

Are cosmically entwined with a Winchester, manipulated by forces beyond their control.

Are gateways. They catalyse the introduction of a previously unknown realm: John to the supernatural, Dean to heaven.

Were raised to do violence: Mary the hunter and Castiel the soldier.

Refused to play the role they were given: Mary left the life and Cas rebelled.

Made a secret devil’s bargain that would ultimately get them killed: Mary with Azazel, Cas with Crowley.

Are presented as characters doing the wrong thing for the right reasons - ultimately forgiven by others but still punished by the narrative.

Symbolically, they represent benevolent archetypes (mother, angel) but complicated individuals.

And for most of Dean’s life, he only relates to them as heavenly ‘others’ - perceiving them both as fundamentally unknowable and unobtainable.

That last point is the one that kills me. Because as long as they stay that way, Dean is safe to love them.

A mother can’t leave you if she’s already dead. And an angel can’t break your heart if you believe he isn’t capable of falling in love.

Supernatural was a show about hetero American masculinity that was never made for queer people, that got reclaimed by the queer community, who managed to find their own experiences within the lines of the text.

The show then became a meta representation of itself, where the characters that started out as stereotypical masculine action heroes turned out to be trapped in that role against their will. In the canon of the show, they were literally being written into a trope that didn't fit them.

Cas was a character who was never meant to stay in the show, but ended up lasting longer than any other side character because of what the fans wanted.

In the show's canon, Cas was an angel who was never supposed to play the role in the story he ended up playing, but ended up gaining free will against the wishes of a vindictive writer.

Writers tend to lose control of shows in an utterly unique way that no other media tends to experience, and Supernatural is the logical extreme of that idea.

The queer community reclaimed this show so thoroughly that they made it their own, and warped it until the writers had no choice but to put the queerness into the very text of the show itself.

Supernatural could have ended as a show about the power of reclaiming your own story and breaking out of tropes, both literally and figuratively. It could have been a beautiful statement on the power of interpretation and a groundbreaking queer love story.

But it wasn't. Because it's Supernatural, and Supernatural is garbage, and it frankly makes sense that they would fuck up their one chance not to remembered as garbage, even when it was all written out for them.

But it doesn't matter. Because in the end, queer people still managed to reclaim a story written with such a strong dislike for them. They managed to inject their own interpretation of that and continue to do so to this day. And that's pretty fucking awesome.

Happy November fifth.

Castiel × Dean Winchester

"I know it's hard for you to take a compliment, but my life began the day that you came in it."

- "HYD" sung by Hayley Williams

If you felt dissatisfied with or confused by the ending of Supernatural, may I introduce you to a concept:

Chuck won.

I spent a year and a half writing out what this concept means, in story and out of story–and why it matters.

Here’s the thesis: 

The ending feels tragic because it IS. The villain wins in the story. And the writers wrote it as purposeful commentary on a situation of real-world censorship that couldn’t allow the ending the characters deserved.

Don’t take my word for it; the show told us everything we need to know.

You do not need ANY prior knowledge of “Chuck won” as an angle of analysis–or prior familiarity with Supernatural meta–to read this. My goal was to make understanding the totality of this concept as accessible as possible :)

Read On AO3